But new ones were constantly being added, at that time mostly from Norman French.

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In 1066, the Norman invasion established French as the language of government, but it did not dislodge English.

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The thieves are a band of Norman mercenaries, including a mysterious warrior who calls himself Harlequin, from the old French word hellequin, meaning a troop of the devil's horsemen.

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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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