when william the conqueror took over england in 1066 ad, he brought his nobles, who spoke norman, a language closely related to french. english changed a lot because it was mostly being spoken instead of written for about 300 years, because all official documents were written in norman french. english borrowed many words from norman at that time, and also began to drop the old word endings. english of this time is called middle english. geoffrey chaucer is a well known writer of middle english. after more sound changes, middle english became modern english.