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The first languages are the Celtic ones like Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. These people settled in the British Isles about 600 BC. -
In 55BC, there was an invasion by the Romans, who spoke Latin. They gave Latin names to places and some of these names are still used today. The words from Romans are:
Sign, very, like ,love, live, and laugh ,peace, nobility, felony, attorney, government, parliament, justice, chivalry, court, courtesy, courage, beef, bacon, baptize, flower, power, royal, annoy, joy, etc. -
The first people who spoke English arrived in England in about the year 450. These people were the Anglo-Saxons and their language was Old English. The words from Anglo-Saxons are:
Live, love, heaven, fight, good, evil, man, wife, child, sleep, eat, house, stone, rain, one, two, three, green, black, the, an, to, for, but, around, will, do, and, with, etc. -
From about 800, the Vikings started to invade Britain. The Vikings came from countries like Denmark and Norway and spoke a language that developed into Norwegian and Danish. The words from Vikings are:
leg, skull, skirt, skin, sky, egg, score, scream, cake,etc. -
In 1066, the Normans invaded England from Normandy in France.
They spoke an earlier version from french -
There were no more invasions of England. English became more important than French. A number of books were published in Middle English. The most famous is a book of stories called: The Canterbury Tales (1400) by Geoffrey Chaucer. -
With the invention of the printing press in 1476, publishing books in English became very popular. -
There are many important authors in Modern English, but one of the most famous writers is William Shakespeare that he was born in 1564. -
William Shakespeare died in 1616