The island of Great Britain, located on the western fringes of Eurasia, has experienced a series of successive language changes and developments in the course of multiple invasions. Celtic languages predominated before the arrival of the Romans in 43 CE imposed a Latinate superstructure. Anglo-Saxon dialects then swamped much of the Romano-British speech from the 5th century, only to be challenged from the 9th century by the influx of Old Norse dialects in much of England and in parts of Scotland. Following the Norman invasion of the 11th century, Norman-French became the prestige tongue, with Middle English re-asserting the Germanic linguistic heritage gradually in the course of the later Middle Ages.