essay about history of english

Key Events in the History of the English Language

Timelines of Old English, Middle English, and Modern English

 Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

The story of English—from its start in a jumble of West Germanic dialects to its role today as a global language —is both fascinating and complex. This timeline offers a glimpse at some of the key events that helped to shape the English language over the past 1,500 years. To learn more about the ways that English evolved in Britain and then spread around the world, check out " The History of English in 10 Minutes ," an amusing video produced by the Open University.

The Prehistory of English

The ultimate origins of English lie in Indo-European , a family of l anguages consisting of most of the languages of Europe as well as 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 century A.D.

• 43 —The Romans invade Britain, beginning 400 years of control over much of the island.
• 410 —The Goths (speakers of a now extinct East Germanic language) sack Rome. The first Germanic tribes arrive in Britain.
• Early 5th century —With the collapse of the empire, Romans withdraw from Britain. Britons are attacked by the Picts and by Scots from Ireland. Angles, Saxons, and other German settlers arrive in Britain to assist the Britons and claim territory.
• 5th-6th centuries —Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians) speaking West Germanic dialects settle most of Britain. Celts retreat to distant areas of Britain: Ireland, Scotland, Wales.

500-1100: The Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period

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 the dialects of the various invaders merged, giving rise to what we now call " Old English ."

• Late 6th century —Ethelbert, the King of Kent, is baptized. He is the first English king to convert to Christianity.
• 7th century —Rise of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex; the Saxon kingdoms of Essex and Middlesex; the Angle kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria. St. Augustine and Irish missionaries convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, introducing new religious words borrowed from Latin and Greek. Latin speakers begin referring to the country as Anglia and later as Englaland .
• 673 —Birth of the Venerable Bede, the monk who composed (in Latin) The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c. 731), a key source of information about Anglo Saxon settlement.
• 700 —Approximate date of the earliest manuscript records of Old English.
• Late 8th century —Scandinavians begin to settle in Britain and Ireland; Danes settle in parts of Ireland.
• Early 9th century —Egbert of Wessex incorporates Cornwall into his kingdom and is recognized as overlord of the seven kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons (the Heptarchy): England begins to emerge.
• Mid 9th century —Danes raid England, occupy Northumbria, and establish a kingdom at York. Danish begins to influence English.
• Late 9th century —King Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great) leads the Anglo-Saxons to victory over the Vikings, translates Latin works into English and establishes the writing of prose in English. He uses the English language to foster a sense of national identity. England is divided into a kingdom ruled by the Anglo-Saxons (under Alfred) and another ruled by the Scandinavians.
• 10th century —English and Danes mix fairly peacefully, and many Scandinavian (or Old Norse) loanwords enter the language, including such common words as sister, wish, skin , and die .
• 1000 —Approximate date of the only surviving manuscript of the Old English epic poem Beowulf , composed by an anonymous poet between the 8th century and the early 11th century.
• Early 11th century —Danes attack England, and the English king (Ethelred the Unready) escapes to Normandy. The Battle of Maldon becomes the subject of one of the few surviving poems in Old English. The Danish king (Canute) rules over England and encourages the growth of Anglo-Saxon culture and literature.
• Mid 11th century —Edward the Confessor, King of England who was raised in Normandy, names William, Duke of Normandy, as his heir.
• 1066 —The Norman Invasion: King Harold is killed at the Battle of Hastings, and William of Normandy is crowned King of England. Over succeeding decades, Norman French becomes the language of the courts and of the upper classes; English remains the language of the majority. Latin is used in churches and schools. For the next century, English, for all practical purposes, is no longer a written language.

1100-1500: The Middle English Period

The Middle English period saw the breakdown of the inflectional system of Old English and the expansion of vocabulary with many borrowings from French and Latin.

• 1150 —Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English.
• 1171 —Henry II declares himself overlord of Ireland, introducing Norman French and English to the country. About this time the University of Oxford is founded.
• 1204 —King John loses control of the Duchy of Normandy and other French lands; England is now the only home of the Norman French/English.
• 1209 —The University of Cambridge is formed by scholars from Oxford.
• 1215 —King John signs the Magna Carta ("Great Charter"), a critical document in the long historical process leading to the rule of constitutional law in the English-speaking world.
• 1258 —King Henry III is forced to accept the Provisions of Oxford, which establish a Privy Council to oversee the administration of the government. These documents, though annulled a few years later, are generally regarded as England's first written constitution.
• Late 13th century —Under Edward I, royal authority is consolidated in England and Wales. English becomes the dominant language of all classes.
• Mid to late 14th century —The Hundred Years War between England and France leads to the loss of almost all of England's French possessions. The Black Death kills roughly one-third of England's population. Geoffrey Chaucer composes The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. English becomes the official language of the law courts and replaces Latin as the medium of instruction at most schools. John Wycliffe's English translation of the Latin Bible is published. The Great Vowel Shift begins, marking the loss of the so-called "pure" vowel sounds (which are still found in many continental languages) and the loss of the phonetic pairings of most long and short vowel sounds.
• 1362 —The Statute of Pleading makes English the official language in England. Parliament is opened with its first speech delivered in English.
• 1399 At his coronation, King Henry IV becomes the first English monarch to deliver a speech in English.
• Late 15th century —William Caxton brings to Westminster (from the Rhineland) the first printing press and publishes Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales . Literacy rates increase significantly, and printers begin to standardize English spelling. The monk Galfridus Grammaticus (also known as Geoffrey the Grammarian) publishes Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae , the first English-to-Latin wordbook.

1500 to the Present: The Modern English Period

Distinctions are commonly drawn between the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) and Late Modern English (1800 to the present).

During the period of Modern English, 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 English ), each with its own nuances of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Since the middle of the 20th century, the expansion of North American business and media around the world has led to the emergence of Global English as a  lingua franca .

