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Samples of words/phrases: Be, water, and strong.
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Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain developed into what we now call Old English. The Anglo-Saxon Germanic language Is the foundation of the English language.
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The Angle kingdoms and Irish missionaries converted Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, introducing new religious words borrowed from Latin and Greek.
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Beowulf is an epic poem written in Old English that consists of 3,182 lines. -
King Alfred of Wessex, aka Alfred the Great, translates Latin works into English and establishes the writing of prose in English.
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William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England. The Normans) introduced a new kind of French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes.
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Samples of words/phrases: apprise, fetter, and artow.
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The Statute of Pleading replaced French with English as the language of law.
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John Wycliffe translated “The Bible” in vernacular English. This challenge to Latin as the language of God was considered a revolutionary act of daring at the time, and the translation was banned by the Church.
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The Canterbury Tales are the stories of the 29 pilgrims on their way to Saint Thomas Becket's shrine in Canterbury. -
Johannes Gutenberg began experimenting with printing in Strasbourg, France in 1440. By 1450, a printing machine was perfected and ready to use commercially: The Gutenberg press.
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The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels. It had a great effect on English pronunciation and spelling, leading to many changes between vowel letters and vowel phonemes.
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The Voyages of Christopher Columbus opened the New World. Giovanni Caboto (known in English as John Cabot) is credited with the discovery of continental North America.
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Samples of words/phrases: afeard, bethink, and wot.
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It was the first authorised edition of the Bible in English, by King Henry VIII of England, to be read in the church services of the Church of England.
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Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall was the first single-language English dictionary ever published. It lists approximately 3000 words with their definitions.
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The First Folio is the first published collection of Shakespeare's plays. Its title is “Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies”. -
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution, in colonial North America.
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The first edition of the Oxford English dictionary was originally issued in short sections, often called 'fascicles’. The earliest fascicles were called 'parts', and contained over 300 pages.