In 1066 the Normans arrived in England. Their influence on the language was very strong. A lot of words connected with nobility, law, shion, science and literature. For about two centuries the Norman conqueros continued to speak in their native language, so the Old english was preserved only among the lowes classes. The language spoken by educated people contained clear evidence of french and in "colloquial English"we find more words of Saxon root. Latin was mainly used by the church and as the language of learning.

Middle English (the language spoken after the norman conquest) gradually lost almost all the Ango-Saxon inflections and vocabulary was enriched with new words borrowed directly from French. The dialects of Middle English were divided into four groups: Northern, Southern, West midland and Easr midland. The last one became the most important and it was called King’s English, because it was spoken in a wast area including London, where the king resided.