English Language Timeline

By mwij21
  • Oct 14, 1066

    Battle of Hastings

    After the Norman conquest, some Old English symbols were resembled with symbols that closely resembled Latin symbols, because Old English was no longer the official language, being replaced by French, and therefore was not written down.
  • Period: Jan 1, 1450 to Jan 1, 1550

    Great Vowel Shift

    As the way we pronounce words changed so did their spelling, as people were inclined to spell words the way it was spelt.
  • Jul 15, 1500

    Many Inflectional Endings Reduced

    Silent e's were continued in the spelling system but repurposed as a tool to signal the value of the long vowels changed in the Great Vowel Shift (e.g. in mate, name, while etc.).
  • Jul 15, 1549

    Affect of Printing

    the tremendous variety of spellings in written English had shaken down into a far smaller set of variants, and a great part of the outlines of the modern orthography was in place.
  • King James Bible

    The most influential and most widespread religous document of the age. Most spelling techniques were adopted by translators and wrtiers.
  • First Dictionary

    Oxford English Dictionary first standardized spelling and gave meaning to a lot of the words (10,000) adding some consistency to English
  • Noah Webster's Dictionary

    He added systematic alterations to this dictionary using -ize instead of -ise for verbs derived from Greek verbs, eliminating u in the suffix -our.
  • Invention of Texting

    This ushered in a new era of English and developed trends and restrictions in spelling.
    Laugh Out Loud- LOL
    Got to go- gtg
    Talk to you later- ttyl
  • Period: to

    Alfred the Great's rule

    After defeating the vikings who threatened the english way of life and its, language, Alfred the Great encouraged English Literacy and saved the English language from extinction.