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Jun 8, 1066
william the duke of normandy
William of Normandy Brought the Normans into rule of Britain by winning the battle of 1066. He placed French-speaking supportes to the key positions of power and this helped to bring 10,000 words over from old french language. They brought over opresive words like 'soldier', 'court', governer'. english however, was still used by the majority of people and developed with word order and spellings changing with distingtive old english characters dying out -
Jun 16, 1066
The Norman Conqurest began
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Jun 16, 1150
Middle English was born
middle english was born with english and french well and truely mixed -
Jan 1, 1200
words that came into britain by the norman french
By 1200, almost around 20,000 words had entered english mainly from french and latin. These words came under 3 main semantic fields: Administration – chancellor, council, government, liberty, mayor, parliament
Religion – abbey, cathedral, communion, confess, crucifix, miracle, saint, sermon
Law - accuse, bail, evidence, heir, judge, jury, justice, prison, summons, verdict
Military – army, battle, captain, defend, garrison, navy, retreat, siege, soldier. -
Jun 15, 1200
Grammar
Although words were still coming into the english language, written old english was dying out. This was because Those high in power were all french so brought in different grammar and spellings such as qu for cw. Word order had also changed with the syntax becoming more fixed with modal auxillary verbs such as had and shall had entered the language too. -
Jun 15, 1200
French and English cultural split
With french people in places of high power and the Anglo-Saxons beneath them, a split in class occured. this is shown in stories and poems with the french stories tending to be about romance with tthe saxons about working and being peasents. this is also shown in the language when talking about food. the french would used pork and beef with the saxons referring to them as cow and pig. -
Jun 15, 1300
so why didnt english get replaced by french?
with the normandy taken over by france, french speakers and leaders became cut off. also the french children had english nannies so they would be biolinguel and some french married english women meaning that the language would still mix. the french was now becoming more of a foreign language with the english language now reserging. -
Jun 16, 1300
Lexis
in this time words like falcon, bait, block and leash came in with the semantic field of the very 1st class sport of falconry. other words changed meaning or narrowed like apple for example narrowed from meaning fruit to just a certain fruit whilst the old word for fruit (waestrum) became obsolete. english townsfolk picked up merchant trade words like measure, malletm troul, pulling, contract, partner. -
Jun 16, 1300
french and english
French language helped narrow the english language by adding words for the same thing with french being more precise. e.g english would be room and freedom, french would bring in chamber and liberty. French words also came in through trade such as meansure, , safron, money, hazard. syrup. all of this helped make the english language stronger as there were more variations of the same worda. -
Jun 15, 1348
The Plague (ratus ratus, black death)
in 1348 the black death started to spread with many latin and french people killed. more percentage of relgious people died then any other group because they all lived in close proximity of each other in monistries and they had people coming to get blessed to try and be cured. With latin and french people dying, english climbed the social ladder and began to make a break through. -
Sep 15, 1348
where did english take over?
English replaced Latin in the churches, the french in school rooms in 1385 with more and more people beginning to learn to read and write in English. English began to appear in law and in parliament in 1362 as the possitions of power began to change. -
Jun 16, 1387
Chaucer
Chaucer writes using fremcn-flavoured middle english in the cantaberry tales. -
Jun 15, 1390
English
Jeffrey trosser became the first great writter in english with hinm writting in a London-English dialect. His most famous work was the canterberry tales. he became famous for his use of different dialects and registers howeverhe did use some french words such as governence and paramore and difficult. he also used earthy english words like arse and he re-instroduced swiven which means fucking -
Jun 16, 1440
the great vowel shift began
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Jun 16, 1478
the renaissance
the renaissance began with thousands of borrowings from all over europe -
Richard chowdrey
Richard chowdrey produced the first dictionary - a table alphabetical -
The Mayflower
The mayflower set sail for the new world, leading to the beganning of a new and influential form of english -
Jonathan Swift wanted to set up a language to fix it forever
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Dr Johnsons dictionary was published
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Robert lowth and lindley murray
Robert lowth and lindley murray published tbejr grammar book telling people to speak corretly -
Elemantary Act
Elemantrary Education Act makes education compulsary from 5 to 10 creating mass literacy -
the bbc
The BBC was born and used sE for broadcasting. The World Service sE all over they world, unifying those without a common language -
Computers
the first home computers with spell checkers and Grammar checkers (many used american english) -
the internet arrived
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the first text message was sent
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school age raised.
School leaving age raised to 11 then 13 (1893) 14 (1918) is (1947) and then finally 16 1972 -
religion
in 597, religion came to England brought by the missionaries (led by Augustine) from mainland Europe. They also brought Latin to England which important documents such as the 'History of English Speaking' were written in. The Anglo-Saxons wrote in symbols, roonds and straight lines as this was easy to carve. English was now wrote using the latin alphabet which included the thorn. At around this time the famous epic poem Beowulf was written. -
The Vikings
The vikings raid on Britain began in 787 and in less than 100 years they danes had control of most of eastern England. They spoke in nordic and remained in power until the Anglo Saxons fought back under Alfred the Great in 878 who saved the English Language from being wiped out completely. There was a divide in england between the north/eastern parts of England and the South and the west. This was called Danelaw. The two would trade and thats how language mixed with english absorbing old norse. -
King Alfred
to promote the use of english, King Alfred translated all books to english from latin to create a language that everyone could understand -
place names and nordic words
You can tell which places were danish settlements by the names. if the place ends in 'by' (Grimsby) then this was Danish for farm; if the placename ended in 'horpe' (Scunthorpe) then this would mean village; if the place ended in thwate, then this would mean 'isolated area'. Names ending in 'son' (davidson, richardson...) have scandinavian roots. pronouns such as they, them and their also have danish roots, over 1800 words of probable scaninavian origin enter the language at this time. -
Anglo saxons and Jutes cross the sea to England
With the Roman empire, which was ruling over England, falling apart, the celts were left looking for protection. The Celts turned to Germanic tribes like the Angles, Saxons and Jutes to come and protect them. Each came in agressively causing many celts to retreat West to Cornwall, Wales and Cumbria. Wakes and welsh means 'slave' and 'second class citizen' .The Celtic language was lost with the saxons bringing in their own language. -
Anglo-Saxon Language
only a few celtic words survived with words like 'crag' and caer surviving. Four major dialects emerged in England: Northumbrian in the north; Mercian in the midlands; West Saxon in the south and west; and Kentish in the south east. The saxons brought in family name titles like 'son', 'daughter' into the language -
the anglo saxons arive in Britain
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Religion arrives
Latin speaking missionaries arrived in Kent, they used the roman alphabet but added in some runes to cover sounds not used in latin. -
Alfred The Great, King of Wessex
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Period: to
History of English Language