• Early 16th century —The first English settlements are made in North America. William Tyndale's English translation of the Bible is published. Many Greek and Latin borrowings enter English.
• 1542 —In his  Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge , Andrew Boorde illustrates regional dialects.
• 1549 —The first version of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England is published.
• 1553 —Thomas Wilson publishes  The Art of Rhetorique , one of the first works on  logic  and  rhetoric  in English.
• 1577 —Henry Peacham publishes  The Garden of Eloquence , a treatise on rhetoric.
• 1586 —The first grammar of English—William Bullokar's  Pamphlet for Grammar —is published.
• 1588 —Elizabeth I begins her 45-year reign as queen of England. The British defeat the Spanish Armada, boosting national pride and enhancing the legend of Queen Elizabeth.
• 1589 — The Art of English Poesie  (attributed to George Puttenham) is published.
• 1590-1611 —William Shakespeare writes his  Sonnets  and the majority of his plays.
• 1600 —The East India Company is chartered to promote trade with Asia, eventually leading to the establishment of the British Raj in India.
• 1603 —Queen Elizabeth dies and James I (James VI of Scotland) accedes to the throne.
• 1604 —Robert Cawdrey's  Table Alphabeticall , the first English  dictionary , is published. 
• 1607 —The first permanent English settlement in America is established at Jamestown, Virginia.
• 1611 —The Authorized Version of the English Bible (the "King James" Bible) is published, greatly influencing the development of the written language.
• 1619 —The first enslaved Africans in North America arrive in Virginia.
• 1622 — Weekly News , the first English newspaper, is published in London.
• 1623 —The First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays is published.
• 1642 —Civil War breaks out in England after King Charles I attempts to arrest his parliamentary critics. The war leads to the execution of Charles I, the dissolution of parliament, and the replacement of the English monarchy with a Protectorate (1653–59) under Oliver Cromwell's rule.
• 1660 —The monarchy is restored; Charles II is proclaimed king.
• 1662 —The Royal Society of London appoints a committee to consider ways of "improving" English as a language of science.
• 1666 —The Great Fire of London destroys most of the City of London inside the old Roman City Wall.
• 1667 —John Milton publishes his epic poem  Paradise Lost .
• 1670 —The Hudson's Bay Company is chartered for promoting trade and settlement in Canada.
• 1688 —Aphra Behn, the first woman novelist in England, publishes  Oroonoko, or the History of the Royal Slave .
• 1697 —In his  Essay Upon Projects , Daniel Defoe calls for the creation of an Academy of 36 "gentlemen" to dictate English usage.
• 1702 — The Daily Courant , the first regular daily newspaper in English, is published in London.
• 1707 —The Act of Union unites the Parliaments of England and  Scotland , creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
• 1709 —The first Copyright Act is enacted in England.
• 1712 —Anglo-Irish satirist and cleric  Jonathan Swift  proposes the creation of an English Academy to regulate English usage and "ascertain" the language.
• 1719 —Daniel Defoe publishes  Robinson Crusoe , considered by some to be the first modern English novel.
• 1721 —Nathaniel Bailey publishes his  Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language , a pioneer study in English  lexicography : the first to feature current  usage ,  etymology ,  syllabification , clarifying  quotations , illustrations, and indications of  pronunciation .
• 1715 —Elisabeth Elstob publishes the first grammar of Old English.
• 1755 —Samuel Johnson publishes his two-volume  Dictionary of the English Language .
• 1760-1795 —This period marks the rise of the English grammarians (Joseph Priestly, Robert Lowth, James Buchanan, John Ash, Thomas Sheridan, George Campbell, William Ward, and Lindley Murray), whose rule books, primarily based on  prescriptive  notions of grammar, become increasingly popular. 
• 1762 —Robert Lowth publishes his  Short Introduction to English Grammar .
• 1776 —The Declaration of Independence is signed, and the American War of Independence begins, leading to the creation of the United States of America, the first country outside the British Isles with English as its principal language.
• 1776 —George Campbell publishes  The Philosophy of Rhetoric .
• 1783 — Noah Webster  publishes his  American Spelling Book .
• 1785 — The Daily Universal Register  (renamed  The Times  in 1788) begins publication in London.
• 1788 —The English first settle in Australia, near present-day Sydney.
• 1789 —Noah Webster publishes  Dissertations on the English Language , which advocates an  American standard of usage .
• 1791 — The Observer , the oldest national Sunday newspaper in Britain, begins publication.
• Early 19th century — Grimm's Law  (discovered by Friedrich von Schlegel and Rasmus Rask, later elaborated by Jacob Grimm) identifies relationships between certain consonants in Germanic languages (including English) and their originals in Indo-European. The formulation of Grimm's Law marks a major advance in the development of linguistics as a scholarly field of study.
• 1803 —The Act of Union incorporates Ireland into Britain, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
• 1806 —The British occupy Cape Colony in South Africa.
• 1810 — William Hazlitt  publishes  A New and Improved Grammar of the English Language .​
• 1816 —John Pickering compiles the first dictionary of  Americanisms .
• 1828 —Noah Webster publishes his  American Dictionary of the English Language . Richard Whateley publishes  Elements of Rhetoric .
• 1840 —The native Maori in New Zealand cede sovereignty to the British.
• 1842 —The London Philological Society is founded.
• 1844 —The telegraph is invented by Samuel Morse, inaugurating the development of rapid communication, a major influence on the growth and spread of English.
• Mid 19th century —A standard variety of American English develops. English is established in Australia, South Africa, India, and other British colonial outposts.
• 1852 —The first edition of  Roget's Thesaurus  is published.
• 1866 —James Russell Lowell champions the use of American  regionalisms , helping to end deference to the  Received British Standard . Alexander Bain publishes  English Composition and Rhetoric . The transatlantic telegraph cable is completed.
• 1876 —Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, thus modernizing private communication.
• 1879 —James A.H. Murray begins editing the Philological Society's  New English Dictionary on Historical Principles  (later renamed the  Oxford English Dictionary ).
• 1884/1885 —Mark Twain's novel  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  introduces a  colloquial prose style  that significantly influences the writing of fiction in the U.S.
• 1901 —The Commonwealth of Australia is established as a dominion of the British Empire.
• 1906 —Henry and Francis Fowler publish the first edition of  The King's English .
• 1907 —New Zealand is established as a dominion of the British Empire.
• 1919 — H.L. Mencken  publishes the first edition of  The American Language , a pioneer study in the history of a major national version of English.
• 1920 —The first American commercial radio station begins operating in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• 1921 — Ireland  achieves Home Rule, and Gaelic is made an official language in addition to English.
• 1922 —The British Broadcasting Company (later renamed the British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC) is established.
• 1925 — The New Yorker  magazine is founded by Harold Ross and Jane Grant.
• 1925 —George P. Krapp publishes his two-volume  The English Language in America , the first comprehensive and scholarly treatment of the subject.
• 1926 —Henry Fowler publishes the first edition of his  Dictionary of Modern English Usage .
• 1927 —The first "speaking motion picture,"  The Jazz Singer , is released.
• 1928 — The Oxford English Dictionary  is published.
• 1930 —British linguist C.K. Ogden introduces  Basic English .
• 1936 —The first television service is established by the BBC.
• 1939 —World War II begins.
• 1945 —World War II ends. The Allied victory contributes to the growth of English as a lingua franca.
• 1946 —The Philippines gains its independence from the U.S.
• 1947 —India is freed from British control and divided into Pakistan and India. The constitution provides that English remain the official language for 15 years. New Zealand gains its independence from the U.K. and joins the Commonwealth.
• 1949 —Hans Kurath publishes  A Word Geography of the Eastern United States , a landmark in the scientific study of American regionalisms.
• 1950 —Kenneth Burke publishes  A Rhetoric of Motives.
• 1950s —The number of speakers using  English as a second language  exceeds the number of  native speakers .
• 1957 — Noam Chomsky  publishes  Syntactic Structures , a key document in the study of  generative  and  transformational grammar .
• 1961 — Webster's Third New International Dictionary  is published.
• 1967 —The Welsh Language Act gives the Welsh language equal validity with English in Wales, and Wales is no longer considered a part of England. Henry Kucera and Nelson Francis publish  Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English , a landmark in modern  corpus linguistics .
• 1969 — Canada  officially becomes bilingual (French and English). The first major English dictionary to use corpus linguistics— The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language —is published.
• 1972 — A Grammar of Contemporary English  (by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik) is published. The first call on a personal cell phone is made. The first email is sent.
• 1978 — The Linguistic Atlas of England  is published.
• 1981 —The first issue of the journal  World Englishes  is published.
• 1985 — A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language  is published by Longman. The first edition of M.A.K. Halliday's  An Introduction to Functional Grammar  is published.
• 1988 —The Internet (under development for more than 20 years) is opened to commercial interests.
• 1989 —The second edition of  The Oxford English Dictionary  is published.
• 1993 —Mosaic, the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web, is released. (Netscape Navigator becomes available in 1994, Yahoo! in 1995, and Google in 1998.)
• 1994 — Text messaging  is introduced, and the first modern blogs go online.
• 1995 —David Crystal publishes  The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language .
• 1997 —The first social networking site (SixDegrees.com) is launched. (Friendster is introduced in 2002, and both MySpace and Facebook begin operating in 2004.)
• 2000 —The Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED Online) is made available to subscribers.
• 2002 —Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum publish  The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language . Tom McArthur publishes  The Oxford Guide to World English .
• 2006 —Twitter, a social networking and microblogging service, is created by Jack Dorsey.
• 2009 —The two-volume  Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary  is published by Oxford University Press.
• 2012 —The fifth volume (SI-Z) of the  Dictionary of American Regional English  ( DARE  ) is published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Resources and Further Reading

• 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.
• Gooden, Philip.  The Story of English: How the English Language Conquered the World . Quercus, 2009.
• Hogg, Richard M., and David Dennison, editors.  A History of the English Language . Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Horobin, Simon.  How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language . Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Lerer, Seth.  Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language . Columbia University Press, 2007.
• McArthur, Tom.  The Oxford Companion to the English Language . Oxford University Press, 1992.
• McWhorter, John.  Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English . Gotham, 2008.
• Millward, C.M., and Mary Hayes.  A Biography of the English Language , 3rd ed. Wadsworth, 2011.
• Mugglestone, Linda.  The Oxford History of English . Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Nist, John.  A Structural History of English . St. Martin's Press, 1966.
• English Language: History, Definition, and Examples
• Old English and Anglo Saxon
• How Do You Rate as an Expert of the English Language?
• Definition and Examples of Codification in English
• Middle English Language Explained
• What is Vocabulary in Grammar?
• What Are the Letters of the Alphabet?
• Definition and Examples of Lexicography
• Yogh (Letter in Middle English)
• Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
• What Is British English (BrE)?
• Modern English (language)
• Meaning of Gender in English Grammar
• Anglo-Saxon and Viking Queens of England
• Standard English (SE)
• Biography of Samuel Johnson, 18th Century Writer and Lexicographer

The History of the English Language Essay (Article)

Chapter 3 and 4 of Gelderen’s book looks at the analysis of how the English language evolved from the eras of prehistory to the modern English period. Chapter 3 provides information on the prehistory of the English language based on Cavalli-Sforza’s and Greenberg’s work. It goes into great detail to discuss and look at the origins of humans and when they first acquired language while chapter 4 focuses on the details of how the English language developed. It looks at the era before the Proto-European to show how the language in general evolved.

