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A timeline of the history of the English language
The wonderful story of The English Language.

Learning English is made easier by understanding the history of the English language. A defined timeline of dates is given below. To demonstrate the development of English language this timeline looks at the translation of the Bible into English and the gradual working of ‘The Lords Prayer’.

The three hundred most widely used words on planet Earth as well as in space travel came from a word set (English,) over a thousand years old and the language that produced them is English, the most successful tongue ever known to man. The English language is steeped in Nordic myth and Gods, and born of the forest, the sea, travel and it is the most successful language conveyed in the heat of battle. It is the language of the English Shieldwall, the sea, and the land. The language of battle, art, science. It has given rise to the greatest of writers. It is the language of modern human song, science, and learning. Learning English is made easier by understanding the timeline of the English language below.

Yet its beginnings were a struggle as it competed with other languages, and interestingly it mirrored the struggle to bring to the English people a translation of the scriptures from the Latin, which also fell naturally into four periods corresponding to changes in the English language. The first period runs from about A.D. 600 to 1150, in which the language had the form known as Anglo-Saxon or Old English. The second period runs from 1150 to 1450, in which we may speak of Middle English. The third period is from about 1450 to 1750, called Early Modern English; and after 1750 we have simply Modern English, the language that we speak today.

449 AD: Beginnings of the English language. Beginnings of Old English (OE)

The history of our language, English can be traced back to the arrival of three powerful Germanic tribes to the collapsing Roman colony of Britannia during the mid 5th Century AD. Jutes, Angles and Saxons and crossed the North Sea from what is present-day Denmark and northern Germany. The primitive Romano Brython inhabitants at that time spoke in Brythonic or a Brythonic/ Latin patois. This language was quickly displaced along with the inhabitants who were pushed into Wales, Scotland and Cornwall where one group fled to the Brittany Coast of France - their descendants still live there as Bretons or Brythons to this day. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin. Their language, a West Germanic dialect was called Englisc from which the word English derives, their new country they named Engle land or Englalond. An Anglo-Saxon runic inscription dated between 450 and 480AD is the oldest known sample of the English language.

500 AD – 800 AD. Regia Anglorum. The 7 Kingdoms of the English.

During the next few centuries four dialects of English developed:

Northumbrian in Northumbria, Angles north of the Humber Mercian in the Kingdom of Mercia. ‘Middle’ Angles West Saxon in the Kingdom of Wessex . The West Saxons. Kentish in Kent.

During the 7th and 8th Centuries, Northumbria's culture and language dominated England and all the lowlands of what is now Scotland including Edinburgh or Edwin's burh to the East and Dumfries and the South Western seaboard.

Map showing the English speaking areas in the 9th century up to the Firth of Forth. West Wales was absorbed into English speaking areas by 825 AD and became part of English speaking Wessex.

7th century: Church Latin additions to English.
The Anglo Saxons begin their struggle to translate the bible from Latin

The Germanic tribes from Engle, Jutland and Saxony were heathens when they invaded the British Isles in the fifth century, but two hundred years later during the seventh century the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity by the efforts of two different groups of missionaries, which resulted in two different forms of Christianity in England. One mission, sent from Rome, aimed at bringing the politically important southern part of England under the influence of the Pope. The other mission was carried out by evangelists from Ireland, where the early Catholic Church had survived. It was in the northern part of England that a first attempt to present any part of the Bible in Anglo-Saxon was made. An illiterate herdsman named Cædmon, after hearing some Bible stories from the priests at Whitby, set about learning English writing and turned some of the stories into poetic songs in his own language. This was about the year 670AD. In the eighth century we have an account of the "Venerable" Bede (a learned teacher at Jarrow, also in the north of England) translating the Gospel of St. John into Old English on his deathbed (735 AD). Sadly this version has disappeared.

793 AD - 900 AD. Nordic fusion. The Viking gift to the English language

The Viking invasions of the 9th Century brought this domination to an end (along with the destruction of Mercia). Only Wessex remained as an independent kingdom. By the 10th Century, the West Saxon dialect of Wessex became the official language of England. Written Old English is mainly known from this period. It was written in an angular alphabet called Runic a Germanic system of writing made using only straight lines. The Latin alphabet was later brought over from Ireland by Christian missionaries and this has remained the writing system of English, although the Englisc 33 rune futhark continues to be used for esoteric and ritual purposes to this day.

