French linguist¹ Bernard Cerquiglini："The English language doesn't exist.

Cerquiglini is most interested by the 13th and 14th centuries, when French -- by then a second language used in trade, administration and law -- bled freely into English because "a job, fortunes in land or cash, upholding a contract, liberty or even one's life, could depend on mastering" the tongue.

Half of English's borrowings from French took place from 1260-1400, producing words like "bachelor", from the old French word "bachelier", meaning a young noble not yet a knight².

"Travel" is related to the modern French word for labour, "travail³", while "clock" stems from the French "cloche", a bell struck to sound the hours before mechanical timepieces were invented.

By the time Shakespeare came to write his plays in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, around "40 percent of the 15,000 words in his works are of French origin", Cerquiglini notes.