User:Wii sports resort cycling olympian/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Influence of French on English

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I am taking a linguistics class and I am interested in the topic of language contact. I also am a speaker of both English and French, and was intrigued years ago when I read one of my French textbooks claiming that French was the closest language to English.

This article matters because few people realize how significant of an influence the French language has had on English, and identifying commonalities between the two languages may help a speaker of one learn the other.

My first impressions of this article were that it was very thorough, with several relevant examples for each aspect of French influence on the English language.

Evaluate the article

 * The lead section clearly outlines the article's major sections in the first sentence. However, I recommend altering the introductory sentence to better convey to any reader the essence of why this topic matters--good related examples include the introductory sentences in the following articles: Slavic influence on Romanian, Arabic language influence on the Spanish language. Without some kind of accurate qualifier describing the nature of the language contact (noticeable, long-standing, significant), the reader has less of an idea of the scope of the language contact between French and English and thus less of an idea of its significance, which makes for a less interesting or comprehensive start.


 * The lead section could stand to be more concise when touching on the history of French language influence on English.


 * The article's content is relevant to its topic. However, because it is noted in the lead section that English has continued to be influenced by French, I would recommend expanding the "Background" section to include as much of that history and evolution as possible to the present day, rather than stopping in the 1400s. The influence of French on English didn't stop in England in medieval times, and I found the content lacking because French has definitely influenced Canadian English in certain ways, but there was no mention of that in this article.
 * A strength of the content of this article was the comprehensiveness of the examples of French borrowings in different linguistic aspects of English.


 * This article is neutral, but is not balanced if it only includes French influence on English from England.
 * The sources cited in this article are reliable. I don't see a need to include both a "Bibliography" and a "References" section, though; perhaps it is best to merge them?
 * The article is well-written and well-organized, but might stand to benefit from more images, especially in the text-heavy Examples of English words of French origin section. This section also might be better placed nearer to the lexical section.
 * Overall, this article could stand to be expanded to include a broader historical overview of French influence on the English language as well as more geographically diverse examples of this influence (contact between francophone and anglophone communities in Canada and the U.S. comes to mind, but I'm sure there are other communities I am forgetting). It is well-developed in terms of examples of French borrowings in the English lexicon, however.