The Anglo-Saxon 33 rune futhark

The Anglo-Saxon 33 rune futhark.

For a more in depth look at the runes read Woden and the Runes

At this time, the vocabulary of Old English consisted of an Anglo Saxon base with additional words from the closely similar Scandinavian languages (Danish and Norse) and also Latin derived from Christian church usage. Latin gave English words like street, kitchen, kettle, cup, cheese, wine, angel, bishop, martyr, and candle. The Vikings added many Norse words: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window (wind eye), husband, fellow, skill, anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their, them. Virtually no Brythonic words survived to pass into the English language, just a few place and river names, so comprehensive was the utter loss of the previous Brythonic culture.

Many pairs of English and Norse words coexist in modern English giving us two words with the same or slightly differing meanings, and it is known that right up until the mid 11th century that English, Norwegians, Danes and Icelanders could make themselves understood to each other. The Norman invasion broke this ancient Nordic link, however we know through the Icelandic sagas that Icelanders frequently came to the English mead halls as ‘ scopes’ (story tellers) and that oaths and treaties were made between these peoples without any mention of interpreters.

In tracing the lineage of Old Englisc to modern English, we must mention a parallel between the language and the growth of a heathen society into one which was Christian, because from the time the Englisc received the scriptures and the Latin bible they began their task of making the word of God accessible to all the people, not just the priesthood who understood Latin.

The 9th century: Old English translation of the Psalms by King Alfred

At the beginning of the ninth century, the northern and eastern parts of England were invaded by another Germanic people called the Danes or Northmen. They were a heathen people, and did much harm to the monasteries where the Scriptures were copied. Nevertheless, from this period we have a historically important manuscript known as the Vespasian Psalter, which was written in the central part of England called Mercia. It contains an interlinear Old English translation of the Psalms. The Danes were at that time advancing through Mercia, but towards the end of the ninth century the Anglo-Saxon armies finally stopped them, and held on to the south and west under the strong leadership of King Alfred The Great. Alfred also became a champion of the Scriptures. Around the year 900 he prefixed to his code of laws and some other portions of Exodus; and he is also reported to have begun a version of the Psalms. Again another great step to enable the common people in learning English.

10th century: The Lindisfarne Gospels -The Northern Dialect is used

During the tenth century Alfred's successors came to dominate the new population of Danes, and, because the culture and language of the Danes was similar to that of the Anglo-Saxons, the newcomers were gradually absorbed into the population of the northeast and Christianized. About the year 950 the "Northumbrian Gloss on the Gospels" (an interlinear Old English translation, in the northern dialect) was added to the famous illuminated manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Monk writing manuscript at Lindisfarne.

Shortly after this a priest of Yorkshire (Northern England) named Farman interlined another Latin manuscript with an idiomatic translation of the Gospel of Matthew (this is contained in the manuscript known as the Rushworth Gospels). At the end of the tenth century there appeared in the south an anonymous version of the four Gospels in idiomatic English, known as the West-Saxon Gospels or Wessex Gospels and seven copies of it have come down to us. Also at this time a scholarly priest named Ælfric in Dorsetshire was translating a number of commentaries into English, Ælfric went on to produce an abridged English version of the Pentateuch.

Learning English often came through contact with the church and the Bible itself. Here is the Old English version of the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), as given in the West Saxon Gospels. Below we see the difference between the Old English of the 10th century as well as its similarity to modern English in these opening lines:

Old English - 'The Lord's Prayer'

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, Si þin nama gehalgod. to becume þin rice, gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg, and forgyf us ure gyltas,	Our father which art in heaven Hallowed be thy name Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily bread forgive us our trespasses...

The 1054 AD Schism: The English stage an ecclesiastic revolution

When Canute died, Ethelred's son Edward came from Normandy to be King. Because he had been raised in Normandy by a Norman mother, he was thoroughly French in culture and connections, and he appointed many Normans to offices in England. He was also very much under the influence of Rome (which tightly controlled the French churches), and so he appointed many Norman clerics to lucrative and powerful secular offices. Acting on behalf of the Pope he also appointed a suitably loyal Norman to be the Archbishop. In this however, he was ardently opposed by the powerful earls in England, who drove out the Norman archbishop and put in his place an Englishman. The Pope, being incensed at this "schismatic" action, excommunicated the English archbishop, and gave his support to the Duke of Normandy's plans for an invasion of England.

