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Period: 450 to 1150
Old English
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500
the use of Germanic Dialects.
The Celtic population eventually started increasing in Britain due to the conquest, later becoming an important part of the old english language due to their germanic dialects (also known as Anglo-saxons) which later mixed together. -
597
Latin and Church play an important role in the English language.
The Roman bring the christianity to britain by St Augustine at the end of the sixth century. The english took words from the Church (such as prope, disciple, archbishop) and eventually added them to their language. -
878
King Alfred enhanced the use of English speaking and writing.
King Alfred lead victory over the Vikings and Danish conquests, also uniting all England under his rule. He translated words from Latin and used it to create a sense of identity. -
1013
The Danes conquest.
The Danes conquer England in 1013 and The Danish king, Canute, rules over and encourages the culture and literature of Anglo-Saxon. -
1066
The French conquest.
The Normans reached England and succesfully conquered. Due to this, a barrier of language began, in which the upper class spoke French and the lower class spoke English. -
Period: 1150 to 1500
Middle English
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1171
Norman English and Oxford.
Henry II declares himself as the overlord of Ireland and introduces for the first time Norman French and English. Oxford had already been founded by this time and developed rapidly whe the King banned the english students from going to the University of Paris. -
1337
The Hundred Years War and English becomes the official language.
The Thousand Years War led to the loss of England's French possesions. During these years, English becomes the official language of the law courts and replaces Latin. -
1368
Geoffrey Chaucer writes his first poem
He is now known as father of English literature. He was a great part during Middle English because he wrote all his poems and stories in English when most of it was still French and Latin. -
1400
The death of Geoffrey Chaucer
This marked the beginning of the period in which the language started changing from Middle English to early stages of Modern English. -
1476
The Renaissance
During this period, the printer is invented, which makes easier to share books and literacy rises, leading to the multiple decisions of which words, grammar and spellings to use. -
1500
The Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes that were made to the vowels Chaufer had introduced. The pronunciation became shorter, and longer vowels became diphthongs. This marked the first great change between the English we knew, and the modern one. -
Period: 1500 to
Modern English
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William Shakespeare's words.
He invented over 1700 words that are now used in modern English. He did this by modifying nouns into verbs, verbs into adjectives, connecting words never used together before, etc. It is said that he's the man who standarized the language and masterized the blank verse, which is a way of writting now commonly used to write poetry in england, but Shakespeare used it in his plays. -
The progress of the language.
The 1700 are a year of progress for the english language, for it was almost fully established and the language was easy to read by modern speakers. People from other places started reaching England and English started to expand, getting more variants and soon being used by other independent colonies. -
Period: to
The Progress
During the first years of the 1700 the first English newspaper was published in London, there were two volumes of the English Dictionary by Samuel Johnson, The creation of an academy to ascertain the use of English. The language was used during the Industrial Revolution to bring and share new ideas and new grammarians rise. -
English becomes an international language.
The use of english in diplomacy enhanced its use. It was right after the World War I was over, when the treaty of Versailles was written in English and French, both the most used by that time. It became widely-used thanks to nations that now spoke it after the end of World War II and in the organization of the United Nations.