Do You Know the History of the English Language?

The greatest difference between Middle and Modern English is the pronunciation of long vowels. Old and Middle English pronounced vowels as they would be in Latin; for example, the “e” in “sheep” would be pronounced like “shape.” Historians still don’t know why the Great Vowel Shift occurred, but by the end of the 16th century, long vowels started to be pronounced as they are today.

English clergyman Robert Cawdrey wanted to organize the English language, and his early 17th-century “Table Alphabeticall” dictionary was an attempt to do this. The dictionary contained 3,000 words, each with a definition and brief description. He hoped to help readers understand unfamiliar words and raise the standard of English spoken by the general public.

When William Shakespeare began writing in the 1590s, Early Modern English was less than a century old. The Bard contributed over 1,700 words to the language. Some were of his own invention, such as “lonely,” while others were new versions of existing words, such as the adjective “gloomy” from the noun “gloom.”

Old English emerged between the fifth century and 11th century, when Germanic peoples occupied England. This form of English is also known as Anglo-Saxon to differentiate it from the Old Saxon language of northern Germany. Old English is formed from three main Germanic dialects: West Saxon, Kentish, and Anglian. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, Old English gradually became obsolete.

The Latin alphabet serves as the basis for not only the English alphabet but also most alphabetic writing in the world. The Classical Latin alphabet contained 23 letters, but during the Middle Ages, the letters “U,” “V,” and “W” were added to give us our current alphabet of 26 letters.

After the Norman Conquest, most literature was written in French, the language of the nobility. But Geoffrey Chaucer chose to write his “Canterbury Tales” in Middle English, which made it accessible to common people, not just the nobles. Chaucer composed the tales between 1387 and his death in 1400, and today, more than 80 manuscripts survive from that time period.

In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded Britain from northern France in what is known as the Norman Conquest. He moved his French nobles and court to Britain and distributed land among them. The new rulers spoke a rural French dialect, which mixed with the natives’ Old English, initiating the transition from Old English to Middle English.

Before modern dictionaries, the printing press was the first major step toward standardizing the language. In 1476, English diplomat and merchant William Claxton brought the printing press to England, which prompted affordable production of books and increased literacy. With the reproduction of more and more books, printers had to agree on a standardized system of spelling and grammar.

Little is known about the origins of “Beowulf”; its author remains a mystery and its composition date of 700 CE is uncertain. Some speculate that the epic poem was an elegy for a seventh-century king, but no one knows who that king was. The only surviving “Beowulf” manuscript, known as the Nowell Codex, dates to around 1000 CE.

Old English was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain (modern-day England) from around 450 CE to 1150 CE. Despite being used for five centuries, only about 3,000 texts in Old English survive, which contain only around 3 million total words from the entire period. With its many defunct spelling and grammar conventions, Old English can look like a foreign language to a modern-day English speaker.