Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
One thing to remember: those people came as conquerors, not as immigrants. They imposed their own languages and cultures on the survivors of the conquered lands. And it wasn't only English speakers. Many parts of the Caribbean and West Africa speak French to this day. Most of Central and South America speak Spanish or Portugese. Even Canada retains a remnant of French colonialism in Quebec. And let's not forget, French and Spanish and Italian, of course, are derived at least in part from the Latin spoken by their Roman conquerors. Even German and Russian have Latin influences, notably the titles Kaiser and Czar, which come from the Latin Caesar.
The first wave, the invaders, were the conquerors. After them came the migrants who wanted to settle the new lands their warriors had conquered. And it was then that the new language bagan to be imposed.

Yes, the French and Spanish did it too. Does that make it better?

I'm not sure what your point is about German and Russian having Latin influences. I believe that much of Germany and all of Russia stayed outside the Roman Empire so could not have a foreign tongue foisted upon them by conquerors. However, if it was useful, they would adopt Latin words to serve a purpose their own language failed to fulfil. English does that all the time. Let's see. From Arabic we have, admiral, alcove, candy, chemistry, genie, hazard, jar, lemon, lute, magazine, mattress, nadir, racket, sash, syrup, tariff, and zero - a selection from the hundreds of words used in everyday English from Arabic languages.

TYWD