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Jan 18, 2019 · In the Anglo-Saxon period, English was “very much a vernacular, a lesser language; not the language of the educated elite” – which was Latin.
Jul 17, 2018 · A number of Native American languages in both North and South America have followed the same path to extinction: that is, bilingualism, then loss of the minority language to the more widespread language, either Spanish or English. Latin was the next language to enter the British Isles.
Of the three sources of Latin influence on Old English, Christianizing has had the greatest impact on the English language (see, e.g., Baugh & Cable, 1981, p. 75; Kastovsky, 2006, p. 220).
- 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 and 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 first cent...
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, dialects of various in...
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 Modern English period, 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 Englis...
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
Jul 18, 2018 · The Old English language or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest form of English. The period is a long one and it is generally considered that Old English was spoken from about A.D. 600 to about 1100. Many of the poems of the period are pagan, in particular Widsith and Beowulf.
The Old English period is considered to have evolved into the Middle English period some time after the Norman conquest of 1066, when the language came to be influenced significantly by the new ruling class's language, Old Norman.
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Feb 7, 2024 · How did the English language evolve across these literary periods? The English language underwent significant evolution from the Old English period, incorporating Latin and French influences, especially after the Norman Conquest.
