[WalterBright]

That happened in England after the Battle of Hastings. Upper crust English is still dominated by french words.

[jjtheblunt]

My Germanic Linguistics grad school prof told us once, to your point, if you count etymologies of words in spoken English and in the English dictionary, you'd get roughly the following: spoken English uses roughly 80% Germanic vocabulary, but the English dictionary is roughly 80% Latin and Greek words (anglicized).

[WalterBright]

I've heard it put more crassly as "barbarian grammar with french nouns"

[codebje]

The only thing that got hacked to pieces more than the English peasantry during the middle ages was the English language.

[jjtheblunt]

That's great.