1066 AD: The brutal suppression of the Old English language

The work of centuries to bring the Latin bible to the English in their own tongue is ended. The story of the attempts of the Anglo-Saxons to produce an Old English version of the Bible comes to a sad end when the Norman army under William the Conqueror invaded and subdued England in the year 1066. Despite being of Nordic lineage himself, having grown up in Normandy, William brought with him a new French-speaking ruling class, and a Norman French clergy, who had only contempt and hostility for the fledgling Old English versions. The Normans quickly set up a church organisation which was utterly inimical to the vernacular English versions, and which served to promote the political interests of the ruling class and of the Pope of Rome. The Nordic respect for relatively equal rights for women vanished as did the concept of a Christian society where every man could understand the words uttered in his local church by his priest. Yet this yoke was ultimately to fail. English would prevail.

1066 AD – 1350 AD: The Norman Yoke. Norman French dialect dominates

We now enter a dark era for both the English folk culture and the English language, as the Norman Yoke bore down in all it's oppressive might, stifling the natural use of English as the language of church, court, law, learning, medicine and literature as it was spurned by the ruling Norman class generally. All of these areas were taken from the now subject common English people and Norman French patois supplanted the native language. So for three hundred years English was effectively driven underground- it became the language of the poor and illiterate, an outlaw. Learning English and speaking it was banned. One reason why the English are genetically so resistant to speaking and learning other languages. They refused to give up English. This obstinance is now part of the English genetic coding.

1150 – 1450 AD: The beginnings of Middle English - The survival of English against the odds

Yet the English language survived to emerge when the Black Death of 1350 made the feudal system, used by the Norman aristocracy to harness English peasants in virtual slavery impossibility, due to the shortage of labour. This sudden change of fortune for the peasant class saw the re-emergence of English language dominance over a French dialect, which had also changed, the style spoken in England having itself become archaic. During this decade we see a court, once so contemptuous, beginning to speak the language of the commoner-English.
The English people had been forced for three centuries to speak French if they wished to appear in a formal setting with their betters, such as in a court of law, and this had changed the native language as Norman French words had been added to the everyday word hoard.

1386- 1400 AD: The rebirth of English literature - A language is reborn

The great writer and revivalist of learning the English language - Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English in the late 1300s heralding the dawn of the new age of learning written and spoken English:

A good man was there of religioun
That was a pore Persone of a town;
But rich he was of holy thought and werk;
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
that Christes gospel trewly wolde preche.

This noble ensample to his shepe he gaf,
That first he wrought and after that he taught.

A better priest I trow that nowhere non is,
He waited after no pompe ne reverence;
Ne maked him no spiced conscience,
But Christes lore and his apostles twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve."553
Chaucer. 1380

1380 AD: John Wyclif's translation begins to spread through England.

Once again the light was burning brightly as a new devout scholar of Old Saxon lineage called John Wycliffe spelled Wyclif, Wycliff, Wiclef, Wycliffe, Wicliffe, or Wickliffe) (mid-1320s – 31 December 1384) took up the cause of bringing the English people a bible they could read themselves.

John Wycliffe

c. 1380 AD: Middle English - 'The Lord's Prayer' - Matthew 6.9 (Wycliffe's translation)

Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halewid be thi name; thi kyndoom come to; be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene: gyue to us this dai oure breed ouer othir substaunce; and forgyue to us oure dettis, as we forgyuen to oure gettouris; and lede us not in to temptacioun, but delyuere us fro yuel.

Yet once again the work of repression snuffed out this light as the Roman church hunted down Wyclif, who along with his followers, had been forced to live in Germany and to smuggle hand written copies of the English Bible into his native country. 44 years after his death the pope of Rome had his bones dug up and crushed, so great was the heresy of attempting to make an English translation of the scriptures for every man to understand. He is, however, accredited with bring the English language bible to the English people.

