History of the English language

Old English- Middle English – Early modern English –

Most of the changes happen in the early stages.

Overview of the major historical periods, and main events in the UK

OE (450/500-c to 1100)
ME (early and late) (1100-1500)
EModE (1500-1700)
LModE (1700-1945)
PDE (1945-present)

- AD (Anno Domini, which means, the year of the Lord, Christ’s birth) vs BC
(before Christ)
- Other used terminology: BCE (before common era) and CE (common era)
- Centuries: 11th century: from 1001 to 1100. So, it makes sense to the first
century: 1-100 as there was no 0 year.
- 1611 is in the 17th century, for example.
- C (circa, more or less (), ante, words used for dates.

Beowulf preface (c. 700-100), OE text.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, c. 900

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1590s),

Huuuge differences between the three texts, (OE, ME, and EModE)

LModE, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), meaning changes, word-choice,

formality…

HISTORICAL EVENTS MARKING PERIODS

410 Formal end of Roman rule in Britain OE

1066 Battle of Hastings (Norman Conquest) ME, HUGE IMPACT
1476 (Introduction of printing in English) Standardisation of the language, access to
more texts. HUGE IMPACT
1485 Beginning of Tudor of dynasty EModE, wanted to improve the language,
interest in language, science, etc.
1707 Act of Union (UK) Better relationship between Scotland and England.
Industrial revolution LModE, social changes, people started earning lots of money,
etc.
1945 WW2 ends PDE.
THE ORIGIN of ENGLISH

Before the Roman occupation there were Celtic-speaking people.

After the Roman left, Germanic tribes arrived from different areas (Anglos, Saxons,
Jutes, Frisians) and were used to protect the Britons.

They were coming from north Europe (Germany, Holland) most of them from coastal
areas, everyday people. They wanted to settle. Their language was almost the same,
with different dialects, but they decided to share a language and they called it Englisc.
That’s English from that point onwards.

The Britons and Celtic people were moved out, but still let us some words in English;
curse, border, river…

The ANGLO-SAXON had 7 major Kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia (in the midlands),
East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex.

Christianisation of England was very significant between the arrival of the Anglo-
Saxons and the Viking invasions.
It had a great impact on literacy, texts from Latin were transcribed.

THE VIKING INVASIONS, their invasions had many manuscripts destroyed,

Monasteries sacked, they enslaved, killed, etc.

Their language was the Old Norse and it influenced especially the northern varieties.

The Norman invasion, the end of OE period

1066 The battle of Hastings.

William the conqueror becomes King Of England (he spoke French)

Well-educated, powerful, influential, French was a mark of prestige and English was
seen as low.
Over 10,000 words were introduced during ME, 75% of them are still in use today.

OE, they have a different alphabet because they used to write with runes. They were
forgotten because of the printing press as well. Because it existed before in Europe.

English is an SVO. Tom kicked John. In OE they did not need the word order because
they had cases. They had some w.o. but they did not need it as much as we do.
Nominative, accusative, genitive, dative ( it tells us that the word is a location).

OE has not a generalised use of long or complex sentences. Embedded sentences.

LModE they liked to use capital letters in words, important nouns.

In OE there are rules to follow in terms of pronunciation.

- V is not a letter in OE. The f acts as a V. The reason is that both sounds wer
pretty much the same in OE. They have the phoneme /f/. IN the beginning it was
pronounced as f, and in the middle of the word as v. Two allophones for one
phoneme. Word ending um. Suffix, case marking, inflection.
Weakening of consonants. From a d to th.
Prefix ge. ‘Completed action’.
Biblical versions in English are more conservative. Thy. It comes from French:
tu, and vous. Thou(sg) and ye(pl) were in English.

Subjunctive, it is telling us that it is hypothetical, a wish or a if. If I were you,

this is the subjunctive. And in PDE they use the MAY, may your kingdom
come, but in earlier stages they used the subjunctive.