The English Language originated out of another ancient language which was known as Proto-Indo-European that existed 5,000 years ago. It was not the original language spoken by the English people since three other languages had preceded it as the spoken language in the British Isles. It is not known what the original language was though evidence from the archaeological investigations confirms that the Celtics may have earlier inhabited the area.

The next language to enter the British Isles was Latin. This was after the Romans conquered it in the middle of the first century AD. As a result, Latin became the spoken language of the ruling class for many years but even so the Celtic languages continued being spoken among the Celtic people’s. When the Romans finally withdrew their troops in 410 A.D Latin ceased being a spoken language in the British Isles for a while.

The English language entered into the British Isles when Britain got invaded by three Germanic tribes in the 5 th century AD.

People in the British Isles spoke the Celtic language and when the Germanic tribes invaded them, they had to move to the western and northern parts of England. The ethnic groups who invaded Britain all spoke similar languages and when these languages came into England they developed into what was known as’ old English’. This was not like English of today although most modern English derives its words from old English. Evidence about Old English exists in texts collected from various regions and even on preserved stone and wood monuments. This evidence points to the fact that old English indeed differed from modern English in its spelling, phonetics morphology, and syntax. This includes words like strong, water, and many others.

The use of old English in England got changed when William the conqueror invaded the country in 1066. The language they brought to England was a kind of French which became adopted by the royal court. The lower classes spoke using the Old English while the royal classes spoke French.

In the 14 th Century, English again gained its dominance. It had become revolutionized and now contained many words which the revolution had brought. This was known as Middle English and it was the language used by the renowned poet Chaucer.

Between the periods of 1500-1800, a sudden and distinct change occurred in pronunciation which became popularly known as the “Great Vowel Shift” where vowels pronunciation became shorter and shorter. This shift signaled the end of Middle English, a time that had seen more and more new words and phrases emerging. Then in 1800 and beyond many more words got added into the language. This was principally because of two factors that affected the language namely the industrial revolution and technological advancement.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, November 1). The History of the English Language. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-history-of-the-english-language/

"The History of the English Language." IvyPanda , 1 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-history-of-the-english-language/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The History of the English Language'. 1 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The History of the English Language." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-history-of-the-english-language/.

1. IvyPanda . "The History of the English Language." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-history-of-the-english-language/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The History of the English Language." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-history-of-the-english-language/.

• Women’s Rights Since Pre-History to 1600 A.D
• The Story of Viet Nam: From Prehistory to the Present written by Shelton Woods
• Celtic Christianity Evolution
• Proto-Nationalism in Premodern Korea and Since 1780
• Proto-Nationalism in Korea and Other Nations Since 1780
• History of Religion in Britain
• The Image of the Celtic Warrior
• History of Celtic Christianity
• Germanic Invasions and the Fall of the Roman Empire
• Celtic Christianity and St. Cuthbert's Contributions
• Romance Languages, Their Origin and Development
• Language Flexibility in Education
• Languages: the Use of Corpus in Vocabulary Learning
• The Effect of Facial Configuration to Recognize Words
• Postcolonial Translation: Robinson, Cohn and Raj' Views

History of English

The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders - mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from "Englaland" [ sic ] and their language was called "Englisc" - from which the words "England" and "English" are derived.

Old English (450-1100 AD)

The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain developed into what we now call Old English. Old English did not sound or look like English today. Native English speakers now would have great difficulty understanding Old English. Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be , strong and water , for example, derive from Old English. Old English was spoken until around 1100.

Middle English (1100-1500)

In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of modern France), invaded and conquered England. The new conquerors (called the Normans) brought with them a kind of French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes. For a period there was a kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French. In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain again, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. It was the language of the great poet Chaucer (c1340-1400), but it would still be difficult for native English speakers to understand today.

Modern English

Early modern english (1500-1800).

Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th century the British had contact with many peoples from around the world.

This, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, meant that many new words and phrases entered the language. The invention of printing also meant that there was now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were, became the standard. In 1604 the first English dictionary was published.

Late Modern English (1800-Present)

The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries.

Varieties of English

From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up , was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies). Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like canyon , ranch , stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American English (and so, to an extent, British English).

Today, American English is particularly influential, due to the USA's dominance of cinema, television, popular music, trade and technology (including the Internet). But there are many other varieties of English around the world, including for example Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean English.

Contributor: Josef Essberger

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

1 Chapter 1: The History of English

Learning outcomes.

After studying this chapter, you should be able to discuss:

• the diversity of English through history and around the world
• the effect of social and cultural factors on an individual’s use of English
• the relationship between a person’s linguistic heritage and their sense of identity
• the ways in which different varieties of English in use around the world are categorized

The Beginnings of English

The English language had been around for about four hundred years before it began to be called English. It first emerged sometime during the fifth century AD, when a number of Germanic tribes from the north of Europe – whom we now refer to collectively as the Anglo-Saxons – arrived in Britain, bringing with them their several indigenous dialects. Over the next few hundred years, as these tribes established roots and began spreading out across the country, the language slowly developed. Yet it was not until the ninth century that the term ‘English’ began to be regularly used to refer to the language (Crystal, 2005, p. 27). English did not become ‘English’ until at least four centuries into its existence.

During this early period of its history, English was just one of many languages spoken on the British mainland. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles – the earliest history of Britain written in English – begin their account of the country by explaining that:

The island of Britain is eight hundred miles long and two hundred broad. There are five languages, English, Brito-Welsh, Scottish, Pictish and Latin. The first inhabitants of this land were the Britons. (The Peterborough Chronicle , c .1150, translated in Freeborn, p. 13)

So in the beginning, English was just one language among several; it was a language without a particularly strong identity and with no special status. For the first few centuries of its life, it was very much a local language, spoken by one section of the population of an island off the western coast of continental Europe.

BBC Documentary: The Birth of a Language

English in the United States

The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing a process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century’s first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to the diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century. Since then, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that, in some cases, show minor influences in the last two centuries from successive waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages.

We will study the different dialects and varieties of English in the United States as we move through the topics in this text. For now, please watch this BBC Documentary on the development of English in the United States:

Video link: https://youtu.be/K1XQx9pGGd0

English Across the Globe

Fast-forward one and a half millennia and English is now spread extensively across the globe. Today it is used, in one form or another, by more people, in more areas, and for a wider set of purposes, than any other language. That unnamed language which began life as a parochial dialect spoken by one faction of a group of invading tribes from northern Europe now has a status unmatched by any other language on earth. The question this raises is how and why this dramatic shift took place. What happened to transform English from that small parochial language into the preeminent medium of international communication in the modern world? Why has this particular language, from all the other countless systems of speech that the human race has developed throughout its history, risen to such a position of prominence?

In an essay written towards the end of the twentieth century, the linguist Michael Toolan suggested that the English that is now used as an international language around the world – that’s spoken, for instance, by a Turkish businesswoman communicating with a Korean sales representative at a convention in São Paulo, or by a Finnish diplomat discussing climate change with a Romanian scientist at a conference in Johannesburg – is so culturally removed from the traditional national language of England that it should not be called ‘English’. The name ‘English’, he argues, is no longer appropriate; it no longer reflects the identity the language has in the modern world. He suggests that the language should be renamed. As an alternative, he proposes that we call it ‘Global’. English, he contends, at least as it’s used in the context of international communication, “is becoming increasingly released from a sense of rootedness in one or more ethnic homelands (whether that is thought of as England, or the Anglo-Saxon world, or the Anglo-American world)’, and so the time is ripe for a strategy of radical renaming” (Toolan, p. 8).

