English language of England in 1066, the now norsified Old English language was subject to contact with the Old Norman language, a Romance language closely related to Modern French. The Norman language in England eventually developed into Anglo-Norman. Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking Anglo-Saxon, the influence of Norman consisted of introducing a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains. Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction
Anglo-Norman literature of Henry IV that English became the native tongue of the kings of England. The language had undergone certain changes which distinguished it from the Old Norman spoken in Normandy, as can be seen from graphical characteristics, from which certain rules of pronunciation are to be inferred. An Anglo-Norman variety of French continued to exist into the early 15th century, though it was in decline at least from the 1360s, when it was deemed insufficiently well known to be used for pleading in court. Great prestige continued to be enjoyed by the French language, however; in the late 14th century,