pronunciation and accent; while in the later borrowings (unless they
have become very popular) an attempt is made to pronounce them in the
French fashion.' From Mr. Smith's pages it would be easy to select
examples of the complete assimilation which was attained centuries ago.
_Caitiff, canker_, and _carrion_ came to us from the Norman dialect of
French; and from their present appearance no one but a linguistic expert
would suspect their exotic ancestry, _Jury, larceny, lease, embezzle,
distress,_ and _improve_ have descended from the jargon of the lawyers
who went on thinking in French after they were supposed to be speaking
and writing in English. Of equal historical significance are the two
series of words which English acquired from the military vocabulary
of the French,--the first containing _company, regiment, battalion,
brigade, division_, and _army_; and the second consisting of _marshal,
general, colonel, major, captain, lieutenant, sergeant_, and _corporal_.

(Here I claim the privilege of a parenthesis to remark that in Great
Britain _lieutenant_ is generally pronounced _leftenant_, than which no
anglicization could be more complete, whereas in the United States this
officer is called the _lootenant_, which the privates of the American
Expeditionary Force in France habitually shortened to '_loot_'--except,
of course, when they were actually addressing this superior. It may be
useful to note, moreover, that while 'colonel' has chosen the spelling
of one French form, it has acquired the pronunciation of another.)

Dr. Henry Bradley in the _Making of English_ provides further evidence
of the aforetime primacy of the French in the military art. '_War_
itself is a Norman-French word, and among the other French words
belonging to the same department which became English before the end of
the thirteenth century' are _armour, assault, banner, battle, fortress,
lance, siege, standard_, and _tower_--all of them made citizens of our