So far, of course, this alternative name hasn’t really taken off. However persuasive Toolan’s arguments may be, people’s actual naming practices have not followed his suggestion. But other scholars have voiced similar qualms, some of which have been highly influential. The linguist Braj Kachru, for example, has suggested that because ‘English now has multicultural identities … [t]he term “English” does not capture [the] sociolinguistic reality’ of the language (p. 357). Instead, he suggests that the plural form ‘English es ’ should be used. It is no longer possible to speak of a single English language, he contends; around the world there are now several different varieties of English being spoken, each of which is distinct enough to be accorded the status of a separate language. So, while Kachru doesn’t go quite as far as Toolan in suggesting that a completely new name is required, he still feels that a fundamental reconceptualization of the language is necessary.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, and despite its emergence as the international language of the present time, the status of English is, in certain respects, no more settled than it was at any previous stage in its history. In addition to the question about how English has emerged to occupy its current prominent position in global society, we can therefore ask what it is about the nature of the language in the world today that leads scholars like Toolan and Kachru to make such radical suggestions about the need to change the very name of the language. If people were to adopt Toolan’s suggestion, the present discussion would be about the pre-history of Global rather than the second millennium of English. So are suggestions such as these from Toolan and Kachru entirely fanciful? Are they ultimately simply misguided approaches to the subject? Or do they actually identify some underlying truth about the state and status of English in the world today?

This chapter takes a look at this group of questions. In doing so, it will introduce you to examples of the variety and diversity of the English language, both as it exists around the world today and as it has developed through history. We shall look at what counts as English today and how the diversity of the language reflects its social history. In addition, we will examine the roles that English plays in people’s lives and consider why it is that debates about the language, and about how people use the language, can sometimes be highly controversial. We’ll begin, though, by asking a simple, but fundamental, question: what exactly is the English language?

What is English?

It seems sensible to begin an exploration of the English language by determining what we mean by ‘English’. If we want to study its development, its use and its status, it’s worth clarifying exactly what it is. From one perspective, of course, this may seem a rather empty task. Given that you are reading this chapter – and are therefore presumably a fluent English reader – English is very likely to be almost as integral a part of your life as the air you breathe. You probably get on perfectly well on a day-to-day basis without ever having to reflect on what exactly comprises the language. It’s what you’re reading now. If you live in an English-speaking country, it’s probably what you use on a daily basis to converse with your friends, colleagues and family. In other words, speaking and reading English is something you just do . You may have the odd argument with people about certain aspects of English usage (‘Is it okay to say My sister and me had an argument about correct grammar ?’), or may occasionally consult a dictionary to check the meaning or spelling of an unusual word (‘What does deontic mean?’; ‘When is it complement and when is it compliment ?’). But, as an expert speaker of the language, you can use English without ever needing to be able to give a scientific definition of what it is – just as you can breathe without needing any knowledge of the chemical constituents of air.

Spend a few minutes writing down a short definition of what you understand by the ‘English language’. Imagine you’re defining the language to someone who has no conception of what it is: how would you sum it up in a few sentences?

You may well have started your definition by saying that English is the language spoken in England. This is how Dr. Johnson defined it in his dictionary of the English language, composed back in the mid-eighteenth century:

ENGLISH. adj . Belonging to England; thence English is the language of England.

Of course, as noted earlier, in today’s world, English is much more than this. English has spread extensively in the two-and-a-half centuries since Johnson’s time. Modern dictionaries mostly augment Johnson’s definition by adding something about the global scope of the language. The Chambers Dictionary (11th edition), for example, defines it as:

A Germanic language spoken in the British Isles, USA, most parts of the Commonwealth, etc.

And the Oxford English Dictionary extends this slightly further:

Of or relating to the West Germanic language spoken in England and also used in many varieties throughout the world.

As we can see, these definitions all concentrate on a number of key elements – and your own definition may well have focused on some or all of these as well. These elements are: the communities with which the language is most associated (English is the national language of the UK, the USA, etc.); its history (i.e. being of Germanic origin); and the way it’s now used in various places around the world. In other words, all these definitions link the language with the people who speak it now or who spoke it in the past. As such, they’re all social definitions of the language – describing it not in terms of the structure it has (they don’t mention, for example, that it predominantly uses a subject-verb-object word order), but in terms of the communities who use it and – importantly – who identify with it.

That’s to say, the language doesn’t exist as an abstract entity out there in the ether. It’s something people actually use; something they both speak and write/read (although these definitions mostly privilege the notion of speaking). And it’s something which plays a significant role in their lives. For this reason any investigation into the language will involve an investigation into the social and historical context in which the language flourishes. In other words, when studying the language we also need to study the people who use the language – we need to study how they use it, why they use it, and what they think about it.

In textbooks on the subject, it is common practice to add statistical information about how many people in the world speak the language. Latest estimates suggest that English is currently spoken by about one billion native speakers and two billion who speak it as a second language in hundreds of countries. It operates as the main form of communication in important domains such as global business and science. It is precisely because of statistics such as these that some people feel the language has developed in such a way that, conceptually, it is now a quite different entity from its pre-globalized incarnation.

We need to be a bit careful, however, when we make assertions about English using figures like these. While statements of this sort may seem fairly straightforward in one respect, there are a number of hidden issues in the way they are phrased which can complicate the picture.

• For example, what do we actually mean when we say that “English is spoken by almost two billion people in the world today”?
• What counts as ‘English’ in this context?
• And who qualifies as having the competence to be a ‘speaker’ of it?
• Is the English that is spoken in a town on the south coast of England the same as that spoken on the north island of New Zealand or in the center of Singapore?
• And, if there are significant differences between the way it is spoken in these places, at what point do we say that they are different varieties of the language, or that perhaps they are actually different languages ?
• And does a ‘speaker’ of the language need to have perfect fluency in it?
• Does someone learning the language count as a ‘speaker’?
• And finally, is there any significance in the fact that these statements privilege speaking over writing ?
• Should we consider spoken English and written English in the same way, or are there important differences between them which mean we should view them as distinct entities?

Once we start scrutinizing some of these issues and concepts we can see that a statement such as, “English is spoken by over three billion people in the world,” is an abstraction, and one which raises almost as many questions as it answers. So, rather than talk only in abstractions, let us consider some concrete examples of the use of the language around the world in an attempt to determine more closely what counts as English, and who qualifies as an English speaker.

Have a look at the three poems/songs linked below. Which of them look like ‘English’ to you? How much can you understand of each of them?

• “The Sierry Petes” by Gail Gardner
• “Sang oda Post War Exiles” by Robert Alan Jamieson
• “Kantoi” by Zee Avi

Link: https://youtu.be/GOnoz-f43RI

The first excerpt is from a ‘cowboy poem’ from the Arizona region dating from the early part of the twentieth century by Gail I. Gardner. It tells the story of two cowboys who run into the devil on their way home from a bar. You probably found it almost all intelligible, although there are one or two dialect words (some of them related specifically to their profession) which might be a little obscure. “Dally,” for example, refers to a method of winding a rope around the saddle; while “ornery” is originally a colloquial pronunciation of “ordinary,” and means “cantankerous” or “mean.” There are also a few distinctive grammatical constructions, such as “you ain’t a-goin’ to gather no’,” which aren’t common in standard English, although similar constructions do still occur in some contemporary colloquial forms of the language.

