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Celts have been living in Britain since the British Iron Age. They spoke the Common Brittonic language and had trade links with Greeks, Phoenicians, and Carthagenians.
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Julius Caesar successfully invades Britain in 54 BC. and subjugates a British warlord but leaves shortly after. Rome's client states and tributes remain intact without direct military occupation.
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Britain is occupied by the Romans and serves as the westernmost outpost of the empire.
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Around 50 AD, Britain falls under Roman control. England is romanized while Scotland remains unconquered.
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As Rome came under attack from Visigoths, Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain to help with the defense of the capital. Britain was left undefended, and Roman Britons were left to fend for themselves against their hostile neightbors.
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Germanic tribes invade the now undefended Britain. Jutes, Angles, and Saxons cross the North Sea settle in the Southeast portion of Britain, driving Britons to the mountain areas.
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By the 5th Century, the three Germanic tribes have replaced the Britons: The Jutes in Kent, Southern Hampshire and the Isle of Wight; Saxons in modern-day Middlesex and Essex; Angles in Edinburgh and Scottish Lowlands. The entire area they occupied is called Engla Land.
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Old English is often referred to as Anglo-Saxon and had strong Germanic roots.It had a relatively free word order and its phonology and morphology were heavily influenced by Germanic languages.
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St. Augustine arrives in England, introducing Latin Christianity and the Roman Alphabet.
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The language of the three Germanic tribes was collectively called Englisc, but each had their own native dialects. The Anglians spoke Northumbrian (North of River Humber) and Mercian, The Jutes spoke Kentish, and the Saxons spoke West Saxon. Three Kingdoms rose: Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. Northumbria becomes the dominant force in terms of language and culture.
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Lindisfarne was a monastery at the heart of the Northumbrian Kingdom and the birthplace of Christianity in England. In 793, Vikings raided and sacked Lindisfarne. Danish and Norse raids would soon occur in greater intensity and frequency.
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Viking incursions continue with greater frequency and intensity. Northumbria is finally invaded in 865. Mercia falls. Cultural and Literary leadership passes to Wessex, led by King Alfred the Great.
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Wessex becomes the last remaining Anglo-Saxon kingdom in England. Winchester becomes a dominant center of culture and learning. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of manuscripts and annals of Anglo-Saxon England. It serves as the primary source on the history of early England. Its first extant manuscript, the Parker Chronicle, was written in Winchester.
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Alfred the Great begins translating the Latin works of Paulus Orosius, St. Augustine, and Venerable Bede into West Saxon. Native Northumbrian and Mercian poetry is also translated into West Saxon. With this rich body of literature and the political and cultural influence of Wessex, West Saxon becomes the "standard" Old English dialect.
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Old English is often referred to as Anglo-Saxon and had strong Germanic roots.It had relatively free word order and its phonology and morphology was heavily influenced by Germanic. While Modern English has two genders (masculine and feminine), Old English had three (m,f, neuter). Old English by the 11th century sounds nothing like our English today. To hear a sample reading in Old English, watch this video.
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Edward the Confessor dies without an heir. William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, claims to be the rightful heir and conquers England. He moves the capital from Winchester to London to reduce the influence of Wessex culture. The influence of West Saxon declined, and all four Old English dialects were placed on the same level. Culture and learning flourished in London. The Carolingian script replaced the commonly used Insular hand, affecting the spelling of written words.
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The Middle English is characterized by the Norman conquest of England.
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The Norman conquest causes great changes in England. Earls and peasants are subjugated. William the Conqueror replaces the English Aristocracy with a Norman Aristocracy. William rules both England and Normandy.
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With the Norman aristocracy in charge, English loses its prestige. Anglo-Norman, a dialect of Old French, replaces English as the language of the ruling class. It becomes the language of court and commerce. Norman French words enter the Old English vocabulary. French is used in the legal system and in monasteries. Literature is written in French. English is relegated to the language of the lower classes and is no longer a written language.
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John Lackland loses his English possessions in France. The connection between England and Normandy is severed.
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English starts to gain ground again. In 1205, the first English book is published since the conquest.
