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Danes and English continue to mix peacefully, and ultimately become indistinguishable.
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Many are religious texts but there is also one great work of literature that was written down in this period: Beowulf. The content shows the story to be much older than its written version; it takes place when the pre-Christian Germanic peoples were still in Scandinavia. It was apparently written down by monks and preserved in the monasteries. It shows many signs of Christian influence, possibly introduced by its writer during this period.
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Rise of three great kingdoms politically unifying large areas:
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Angles, Saxons, Jutes, some Frisians
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First Germanic tribes arrive in England from the lowlands on the other side of the North Sea.
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Norman French becomes the language of the court and propertied classes. The legal system is redrawn along Norman lines and conducted in French. Churches, monasteries gradually filled with French-speaking functionaries, who use French for record-keeping. After a while, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is no longer kept up. Authors write literature in French, not English. For all practical purposes English is no longer a written language.
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There is a large influx of Latin and Greek borrowings and neologisms.
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Large numbers of essays, plays, poetry. The English novel emerges in 18th century.
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By 19th century, a standard variety of American English develops, based on the dialect of the Mid-Atlantic states.
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Borrowings from languages around the world.
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English has greater impact than ever on other languages, even those with more native speakers. Becomes most widely studied second language, and a scientific lingua franca.