The second example is in Scots, the traditional Germanic language spoken in Lowland Scotland, the Northern Isles, and parts of Ulster. Along with Gaelic and Scottish English, this is one of the three main languages spoken in Scotland. It has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon dialects which arrived on the British mainland in the fifth century, so it’s related to English but has developed mostly independently. Some people consider it to be a dialect of English, while others regard it as an entirely separate language. These stanzas are from a poem called “Varg,” by the contemporary poet Robert Alan Jamieson. As you can see, although some words are obviously close cousins of modern standard British English (e.g. ‘wark’ = work; ‘luv’ = love), for the most part it’s quite different. And even these words, which sound similar when spoken, are spelled in non-standard ways. It also includes some characters, such as ø and æ, which aren’t used in modern standard English. So, unless you’re a Scots speaker, you’d probably have difficulty understanding it without the translation.

Image of Zee Avi licensed C C BY-SA 2.0  

The third example is from a song titled “Kantoi,” by the Malaysian singer Zee Avi. This is in what is colloquially known as “Manglish,” a blend of English and Malay. In Malay, this type of language use is also known as bahasa rojak , which means “mixed language.” Such mixed or hybrid languages are quite frequent around the world. But they’re also often quite controversial and are viewed by some as being sloppy or incorrect uses of “proper English.” In 2006, for example, the Malaysian government banned the use of bahasa rojak on television and radio, saying that it was adversely affecting people’s proficiency in both standard English and Malay ( The Star, 2006). On the other hand, many people consider it to be a distinctive aspect of Malaysian culture and, when used in songs such as this, see it as a way of expressing a unique cultural identity.

So what do these different examples tell us about the nature of English around the world? One of the points I hope they illustrate is that the language is very diverse – that in different communities it has developed in such a way that its form is noticeably different.

You may feel, however, that some of the examples above are not necessarily ‘real’ English at all. Manglish, for instance, can be thought of as a mixture of English and a quite separate language. And while modern Scots and English developed from a common ancestor, Scots is now often viewed as a distinct language (although this decision is as much a political issue as it is a linguistic one). In these two cases there is a great deal of controversy about the status of these as independent or legitimate languages. So were you to make the argument that neither of them are really English at all, you wouldn’t be alone in doing so.

The question that follows from this, though, is at what point do we decide to call these varieties a different language? At what point are they no longer ‘English’? Is the Arizonan example also a different language? Or is it similar enough to standard English that it should still be called English? In other words, where does the tipping point come? Given the fact that English is being used on an everyday basis in these diverse forms around the globe, how does one decide what counts as the core of the language? Is there a central version of the language which we should think of as authentic English? Or are each of these varieties equally valid systems of linguistic expression which just happen to be different? We can start to answer these questions by looking at the ways that languages exist in the world, and the distinctions that are made in describing them.

English Through History

We can see the difficulties in categorizing languages and varieties by looking at the way English has changed throughout history. Just as we can ask whether different geographical varieties can be considered the same language, so we can ask to what extent modern-day English – the English you are reading now – is the same language as that introduced to the British Isles one and a half millennia ago.

Have a look at the following passage, which is written in Old English and dates back to the late tenth century AD . If you came across this passage with no introduction, do you think you’d recognize it as English? Can you understand any of it? While reading it through, make a note of any words that you recognize:

eac swylce seo næddre wæs geapre þonne ealle þa oðre nytenu þe God geworhte ofer eorþan. and seo næddre cwæþ to þam wife. hwi forbead God eow þæt ge ne æton of ælcon treowe binnan paradisum.

At first glance this might seem entirely incomprehensible to you. There are only five words in the passage which have a form which is the same as modern standard British English. These are: God, and, to, wife and of . There’s at least one other word which resembles a modern English word: paradisum looks a little similar to paradise . But other than that the words mostly look distinctly alien, and some of them even include letters which are no longer part of the alphabet we use for modern-day English.

Now let’s look at another passage from approximately four hundred years later. This is in what’s known as Middle English, and was written around the late fourteenth century. How much of this passage can you read?

As you might have noticed, both these passages are translations of the same section of the Bible, namely Genesis chapter 3, verse 1. The Middle English version is much closer to modern-day English, and you were probably able to read a great deal more of it than of the Old English version. However, there are still a few features that differ from the language we now use. For example, the character (known as ‘yogh’) is used in place of a y . Also, the spelling of many words is rather different from how it is today. For instance, in the first line, the word ‘living’ is spelt lyuynge ( y is used instead of i , and u instead of v ), and the word ‘beasts’ is spelt beestis . Some of the vocabulary is also no longer regularly used in contemporary English. The word ‘feller’ in the first line, for example, means ‘crueller’ or ‘more ruthless’. It was still to be found in Shakespeare’s time – for example, in the phrase ‘this fell sergeant, Death, is swift in his arrest’ in Hamlet (5.2.341) – but is not in common usage today (except in rather specialised contexts). All in all, though, you’d probably identify this as being English.

Finally, let’s look at two more translations of the same passage. The first is in Early Modern English and dates from the seventeenth century. This is, in fact, a passage from one of the most renowned translations of the Bible: the King James or Authorised Version of 1611. The second is in Modern English, and was translated in 1961.

The serpent was more crafty than any wild creature that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Is it true that God has forbidden you to eat from any tree in the garden?’

The Early Modern English version is closer still to present-day English, although there are still a few features which mark it out as archaic. For example, nowadays ye meaning ‘you’ is only found in certain dialects, and is no longer used in standard British or American English.

Before going on to discuss what conclusions we can draw from the way the language has changed over the years, let’s have another look at the first translation again and see if we’re able to recognize more similarities between it and the others than might have been apparent at first glance. It will help if you know that the character þ, known as ‘thorn’, is used for the sound th in words such as thin ; that ð, known as ‘eth’, is used for the sound th in words such as that ; and that æ, known as ‘ash’, is used for the vowel sound in words such as nap . If you compare the words in this translation with the equivalent words in the other translations – and if you try speaking them out loud – you may well find that you’re able to read much more than you originally thought.

It’s not possible to work through the passage word by word here, but I’ve highlighted a few words which we can scrutinize in a little more detail:

• From looking at the later translations, you can probably see that næddre is in the equivalent position to ‘serpent’. If you separate the first letter from the rest of the word, you’ll perhaps be able to identify a connection. The meaning has changed somewhat – the Old English word was used to refer to snakes generally, whereas the modern word is used for a particular type of snake – but the Old English word is the original form of the modern word ‘adder’.
• Moving on to oðre , if we replace the ð with a th , we can recognize this as the word ‘other’.
• A similar shift in spelling conventions can be seen in the word cwæþ , where we now use qu instead of cw . If we then substitute th for þ in this word, we end up with something which would be pronounced ‘quoth’ – which we still have in the modern form of ‘quote’.
• In the case of the word hwi , if we simply reverse the first two letters of the word we get modern-day ‘why’.

So we can see that there is indeed a fair amount of continuity between Old English and Modern English, albeit that surface features such as spelling conventions have changed quite considerably.

It’s also worth noting that one of the words we were able to identify from the very beginning – ‘wife’ – actually has a slightly different meaning in this first translation from its modern sense. In all the later translations of the passage it’s given as ‘woman’. This is because the word’s meaning has narrowed since the tenth century. Nowadays we use ‘wife’ specifically to refer to a married woman, whereas back in the centuries of the first millennium it simply meant ‘woman’.

So in conclusion, we can see that the language has changed considerably over the last thousand or so years. It has changed in terms of its lexis (vocabulary), its orthography (spelling) and its semantics (meaning). And, although we haven’t commented on it here, it’s also changed in terms of its syntax (word order). At the same time, however, we can still discern a very definite line of continuity back through all the passages, which justifies us in referring to them as being instances of a single developing language.

One of the reasons for the change that has happened to English over the centuries is that, since its very beginnings, English has always been in contact with other languages. The influence from this contact can be seen most clearly in the way that English is full of what are known as loanwords. The term loanword, or borrowing, is used to refer to an item of vocabulary from one language which has been adopted into the vocabulary of another. The process is often the result of language contact, where two or more languages exist in close geographical or social proximity. The dominant language often absorbs new items of vocabulary, either to cover concepts for which it has no specific word of its own, or to generate a slightly different function or nuance for concepts for which it does have existing words.

