Check out Loan Words by rogersgeorge. Here is an excerpt:
I suppose you could say that English became a lot more cosmopolitan in 1066 when the Normans invaded and infused French into the language. From them we got “pork” and “beef” on the dinner table and “pig” and “cow” in the barnyard. But English, over time, has become almost a pidgin language from…
The full article is available here.
