The history of English

By facebooker_1475234979534761
  • 1066 BCE

    Norman Conquest

    Norman Conquest
    The death of the last Anglo-Saxon King.
  • Period: 1066 BCE to 1066 BCE

    Infusion of Romance (Anglo-Norman) words

    -William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England and the Anglo-Saxons.
    -The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman.
    -Anglo-Norman was a French dialect that had considerable Germanic influences in addition to the basic Latin roots.
  • Period: 1000 BCE to 1100 BCE

    The finally phase the Old English

    • Was brought about by the Norman invasion of England. This period ended with the consequential evolution of the English language towards Early Middle English.
  • 700 BCE

    Anglo-Saxon literature

    Anglo-Saxon literature
    • Beowulf is the oldest surviving Germanic epic and the longest Old English poem. Other great works of Old English poetry include The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Battle of Maldon, and The Dream of the Rood.
    -Old English prose works include legal writings, medical tracts, religious texts, and translations from Latin and other languages.
  • 700 BCE

    Vikings words

    Vikings words
    Most words were West Germanic, some introduced by the Vikings.
  • Period: 700 BCE to 1000 BCE

    Figures in the world of Anglo-Saxon literature.

    • This period contains some of the earliest documented evidence of the English language, showcasing notable authors and poets like Cynewulf and Aldhelm.
  • Period: 600 BCE to 1100 BCE

    Typologically of English language is:

    • Stress-timed, non-tonal
    • Synthetic, agglutinating/fusional
  • 500 BCE

    Germanic invasions

    Germanic invasions
    • The Celts withdrew to Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Wales, and Cornwall.
    • OE was influenced by the following languages: Celtic - Latin - Scandinavian.
    • Latin words were brought to Britain by the Germanic invaders, By the culture, and Christianity.
  • 500 BCE

    Scholars believe that...

    Scholars believe that...
    • About 40 Scandinavian (Old Norse) words entered Old English.
    • The most important dialect for modern scholars is, however, West Saxon.
    • About half of the most commonly used words in modern English have Old English roots.
  • 410 BCE

    The arrival of English

    The arrival of English
    -Germanic-speaking tribes replaced the Celtic peoples.
  • 400 BCE

    Begin Indo-Eropean

    Begin Indo-Eropean
    • Germanic tribes invaded Britain.
    • Old English Belongs to the West Germanic.
    • Christian era: Old English descended from a dialect of Indo-European.
    • English belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic language family
  • 200 BCE

    Germanic language split

    Germanic language split
    • East Germanic was spoken by peoples who migrated back to southeastern Europe. No East Germanic language is spoken today, and the only written East Germanic language that survives is Gothic.
    • North Germanic evolved into the modern Scandinavian languages of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic (but not Finnish, which is related to Estonian and is not an Indo-European language).
    • West Germanic is the ancestor of modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English.
  • 593

    Christianization

    Christianization
    • England adopted the Latin alphabet, and English was soon being written down extensively.
  • Jan 1, 850

    Norse invasions

    Norse invasions
  • 1100

    Phonology (ME period)

    The main differences between OE and ME related to the addition of new consonant phonemes and some changes in the quality of vowels.
    ME Diphthongs
    ME consonants
    ME monophthongs
  • Period: 1100 to 1400

    The English language evolved

    • The middle was Germanic.
    • Anglo-Norman French (up to the late 12th century)
    • Central French (from then until the end of the 15th century).
    • The most significant development was phonological
  • Period: 1100 to 1500

    Morphology ME period

    The ME period is marked by a great reduction in the inflectional system inherited from OE.
    Language Contact: OE often mixed with Old Norse.
    Phonological Reasons: The weakening and eventual loss of unstressed syllables at the ends of words destroyed many of the inflections of OE.
    English change: synthetic language to a much more analytic.
  • 1300

    Linguist Otto Jespersen

    Linguist Otto Jespersen
    The term Great Vowel Shift was coined by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. It affected the pronunciation of almost all vowels, most distinctively, however, the long monophthongs.
  • 1301

    Anglicised

    Anglicised
    • British government and its wealthy citizens Anglicised the language.
  • 1349

    Black Death

    Black Death
    It killed about one-third of the English population.
  • Period: 1350 to 1550

    The great vowel shift

    The transition from Middle English to Early Modern English was marked by a major change in the pronunciation of vowels from about 1350 to 1550.
  • 1400

    Medieval aristocracy

    Medieval aristocracy
    • The ruling class of England, had spoken French or Latin but changed to English in the 15th century
    • The shift affected words of both native ancestry and borrowings from French and Latin. But on the other hand, there were several conflicts between England and France at this time.
  • 1450

    Language ME period

    Language ME period
    • By the end of the ME period most of today's syntactic and morphological patterns had been established.
    • Between 1450 and 1650 five of the seven long vowels of Middle English were raised and two became diphthongized.
    • During the renaissance five of the seven long vowels of Middle English were raised and two became diphthongized.
    • The foundation for spelling conventions was finally laid in 1476 with the invention of the printing press.
  • 1476

    William Caxton

    William Caxton
    Printing was introduced in the second half of the 15th century (1476) by William Caxton and was the single most important factor that led to the standardization of English, based on the English spoken in London, the then center of the country.
  • 1477

    Printing

    Printing
    • Printing was introduced in the 15th century.
    • The first dated book issued from this press was the "Dictates and sayings of the Philosophers" and bears the imprint 1477.
  • 1500

    Rise of Modern English

    Rise of Modern English
    • The Middle English period came to a close around 1500 AD with the rise of Modern English.
    • French was the language of the nobility, the government, the law, and civilized behavior in England.
    • Beginning in the twelfth century and continuing until the eighteenth: the Great Vowel Shift / he sounds of the long stressed vowels in English
  • 1500

    Early Modern English grammar

    Early Modern English grammar
    • Most of the grammar of English was carried by syntax rather than morphology.
    • Order the word.
    • The 2nd person singular pronominal inflection
    • The singular personal endings of verbs
  • Period: 1500 to

    Declension, conjugation and syntax

    • The possessive case, the non-possessive, or oblique case.
    • Retained, at least to some extent, all the earlier inflectional categories: tense, mood, number, person.
    • The trend, however, was toward modern SVO word order.
  • Period: 1500 to

    The Early Modern English period

    • The late Middle Ages had seen the triumph of the English language over French in England, and the establishment once more of a standard form of written English.
    • The beginning of the EMnE period coincides with the ascendancy of Henry VIII to the throne in 1509.
    • The end of EMnE is marked by the completion of the Great Vowel Shift and the beginning of the scientific age at around 1700.
    • Most influential with regard to EMnE were the works of William Shakespeare.
  • 1550

    The Renaissance

    The Renaissance
    It began in Italy, and its first period was marked by a revival of interest in classical literature and classical ideals.
  • Period: to

    Global Language - English.

    • Verb forms in third and second person.
    • The auxiliary does appear and is still used the same
    • The invasion carried the English around the world.
    • 250 million people already spoke English from Great Britain, it spread to America, South Africa, Australia, South Asia.

  • Present-day English towards

    • Linguistic changes in the ME period.
    • Development of varieties of English.
    • English as a global language.
    • Varieties of English.
    • British vs. American English.
  • Period: to

    Dictionary of English 1st

    By: Johnson's

  • English language

    English language
    English is the most used language in the world, as a mother tongue.
    - British English:
    Variety of pronunciation RP, 12 monophthongs, 8 diphthongs, and 24 consonants.
    • American English: There is no uniform accent, there are 12 monophthongs, 3 diphthongs, and 24 consonants.