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Nov 15, 2023 · 1607. Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, established. 1611. The Authorized, or King James Version, of “The Bible” is published. 1616. Death of William Shakespeare. 1622. Publication of the first English-language newspaper, the “Courante” or “Weekly News”.
- The Prehistory of English
- 500-1100: The Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period
- 1100-1500: The Middle English Period
- 1500 to The Present: The Modern English Period
- Resources and Further Reading
The ultimate origins of English lie in Indo-European, a family of languages consisting of most of the languages of Europe as well as those of Iran, the Indian subcontinent, and other parts of Asia. Because little is known about ancient Indo-European (which may have been spoken as long ago as 3,000 B.C.), we'll begin our survey in Britain in the fir...
The conquest of the Celtic population in Britain by speakers of West Germanic dialects (primarily Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) eventually determined many of the essential characteristics of the English language. (The Celtic influence on English survives for the most part only in place names—London, Dover, Avon, York.) Over time the dialects of the va...
The Middle English period saw the breakdown of the inflectional system of Old English and the expansion of vocabulary with many borrowingsfrom French and Latin. 1. 1150—Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English. 2. 1171—Henry II declares himself overlord of Ireland, introducing Norman French and English to the country. Abou...
Distinctions are commonly drawn between the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) and Late Modern English (1800 to the present). During the period of Modern English, British exploration, colonization, and overseas trade hastened the acquisition of loanwords from countless other languages and fostered the development of new varieties of English (World Eng...
Algeo, John. The Origins and Development of the English Language, 6th edition. Wadsworth, 2009.Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language, 5th edition. Prentice Hall, 2001.Bragg, Melvyn. The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language. Hodder & Stoughton, 2003.Crystal, David. The English Language. Penguin, 2002.- Richard Nordquist
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Apr 19, 2024 · English language, a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family that is closely related to the Frisian, German, and Dutch languages. It originated in England and is the dominant language of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand. It has become the world’s lingua franca.
- What is the English language?The English language is an Indo-European language in the West Germanic language group. Modern English is widely considered to be the lingua franca...
- How many people speak English?As of 2020 there are 1.27 billion English speakers around the world. This makes it the most spoken language, ahead of Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billio...
- Is African American Vernacular English a dialect of English?There has been much public and academic debate on whether African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of English or its own separate la...
- Where did English come from?Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English...
- Is English the official language of the United States of America?English is not the official language of the United States of America. The country does not have an official language on the federal level. Many sta...
e. English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern ...
The Old English period began in 449 AD with the arrival of three Germanic tribes from the Continent: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They settled in the south and east of Britain, which was then inhabited by the Celts. The Anglo-Saxons had their own language, called Old English, which was spoken from around the 5th century to the 11th century.
He is edi-tor of volume 1 of The Cambridge History of the English Language (six volumes, 1992–2001) and one of the founding editors of the journal English Language and Linguistics (also published by Cambridge University Press). He is author of Metrical Phonology with Christopher McCully (Cambridge University Press, 1986), A Grammar of Old ...
