English Language Timeline By Hrr19 400 Beginning Period: 450 to 1150 Old English 700 Approximate date of the earliest manuscript records of Old English 750 Suspected date of Beowulf's writing 867 Danes raid England and Danish begins to influence English 1000 Old Norse loanwords enter the language These words included sister, wish, skin, and die. 1066 The Norman Invasion 1150 Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English Period: 1150 to 1450 Middle English 1362 Parliament is opened with its first speech delivered in English 1400 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales 1400 The Great Vowel Shift begins This changed the pronunciation of words like bite, meat, meet, mate, out, boot, and boat. 1436 The invention of the Printing Press Period: 1450 to 2012 Modern English 1492 The discovery of North America 1586 William Bullokar's Pamphlet for Grammar is published 1604 Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall or the first English dictionary is published 1623 Publication of Shakespeare's First Folio 1765 The American Revolution 1844 The Telegraph is invented by Samuel Morse 2012 End
