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The period of Old English begins
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The arrival of St. Augustine in 597 and the subsequent conversion of England to Latin Christianity
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In the 8th century, the Northumbrian speech group led in literature and culture, but that leadership was destroyed by the Viking invaders, who sacked Lindisfarne, an island near the Northumbrian mainland, in 793.
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In the 9th century, as a result of the Norwegian invasions, cultural leadership passed from Northumbria to Wessex.
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They landed in strength in 865.
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During King Alfred’s reign, in the last three decades of the 9th century, Winchester became the chief centre of learning.
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The period of Middle English begins
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The extension south to the Pyrenees of the Angevin empire of Henry II
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nāme, mēte, nōse, wēke, and dōre in the 13th and 14th centuries.
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King John lost Normandy in 1204.
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He was in his early 20s when the Statute of Pleading was passed
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The death of Chaucer at the close of the century marked the beginning of the period of transition from Middle English to the Early Modern English stage.
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The period of Modern English begins
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Lord Berners completed his translation of Jean Froissart’s Chronicle, and William Tyndale translated the New Testament.
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Throughout his career, Shakespeare invented thousands of words. He combined or distorted Latin, French, and other roots to create new words. These words were familiar enough to the audience that, with contextual clues, they could understand their meaning
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Francis Bacon published De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (On the Dignity and Advancement of Learning, an expansion of his earlier Advancement of Learning) in Latin
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The return of the monarchy (celebrated in John Dryden’s poem Astraea Redux) in 1660.
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The vowel had disappeared after a vowel in the syllabic coda in Southern English.