history of language change flashcards

Old English

500-1100

• Romans leave England to the Britons and Celts

• Germanic tribes invade, Jutes, Angles and Saxons

• Revival of Christianity brought Script (writing)

• Beowulf - earliest example of vernacular European Literature

• Viking invasion and Ole Norse

• Alfred the Great defeated the Danes and secured the English Language

• Norman invasion relegated English language to third place behind French and Latin

13th Century

The Black Death

• Over 1/4 of the population died

• Nearly half of the Latin speaking clergy died

• Few people were left to work the land meaning those who were left gained power, the common man rose up and spoke English

• English became the official language because so little understood French, English quickly replaced French

• Parliament spoke English

• Henry IVth was the first King who spoke English

Geoffrey Chaucer

• Wrote the Canterbury Tales (1387) in middle English

14th Century

• Movement to return English to its central place in society

• Christianity was only Latin

• John Wycliffe’s middle English Bible was written, it had to be done in secret, he was condemned by the church

• Over a thousand Latin words came into use in English

• The church banned the English Bible and burned Wycliffe’s rotting corpse

• The Bible remained Latin

15th Century

• Spelling became more standardised

• The Chancery civil service decided which forms and spellings words should adopt

• Origins of standard written English found in Chancery English

• By the 1500s language is becoming more recognisable

The Printing Press

• Invented by Gutenberg in Germany 1440

• William Caxton printed his first book in English, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

16th Century

• William Tyndale believed in an English Bible

• Henry VIII split with the Catholic church, be authorised a legally printed English Bible and 85% of the new Bible was written by the freshly excecuted Tyndale

17th Century

• The vocabulary of English language expanded rapidly

• English naval supremacy led to over 10,000 new words entering the English language through trade.

• Sailors brought swear words

• English plays were enjoyed

Shakespeare

• added well over 2000 words to our vocabulary

• coined many expressions

• his language is still used today

Late modern English

1700 - Present

• Attempts to fix the language by Jonathan Swift

• Nothing came of this but a few years later Samuel Johnson published his dictionary in an attempt to stabilise the language

• He acknowledged that no dictionary can be perfect as language is always changing

• 1762, Robert Lowth’s short introduction to English grammar

Jonathan Swift

• He disliked vagueness and shortened words, unnecessary contractions and words Invented “by some pretty fellow”

19th century English

• Rail travel and colonial expansion meant more people had access to standard English

• New words had to be invented due to the Industrial Revolution changing the world

• English borrowed words from all over the world

• American English was taking form