But sometime I will use English turn of sentences in French and it sounds weird ( just did it a l’envers here, pretty sure “turn of sentence” does not exists in English )
I’m ok at Spanish too. My main motivation is to be able to talk to random peoples when traveling. English came de facto because of the internet and US soft power.
Not sure it makes me better at writing or speaking.
We do say "turn of phrase" in English, which means something similar. I wonder if both have the same origin.
It actually goes to show that my command of English is limited. I know both words but “phrase” did not occurs to me even so it’s the same damn word :)
Yeah, that jarred for me. We do say "turn of phrase".
I grew to like English this way: massive corpus made of anglo-saxon plus French.
Just to give an example of why “Anglo-Saxon” might be too broad a term—surviving Old English texts like Beowulf are in what you might call Late West Saxon, and the differences between Saxon and Anglian dialects help explain why Chaucer, who spoke something you might call Anglo-Norman, is much more accessible to modern readers.
If you want more of that Saxon influence, listen to West Country English, where it survives today.
Presence of English in France and Germany might be more due to Americans.
It’s interesting to see French word in English from the William the conqueror period, too. ( like “phrase” from above or the tired example “sheep” vs “mutton” )