-
After the Roman legions leave Britain, in an effort to protect themselves, the Romano-Briton Kings invite Germanic tribes such as the Angles and Saxons. Revolt by these mercenaries results in large Germanic settlements in southeast England. Latin is still highly regarded across Europe as the language of civilisation and religion, but is now a dead language.
-
Pre 450 AD, Celtic was the language of Britain before English was established. Germanic tribes invading the UK in the mid-5th century influenced earliest stages of English and brought proto-germanic language to the UK. PDE core vocabulary originates in Old English, for example, 'strong', 'water', 'be', 'eald'. Old English is the earliest version of English.
-
Christian missionaries around Europe continue to use latin. Words such as 'martyr', 'bishop' and 'font' integrate into the English Language. Many latinate English words related to the church entered Old English from Greek and Italian. The majority of PDE vocabulary in the semantic field of the Church links back to latinate loans and the influence from Italian missionaries. For example, 'nonna' (loan from Italian / Old French) lead to the semantic narrowing of the word 'nun'.
-
Viking raids began in 793 and, consequently, Old Norse has clear influence on the language. It is estimated they brought with them around 2000 Old Norse borrowings in the English Language. These borrowings are amongst the most frequently used terms in English and denote many everyday objects and descriptions, such as the day of the week, animals and objects such as 'ball', 'window', 'cake', 'egg' and 'bag'.
-
After the Norman Invasion of William the Conquerer in 1066, Old French became the verbal language used in court - Britain had 2 national languages. Lots of legal and political terminology depends from Old French, as well as language in arts cuisine and military, 'armour', 'battle', 'army'. Middle English formed due to Old French and Old English co-existing overtime. A dual vocabulary of a high and low register developed due to Norman ruling and Anglo-Saxon peasantry, e.g. 'cow' vs. 'beef'.
-
The renaissance was a period of European cultural, artistic and economic 'rebirth' following the Middle Ages. It brought a rapid growth of the lexicon: more words were acquired for new literary, medical, scientific and cultural concepts, allowing for more linguistic creativity and filling semantic gaps in the language. For example, 'telephone' comes from 'tele' (Greek - 'far') 'phone' (Greek - 'sound'), and latin 'forma' (meaning shape / form) lead to PDE 'formulae'.
-
This was a series of changes in the pronunciation of English Language, which at first began in Southern England. From here, this then influenced phonology and resulted in the switch from Middle English to modern English. The ultimate change around this was the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels and the sound of consonants becoming silent.
-
William Caxton introduced England's first printing press in Westminster, London. It helped to standardise the English Language, choosing the East Midlands dialect (Oxford, London, Cambridge). Handwritten books were now obsolete meaning the end of several spellings of the same word. The printing press created uniformity. Printing spread fast, by the end of Early Modern, over 20,000 titles had been printed in English.
-
As the language was developing due to the renaissance, there was an influx of borrowings and new lexicon from other languages. This created a divide in England because some people believed that the borrowings / influences were enriching the language. Others thought it was corrupting it and making it 'develop improperly'. This became an active debate amongst speakers and is a key part of the language revolution that was taking place in the mid 16th - 17th century.
-
Shakespeare's writing influenced the English Language, as his works contributed to the standardisation of English language rules and grammar in the 17th/18th century. The introduction of new words as well as phrases, had enriched the language making it more expressive and colourful. He has several phrases that are still part of todays language, such as 'full circle', 'sorry sight', and 'fair play'.
-
Written by Samuel Johnson in 1755, the Johnson dictionary was known as the most influential dictionary in the history of the English Language. Johnson aimed to create "a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed". He was the first person to standardise the spelling of words in the English Language. He wrote reasonably accurate definitions and was even good at guessing etymologies. The dictionary was written on a grand scale.
-
Lowth was a prescriptive grammarian and part of a group of 18th century academics. His book was the most influential as a grammar guide and contained idiosyncratic rules on which grammatical rules should be avoided and encouraged, For example, "two negatives destroy one another or are equal to an affirmative" - this comes from the common judgement that language should be logical and any constructions that aren't logical don't make sense.
-
By 1783, Britain had established a large empire, and throughout the 18th century the empire was expanding. This positioned English as a truly global language: there are now over 50 English-speaking countries. Through migration and communication technology, English had significant exposure to world languages, enriching the lexis. For example, the PDE noun 'hurricane' comes from Native American 'hurucane' meaning evil spirit of wind.
-
The industrial revolution came to an end in 1840 (the scientific revolution came to an end in 1687) but both were very significant in the development of the English Language. Due to new inventions, new words were created. There was a heavy use of Greek and Latin affixes and morphology derivation occurred e.g. 'protein' and 'biology'.
-
The Education Act made education compulsory for children between the ages of 5 and 13. This meant that more people could read and write at an early age regardless of their class, thus starting the collapse of the class system. As more people could read and write, school mobility became increasingly more common, this added the collapse of the class system.
-
The first edition of the new English dictionary was published in 1884.
-
Since the first wave of feminism ended in the 1920s, many new words have been coined in the lexical field associated with the fight for equality. For example, as more women joined the workforce, the use of feminine nouns such as 'hostess' entered the vocabulary. Words and phrases that arose due to the Feminist movement are 'gender identity' (1964), 'sexism' (1965), 'Mx' (title, 1977) 'Feminazi' (1991) and 'manspreading' (2013).
-
The end of the Second World War introduced new words and phrases into the language such as 'keep calm and carry on', 'Spam' (a blend of the words 'spiced' and 'ham') and 'Kamikaze' (a borrowing from Japanese, meaning 'divine wind' - the pilots that launched suicidal attacks on an enemy target).
-
Since the spread of the internet in the 1980s/1990s there had been an increase in the speed of which information is spread around the world. The internet helps to preserve the most sacred dialects and allows individual to communicate quicker. It has also opened discoveries to new language like text speak, made up of abbreviations, typically not following grammar, spelling and punctuation, for example 'cya' - 'see you'.
-
Census data from 2015 showed that over 300 languages were being spoken in British schools. This impacts the language as English Speakers can adopt new words from other languages. In London there is a phenomenon known as multicultural London English (MLE) which has led to the introduction of much of our modern slang, e.g. 'nang' (meaning very good) which has a mix of English and Bangladeshi origin, or the Polish word 'dupa' which means girlfriend in some inner-city circles.