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500
The Anglo-Saxon Invasion
The Jutes, Saxons and Angles invaded the British Isles in the 5th century. What people know as English today was started back then by the invaders. The languages before the invasion almost disappeared after the invasion. In the following part of the Anglo-Saxon period (787-1066), the Christian missionaries brought Latin and the Danish Vikings took care of bringing Norse and scholars. -
Jan 1, 1066
Invaded by the Normans
For some centuries between 1066 to about 1470 the Normans had been invading The British Isles. The French Normans brought their language, but French was not spoken by everybody. As the third language at the time beside Middle English and French, Latin was spoken too by the clergy and people similar to these. As a matter of fact French and Latin influenced The Middle English a long way of the English's development. -
Jan 1, 1476
Discoveries and exploring the world
In the beginning of Modern English there were no dictionaries, and people didn't know how to spell and write correctly. Between 1476 and the late 18th century there were missing words in English for new inventions, things and so on, With help by the society changes and the revolution the English has become the way it is today. -
Jan 1, 1476
Invention of the first printing press
The first printing press was invented by William Caxton. The invention made it possible to produce books way faster than before, but if a book was supposed to sell well, the spelling and the language had to be understandable for everyone. The dialects caused problems because of the different vocabularies and so on. -
Two important factors of the development of Modern English
The King James Bible which was produced in 1611, in the year of the Early Modern English period. By intrducing a lot of normal phrases and words he has influenced the language back then and even still today. On the other hand Shakespeare (1564-1616) had a major participation on our understanding of the Early Modern English. He was among other things a poet and his work gives us an insight of how the Early Modern English was. -
The Inkhorn Controversy
In the middle of the changes of the English language many writers ware worried. Would it be possible to read their work in the future in proportion to the changes of spelling, dictionaries and such? One of the worried writers was Jonathan Swift who expressed his concerns in a famous way. Because of the worries Samuel Johnson made the first English dictionary back in 1755. -
American Independence
As America no longer was a part of Britain they decided to have a new language. Even though American English and British English sounds a lot like the same, there are some major differences in the vocabulary, spelling, intonation and pronounciation. The first American dictionary was published back in 1806 by Noah Webster. -
Modern English
The Modern English period has been from 1800 until now. In the latest two centuries the changes of the English vocabulary and dictionaries was because of the new inventions. For instance the words are watt, cocaine and so on. After all the changes in the period of the Modern English hasn't been that fast as the changes had been before.
