The pronunciation differences between the harsher, more guttural Anglo-Norman and the softer Francien dialect of Paris were also carried over into English pronunciations. For instance, words like quit, question, quarter, etc, were pronounced with the familiar “kw” sound in Anglo-Norman (and, subsequently, English) rather than the “k” sound of Parisian French. The Normans tended to use a hard “c” sound instead of the softer Francien “ch”, so that charrier became carry, chaudron became cauldron, etc. The Normans tended to use the suffixes “-arie” and “-orie” instead of the French “-aire” and “-oire”, so that English has words like victory (as compared to victoire) and salary (as compared to salaire), etc. The Normans, and therefore the English, retained the “s” in words like estate, hostel, forest and beast, while the French gradually lost it (état, hôtel, forêt, bête).
French scribes changed the common Old English letter pattern "hw" to "wh", largely out of a desire for consistency with "ch" and "th", and despite the actual aspirated pronunciation, so that hwaer became where, hwaenne became when and hwil became while. A "w" was even added, for no apparent reason, to some words that only began with "h" (e.g. hal became whole). Another oddity occurred when hwo became who, but the pronunciation changed so that the "w" sound was omitted completely. There are just some of the kinds of inconsistencies that became ingrained in the English language during this period.
During the reign of the Norman King Henry II and his queen Eleanor of Aquitaine in the second half of the 12th Century, many more Francien words from central France were imported in addition to their Anglo-Norman counterparts (e.g. the Francien chase and the Anglo-Norman catch; royal and real; regard and reward; gauge and wage; guile and wile; guardian and warden; guarantee and warrant). Regarded as the most cultured woman in Europe, Eleanor also championed many terms of romance and chivalry (e.g. romance, courtesy, honour, damsel, tournament, virtue, music, desire, passion, etc).
Many more Latin-derived words came into use (sometimes through the French, but often directly) during this period, largely connected with religion, law, medicine and literature, including scripture, collect, meditation, immortal, oriental, client, adjacent, combine, expedition, moderate, nervous, private, popular, picture, legal, legitimate, testimony, prosecute, pauper, contradiction, history, library, comet, solar, recipe, scribe, scripture, tolerance, imaginary, infinite, index, intellect, magnify and genius. But French words continued to stream into English at an increasing pace, with even more French additions recorded after the 13th Century than before, peaking in the second half of the 14th Century, words like abbey, alliance, attire, defend, navy, march, dine, marriage, figure, plea, sacrifice, scarlet, spy, stable, virtue, marshal, esquire, retreat, park, reign, beauty, clergy, cloak, country, fool, coast, magic, etc.
A handful of French loanwords established themselves only in Scotland (which had become increasingly English in character during the early Middle English period, with Gaelic pushed further and further into the Highlands and Islands), including bonnie and fash. Distinctive spellings like "quh-" for "wh-" took hold (e.g. quhan and quhile for whan and while), and the Scottish accent gradually became more and more pronounced, particularly after Edward I's inconclusive attempts at annexation. Scottish English's radically distinct evolution only petered out in the 17th Century after King James united the crowns of Scotland and England (1603), and the influence of a strongly emerging Standard English came to bear during the Early Modern period.