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By the 1300s, French is still the official language. But the loss of nobles' holdings in France meant that many feel more English than French. English becomes many nobles' native language.
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In 1337, the Hundred-Years War between France and England begins. This would result to the loss of French continental holdings in England. Many nobles would no longer have a reason to learn French.
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The Black Death wipes out a third of the English population. This caused massive labor shortages. English became more valuable as it was the language of the working class.
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The Statute of Pleading makes English the official language of the courts. More and more works are being published in English.
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English is regaining its status as a literary language. Geoffrey Chaucer writes the Canterbury Tales in Middle English. The London dialect is considered the standard variety of English. Late Middle english is still Germanic at its core, but is heavily influenced by French and Latin. Must of the structural complexity of Old English had disappeared. To hear what Middle English sounded like, watch this video.
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During this period, the movement of people into London from the surrounding areas brought in new words from other languages into English ("A brief history of the English language") and triggered the Great Vowel Shift. Vowel sounds and diphthongs (the combination of two vowel sounds) changed drastically during this time. Other notable events were the return of the printing press and the English Renaissance (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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William Caxton brought the printing press to England. This allowed anyone to publish their own works and helped immortalize the English language through writing (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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The Renaissance, which started in Italy, arrived in England through the French. During this time, the English language needed to keep up with the demand for scientific and academic words. Many words were borrowed and reborrowed from Latin (classical and religious), Greek, Anglo-Norman, and Old French. These included words like "logic," "grammar," "item," "abacus," and words with the same origin like "count" and "compute" and "real", "royal," and "legal" (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1525, William Tyndale completed his English translation of the New Testament. This version made its way, word-for-word, in a third of the King James Bible's own New Testament later on (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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This period saw the rise of Shakespeare and other influential English writers. Many words were "coined" or made up by these people during this time. Scholars also switched between Latin and English when writing different works (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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Sir Humphrey Gilbert arrives in Newfoundland, an island in eastern Canada, in 1583 and takes it on behalf of the queen of England (Hickey, 2020).
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In 1607, the British established the first English colony of the New World in Jamestown, Virginia ("A brief history of the English language"). From the Native Americans (and, later, from the French and the Dutch immigrants), they borrowed words for the local flora and fauna (e.g. hickory, raccoon). They also began combining words and creating other, new meanings for existing English words. This was the beginning of American English (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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The King James Bible was published at the request of King James I, who wanted a new version of the Bible that did not contain what he felt were the misleading errors of other versions during his time. He sponsored and supervised the whole process until its publication in 1611 (The Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2017).
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More than ten years after the settlers in Jamestown arrived, the Plymouth colony moved to Massachusetts and called it New England. After them, many more colonies came and occupied other nearby areas (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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As Charles II returned to power and restored the monarchy in 1660, French dominated once more over English as the language of the elites. They thought that French was more sophisticated and proper than English, which they called the language of the masses (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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The Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge gathered 22 scholars to make English worthy of the academe. This committee, as Bishop Thomas Sprat said, was supposed to create a clearer version of English that would not be easily misunderstood. This attempt eventually failed (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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This period included many tries at creating a standard for English. Dictionaries and grammar books were made to keep people from using English "incorrectly" (Crystal and Potter, 2019). The English language also borrowed many words from the lands the British and, later, the Americans conquered. This was the age of scientific and technological development and the "discovery" of new worlds. By the end of this era, English was already very close to what we use today (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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Jonathan Swift asked Robert Harley, the earl of Oxford, to try fixing the English language. Many people agreed with Swift, but it failed before they could even begin. After the death of Queen Anne, Swift and his colleagues lost their positions; and no one wanted to take over the project after them (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first edition of his DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE in two volumes. He collected words and their meanings from how people in contemporary London used English, especially writers; and wrote vivid, picturesque definitions. At first, he tried to be prescriptive (dictating what proper English is), but he eventually gave up because he found it impossible and impractical to control people's use of the English language (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1756, a shortened version of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language was released. From the original two, it became only one volume. Other versions came later in 1818 and 1866 (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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The first Industrial Revolution began in England as an age of technological and scientific discoveries. To make room for these changes, scientists used Greek and Latin words as the bases for new terms ("A brief history of the English language").
