[bioneuralnet]

I remember the "History of English Podcast" covering a lot of this. I'm more a programming language nerd than spoken language, but I still found it fascinating.

Old English was a Germanic language, later heavily influenced by Norman/French vocabulary. French of course descended from Latin, and Latin and Germanic languages both belong to the Indo-European family of languages. (The "C" language of humanity, if you will.)

[Joel_Mckay]

It was more that early English commoners had kept a more Germanic dialect, and french was slowly popularized with the aristocracy. =)

[nine_k]

French was forcibly thrust on the population in 1066, but of course the conquerors were the elite, and the defeated, their servants. So if you tend a cow, you call it with the Germanic word: cow, not vache. But if you consume its expensive meat, you name it in French: boef / beef, not rind(fleisch).

[devilbunny]

At least in the case of meat vs animal, this was pointed out in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, published 1819-1820.

[Balgair]

One I'll (badly) remember about English is:

English is the result of Norman soldiers trying to woo Anglo-Saxon barmaids, and for that task was, evidently, effective enough.