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Period: 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE
Proto-Indo-European
Proto language: In the treemodel of linguistics, proto language is an ancestral language from which a number of languages evolved from. Forming a family.
Proto-Indo-european is the reconstructed common ancestor of Indo-European languages. English is part of this. -
Period: 2900 BCE to 200 BCE
Proto-Germanic
approx
Believed to be a single germanic language, from which the other Germanic languages developed
An off-shoot of Indo-European
Features of found in Old English
The Germanic consonant shift, different from Indo-European -
600 BCE
Arrival of the Celts
Both English and celtic are Indo-European English is Germanic while Celtic is Celtic -
400
Arrival of the Germanic tribes-the start of English
The history of the English language started with the arrival of 3 Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. The tribes (the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes), crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern German. The inhabitants of Britain spoke Celtic. But most of the Celtics were pushed west and north by the invaders - mainly into now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from "Englaland" [sic] and their language was called "Englisc" -
Period: 450 to 1150
Old English
The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain developed into what we now call Old English. About half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English. synthetic language. It's reliance of inflections gave way for a freer word order, as it did not rely heavily on prepositions or auxiliaries like modern English does -
Period: 450 to 480
Earliest known Old English inscriptions
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597
The arrival of Christianity
Christianity establishing a standard script. Augustine and fellow missionaries arrived in Britain 597 AD and started converting. Recorded in Bede’s Ecclisiastical History which shows the christian identity of the Anglo-Saxons. The arrival of christianity brought the development of an Old English script that was based on the Roman alphabet moving away from the runic alphabet developed from Futhorc to the Roman alphabet. -
600
Futhork
7th-8th c -
Period: 870 to 1100
Old Norse
Never written only spoken.
Settled Norwegian speakers from 870´s
following the viking wars of the time of King Alfred -
887
King Alfred ascends to the throne of Wessex
King Alfred and the Production of Vernacular Manuscripts From around 896 ad, he started seeing himself as king of the Anglo-Saxons. He wanted to promote a written English standard as a means of political unification. Alfred wanted to educate his subjects and he had certain important Latin documents translated into english. This was helped by the development of an Old English script. This made the West-Saxon dialect the most commonly used in writing at the time
Prestige. -
900
The Benedictine reform-second half of tenth c.
Movement in the later Anglo-Saxon period.
English monasteries experienced an overhaul and there was a renewed interest in the production of texts in the vernacular for didactic purposes.Efforts were made at The school of Bishop Æthelwold in Winchester to create a “standard”, here meaning a preferred usage.(Largely developed from the West Saxon dialect ).
The reform had a notable effect on prose, but not on poetry. The reform fostered a general interest in linguistic consistency. -
1066
The Norman Conquest
England invaded by normans. (By Vilhem the conqueror). He won in Hastings, which led to Norman control over Eng. This event removed the existing ruling class and replaced it with the foreign french monarchy, aristocracy and priest hierarchy.
Which led to a change in the English language. (deveoplement of middle eng shows it. rel little change in written eng) Previo scandinavian language influency dissappeared. And a rivalry with the French started. Normans: french feudalist middle age culture -
1100
Ormulum
Takes pains to represents the lenght of vowels!!!
12th century. Ad Hoc example. -
1150
Earliest surviving manuscripts in Middle English
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Period: 1150 to 1500
Middle English
Dialectal variation.
Many territorial divisions. In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of modern France), invaded England. The new conquerors (Normans) brought with them French, which became the language of the Royal Court. There was a kind of linguistic class division. The lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French. In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain again, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. -
Period: May 24, 1337 to Oct 19, 1453
The 100 year war
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1348
English replaces Latin as the language of instruction in most schools
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1362
Statute of pleading
English replaces French as the ORAL language of law. English is used in Parliament for the first time -
1388
The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer starts writing The Canterbury Tales -
Period: 1400 to
The great vowel shift
GVS began in southern England and influenced all dialects of English. Through GVS, the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels was changed. Some consonant sounds changed as well, particularly those that became silent; the term GVS is sometimes used to include these consonant changes.
The standardization of English spelling began in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Great Vowel Shift is the major reason English spellings now often deviate from how they represent pronunciations. -
1476
Westminster printing press in operation
The introduction of print to England, led by William Caxton facilitated the spread of increasingly standardized system of spellings and grammatical forms.
Caxton: first englishman to sell books and make a living from print. Contributed to standardisation of english.
He harmonized writing from different dialects and this led to an expansion of vocab, development of a firmer syntax and an increase in speachwriting difference.
Before this English was usually written the way it was spoken. -
Period: 1485 to
Tudor period
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Period: 1485 to
Early modern English
-From beginning of Tudor English to the transition to Modern English -The great vowel shift: vowels being pronounced shorter.
From the 16th c: The British had contact with many peoples from around the world.
-The Renaissance of Classical learning,
-The invention of printing also meant that there was now a common language in print.
-Standardization :Spelling and grammar became fixed,
- The dialect of London, where most publishing houses were, became the standard. -
1534
Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy
1534 and 1559 The break with Rome and establishment of the Church of England, After this, English became the language of that reformed English Church (translating the Bible into English was no longer heresy but an act of patriotism). -
Period: 1564 to
Shakespear
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William Bullokar-Pamphlet for grammar-latin
Bullokar was a 16th c printer who devised a 40 letter phonetic alphabet for the Ebnglish language modeled on latin grammar.
It was the first published grammar of the English language -
The royal society
1600s
wanted to be cordinators for english scientific endavours. matters of language.
Members should have appropriate and correct language.
they met a few times. big idea but never happened. -
Table alphabeticall
The first monolingual english dictionary (by Robert Cadrew.) -
Jamestown
The first permanent English settlement in the New World (Jamestown) is established -
The king James Bible
A translation of the bible which started in 1604 and finished 1611. This translation greatly influenced the development of the English language and literature. -
Shaespeares first folio published
Shakespeare's First Folio is published -
Christopher Cooper-Grammatica Linguæ Anglicanæ-latin
Written in latin -
Period: to
Era of Prescriptivism
late 1700s to 1800s.
Prescriptivism is when an individual takes a stance, holding the belief or attitude that one variety of language is better or worse than another, creating a superiority list. -
The first daily English-language newspaper
The first daily English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant, is published in London -
Jonathan Swift- a proposal for correcting, improving and ascerntaining the english tongue
to root out all variation Jonathan Swift was an English-irish writer. He is well known in English literature today, and was aslo wuite famous during his life. -
Samuel Johnsons English dictionary
Samuel Johnson publishes his English dictionary -
Robert Lowth- Short introduction to English grammar-latin
Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and author of a highly influential textbooks of English gramr. He wanted to fix Eng grammar. 1st who judged English language in addition to describing it.
Famous contribution to grammar study:
prepositional stranding is inappropriate in formal writing.
Was influenced by latin (like other linguists att) but condemned using foreign rules English. SITEG remained in usage throughout educational institutions until the early 20th century. -
The declaration of independence
Thomas Jefferson writes the American Declaration of Independence -
Britain abandonds its colonies
Britain abandons its colonies in what is later to become the USA -
Period: to
Modern English
The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries. -
Websters American English dictionary
Webster publishes his American English dictionary -
The British Broadcasting Corporation is founded
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The Oxford English Dictionary is published