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In 1761, Robert Lowth published his book GRAMMAR. He was one of the grammarians that made great attempts to create only one "proper" English. They were both prescriptive (dictating what was "correct") and proscriptive (correcting "wrong" usage), even to the point of banning common sentences like "You better go," "It is me," and "Who is this for?" for not following what they believed was "good" grammar (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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One year before he arrived in Australia, James Cook took New Zealand for the British first (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1770, James Cook arrived on the shores east of Australia (now called New South Wales) and claimed it for the British Empire (Hickey, 2020).
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In 1776, the Americans gained their freedom from the British. It reaffirmed the American identity and paved the way for the formation of American English (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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Eighteen years after James Cook first claimed New South Wales, the British came and settled near Sydney (Crystal and Potter, 2019). In the late 20th century, more migrants from Europe and Pacific Rim arrived in Australia. More than 80% of them had British ancestry. Australian English kept on developing, as English-speaking settlers borrowed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander terms for their local animals and tools (e.g. kangaroo, boomerang, etc.) (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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After Lowth, Lindley Murray released his own English grammar book, which was widely used for years as a guide to proper English. Murray also mentioned once that he preferred Latin over English for its more "logical" construction (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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According to BBC News, the British conquered Singapore as well as Malacca, and Penang and established the Straits Settlements there. Singapore eventually became an important symbol of British power, especially in the trade industry (2018). After the Second World War, Singapore finally got its sovereignty in 1965 (Pryke, 2015).
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In 1828, Noah Webster published the two volumes of THE AMERICAN DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (Crystal and Potter, 2019). Through the years, it went through many revisions. This dictionary, however, maintains to be the first successful attempt to record and compile an American English dictionary (Hickey, 2020).
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Shortly after America achieved its independence, many immigrants came from Europe to seek refuge and a new life. In the first few decades, these settlers most came from Ireland, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. West African slaves and the Spanish also came in. Then, after the American Civil War, thousands of Slavs, Scandinavians, and Italians arrived to America. All these interactions among languages eventually led to new English dialects (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1840, the Maori handed New Zealand over to the British through the Treaty of Waitangi. After this, the British arrived and settled there. English in New Zealand was quite similar to Australia's but contained some traces of Maori in areas like the North Island. (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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Ireland's Great Famine forced 1.5 million Irish people to migrate to the New World (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1857, the dean of St. Paul's University Richard Chenevix Trench gave a speech entitled "On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries" to the Philological Society. He proposed the creation of a new dictionary to fix the issues other English dictionaries had (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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Herbert Coleridge works on Trench's proposal for the creation of a new dictionary. This effort was continued by Furnivall, Murray, and many others (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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Frederick James Furnivall, one of the people who worked on Trench's proposed dictionary, founded the Early English Text Society to help lexicographers (people who create dictionaries) by making early English literature as accessible and as accurate as possible (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1898, the Americans colonized the Philippines and introduced the public school system. With their soldiers, they brought in American teachers, who were to teach English in classrooms to Filipino children (Borlongan and Lim, 2020).
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Upon learning that the American methods in teaching English were not very effective on Filipino children, President William McKinley made English the only language allowed in schools. This was to save American teachers time from learning the local languages and to attempt to unify the Filipinos, who all spoke different languages and dialects, and to "civilize" them (Koo, 2008).
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The 1907 English Language Amendment Bill of India encouraged communication between Hindi and non-Hindi speakers by making English an official language (the other official language being Hindi) (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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From 1910 to 1961, the South African areas of Natal, Transvaal, Cape Province, and the Orange Free State-- also known as the Union of South Africa-- were members of the British Empire and the British Commonwealth. African terms from all these areas for geographical features, political and social ideas, and the native flora and fauna were mixed into English (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1925, the Monroe Survey Commission checked the effectiveness of the English language program in the Philippines. They eventually stood by the existing English-only policy and blamed the students' poor English proficiency on their mother tongues, claiming that these got in the way of their learning a new language (Koo, 2008).
