Main periods in the history of the english language
Traditionally, the history of the English language is divided into 3 periods, which were originally suggested by the English scholar Henry Sweet, author of a number of works on the English language and its history. They are Old English, Middle English and Modern English.
I. Old English (500-1100 AD)
West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is the source of the words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes, began populating the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. They spoke a mutually intelligible language, similar to modern Frisian—the language of northeastern region of the Netherlands – that is called Old English. Four major dialects of Old English emerged, Northumbrian in the north of England, Mercian in the Midlands, West Saxon in the south and west, and Kentish in the Southeast.
These invaders pushed the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is now England into Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words. Also influencing English at this time were the Vikings. Norse invasions, beginning around 850, brought many North Germanic words into the language, particularly in the north of England, and influenced grammar greatly.
Old English, whose best known surviving example is the poem Beowulf, lasted until about 1100. This last date is rather arbitrary, but most scholars choose it because it is shortly after the most important event in the development of the English language, the Norman Conquest.
II. The Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500)
William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England and the Anglo-Saxons in 1066 AD at the battle of Hastings. The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman. The Normans were also of Germanic stock and Anglo-Norman was a French dialect that had considerable Germanic influences in addition to the basic Latin roots. As a result, many words commonly used by the aristocracy have Romanic roots and words frequently used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have Germanic roots (not always, of course). Sometimes French words replaced Old English words, other times, French and Old English components combined to form a new word, or even two different words with roughly the same meaning survive into modern English.
In 1204 AD, King John lost the province of Normandy to the King of France. This began a process where the Norman nobles of England became increasingly estranged from their French cousins. England became the chief concern of the nobility, rather than their estates in France, and consequently the nobility adopted a modified English as their native tongue. About 150 years later, the Black Death (1349-50) killed about one third of the English population. The laboring and merchant classes grew in economic and social importance, and along with them English increased in importance compared to Anglo-Norman. This mixture of the two languages came to be known as Middle English. The most famous example of Middle English is Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
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By 1362, the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was largely over, in that year, the Statute of Pleading was adopted, which made English the language of the courts and it began to be used in Parliament.
The Middle English period came to a close around 1500 AD with the rise of Modern English.
III. Modern English (1500-nresent)
1. Early Modern English (1500-1800)
The next wave of innovation in English came with the Renaissance. The revival of classical scholarship brought many classical Latin and Greek words into the Language.
Elizabethan English, has much more in common with our language today than it does with the language of Chaucer. Many familiar words and phrases were coined or first recorded by Shakespeare, some 2,000 words and countless catch-phrases are his.
Two other major factors influenced the language and served to separate Middle and Modern English. The first was the Great Vowel Shift. This was a change in pronunciation that began around 1400. Long vowel sounds began to be made higher in the mouth and the letter “e” at the end of words became silent. In linguistic terms, the shift was rather sudden, the major changes occurring within a century. The shift is still not over, however, vowel sounds are still shortening although the change has become considerably more gradual.
The last major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the printing press. William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476 (the first printed book in Britain – translation of the History of Troy). Books became cheaper and as a result, literacy became more common. The printing press brought standardization to English. The dialect of London, where most publishing houses were located, became the standard. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the first English dictionary was published in 1604.
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2. Late-Modern English (1800-Present)
The principal distinction between early- and late-modern English is vocabulary. Pronunciation, grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but Late-Modern English has many more words. These words are the result of two historical factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that had not previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height, Britain ruled one quarter of the earth’s surface, and English adopted many foreign words and made them its own.
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