Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
             The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
             And bathed every veyne in swich licour
             of which vertu engendred is the flour,
             Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
             Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
             The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
             Hath in the ram his half course yronne,
             And smale foweles maken melodye
             That slepen al the nyght with open eye,
             so priketh hem Nature in hir corages,
             Than longen folk to goon on pilgrymages,
             And palmeres for the seken straunge strondes
             To ferne halwes couth in sondry londes,
             And specially, from every shires ende
             of Engelond, to Canterbury they wende,
             The holy blisful martir for to seke
             That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke
            
             "Nearly fifty per cent of the vocabulary in this English classic is of French Origin. Of the above one hundered twenty eight words, 42 are full words,meaning nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and of that number 20 are French. (they are represented in italics)."
            
             -Dr. Mick Short, Lancaster University.
             On the first 18 lines of Chaucer's General Prologue
            
             What many people do not realize is that much of the contemporary English vocabulary comes from non-English origins. Certainly, we are accustomed to using words like hors d'ouvres, pizza and chop suey in our every day speech, therefore some might contest that they can spot a foreign influence when they see one. However, as Dr. Short points out in his analysis of Chaucer's General Prologue, vocabulary we assume is everyday english, consists of many borrowed words. To cite a more relevent example, in a recent newspaper I found the heading "Many Angered as Bush Government Prepares for Second Term."(srr) It is a fact that none of the key words in this clause bear Anglo-Saxon roots: Angered comes from Scandanavia; Government comes from Normandy; and term comes from Latin Rome.(34, ...