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First language ever!! We dont know much about this language because it was spoken and not written. But we do know that it had its inspiration from the runic alphabet - we can also see that there are words that have survived to this day which are mainly place names as Thames, Dover and London.
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The Goths (speakers of a now extinct East Germanic language) sack Rome. The first Germanic tribes arrive in Britain.
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The British was invaded again - now by the Angles (northern Germany), the Saxons (Germany) and the Jutes (Jutland/Denmark) - who spoke a language which is the English we know today. The "new" English nearly obliterating the "old" English which was spoken before the invasion. About one third of the words we use to day are of Old English origin.
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450-1066
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5th-6th centuries Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians) speaking West Germanic dialects settle most of Britain. Celts retreat to distant areas of Britain: Ireland, Scotland, Wales.
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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.
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Rise of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex; the Saxon kingdoms of Essex and Middlesex; the Angle kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria. St. Augustine and Irish missionaries convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, introducing new religious words borrowed from Latin and Greek. Latin speakers begin referring to the country as Anglia and later as Englaland.
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Approximate date of the earliest manuscript records of Old English.
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Approximate date of the only surviving manuscript of the Old English epic poem Beowulf, composed by an anonymous poet between the 8th century and the early 11th century.
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Danes attack England, and the English king (Ethelred the Unready) escapes to Normandy. The Battle of Maldon becomes the subject of one of the few surviving poems in Old English. The Danish king (Canute) rules over England and encourages the growth of Anglo-Saxon culture and literature.
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England was invaded again - now by the Normans from France which spoke an early vision of French. Therefore also iFrench got an influence on the English we know today. At that time French was only spoken by the king, his nobles and the elite and became therefore a high status language in England. The words which came to England was catch, wage and reward and a lot of words containing food. Common peopple still spoke Old English and the church, the priets and bishops spoked Latin.
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1066-1475
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Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English.
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Henry II declares himself overlord of Ireland, introducing Norman French and English to the country. About this time the University of Oxford is founded.
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King John loses control of the Duchy of Normandy and other French lands; England is now the only home of the Norman French/English.
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The University of Cambridge is formed by scholars from Oxford.
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King Henry III is forced to accept the Provisions of Oxford, which establish a Privy Council to oversee the administration of the government. These documents, though annulled a few years later, are generally regarded as England's first written constitution.
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Under Edward I, royal authority is consolidated in England and Wales. English becomes the dominant language of all classes.
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The most important event in the changing linguistic situation was the rise of the London dialect as the prevalent written form of language. The history of the London dialect reveals the sources of the literary language in Late ME and also the main source and basis of the Literary Standard, both in its written and spoken forms. The Early ME written records made in London – beginning with the PROCLAMATION of 1258 – show that the dialect of London was fundamentally East Saxon. Later records indicat
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The Hundred Years War between England and France leads to the loss of almost all of England's French possessions. The Black Death kills roughly one-third of England's population. Geoffrey Chaucer composes The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. 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 "
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The Statute of Pleading makes English the official language in England. Parliament is opened with its first speech delivered in English.
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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.
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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.
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Early 16th century
The first English settlements are made in North America. William Tyndale's English translation of the Bible is published. Many Greek and Latin borrowings enter English. -
The first version of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England is published.
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Thomas Wilson publishes The Art of Rhetorique, one of the first works on logic and rhetoric in English.
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Henry Peacham publishes The Garden of Eloquence, a treatise on rhetoric.
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The first grammar of English--William Bullokar's Pamphlet for Grammar--is published.
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The Art of English Poesie (attributed to George Puttenham) is published.
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1590-1611 William Shakespeare writes his Sonnets and the majority of his plays.
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From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is.
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Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, the first English dictionary, is published.
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Weekly News, the first English newspaper, is published in London.
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The Royal Society of London appoints a committee to consider ways of “improving” English as a language of science.
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Aphra Behn, the first woman novelist in England, publishes Oroonoko, or the History of the Royal Slave.
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The Daily Courant, the first regular daily newspaper in English, is published in London.
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Elisabeth Elstob publishes the first grammar of Old English.
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Nathaniel Bailey publishes his Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, a pioneer study in English lexicography: the first to feature current usage, etymology,syllabification, clarifying quotations, illustrations, and indications of pronunciation.
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Samuel Johnson publishes his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language.
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1760-1795
This period marks the rise of the English grammarians (Joseph Priestly, Robert Lowth, James Buchanan, John Ash, Thomas Sheridan, George Campbell, William Ward, and Lindley Murray), whose rule books, primarily based on prescriptive notions of grammar, become increasingly popular. -
Robert Lowth publishes his Short Introduction to English Grammar.
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Noah Webster publishes his American Spelling Book.
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The Daily Universal Register (renamed The Times in 1788) begins publication in London.
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The Observer, the oldest national Sunday newspaper in Britain, begins publication.
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Early 19th century
Grimm’s Law (discovered by Friedrich von Schlegel and Rasmus Rask, later elaborated by Jacob Grimm) identifies relationships between certain consonants in Germanic languages (including English) and their originals in Indo-European. The formulation of Grimm’s Law marks a major advance in the development of linguistics as a scholarly field of study. -
William Hazlitt publishes A New and Improved Grammar of the English Language.
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John Pickering compiles the first dictionary of Americanisms
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Noah Webster publishes his American Dictionary of the English Language. Richard Whateley publishes Elements of Rhetoric.
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James A.H. Murray begins editing the Philological Society’s New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (later renamed the Oxford English Dictionary).
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The New Yorker magazine is founded by Harold Ross and Jane Grant.
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Henry Fowler publishes the first edition of his Dictionary of Modern English Usage.
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British linguist C.K. Ogden introduces Basic English
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England was invaded by the Romans in 55 BC. The language was influeded by the Romans who spoke latin. We can also see the influence today where a lot of cities containing "chester" which is derived from the Roman name of that place. The Romans gave places names which are still used today. The language was still spoken and not writen so the information is little.
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The Christan Missionaries spoke Latin and gave English a lot of Latin words in connection with religion, church and school because they also teached the children in the school. Etc altar, angel, apostel, candle, demon, grammatical, hymn, priest are words which the Christian Missionaries brought to the English language and they are still used today.
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The Vikings started to invade Britain and letf behind a lot of words which the English language adopted etc egg, dirt, harbour, knife, birth, slaughter, die, bull, outlaw and rotten. The Vikings settled as farmers in the North and gave everyday words to the English Landuage
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Three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. At that time the people of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders. The Angles came from Englaland and their language was called Englisc - from which the words England and English are like the same.
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Egbert of Wessex incorporates Cornwall into his kingdom and is recognized as overlord of the seven kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons (the Heptarchy): England begins to emerge.
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Danes raid England, occupy Northumbria, and establish a kingdom at York. Danish begins to influence English.
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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. 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.
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English and Danes mix fairly peacefully, and many Scandinavian (or Old Norse)loanwords enter the language, including such common words as sister, wish, skin, and die.
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Christianity was introduced among Anglo-Saxons by St.Augustine, missionary from Rome. Irish missioners also spread Celtic form of Christianity to mainland Britain.
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The four main dialectal forms of Old English were Northumbrian, spoken north of the river Humber; Mercian, spoken in the midlands; Kentish, spoken in Kent (the southeastern part); and West Saxon, spoken in the southwest. Each of those dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Of these, all of Northumbria and most of Mercia were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. The portion of Mercia and all of Kent that were successfully defended were then integrated into We
