British English English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who conquered and colonised parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. These
Anglo-Norman language and French have led to many "faux amis" (words having similar form but different meanings) in Modern English and Modern French. Since although a Romance language, Norman contains a significant amount of lexical material from Norse, some of the words introduced into England as part of Anglo-Norman were of Germanic origin. Indeed, sometimes one can identify cognates such as "flock" (Germanic in English existing prior to the Conquest) and "floquet" (Germanic in Norman). The case of the word "mug" demonstrates that in instances, Anglo-Norman may have reinforced certain Scandinavian elements already present in English. "Mug" had been introduced into northern