-
449
Anglos and Saxons invade
The Anglo-Saxons arrive from North Germany, bringing with them language (Old English). The only writing is runic, and comes from Latin - monks use the alphabet with new letters ("ash", "eth" and "thorn") -
Period: 450 to 1066
Origins of English
-
520
St Augustine and the 40 monks (No exact date)
Mans was sent to bring Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons and was the first archbishop of Canterbury. England in the 6th century was divided into a lot of kingdoms, so mans chose Kent as the queen of the King of Kent was already Christian. -
1066
Norman Conquest
my guy duke William of Normandy riding in like hi lols I'm here - defences?? no <3. Later he became known as William the
✨ Conqueror✨ (stab stab). Apart from this though, French scribes started to introduce their spelling patterns: 'qu' replaced 'cw' + a reversed letter order -
Period: 1066 to 1485
Middle English
General expansion of lexis - the first concerns about English emerges during this period lols - basically "we gotta stabilise man, we be moving too much" -
Period: 1300 to 1500
The Great Vowel Shift (GVS)
(imagine shifting back to this era jesus christ I don't think you should) just some vowels moving, totally didn't impact english as we know it now at all. It also overlaps with the tudor period. Longer vowel sounds higher and further in the mouth [damn, no deepthroating :( ] -
1347
the B L A C K death (ends 1350)
kills between a quarter to a third of the population oof (f for respects). Many monks died too :( but that also means Latin go bye bye so sad -
1348
First English Translation of the Bible
By John Wycliffe -
1362
English becomes the official language
EDWARD 3.0 MY BOY - law and state business is where its at according to him (oh shit, mans qwirky) do you think this all originated because he was just like "I want to be quirky lol" -
1370
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
He was one of the first people to continue using English in a predominantly French time, and was rich so knew the customs of the court. The Canterbury Tales were just a staple of time yk -
1458
Printinggggg pressssssssss
yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh here's the real fun, Gutenburg was like "and let there be printing" and voila printing press very fun. Some standardisation occurs due to this, but not much - some publishing companies do go "we have rules now grrr" but its really not that accepted (I have such brainrot, I saw the picture and was like OMG MINECRAFT??) -
1475
printing press 2.0
nothing special, just William Caxton going to Britain and saying "I'm about to blow yalls minds watch" bam printing press (nah because William kinda hot, ygm??) /j -
Period: 1485 to
The TUDORRRSSSSS (Renaissance)
strap in, this period a long one -
1486
Nationalism (No Set Date)
Rise in nationalism because off something like expressive language - makes sense ig, but also what????? also ignore the date lol its an estimate and didn't occur in one section -
1501
Literature (No Set Date)
a flowering of literature like bam words, ELEVATED diction and a lot of new words from greek and stuff pogchamp nice era -
1505
The New World (No Set Date)
Lexis expansion!!!!!! and colonies in The New World led to trade routes and a lot of other stuff, which made change zzzzzzzzzzzzoooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmm -
1549
Book of Common Prayer
A translation of the Church Liturgy in English -
Period: 1564 to
Shakespeare my man
Man did a lot -
1569
Inkhorn {Derogatory} (No Set Date)
Basically, some scholars were pick me girls and decided to copy Latin so much it was awkward, so words such as 'devulugate' existed. This controversy was first in a lot of controversies around English at that time, mostly around overuse and over complexion of language -
Shakespeare 1 (No Set Date)
Mans was so powerful, he changed entire nouns to verbs and everyone was like yeah, this works -
Other common language things (No Set Date)
Use of interrogative forms without an auxillary (I cannot believe this, how rude of them, cancel English people in the 16th century) and double negatives - 'I am definitely not not not not not going to fail my English exam' -
Shakespeare 2 (No Set Date)
His vocabulary?? immaculate - 34,000 words by some counts and also 2000 neologisms doth he make -
Period: to
The 17th Century
ANOTHER LONG ONE ENGLISH WHY -
Religionae (No Set Date)
(https://youtu.be/q2hIUzrY0Y4) ==> Read Religion like this Influences (HI SISTER) of Puritanism and Catholicism (roundhead and fish eggs (cavalier)) and SCIENCE Puritan ideas of clarity and simplicity influence prose which made english less verbose (Whatever that means) -
The First English Dictionary
A Table Alphabeticall was what it was called - Published by Robert Cawdrey. It contained 2,543 of what are called "hard words" ;) -
Beeblae
King James Version (KJV) of the Bible led to the culmination of more than two centuries of efforts to produce a bible wow. KJV was compiled by 54 scholars and clerics to standardise the beeblae. It's also deliberately conservative smh -
Period: to
18th Century
An age of reason, as ideas of order prevailed - Everyone was like LANGUAGE SHOULD HAVE RULES but thats so poopy because why should language have rules but anyways -
Jonathon Swift write to Lord Treasurer
He want standardisation!!! As does almost every other person at this time. He was concerned about a vagueness in language, shortened words, unnecessary contractions, unnecessary polysyllabic words and words that had undergone semantic shift - basically language now. -
im done. Im so done. Another dictionary.
Nathan Bailey produces the first substantial Etymological English Dictionary but was criticised about the lack of words. yk, Nathan is a cute name I wonder if the person is cute EWWWWWW HE'S NOT HE'S NOT you wouldn't believe, the site where I got the picture from was captioned "300-Year-Old-Fried Chicken" I think I'm a bit dead -
another dictionary (Uzi, Uzi - not againnnn)
Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary o the English Language" with 43000 words in it poggers -
iS IT aNOther DictionARY. PeRhaPS
Robert Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar - apparently he's the creator of prescriptivism so mans can go burn -
school.
Thomas Sherider!!!!! Moved to Bath and founded an Academy. He saw dialect variations as 'vulgar' and 'provincial' though which kind of sucks nah because why does he look like a male karen like -
Period: to
19th Century
A reneweed interest of the past and archaic words -
ANOTHER DICTIONARY
Noah Webster - The American Dictionary of the English Language 'I've found you a girl, sad news, she's American' - Tommyinnit, 2020 -
ANOTHER KLASDJFKLSADJF FUCKING DICTIONARY
James Murrayeeeeeee lets party murray. Muryay. Muryoyo. SOrry okay He starts to complete the New English Dictionary in 1879 but he takes 5 years to complete it -
Period: to
20th Centurt [to infinity] AND BEYONDDDDDDD
Overseas influence goes boom, English goes global real quick and computers means standardised spelling and stuff because ahem "Writing's not that easy, but! Grammarly can help. This sentence is grammatically correct, but it's wordy and hard to read." Spellings are like, fixed now and pronunciation of words doesn't seem to be changing tbh, also the internet is like. Changing a lot of stuff