Some loanwords retain their ‘foreign’ appearance when they are adopted, and people will often then use them specifically for the sense of exoticism that they impart. One can talk of a certain je ne sais quoi , for example, or of a joie de vivre when speaking English – in both cases invoking images of French culture to enhance the meaning of what is being communicated. Other loanwords, however, become completely naturalized, until speakers of the language no longer notice their ‘foreignness’ at all. Below is a short selection of words of foreign origin which are in use in modern-day English. As you can see, they come from languages from all parts of the globe.

The extent to which English is made up of words of foreign origin was satirized during the diplomatic row between the United States and France over support for the Iraq war in 2003. The newspaper article plays on the idea that some factions within the United States were so displeased with the French for not offering support for the war that they tried to remove all influence of French culture from their everyday lives.

If the journalist had been even more rigorous with the linguistic analysis, he or she might also have put a line through level, percentage, cultural and captives , all of which have their etymology based partly in French. The point is well made though, that if we wish to remove all French influence from English we have to step well back into the history of the language. In the article, this earlier form of English is symbolized by the popular twelfth-century song, Sumer is icumen in , which appears a great deal more ‘foreign’ to us now than many of the loanwords that have become part of our vocabulary.

For the time being, the point to make is simply that English has, over its lifetime, absorbed influences from countless sources – and so just as English is now a presence in diverse contexts all across the globe, so diverse contexts from across the globe also have a presence in the language itself.

Timeline of the History of English

Click to see an interactive timeline of the history of English from its earliest beginnings up until the 21st century. The Help button at the top of the timeline gives an explanation of how to use it. Take the dates at which the four Bible translations we looked at earlier were written (i.e.: circa 980; circa 1380; 1611; and 1961), and explore the events that were going on in the development of English at that time.

Who Speaks English?

History is not simply about the passage of time, of course. It is what people do, and the changes that occur in society as a result of people’s actions over time. The history of English can therefore be seen as a record of the changes that have occurred in the populations of those who speak the language. When two languages come into contact, what actually happens is that two communities who speak different languages engage with each other, and the nature of that engagement will determine how the languages influence one another. In other words, it is important when we study English not to forget that what we are actually studying is the language as it is and was used by real people.

I remarked earlier that there is a problem in talking about statistics such as those which say that English is spoken by over three billion people the world over because they make large generalizations about the nature of the English involved and the relationship that people have to the language. Such statistics can never fully represent the diversity of experiences that speakers of the language have, either about whether they feel they are ‘authentic’ English speakers or about what they themselves understand English to be. In this section, therefore, I shall consider the role English plays in the lives of people in various parts of the world, and look at how the opinions people hold about the language are related to their personal histories, to the histories of their communities and to their interpretations of the history of the language.

Here is a short selection of extracts from English speakers from around the world who were asked the same questions. The first extract is from a woman who was born and brought up in Birmingham in the UK. She reflects here on her time since university and the influences on her use and perception of language during this period of her life:

The second excerpt is from a man who was born and brought up in Iran but now lives in Ontario, Canada. His native language is Farsi. In between his childhood in Tehran and his current life in Canada, he also spent some time living in the UK:

I was educated in a mixed Farsi and English language school until grade eight. My father was keen to send me to England for my education. In those days a lack of university places and the annual university entrance competition were a major concern for parents. In 1978, just before the Iranian Revolution, I started my education at a college in Bedford, England. My minimal English and studying this subject further helped me to get through my course work every year. After finishing my O-Levels and A-Levels, I went to Liverpool University. I decided to study Structural Engineering with a view to going back to Iran one day.

I had to learn a lot of engineering professional jargon like ‘stress’, ‘strain’, ‘fatigue’, ‘moment’, ‘shear’, ‘curvature’, etc. With my solid English background, I could put together the basic vocabulary and, without this, my understanding and learning of the Structural Engineering concepts and syllabus would have been impossible.

After receiving my Masters degree in 1992, I found a good position at the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering in Tehran, Iran. After 14 years I was returning with not much Farsi ability to write at advanced levels. It took me almost one year to read and learn the engineering terms in Farsi. But I found out in some cases that the technical words were taken from the engineering literature in English.

The final extract is from a woman currently living in London. She writes here of the periods of her life spent in both her birthplace, Taiwan, and the UK:

I was born in Taipei, Taiwan and brought up with Mandarin Chinese. I first moved to London with my family when I was ten years old, knowing my alphabet up to K. The only two English words I knew were ‘apple’ and ‘hat’, which I pronounced more like ‘epple’ and ‘het’ due to the more dominant American influence in Taiwan.

After I graduated from my Fine Art degree, I went to Taiwan to get reacquainted with Chinese culture. While I was there I worked at an art gallery, an English language school and a bilingual newspaper. Most of my western friends were American. I was shocked to be labelled British. In order to work at the language school in Taiwan, I had to adapt my accent moderately so that kids didn’t fail their KK (the phonetic system used there). My accent was all mixed up. I remember being mistaken for being an Australian when I spoke to a British guy! I hated listening to the local American station and clung to BBC World Service for my sanity.

I married an American and then moved back to the UK. I found work in East London at a university library. For the first time in my life, I became fascinated by the different accents I was coming across. Some of my colleagues are of proud, East End, working class origin, some are from Essex, some are from the Midlands, the North, from Scotland, from Italy, Bulgaria, Kenya … Here we are in multicultural Britain! Not to mention the new slangs used by colleagues who are a decade or so younger than me, or the foreign students we encounter from all over the world!

What is noticeable from these stories is that everyone has a slightly different experience of the language and that their attitudes towards it depend on the specific context in which they are using it. Often, as people pass through different stages in their lives – and especially as they move from one place to another – these attitudes will alter, and their own language practices will adapt to their new environment. For all the interviewees, however, English is not only important as a means of communication, but as part of the way they see themselves and how they are perceived by others.

So as we can see, the attitudes people have towards the language are a part of their own personal history. But this personal history is always a part of the wider history of the community in which they live. It is often the case that not only is the language of importance to the individual’s sense of identity, but that it also plays a part in the cultural identity of a group or nation. It is within this context that the history of English – and especially the reasons behind its global spread – can be of great significance for the attitudes people have towards the language.

The development of the language is influenced by social forces. Decisions about the language made by institutions such as national governments and education systems have an impact on the form of the language and on the way it is perceived and used. In contexts such as these, English cannot simply be considered a neutral medium of communication; instead it is a politically charged social practice embedded in the histories of the people who use it.

What we have seen in this chapter is that the English language is and always has been a diverse entity. It has changed dramatically over the centuries since it first arrived on the shores of Britain from the north of Europe, and these changes mean that the language that was spoken at that time is almost incomprehensible to us now. As the language has spread beyond Britain it has continued to change, and to change in different ways in different contexts. It has diversified to such an extent that some scholars suggest that it is no longer accurate to talk of a single ‘English’; that instead there are many different English languages around the world today.

At the same time, however, English exists in the world today as a means of international communication – as a way for people from different social groups to communicate with each other – and to fulfill this function it would seem that variation in the language needs to be curtailed to a certain extent. That is to say, if the language becomes too diverse it will not remain mutually comprehensible across different social groups. So we have two impulses at work that are seemingly incompatible, or perhaps even in conflict, and the question we are faced with is how to render them as consistent, as both being part of the existence of a single entity we call ‘English’. This is one of the central issues in English language studies today – and it’s a very modern issue because it has come about as a direct result of the unprecedented position that English now occupies in the world: as a language with global scope which is implicated in the history and present-day existence of societies all around the world.

Attributions

Content adapted from the following:

English in the World Today by Philip Seargeant licensed CC-NC-SA 4.0 .

“English in the United States”  from “ American English ” licensed CC SA 3.0 .

