Comment on You got it, buddy
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 10 hours agoPartially. In German, the term eye doctor has first been recorded in 1401 (ougenarzt) (according to Wikipedia).
The 1700’s made enormous medical progress - but it’s not like people prior to that had no need for specialized doctors. For example, according to etymonline the term “dentist” was first used in 1759. You can’t tell me dentists didn’t exist for many centuries prior to that and didn’t have an “English-derived”, self-explanatory term. I mean, I never knew “dent” was Latin for tooth until reading the etymology just now.
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
Sure, but many of those words for specialised doctors came to English through French, not directly from Latin or Greek. And I don’t think that you can reasonably argue that English words with French origins aren’t by now a native part of the language. We use many of the same names in Dutch too, coming from French loanwords.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 10 hours ago
Wasn’t English’s French influence mostly over by this point? The Norman conquest added a bunch of French vocabulary but by the 1700’s, England was a stable colonial power.
And for very frequently used terms - like anatomical terms - the English root remained mostly intact and loanwords weren’t used. Arm, nose, shoulder, knee, elbow etc. are not French in origin.
I suspect it could be remnant of nobility separating itself from the common people. By only ever referring to anything with its Latin term, you can distinguish the wealthy, highly-educated from the poorer, lesser-educated people. After all, if you spoke Latin and/or Greek those terms make a lot of intuitive sense.
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
French remained influential in the courts, higher education, and elite society long after it stopped being the “official” language. That last part is totally right.