Did Built Replace Builded?

Also, do French words change pronunciation more quickly among native French speakers?

NOTE: Do you have a language question for John? Leave a comment or email lexiconvalley@booksmartstudios.org, and John may answer your question in a future post!

Cleveland Public Auditorium

Waldron Faulkner has an interesting question:

Why is it that change seems to be more accelerated in the ‘home’ language than in the languages that borrow from that language? Example: In English, we have many words that were borrowed from French starting about 1,000 years ago or so. My understanding is that our pronunciation of these words in English is closer to the pronunciations that would have been prevalent in French at the time they were borrowed. Whereas in French, huge changes in pronunciation have occurred in the intervening years, even if spellings have not kept up with those changes.

I'm thinking of the word ‘gentile,’ which I understand we pronounce pretty closely to the way it was pronounced in French when it was borrowed-across.