PRE ENGLISH PERIOD
ca. 410 England sees the Germanic tribes arriving from the lowlands.
c.450 Angles, Frisians, Saxons and Jutes begin the Anglo- Saxon settlement, bringing with them
The Germanic dialects. Even though they are distantly related, the earlier cultural contact with the Romans brings borrowings from
Latin.
Anglo-Saxons, originally sea-farers, settle down as farmers, exploiting rich English farmland.
By 600 A.D.,
Anglo-Saxon language covers most of modern-day England
THE OLD ENGLISH, OR ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD
ca. Christianity introduced among Anglo-Saxons by St. Augustine,
600 missionary from Rome. Irish missionaries also spread Celtic form
of Christianity to mainland Britain.
700s Texts in English emerge and become numerous. Many are
religious texts but there is also one great work of literature that was
written down in this period: Beowulf. The content shows the story
to be much older than its written version; it takes place when the
pre-Christian Germanic peoples were still in Scandinavia. It was
apparently written down by monks and preserved in the
monasteries. It shows many signs of Christian influence, possibly
introduced by its writer (a monk?) during this period.
792 Viking raids of Britain begin
793 First serious Viking incursions. Lindisfarne monastery sacked.
Viking incursions grow worse and worse. Large organized groups
set up permanent encampments on English soil. Slay kings of
Northumbria and East Anglia, subjugate king of Mercia. Storm
York (Anglo-Saxon Eoforwic) and set up a Viking kingdom (Jorvik).
Wessex stands alone as the last Anglo-Saxon kingdom in Britain.
c.800 Old English epic poem “Beowulf” composed
871 Alfred the Great becomes king of Wessex, encourages English
prose and translation of Latin works
871 “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” is begun
Middle English
1066 The Norman conquest under William the Conqueror
Middle Eng
1086 “Domesday Book” compiled
c.1150 The oldest surviving manuscripts in Middle English date from this period
1167 Oxford University established
1209 Cambridge University established
1349-50 The Black Death kills one third of the British population
1362 English is used in English Parliament for the first time
1385 English replaces Latin as main language in schools (except Universities of Oxford and Cambridge)
c.1388 Chaucer begins “The Canterbury Tales”
Early Modern English
c.1450 The Great Vowel Shift begins
1539 “The Great Bible” published
c.1590 William Shakespeare writes his first plays
1616 Death of William Shakespeare
1702 Publication of the first daily English-language newspaper, “The Daily Courant”, in London
Late Modern English
1788 First publication of “The Times” newspaper in London
1828 Noah Webster publishes his “The American Dictionary of the English Language”
1834 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire
1865 United States ends slavery after Civil War
1928 First edition of the “Oxford English Dictionary” is published
19th-20th
centuries
Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. Development of
technical vocabularies. Within a few centuries, English has
gone from an island tongue to a world language, following the
fortunes of those who speak it.
1945-? American political, economic, military supremacy. Borrowing
patterns continue. English has greater impact than ever on
other languages, even those with more native speakers.
Becomes most widely studied second language, and a
scientific lingua franca.
1990s- Internet begins to change the way people communicate and
2000s find out information. Portable phones. Texting.
New waves of immigrants to the U.S. Linguistic diversity increases where the
newcomers settle, but immigrants repeat the pattern of earlier settlers and
lose their language within a generation or two. The culture at large remains
resolutely monolingual (despite the fears of cultural purists). But as ever, the
language continues to absorb loanwords, continually enriched by the many
tongues of the newcomers to these shores.
