You Speak French Without Knowing It
For centuries, French was the main language for commerce, diplomacy, science, international relations, and exchanges. Basically for everything. But after World War II, English started to be the dominant language globally because of the influence of the United States, they became the greatest economy on the planet and the most powerful meanwhile Western Europe was reconstructing itself. Step by step, English was taking more and more space internationally, retrograding French in second place.
But why such a title? In fact, the English language is almost a French-based language. For this, we need to look at several centuries back.
A quick history
At the beginning of the 11th century, the English language did not have a well-defined status. Indeed, the inhabitants of Great Britain did not have a language that enabled them to communicate with each other. The different languages in use existed in various dialectal forms. Great Britain, where various Celtic idioms have been intertwined since the 4th century BC, had known the partial occupation of the Romans since the 1st century, and this for four centuries. From 450, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, who came from continental Europe, settled in the South and East. Germanic dialects will, thus, prevail in these regions, supplanting the Celtic languages, which will remain in the…
