Jacques halbronn Linguistique. L'anglais dominé par le français. Le cas de la Slovaquie et de l'impact du hongrois.

What is the evidence behind the idea that English uses Romance words for meat and Germanic words for animals because of Norman domination post-1066? I've seen quite a lot of claims that the reason English says pork for the meat, and pig for the animal is due to the Norman Conquest, with Norman French aristocratic speakers eating the foods and Anglo-Saxon Old/Middle English speaking peasants raising the animals. If memory serves, this even shows up as a linguistic theory in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. I've never seen an actual academic paper providing evidence in favour of this theory, and I was wondering what the actual evidence is for this being anything other than a popular science theory? Is there another potential reason why this might have occurred? Are there other languages with similar issues (e.g. does a place like Slovakia, historically dominated by a Hungarian aristocracy, have a similar divide between foodstuff/animal terminology?) JHB 20 09 25