Yep, a very silly accents 
Viking IIRC correctly just means ‘raider’ (with specfic reference to the Northmen), which indeed the Normans were originally.
The Franks became the French through a synthesis with the Romano-Celtic culture of that area.
Actually, I think Viking orgianlly meant ‘seafarer’ but in a historical context it means Northmen raiders, usually from the Scandanavian fjords.
I hate to dissapoint you, but the “norman french” only refers to the oil dialect (as opposed to “oc” dialects spoken in southern france) spoken in Normandy, and extremely close to the dialect spoken in the area around Paris which would become modern french.
And there weren’t much Norsemen who settled in Normandy, actually, though I forgot the estimated numbers. They were granted this duchy by the king of France who couldn’t manage to successfully fight off the various and recurrent raids. They ruled the land, but plainly adopted its mores, customs and language, and by the time of the Norman conquest their descendants were as much “french” as any other ruling class in any part of the kingdom (at least the northern part…there were more significant difference in the southern half of France).
Beside, though the duke of Normandy himself could trace back his ancestry to Rollon, the Norse leader who was originally granted the duchy, most of the other nobles who accompanied him were probably of french or mixed descent.
So, the “norman french” wasn’t more different from the dialect which would become “standart french” than were, say, “picardy french” or “bourgogne french”. By the way, the french dialect spoken in normandy retained until its dissapearance some features that you still can notice in english. For instance, a lot of words ending in “eur” in “Paris french” ended in “our” in “normandy french”. For instance “couleur” in the Paris dialect would be pronounced “colour” in Normandy.
So, sorry, but i guess you owe something to us… 
I hate to dissapoint you, but the “norman french” only refers to the oil dialect (as opposed to “oc” dialects spoken in southern france) spoken in Normandy, and extremely close to the dialect spoken in the area around Paris which would become modern french.
And there weren’t much Norsemen who settled in Normandy, actually, though I forgot the estimated numbers. They were granted this duchy by the king of France who couldn’t manage to successfully fight off the various and recurrent raids. They ruled the land, but plainly adopted its mores, customs and language, and by the time of the Norman conquest their descendants were as much “french” as any other ruling class in any part of the kingdom (at least the northern part…there were more significant difference in the southern half of France). The overwhelming majority of the population in Normandy was the people who lived there before the duchy was handed to the Norse leader.
Beside, though the duke of Normandy himself could trace back his ancestry to Rollon, the Norse leader who was originally granted the duchy, most of the other nobles who accompanied him were probably of french or mixed descent.
So, the “norman french” wasn’t more different from the dialect which would become “standart french” than were, say, “picardy french” or “bourgogne french”. By the way, the french dialect spoken in normandy retained until its dissapearance some features that you still can notice in english. For instance, a lot of words ending in “eur” in “Paris french” ended in “our” in “normandy french”. For instance “couleur” in the Paris dialect would be pronounced “colour” in Normandy.
So, sorry, but i guess you owe something to us…
I could email Professor Cable and ask him, I guess. Been a couple years since I took his class, but he might help us out.
hazel-rah, it also says in the book that only 15% of words in Old English survived into current use in Modern English. As the current lexicon is alot larger than it was then, we should be able to say with reasonable certainity that the number of Old English words still in usuage must be significantly less than 15%.
Gack. Should have been more clear in my earlier posting. The correct sentence should be that the bulk of the vocabulary that is commonly used in English is Germanic. A lot of words were borrowed from Latin, Greek, etc. but many of those are not used outside of highly technical circumstances.
My apologies for the confusion, and I’ll be clearer next time.
.:Nichol:.