If you ask people to name the one person who had the greatest effect on the English language, you will get answers like "Shakespeare," "Samuel Johnson," and "Webster," but none of these men had any effect at all compared to a man who didn't even speak English -William the Conqueror.
如果你问别人，谁对英语的影响最大，你会得到诸如“莎士比亚”、“塞缪尔·约翰逊”和“韦伯斯特”之类的答案，但这些人的影响没一个能比得上一个连英语都不会说的人——征服者威廉。

Before 1066, in the land we now call Great Britain lived peoples belonging to two major language groups. In the west-central region lived the Welsh, who spoke a Celtic language,and in the north lived the Scots, whose language, though not the same as Welsh, was also Celtic. In the rest of the country lived the Saxons, actually a mixture of Anglos, Saxons, and other Germanic and Nordic people, who spoke what we now call Anglo-Saxon (or Old English ), a Germanic language. If this state of affairs had lasted, English today would be close to German.
1066年以前，在我们现在称之为大不列颠的土地上，居住的人们属于两大语言群体。中西部地区居住着说凯尔特语的威尔士人，北部居住着苏格兰人，他们的语言虽然与威尔士人不同，但也是凯尔特语。其他地区居住着撒克逊人，实际上是盎格鲁、撒克逊人和其他日耳曼人和北欧人的混合体，他们说的是我们现在所说的盎格鲁-撒克逊语（或称古英语）——一种日耳曼语言。如果这种情况持续下去，今天的英语将接近德语。

But this state of affairs did not last. In 1066 the Normans led by William defeated the Saxons and began their rule over England. For about a century, French became the official language of England while Old English became the language of peasants. As a result,English words of politics and the law come from French rather than German. In some cases, modern English even shows a distinction between upper-class French and lower-class Anglo-Saxon in its words.We even have different words for some foods, meat in particular, depending on whether it is still out in the fields or at home ready to be cooked, which shows the fact that the Saxon peasants were doing the farming, while the upper-class Normans were doing most of the eating.
但这种情况并没有持续下去。1066年，威廉领导的诺曼人打败了撒克逊人，开始统治英格兰。大约一个世纪，法语成为英格兰的官方语言，而古英语成为农民的语言。因此，英语中的政治和法律词汇来自法语而不是德语。在某些情况下，现代英语甚至在代表上层阶级的法语和代表下层阶级的盎格鲁-撒克逊语中在单词上会有区别。我们甚至对于某些食物，尤其是肉，有不同的单词，取决于它是在田野里还是在家里准备烹饪，这表明撒克逊农民在耕种，而上层阶级诺曼人正在吃大部分的食物。

When Americans visit Europe for the first time, they usually find Germany more "foreign" than France because the German they see on signs and advertisements seems much more different from English than French does.Few realize that the English language is actually Germanic in its beginning and that the French influences are all the result of one man's ambition.
美国人第一次访问欧洲时，通常会发现德国比法国更显得“外国化”，因为他们在招牌和广告上看到的德语和英语的差异似乎比法语大。很少有人意识到英语一开始实际上是一种日耳曼语，而法语的影响完全是一个人野心的结果。