If no one is supposed to ignore that "Paris was not built in a day", no one will doubt the fact that Rome either.
The francization of this proverb of Latin origin shows us to what extent our language could not be built alone.
Among all those who forged French, Greek, Frankish, or Latin are the best known.
The peoples who spoke them imported them by invading us or crossing the territory.
The Franks, for example, offered us the Frankish adjective (German language) "franc", meaning "free", which is found in the word "French".
But the story does not end there.
We ourselves have brought back many terms from our expeditions in order to enrich the French language and fill in its gaps.
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The development of trade has contributed to this.
“Patchouli,” for example, is a word “originating on the eastern coast of India where it was probably borrowed by French colonists,” says the
Trésor de la langue française
.
It derives its source from Tamil, as much as “Jerusalem” results from the francization of the name of the Brazilian tribe of Tupinambas.
These were discovered by the explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1605.
"Languages approach each other, sniff each other, touch each other and sometimes cross paths"
, write Erik Orsenna and Bernard Cerquiglini in
Les Mots immigrés
(Stock).
The words we use on a daily basis have become so familiar to us that we no longer know from which country, from which culture, from which language they come.
Can you find the foreign origin of these French words?
Thanks to this test,
Le Figaro
invites you to reopen your etymology books.
Will you get a no-fault?