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Trench's proposal was finally met through the completion of A NEW ENGLISH DICTIONARY ON HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES. It contained twelve volumes, more than 15,000 pages, and 414,825 words from all five Middle English dialects between 1150 and 1500; and it was shown to King George V (British Commonwealth) and President Calvin Coolidge (USA) as the standard of the English language. It did not include any scientific, technical, or dialect-specific vocabulary from after 1500 (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1933, a shorter, edited version of A NEW ENGLISH DICTIONARY ON HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES was published under a new name: THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. It would continue to be published under this name for its succeeding editions (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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After the Philippines gained its sovereignty from the Americans in 1945, the government implemented the Experimental Bilingual Education program in the same year. Instead of a strict English-only policy in schools, people were allowed to speak in their native languages, even if English was still the language of instruction (Koo, 2008).
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The 1950 Prator Report recommended English to be taught as a second language in all schools. This also encouraged more Filipino writers to use English in their works, thus increasing the amount of Philippine literature in English (Koo, 2008).
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After India joined the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly called the British Commonwealth) as an independent, federal republic, it established Hindi as its first national language and English as the official language from 1950 through 1965. This made English the language of business, science, and education (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1956, Pakistan gained its independence and split into West Pakistan and East Pakistan. English, as the republic's third official language, bridged the Urdu-speaking West and the Bengali-speaking East (even after East Pakistan separated from West Pakistan and became Bangladesh in 1971) (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1957, the Revised Philippine Education Program introduced the use of English as the main language of the classroom slightly later (from Grade 3 up to college) than it was before. The local languages would be used mainly to teach first and second graders; and even after they shifted to using mainly English, the language of the area would become the secondary language of instruction (Koo, 2008).
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After Singapore became independent, its first task was to unite the Chinese, Malay, and Tamil-speaking communities. To accomplish this, the government used English to unite all three groups. While they still had to learn and use their own mother tongues in and out of school, English was set as the main medium of instruction. The government believed that if Singaporeans could speak English well, they would have an edge in the workforce there and abroad (Cheng, 2015).
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In 1974 , the Philippine Bilingual Education Policy (D.O. No. 25, s. 1974), split the use of English and Filipino as languages of instruction into different subject areas. Filipino was used for teaching "social studies, music, arts, physical education, home economics, practical arts, and character education;" while English was for "communication arts,...science, math, and technology" (Espiritu, n.d.).
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The 1987 Policy on Bilingual Education (D.O. No. 52, s. 1987) made the goals of using English and Filipino in school clear. It claimed that learning English as the "international language" would connect the Philippines to the world. Meanwhile studying how to read and write in Filipino would help students' national identity as Filipinos (Espiritu, n.d.).
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After more than sixty years, the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY released its second edition and opened an online database for collaborative and constant revision and expansion in 1989 (Crystal and Potter, 2019; Oxford University Press, 2020).
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Republic Act No. 7722, or the Higher Education Act of 1994, gave birth to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), which is in charge of colleges and universities. It adjusted the General Education Curriculum to match the existing Bilingual Education Program and ordered all language and literature course instructors to be able to use the language they are teaching in class well. They are also only allowed to hold courses if they have enough resources and materials (Koo, 2008).
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In 1996, the South African constitution included English as one of its eleven official languages (Crystal and Potter, 2019).
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In 1999, the Singaporean government introduced the "Speak Good English" movement to push for the mastery of "Standard English" over Singapore Colloquial English (or Singlish). This was intended to make communication between Singaporeans and foreign English speakers much easier, although it faced backlash for attacking an important part of the Singaporean identity (Pryke, 2013). Watch a comparison of English and Singlish here.
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After being reviewed in 2006, the Singaporean curriculum for English was formed in 2010. These changes presented language more in context and strengthened the grammar and oral language skills of students, especially in the higher levels (Cheng, 2015).
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In 2012, the Philippines first implemented the Mother Tongue-Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). Students from Kinder until Grade 3 would be taught in their mother tongue. Then they will start learning Filipino in Grade 1 and English between Grades 1 and 2 (spoken English in the last part of Grade 1, written English from the start of Grade 2). They will continue the rest of their schooling in both Filipino and English, as in the Bilingual Education Program (Koo, 2008).
