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400
Old English - The Anglo-Saxon invasion
Angles from nothern Germany, Saxons from Germany and Jutes from Jutland in Denmark invaded the British Isles. -
Period: 400 to Jan 24, 1066
Old English
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Jan 24, 787
Old English - Latin and Norse
The two biggest influences on the English language during the Anglo-Saxon period were Latin, which came from the Christian missionaries and scholars, and Norse, which came from the Danish Vikings, who raided and settled as farmers in the northern parts of Brittain in 787 to 1066. -
Jan 24, 1066
Middle English - Grammar
The English language used to have a lot of inflections. This changed during the Middle Ages to what we see today: the words' order is the most important. -
Jan 24, 1066
Middle English - Invaded by the Normans
Britain was invaded by the Normans from the northern parts of France. At this point England became a trilingual nation as the Norman/English king, his noles and the elite spoke French because of the invasion, the clergy, bishops and priests spoke Latin, while the rest of the population spoke English. -
Period: Jan 24, 1066 to Jan 24, 1470
Middle English
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Dec 24, 1066
Old English to Middle English
The shift from Old English to Middle English was slow unlike the shift to Old English, which was harsh.
The changes took place in the vocabulary, grammar and spelling. -
Dec 24, 1066
Middle Englisgh - Vocabulary
In 1066 90% of the words were of Old English origin and by the end of the Middle Ages it had shrunk to 75%. Those new words were mostly from French as the Normans dominated government, law, administration, the church, medicine, art and literature, and fashion for 150 years.
The translation of the Bible gave the English language thousands of Latin words.
Some of the other words came because they simply didn't have a word for it then. -
Dec 24, 1066
Middle English - Sound and spelling
There were only a few changes in the alphabet. ð and θ was replaced by th and æ was replaced by a.
In Old English there were no rules on how to spell a word. That meant that some words could easily be spelled in 20 different ways. In the Middle Ages it changed to a highly regularized system. -
Jan 24, 1476
Early Modern English
Because of the development in the world in the period from 1476 to the late 18th century the English language got a lot of new words for new things, concepts, techniques and inventions.
For instance Shakespeare's plays and poems, Columbus' adventures in the new world, and the King James Bible were translated into English, which gave the language new words. -
Jan 24, 1476
Early Modern English - Printing press
William Caxton set up the first printing press in 1476, which meant that the whole country had to agree on the spelling, punctuation, vocabulary etc. in the English language if everyone should be able to read the books. -
Period: Jan 24, 1476 to
Early Modern English
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American English
America gained its indepence. Therefore they wanted a new language. In 1806 Noah Webster published an American dictionary in which he had cut out all superfluous and silent letters. Some of the differences between American and British English are:
In America they change -re endings to -er. (theatre to treater)
They replace -ce by -se (defence to defense)
In America you say line and cab while in England you say queue and taxi. -
Modern English
The language continued to change but at a much slower rate than previously.
There came new words to the language all the time, like watt, chromosome, and silicon. -
Period: to
Modern English