1500 AD: The Great English Vowel Shift

The great printer William Caxton set up the first printing press in England at the end of the 15th century and with its use the language began to take the first steps toward standardisation. The period from 1500 to about 1650 is called Early Modern English, a period during which notable sound changes, syntactic changes and word enrichment took place, although in some areas such as in Scotland's Lowlands and North Eastern England the Old English vowels can be still be heard 'oot' for 'out' is but one example. The Great English Vowel Shift, which systematically shifted the phonetic values of all the long vowels in English, occurred during this period.
Word order became more fixed in a subject-verb-object pattern, and English developed a complex auxiliary verb system. A rush of new vocabulary from the classical languages, the modern European languages, and more distant trading partners such as the countries of Asian minor and the Middle East entered the language as the renaissance influences of culture and trade and the emerging scientific community of Europe took root in England.

English literature in THE GOLDEN AGE – the ‘bard’ William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright in the English language wrote prolifically during the late 1500s and early 1600s and, like Chaucer, took the language into new and creative literary territory. His influence on English drama and poetry continued to grow after his death in 1616 and he has never been surpassed as the best known and most read poet/playwright of modern English. Shakespeare’s Globe theatre on the south bank of the River Thames in London has been recreated to display his work.

1525 AD: Tyndale attempts to bring the New Testament to the English Early Modern English

Like Wyclif, William Tyndale was committed to taking the Bible directly to the people. Expressing open defiance of the Pope, Tyndale said " If God will spare my life I will make it possible for even a ploughboy to know more about Holy Scripture than the Pope himself". By August of 1525 his translation of the New Testament was complete. Printing began at Cologne, but when the authorities forbade the project, Tyndale escaped to Worms, where 6,000 copies were printed and sold in England by April of 1526. Official opposition in England led to the destruction of most of these early copies. Ninety percent of the New Testament in the King James Version (KJV) is Tyndale's translation

1536 AD: Tyndale is executed. But the English Bible is read widely

Tyndale did not live to complete his Old Testament translation. On May 21, 1535, he was arrested and later executed for heresy at Vilvorde, Belgium, on October 6, 1536. His dying prayer was that the Lord would open the eyes of the King of England. He left behind a manuscript containing the translation of the historical books from Joshua to 2 Chronicles that was finally published in 1537.
Following in the great tradition of Wyclif in the army of Reformers, Tyndale holds the distinction of being the first man to ever print the New Testament in the English language. Tyndale was a true scholar and a genius, so fluent in eight languages that it was said one would think any one of them to be his native tongue. He is frequently referred to as the “Architect of the English Language”, along with William Shakespeare as so many of the phrases Tyndale coined are still in our language today.

1559 AD: ‘The Lord's Prayer’ in the Book of Common Prayer

Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.
Amen.

(Morning prayer; modern spelling edition, ed. Booty (1976))

1611 AD: The King James Bible.

The King James Bible is published and marks the culmination of at least a thousand years of efforts to bring a Bible written in the native language of the people into the Church establishment and into people's homes. Among the common people, whose contact with literature often did not go far past the Bible, the language of the scriptures as presented in this version commissioned by King James I was deeply influential, due in part to its religious significance, but also to its literary quality. Its simple style and use of native vocabulary had a surpassing beauty that still resonates today.

1700 AD: English colonise the 'New World' and it's Empire expands

By the 1700s almost all of the modern syntactic patterns of English were in place and the language is easily readable by modern speakers. Colonisation of new territories by the newly united Kingdom of Great Britain spread English to the far corners of the globe and brought cargoes of still more loanwords from those far-flung places. At this point English began to develop its major world dialectal varieties, some of which would develop into national standards for newly independent colonies. By the 21st century, as the language of international business, science, and popular culture, English has become the most important language on the planet and is the greatest gift from the English people to the World.

1963 AD: Late Modern English – ‘The Lord's Prayer’ - The New Testament in Modern English (1963, tr. Phillips)

Our Heavenly Father, may your name be honoured;
May your kingdom come, and your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day the bread we need,
Forgive us what we owe to you, as we have also forgiven those who owe anything to us.
Keep us clear of temptation, and save us from evil.

M.Taylor
English Artist
2008
http://www.englandandenglishhistory.com/the-wonderful-story-of-the-english-language