HISTORY OF ENGLISH

Proto-Indo-Europeans

5000 BCE

Proto-Indo-Europeans living in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the new stone age begins. Man goes from being a hunter to a type of farmer growing crops and raising animals.

Germanic Indo-European tribes

1000 BCE

Germanic Indo-European tribes living in parts of modern-day Germany, The Bronze Age reaches Britain. Immigrants from Central Europe who were militarily effective and settled down in Britain suppressing what native population there may have been.

First Celts

500 BCE

The first Celts appear in Britain. They were bearers of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (from Austria). This was followed some hundred or two hundred years later by bearers of the La Tène culture, noted for its ornamental designs on jewellery and vessels of various kinds.

Julius Caesar

55

Julius Caesar invades Britain; thorough conquest starts about a hundred years later.

Londinium

122

Emperor Adrian, determined that Londinium fuese la capital de Britannia. Some years after prosperity in the trade sector was interrupted by the Celtic invasions. The first invaders were the icenes, which destroy Londinium.

Romans leave England

420

Roman withdrawal from Britain, also Britons are attacked by the Picts and by Scots from Ireland. Angles, Saxons, and other German settlers arrive in Britain to assist the Britons and claim territory.

Germanic peoples

550

Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians) speaking West Germanic dialects settle most of Britain.

St. Augustine

597

St. Augustine and Irish missionaries convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, introducing new religious words borrowed from Latin and Greek, rise of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex; the Saxon kingdoms of Essex and Middlesex; the Angle kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria.

Venerable Bede monk

673

Birth of the Venerable Bede, the monk who composed (in Latin) The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c. 731), a key source of information about Anglo Saxon settlement.

Manuscript records

680

Approximate date of the earliest manuscript records of Old English. “Cædmon's Hymn” composed in Old English.

Ecclesiastical History

731

The Venerable Bede writes “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” (in Latin)

Beowulf

800

Old English epic poem “Beowulf” composed. Scandinavians begin to settle in Britain and Ireland; Danes settle in parts of Ireland.

Alfred of Wessex

871

King Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great) leads the Anglo-Saxons to victory over the Vikings, translates Latin works into English, and establishes the writing of prose in English. Also He uses the English language to foster a sense of national identity. England is divided into a kingdom ruled by the Anglo-Saxons (under Alfred) and another ruled by the Scandinavians.

William of Normandy

1066

The Norman Invasion: King Harold is killed at the Battle of Hastings, and William of Normandy is crowned King of England. Over succeeding decades, Norman French becomes the language of the courts and of the upper classes; English remains the language of the majority. Latin is used in churches and schools. For the next century, English, for all practical purposes, is no longer a written language.

1100-1170: Part of The Middle English Period

1100

period saw the breakdown of the inflectional system of Old English and the expansion of vocabulary with many borrowings from French and Latin. 1150 a.c Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English.

Oxford

1167

About this time the University of Oxford is founded. Henry II declares himself overlord of Ireland, introducing Norman French and English to the country. Writing in English in the early Middle English period is marked by extreme dialectal diversity as the old West Saxon standard was infinitely too archaic and the later standard of the London area had not yet become established.

Cambridge university

1209

The University of Cambridge is formed by scholars from Oxford. The political influence of the Normans ceased to exist with the loss of Normandy for the English under King John. After this it was Central French which provided the source for newer French loan-words. The stylistic two-tier structure of the English lexicon has its roots in this period.

Magna Carta

1215

King John signs the Magna Carta "Great Charter", a critical document in the long historical process leading to the rule of constitutional law in the English-speaking world.

Mid to late 14th century

1300

English becomes the official language of the law courts and replaces Latin as the medium of instruction at most schools. John Wycliffe's English translation of the Latin Bible is published. The Great Vowel Shift begins, marking the loss of the so-called "pure" vowel sounds (which are still found in many continental languages) and the loss of the phonetic pairings of most long and short vowel sounds.

Black Death

1348

London, as the country's largest city, had problems of overcrowding and poor sanitation. The Thames was a polluted mess and cesspits within the city were a constant source of contamination.The first outbreak of plague swept across England in 1348-49

John Wycliffe publishes his English translation of “The Bible”

1382

Although translations of parts of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon existed hundreds of years before Wycliffe's translation, John Wycliffe is credited as being the first translation of the entire Bible (both Old and New Testaments) into English. His translation started a revolution, and enabled ordinary people to finally have access to the Bible in a language they could understand.

King Henry IV

1399

At his coronation, King Henry IV becomes the first English monarch to deliver a speech in English.

Anglican Church

1534

With his first wife, Cath. of Aragon, Henry had six children, only one of whom, a daughter. Henry believed this was a sign the marriage was ill­ fated, and because he desired a male heir, the king chose to attain an annulment of the marriage from the Catholic Church. But Pope Clement VII would not grant Henry an annulment. Enraged, Henry refused to accept the pope's decision. He secretly married Anne B. and provoked excommunicate Henry. This act resulted in the the Anglican Church.

Thesaurus

1565

William Caxton brings to Westminster (from the Rhineland) the first printing press and publishes Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Literacy rates increase significantly, and printers begin to standardize English spelling. The monk Galfridus Grammaticus (also known as Geoffrey the Grammarian) publishes Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae, the first English-to-Latin wordbook.

Dictionary

1604

Robert Cawdrey publishes the first English dictionary, “A Table Alphabeticall”

1607-1622

1607

The first permanent English settlement in America is established at Jamestown, Virginia. The Authorized Version of the English Bible (the "King James" Bible) is published, greatly influencing the development of the written language. The first African slaves in North America arrive in Virginia. Weekly News, the first English newspaper, is published in London.

William Shakespeare First Folio

1623

The First Folio is the first collected edition of William Shakespeare's plays, collated and published in 1623, Of the 36 plays in the First Folio, 17 were printed in Shakespeare's lifetime in various good and bad smaller editions, one was printed after his death and 18 had not yet been printed at all. First Folio so important; without it, 18 of Shakespeare’s plays, including Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Julius Caesar and The Tempest, might never have survived.

1700

1700

1707 The Act of Union unites the Parliaments of England and Scotland, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain. 1709 The first Copyright Act is enacted in England. 1712 Anglo-Irish satirist and cleric Jonathan Swift proposes the creation of an English Academy to regulate English usage and "ascertain" the language. 1719 Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe, considered by some to be the first modern English novel. 1715 Elisabeth Elstob publishes the first grammar of Old English.