Having read through the thead, I can see that nowhere do Pet or Gnaes insist that Norman French was anything other than important. On that I can agree with them, at least in terms of the words it did contribute to the language. Having said that, however, I can also see Icel's point in saying that Norman French's impact on English was minimal. If one looks at it from the number of words which entered English through Norman French, then it was minimal. I think the safest course would be to say that Norman French did make an important contribution to English, but not in the number of words it contributed but rather in the over all importance of the words it contributed. From my point of view, however, while Norman French did make some important contributions to the language, I think over all it made less of a contribution than either Latin or Old Norse, although it did make a greater contribution (if not in number, then in importance)than Native American or other langagues.