Instead, the assimilation of elements of French into English produced Middle English and, with it, the basic profile of the language we still speak: a large vocabulary of Germanic and French-derived words organized with a simplified Germanic grammar.

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When completed, this tree had sprouted branches representing all the main language groups in modern Europe: Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and so on.

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Two centuries of Norman rule in England after 1066 significantly changed the Germanic grammar and dumped a large amount of French vocabulary into the language.

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