And, of course, the Normans were… Vikings, who had settled in France and adopted the French language. In any case, all of the intermixing of linguistic influences has turned English into a linguistic vacuum cleaner; while foreign words easily slide into English, English words tend to sound jarring in other languages. I can understand why the Académie française gets uptight about Anglicisms, though it can be silly when an English word in question has French roots.
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