Tim Harford talks to Dr Beth Malory, lecturer in English Linguistics at University College London, who explains why so many words derived from French have ended up in English.

With roughly one-third of the English language being derived from French, according to some estimates, it's no surprise that there are a few words that didn't exactly remain true to their original ...

derived from proper names, 3.28 percent; all other languages, less than 1 percent. So here is the list of commonly used 50 French words used in English language: ...

Here are the French words we use in English, in a manner that even the French themselves may not quite understand. The French like to pinch words from English and then reinvent them - something we ...

“English has always borrowed words from ... From modern languages, words derived from French knocked out the most final-rounders. From living languages, it was German and Italian that lead ...

Take hallenkirche, for example, a word derived from German that ... and Greek that later passed through the French language before ending up as an English word. And there are other oddities.