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After the Norman conquest of 1066 , when England was taken over by French speaking Normans, a Germanicized form of French became the language of the King's court and the upper class, who at first were mostly immigrants from Normandy. As the nobles and scholars became more and more English over time, the English spoken by the common people around them became more and more French. By the Middle English period, the Frenchified Saxon dialect of London was becoming the literary dialect and hence the national standard.

Modern English has a great deal of French vocabulary, and some French grammar, but it remains a Germanic language.

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