Survival of English.  Although the Normans conquered the English in 1066, the English Language eventually won out over Norman French. Why?
 

In the year of 1066, William the Conqueror, ruler of Normandy invaded and conquered England.  William took over everything.  He brought with him the French feudal system, which had serious effects on the legal and cultural system of England.  William took over the churches, the land, and put his own people in charge of everything.

England became a country with three languages:  French, for the aristocrats, Latin, for the church, and English, for the common people. The language of French led the way for four centuries.  French was the law of the language.  French was the language of the upper class.  It was spoken by the Normans.  Anybody who married the Normans or associated with them spoke French.  Latin was the language of learning and religion.  English remained the language of the peasants, which had a profound influence on English and the development of the English language.

With a great amount of competition between the three languages, there was an overflow of vocabulary words.  Sometimes there were three words used for the same thing.  In the everyday life of the people, the Normans ate beef, the French ate boeuf, and the English ate ox.

Over a period of time, some of the Anglo-Saxon languge died out, but some of it survived to provide guidelines for improvement from the Normans.  Looking at the facts and figures of survivor, before the Normans came, everybody was speaking English.  People were not going to change their language because the rulers changed.  A large portion of the people spoke English.  The upper class had to learn it, become familiar with it, and carry out daily business with it.  During this time, the Normans began to intermarry with the English people to establish themselves better.  The Normans masters tried to control their servants using French, but it was hard.  England and France broke all ties when England lost its possessions in France, therefore causing the French language to be lost.

Out of all this, England developed a language of enrichment called the Middle English in which 10,000 borrowed words came from France.  The Middle English had several dialects which brought with it Chaucer'sCanterbury Tale and William Caxton's printing press, which started a wide range of communication.

Many changes in pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary took place in the English language.  Within some of these changes inflections were loss, the final e words stopped being pronounced, writing and spelling changes took place.  The y became u and ui, c sometimes became ch, and u sometimes became o.

Despite the efforts to destroy the English language, it was re-established by:  the loss of Normandy by King John, the Provisions of Oxford, the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, the Statute of Laborers (wage and price controls), and the Peasant's Revolt.  The English language has survived many cultures which has given it freedom, liberty, and strength to continue to grow.