• Christian Science Monitor (2003) ‘English Sans French’ [online], Christian Science Monitor , 14 March, http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p10s02-comv.html (Accessed 10 February 2010).
• CJGTC [Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the Twenty-First Century] (2000) The Frontier Within: Individual Empowerment and Better Governance in the New Millennium , Chapter 1 Overview.
• Crystal, D. (2005) The Stories of English , London, Penguin.
• Freeborn, D. (1992) From Old English to Standard English , Basingstoke, Macmillan.
• Freeborn, D. (2006) From Old English to Standard English , Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
• Gu, M. (2009) The Discursive Construction of Second Language Learners’ Motivation: A Multi-Level Perspective, Bern, Peter Lang.
• Johnson, S. (1755) A Dictionary of the English Language , London, J. and P. Knapton.
• Kachru, B. (1992) ‘Teaching World Englishes’ in Kachru, B. (ed.) The Other Tongue: English across Cultures (2nd edn), Urbana and Chicago, IL, University of Illinois Press.
• McArthur, T. (1998) The English Languages , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• The Star (2006) ‘Gag order on using bahasa rojak ’, 2 April; available online at http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/4/2/nation/13849132&sec=nation (Accessed 29 January 2010).
• Toolan, M. (1997) ‘Recentering English: New English and global’, English Today, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 3–10.

More than Words: The Intersection of Language and Culture Copyright © 2022 by Dr. Karen Palmer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

The Great Age of the English Essay

From the pens of spectators, ramblers, idlers, tattlers, hypochondriacs, connoisseurs, and loungers, a new literary genre emerged in eighteenth-century England: the periodical essay.  Situated between classical rhetoric and the novel, the English essay challenged the borders between fiction and nonfiction prose and helped forge the tastes and values of an emerging middle class. 

This authoritative anthology is the first to gather in one volume the consummate periodical essays of the period. Included are theSpectator cofounders Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, literary lion Samuel Johnson, and Romantic recluse Thomas De Quincey, addressing a wide variety of topics from the oddities of virtuosos to the private lives of parrots and the fantastic horrors of opium dreams.

In a lively and informative introduction, Denise Gigante situates the essayists in the context of the contemporary Republic of Letters and highlights the stylistic innovations and conventions that distinguish the periodical essay as a literary form.  Critical notes on the essays, a chronology, descriptions and a map of key London sites, and a glossary of eighteenth-century English terms complete the anthology—a uniquely pleasurable survey of the golden era of British essays.

About the Author

Denise Gigante

Denise Gigante teaches British Romantic literature, and poetry over a longer tradition. Her interests include poetic form and aesthetics, bibliomania and literary antiquarianism, gastronomy, the history and form of the essay, material print culture, and the mixed-media work of William Blake.

She is currently completing work on The Cambridge History of the British Essay, a monumental history the development of the essay genre by a global network of authors that includes her own chapter, “On Books: The Bibliographical Essay” She is also working to complete The Mental Traveller: William Blake, a study of Blake’s illuminated poetry in relation late Medieval and Renaissance Christian iconography and the literary tradition of Pilgrimage, in a heavily illustrated volume to be published as part of the Clarendon Lecture Series by Oxford University Press.

Her most recently published book is Book Madness: A Story of Book Collectors in America (Yale University Press, 2023), a narrative experiment in literary history that explores different pockets of book collecting in mid-nineteenth-century America. The story is based on the sale of Charles Lamb’s antiquarian books—a quintessential book lover’s library—in New York in 1848.

She is also the author of The Keats Brothers: The Life of John and George, (Harvard UP, 2011), Life: Organic Form and Romanticism (Yale UP, 2009), Taste: A Literary History (Yale UP, 2005), and two anthologies: The Great Age of the English Essay (Yale UP, 2008) and Gusto: Essential Writings in Nineteenth-Century Gastronomy (Routledge, 2005) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on topics of interest from taste and gastronomy to book collecting and poetic form

A Brief History of the English Language: From Old English to Modern Days

Join us on a journey through the centuries as we trace the evolution of English from the Old and Middle periods to modern times.

What Is the English Language, and Where Did It Come From?

The different periods of the english language, the bottom line.

Today, English is one of the most common languages in the world, spoken by around 1.5 billion people globally. It is the official language of many countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

English is also the lingua franca of international business and academia and is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Despite its widespread use, English is not without its challenges. Because it has borrowed words from so many other languages, it can be difficult to know how to spell or pronounce certain words. And, because there are so many different dialects of English, it can be hard to understand someone from a different region.

But, overall, English is a rich and flexible language that has adapted to the needs of a rapidly changing world. It is truly a global, dominant language – and one that shows no signs of slowing down. Join us as we guide you through the history of the English language.

Discover how to learn words 3x faster

Learn English with Langster

The English language is a West Germanic language that originated in England. It is the third most spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. English has been influenced by a number of other languages over the centuries, including Old Norse, Latin, French, and Dutch.

The earliest forms of English were spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, who settled in England in the 5th century. The Anglo-Saxons were a mix of Germanic tribes from Scandinavia and Germany. They brought with them their own language, which was called Old English.

The English language has gone through distinct periods throughout its history. Different aspects of the language have changed throughout time, such as grammar, vocabulary, spelling , etc.

The Old English period (5th-11th centuries), Middle English period (11th-15th centuries), and Modern English period (16th century to present) are the three main divisions in the history of the English language.

Let's take a closer look at each one:

Old English Period (500-1100)

The Old English period began in 449 AD with the arrival of three Germanic tribes from the Continent: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They settled in the south and east of Britain, which was then inhabited by the Celts. The Anglo-Saxons had their own language, called Old English, which was spoken from around the 5th century to the 11th century.

Old English was a Germanic language, and as such, it was very different from the Celtic languages spoken by the Britons. It was also a very different language from the English we speak today. It was a highly inflected language, meaning that words could change their form depending on how they were being used in a sentence.

There are four known dialects of the Old English language:

• Northumbrian in northern England and southeastern Scotland,
• Mercian in central England,
• Kentish in southeastern England,
• West Saxon in southern and southwestern England.

Old English grammar also had a complex system, with five main cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental), three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and two numbers (singular and plural).

The Anglo-Saxons also had their own alphabet, which was known as the futhorc . The futhorc consisted of 24 letters, most of which were named after rune symbols. However, they also borrowed the Roman alphabet and eventually started using that instead.

The vocabulary was also quite different, with many words being borrowed from other languages such as Latin, French, and Old Norse. The first account of Anglo-Saxon England ever written is from 731 AD – a document known as the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People , which remains the single most valuable source from this period.

Another one of the most famous examples of Old English literature is the epic poem Beowulf , which was written sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries. By the end of the Old English period at the close of the 11th century, West Saxon dominated, resulting in most of the surviving documents from this period being written in the West Saxon dialect.

The Old English period was a time of great change for Britain. In 1066, the Normans invaded England and conquered the Anglo-Saxons. The Normans were originally Viking settlers from Scandinavia who had settled in France in the 10th century. They spoke a form of French, which was the language of the ruling class in England after the Norman Conquest.

The Old English period came to an end in 1066 with the Norman Conquest. However, Old English continued to be spoken in some parts of England until the 12th century. After that, it was replaced by Middle English.

Middle English Period (1100-1500)

The second stage of the English language is known as the Middle English period , which was spoken from around the 12th century to the late 15th century. As mentioned above, Middle English emerged after the Norman Conquest of 1066, when the Normans conquered England.

As a result of the Norman Conquest, French became the language of the ruling class, while English was spoken by the lower classes. This led to a number of changes in the English language, including a reduction in the number of inflections and grammatical rules.

Middle English is often divided into two periods: Early Middle English (11th-13th centuries) and Late Middle English (14th-15th centuries).

Early Middle English (1100-1300)

The Early Middle English period began in 1066 with the Norman Conquest and was greatly influenced by French, as the Normans brought with them many French words that began to replace their Old English equivalents. This process is known as Normanisation.

One of the most noticeable changes was in the vocabulary of law and government. Many Old English words related to these concepts were replaced by their French equivalents. For example, the Old English word for a king was cyning or cyng , which was replaced by the Norman word we use today, king .

The Norman Conquest also affected the grammar of Old English. The inflectional system began to break down, and words started to lose their endings. This Scandinavian influence made the English vocabulary simpler and more regular.

Late Middle English (1300-1500)

The Late Middle English period began in the 14th century and lasted until the 15th century. During this time, the English language was further influenced by French.

However, the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between England and France meant that English was used more and more in official documents. This helped to standardize the language and make it more uniform.

One of the most famous examples of Middle English literature is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, which was written in the late 14th century. Chaucer was the first major writer in English, and he e helped to standardize the language even further. For this reason, Middle English is also frequently referred to as Chaucerian English.

