-
200
Proto-English
The main source of information for the culture of the Germanic peoples (the ancestors of the English) in ancient times is Tacitus Germania, written around 200 AD -
400
Old English
Old English was not static, and people used it for about 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in 400 AD to about 1100 AD, after the Norman invasion. The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain developed into what we now call Old English. -
Jan 1, 1066
Middle English
For about 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and their high nobility spoke only one of the langues d'oïl called Anglo-Norman, which was a variety of Old Norman used in England -
Jan 1, 1200
English Literature
English literature started to reappear around 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable -
Jan 1, 1400
Early Modern English (Shakespear)
Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mainly during the 15th century. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid-late 16th century),The language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. -
Jan 1, 1558
Elizabethan Era
It was the height of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of English poetry, music and literature. -
Varieties of English
From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. -
First Dictionary (Modern English)
On 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first significant English dictionary, his Dictionary of the English Language. -
Late Modern English
The difference between early- and late-modern English is vocabulary. Pronunciation, grammar, and spelling are mostly the same, but Late-Modern English has many more words
