Page "Middle English" Paragraph 12

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 resulted in only limited culture shock.

However, the conquest saw the replacement of top levels of English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies by the Norman-speaking rulers who used Latin for administrative purposes.

Thus Norman came into use as a language of polite discourse and literature, and this fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration, even though many Normans of the early period were illiterate and depended on the clergy for written communication and record-keeping.

Although Old English was by no means as standardised as modern English, its written forms were less subject to broad dialect variations than was post-Conquest English.

Even now, after nearly a thousand years, the Norman influence on the English language is still apparent, though it did not begin to affect Middle English until somewhat later.