But chassis and garage still retain their French pronunciation, or perhaps it would be better to say they still receive a pronunciation which is as close an approximation to that of the French as our unpractised tongues can compass.  And in thus taking over these French words while striving to preserve their Frenchiness, we are neglectful of our duty, we are imperilling the purity of our own language, and we are deserting the wholesome tradition of English—­the tradition which empowered us to take at our convenience but to refashion what we had taken to suit our own linguistic habits.

‘Speaking in general terms,’ Mr. Pearsall Smith writes, in his outline history of the English language, ’we may say that down to about 1650 the French words that were borrowed were thoroughly naturalized in English, and were made sooner or later to conform to the rules of English 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 vocabulary, after having renounced their allegiance to their native land.