French influence can also be seen in the vocabulary, with many French loanwords being introduced into English during this time. Middle English was also influenced by the introduction of Christianity, with many religious terms being borrowed from Latin.

Modern English Period (1500-present)

After Old and Middle English comes the third stage of the English language, known as Modern English , which began in the 16th century and continues to the present day.

The Early Modern English period, or Early New English, emerged after the introduction of the printing press in England in 1476, which meant that books could be mass-produced, and more people learned to read and write. As a result, the standardization of English continued.

The Renaissance (14th-17th centuries) saw a rediscovery of classical learning, which had a significant impact on English literature. During this time, the English language also borrowed many Greek and Latin words. The first English dictionary , A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words , was published in 1604.

The King James Bible , which was first published in 1611, also had a significant impact on the development of Early Modern English. The Bible was translated into English from Latin and Greek, introducing many new words into the language.

The rise of the British Empire (16th-20th centuries) also had a significant impact on the English language. English became the language of commerce, science, and politics, and was spread around the world by British colonists. This led to the development of many different varieties of English, known as dialects.

One of the most famous examples of Early Modern English literature is William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet , which was first performed in 1597. To this day, William Shakespeare is considered the greatest writer in the English language.

The final stage of the English language is known as Modern English , which has been spoken from around the 19th century to the present day. Modern English has its roots in Early Modern English, but it has undergone several changes since then.

The most significant change occurred in the 20th century, with the introduction of mass media and technology. For example, new words have been created to keep up with changing technology, and old words have fallen out of use. However, the core grammar and vocabulary of the language have remained relatively stable.

Today, English is spoken by an estimated 1.5 billion people around the world, making it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. It is the official language of many countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. English is also the language of international communication and is used in business, education, and tourism.

English is a fascinating language that has evolved over the centuries, and today it is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world. The English language has its roots in Anglo-Saxon, a West Germanic language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons who settled in Britain in the 5th century.

The earliest form of English was known as Old English, which was spoken until around the 11th century. Middle English emerged after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and it was spoken until the late 15th century. Modern English began to develop in the 16th century, and it has continued to evolve since then.

If you want to expand your English vocabulary with new, relevant words, make sure to download our Langster app , and learn English with stories! Have fun!

Ellis is a seasoned polyglot and one of the creative minds behind Langster Blog, where she shares effective language learning strategies and insights from her own journey mastering the four languages. Ellis strives to empower learners globally to embrace new languages with confidence and curiosity. Off the blog, she immerses herself in exploring diverse cultures through cinema and contemporary fiction, further fueling her passion for language and connection.

Learn with Langster

Writing Emails in English: Formal and Informal

Jumpstart Your Way To Fluency: Basic English Words for Beginners

Writing Skills: How to Write an Essay in English

More Langster

• Why Stories?
• For Educators
• French A1 Grammar
• French A2 Grammar
• German A1 Grammar
• German A2 Grammar
• Spanish Grammar
• English Grammar

• Utility Menu

English 185e. The Essay: History and Practice

Instructor: James Wood Spring 2024: Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30-2:45pm | Location:  Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location Course Site Spring 2025: TBD Matthew Arnold famously said that poetry is, at bottom, “a criticism of life.” But if any literary form is truly a criticism of life, it is the essay. And yet despite the fact that all students write essays, most students rarely study them; bookshops and libraries categorize such work only negatively, by what it is not: “non-fiction.” At the same time, the essay is at present one of the most productive and fertile of literary forms. It is practiced as memoir, reportage, diary, criticism, and sometimes all four at once. Novels are becoming more essayistic, while essays are borrowing conventions and prestige from fiction. This class will disinter the essay from its comparative academic neglect, and examine the vibrant contemporary borderland between the reported and the invented. We will study the history of the essay, from Montaigne to the present day. Rather than study that history purely chronologically, each class will group several essays from different decades and centuries around common themes: death, detail, sentiment, race, gender, photography, the flaneur, witness, and so on. In addition to writing about essays – writing critical essays about essays – students will also be encouraged to write their own creative essays: we will study the history of the form, and practice the form itself. Essayists likely to be studied: Montaigne, De Quincey, Woolf, Benjamin, Orwell, Primo Levi, Barthes, Baldwin, Sontag, Didion, Leslie Jamison, Hanif Abdurraqib, Helen Garner, Cathy Park Hong.  This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.

• Fall Term 2024
• Spring Term 2025
• Fall Term 2023
• Spring Term 2024
• Summer Term 2023

Essay on History Of English

Students are often asked to write an essay on History Of English in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on History Of English

Origins of english.

English started about 1,500 years ago. Warriors from Germany called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came to Britain. They spoke similar languages, which turned into Old English. This was the start of the English language.

Old to Middle English

In 1066, the Normans conquered England. They spoke French, which mixed with Old English. This mix created Middle English. Famous works like “The Canterbury Tales” were written in Middle English.

Modern English

Around the 1500s, the English language changed again and became Modern English. Shakespeare’s plays show this type of English. It spread around the world through books, trade, and colonization.

English Today

Now, English has many words from different languages. It’s always changing and growing. Millions of people speak and learn English worldwide, making it an important global language.

250 Words Essay on History Of English

English started about 1,500 years ago. Warriors from Germany, known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, came to Britain and brought their languages with them. These languages mixed and became Old English. This early form of English was very different from what we speak now.

Old English

Old English was used from 500 to 1100 AD. During this time, the famous story “Beowulf” was written. The language had many sounds that we don’t use today. Only a few people can read Old English now because it looks and sounds so different.

The Norman Conquest

In 1066, the Normans from France conquered England. They spoke Old French, and this language had a big impact on English. Many French words entered English, and the language started to change. This period was when Middle English began.

Middle English

Middle English was spoken from about 1100 to 1500. A famous writer from this time is Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote “The Canterbury Tales.” The language was becoming more like modern English, but it still had a long way to go.

Around 1500, Modern English started to appear. William Shakespeare wrote his plays in this language. The invention of the printing press helped more people learn to read and made English more consistent. In the next centuries, English spread around the world.

Today, English is spoken by millions of people worldwide. It has borrowed words from many languages and continues to change. English is used in business, science, and the internet, making it an important language to learn.

500 Words Essay on History Of English

English is a language spoken by millions of people around the world. It started a very long time ago in a place called England. Before English, people in England spoke different languages. Around 1,500 years ago, tribes called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came from places we now call Germany and Denmark. They brought their languages with them, and these languages slowly mixed into what we now call Old English.

Old English doesn’t sound much like the English we speak today. If we heard it, we might think it’s a totally different language! It was used until about the year 1100. Famous works like “Beowulf,” a big poem about a hero and his battles, were written in Old English.

Changes in English

After Old English came Middle English. This started when the Normans from France took over England in 1066. They spoke a type of French, and this language mixed with Old English. Words from French started to be used in English. Middle English sounds a bit more like today’s English, but it would still be hard for us to understand. A famous book from this time is “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Around the 1500s, we get to Early Modern English. This is when William Shakespeare was writing his plays and sonnets. English had changed enough by then that we can understand a lot of it, even though some words and the way they’re put together might seem strange.

From about the 1700s to now, we have what’s called Modern English. Lots of things happened that changed the language. People invented new words for new things, like “train” or “computer.” English people went to faraway places, like North America, Australia, and India, and English mixed with other languages there too.

In the 20th century, America became very powerful and influential, so American English also spread around the world through movies, music, and business.

English Around the World

Today, English is a global language. It’s not just spoken in England and the United States, but in many other countries as a first or second language. People from different parts of the world speak English in their own special way, with different accents and sometimes different words.

The Future of English

What will English be like in the future? It’s hard to say for sure. Languages keep changing, just like they always have. New words will come into English, and some old words might stop being used. People will probably keep mixing English with other languages, creating new ways of speaking.

In conclusion, the history of English is like a long trip. It started with the languages of some old tribes and changed a lot over time. It picked up words from other languages and spread all over the world. English is always changing, and that’s what makes it a living and exciting language.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on History Of Clothing
• Essay on History Of Basketball
• Essay on History Of Civil Society

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.