5 hours ago, Norm Matthews said:I am guessing that England has many French food references since William de Normandie (The Conqueror) was from France and his French speaking court replaced the Saxon court. I always thought that is why the Saxon farm workers that produced the food had different names for the food than barons who ate the food.. ie cow, beef (boef), pig-pork (porc)_, deer-venison, chicken-poultry, etc.
It's a popular theory, but one which has been challenged by several renowned lexicographers going all the way back to Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) through to Robert Burchfield, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1956 to 1986.
There is little hard evidence supporting the theory and some contradicting it.
