Elsewhere, capfka queried whether French "crept" into English, and my sympathy with the question (at least as it relates to the speed with which the French language affected the English language) set me wondering: What about the Romans? I am proudly omnascient, but I have always assumed that the bulk of any Latinate influence in English came from the Frenchified Vikings who caught Harald's eye in 1066. So, what about the Romans? How much of an impact did they have, linguistically? I realise that their presence predates the Angles and the Saxons, but surely they couldn't have hung around for a couple of centuries without leaving some discernible mark on the language?