(_b_) #French.# Most early borrowings from French were again due to invasion and settlement. But the conditions of contact were very different. Some were unfavourable to borrowing: the Normans, who were relatively few, were dispersed throughout the country, and not, like the Scandinavians, massed in colonies; and their language had little in common with English. So the number of French words in English texts is small before the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. Other conditions made borrowing inevitable: the French speakers were the governing class; they gradually introduced a new system of administration and new standards of culture; and they had an important literature to which English writers turned for their subject-matter and their models of form. Fourteenth-century translators adopt words from their French originals so freely (see note at p. 234, foot), that written Middle English must give a rather exaggerated impression of the extent of French influence on the spoken language. But a few examples will show how many common words are early borrowings from French: nouns like _country_, _face_, _place_, _river_, _courtesy_, _honour_, _joy_, _justice_, _mercy_, _pity_, _reason_, _religion_, _war_; adjectives like _close_, _large_, _poor_; and verbs _cry_, _pay_, _please_, _save_, _serve_, _use_. Anglo-French was never completely homogeneous, and it was constantly supplemented as a result of direct political, commercial, and literary relations with France. Hence words were sometimes adopted into ME. in more than one French dialectal form. For instance, Late Latin _ca-_ became _cha-_ in most French dialects, but remained _ca-_ in the North of France: hence ME. _catch_ and _(pur)chase_, _catel_ and _chatel_, _kanel_ 'neck' V 230 and _chanel_ 'channel' XIII _a_ 57. So Northern French preserves initial _w-_, for which other French dialects substitute _g(u)_: hence _Wowayn_ V 121 beside _Gawayn_ V 4, &c. (see note to V 121). Again, in Anglo-French, _a_ before nasal + consonant alternates with _au_:—_dance_: _daunce_; _chance_: _chaunce_; _change_: _chaunge_; _chambre_ XVII 281: _chaumber_ II 100. English still has the verbs _launch_ and _lance_, which are ultimately identical. As borrowing extended over several centuries, the ME. form sometimes depends on the date of adoption. Thus Latin _fidem_ becomes early French _feið_, later _fei_, and later still _foi_. ME. has both _feiþ_ and _fay_, and by Spenser's time _foy_ appears. The best study of the French element in ME. is still that of D. Behrens: _Beiträge zur Geschichte der französischen Sprache in England_, 1886. A valuable supplement, dealing chiefly with Anglo-French as the language of the law, is the chapter by F. W. Maitland in _The Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. i.