ABRIEF HISTORY OF

OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

BY:
DIANA HURTADO
CAROLINE CERÓN
ANGÉLICA GARCÉS
HADER A. CASTILLO Q.
 Introduction

● Britain was a small Island with no

known name and no proper language.

● Subjected to successive foreign

conquerors,
 Beginnings

● The inhabitants of Britain previously

spoke a Celtic language.

● The invading Germanic tribes:

The Vikings
Invasion
By the late 8th Century, the
Vikings (or Norsemen) began
to make sporadic raids on the
east cost of Britain. They
came from Denmark, Norway
and Sweden, although it was
the Danes who came with the
greatest force.
 Vikings
The Vikings spoke Old
Norse, an early North
Germanic language not that
dissimilar to Anglo-Saxon
and roughly similar to
modern Icelandic (the word
viking actually means “a
pirate raid” in Old Norse).
Accents and pronunciations
in northern England even
today are heavily influenced
by Old Norse, to the extent
that they are largely
intelligible in Iceland.
- Middle English was a form of the English language, spoken after the
Norman conquest (1066) until the late 15th century.
- English underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old
English period.
- The Oxford English Dictionary specifies the period when Middle English
was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500.
- During the Middle English period, many Old English grammatical features
either became simplified or disappeared altogether.
- Nouns, adjectives and verbs inflections were simplified by the reduction
(and eventual elimination) of most grammatical case distinctions.
 PERIODS OF MIDDLE ENGLISH

Early Middle English:E From 1100 to 1250

Central Middle English: From 1250 to 1400

Late Middle English: From 1400 to 1500