More French in English than You Think

I agre with you Simon
I love London even more than Paris for all the good plays we can see there.

What about Montpellier? I've heard lovely things about that city, but bypassed it on my tour and ended up in the dreaded Cote d'Azur region (which was beautiful and scenic but a tad too overwhelming).

it is dirtier. and infront of horrible, the article as just 'a'

=> To Sima
Well my favorite place is certainly Montmartre and all the 18th "arrondissement"!!! But I like all the places that still look like the villages they used to be: the Butte-aux-Cailles, some spots in Belleville and Ménilmontant, the Batignolles, etc.
I am very interested in Paris history and evolution. So, I like to find remains of the past in modern areas. And Paris is full of these remains.
But that goes for every city. Remains of the past are, for me, the soul of a city.

I'd love to visit London because it seems to be a very interesting place. I was very impressed by Rome and by Lisbon (what a lovely city indeed, I had forgotten to mention it before, I think).

Yeah Montpellier is quite cool! It is very beautiful, people here are very kind. I think if you visit France once more, I will go there. Unfortunately I think the French Riviera is too snobbish: there is a lot of money there, too much indeed.
Moreover cities like Bayonne or Biarritz (just before Spain, on the Atlantic cost) are really cool too!

Montpellier is cool if you forget the plethoria of dog droppings on the pavements.

Da Frogg
I love Montmarte too. It's so nice to go there in fall, I mean these days.

Around the PSG stadium is not a bad area. I love the little island Notre Dame is on and the Champs-Elysées.

I love Montmartre by snowy weather (it is very rare and you have to be careful in the slippy stairs, but I love it). Oh, it's great all the time. In summer, it's shady and cool. In spring, it's full of flowers.

The 16th arrondissement (the Parc des Princes area) is nice but soooo snobbish. And so desert!
The islands are really neat if you avoid the tourists spots.

But I never go to the Champs Elysees unless I'm compelled to. Too many tourists, shops, little punks. And the movie theaters aren't playing the good movies :o)
But it's where you find all those luxury shops that are part of Paris reputation so...

[It seems that the thread has turned into "Visit France!!!" :-D]

On the question of the Celtic element in modern English, Simon is right in stating that it is minimal. There are less than 10 words of definite Celtic origin that enter everyday English ('Broch', meaning a badger's set, is one of them. 'Port' might be another, although this could have entered English in the same way it entered Brittonic, from Latin). This, in fact, is a major argument to state that the Anglo-Saxons anihilated the Celts in what is now England, rather than merging with them as some would have it.

As far as the French element is concerned, the English borrowing from French is particularly interesting - English, as people above have stated, has borrowed a large number of French words (40% - 60% depending on who you choose to believe). However, it did not borrow French grammar or syntactic structure, which is evidence of the fact that Norman French can not have been an everyday speech in mediaeval England, but rather it remained the preserve of the aristocracy.

Aye, too much dog droppings in France. Sometimes, too much human affection for those canines is not good. They must be taught a lesson on the hard side that excreting on the pavement is unhealthy, e.g. giving them an electric shock every time something leaks out.

At least in the U.S., there are laws that force dog owners to pick up droppings. Therefore, Americans who walk their dogs always have a bag in their hand.

There are laws there as well, and the average French is carrefull not letting his/her dog excreting anywhere. But a low rate of people less concerned about general interest are enough to waste those attentions; especially if the dog owners are numerous in the overall population. It happens to be the case in France, at least in Paris and Montpellier.

And Marseilles...

As a footnote, what I have heard however, is that the first Engliosh grammarians based their work on Latin Grammars and so were influenced slightly by the grammar of that language.

I think American English has words like smithereens (that come from Irish) and perhaps a few others. Interestingly, "shinanegans" is not Irish in origin.

Yeah, the first English grammars were based on Latin. That makes me wonder if this is part of the reason we have the present progressive (-ing) and the use of the word "of" to indicate possession. Did these grammarians do this by accident or was it already common usage in the English language?

the book of the day = the day's book

It just makes me wonder if these grammarians did something that made the English language even further from its Germanic relatives.