Since French was more polished than their own language, which had declined somewhat in the centuries when it was use mainly by the uneducated classes, they naturally borrowed French words to make up deficiencies in their native tongue. Often both the French word and its English equivalent were kept, sometimes with varying shades of meaning, and this has tended to make English vocabulary rich and varied. Thus we have both “begin,” which is native English, and “commence,” which is of French origin, as well as the following examples: “sin” and “crime”, “wretched” and “miserable”, “shun” and “avoid”.
During the centuries when the distinction between Frenchman and Englishman was disappearing in England, the English vocabulary was enriched by the addition of thousands of French words. The language of this period is called Middle English, and it reached its fullest development in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. Notable also during the 14th century in England was the translation of the Bible into English by John Wycliffe.