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 i s 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.

There are various ways of studying language: a linear route which covers historical development through time, known as diachronic, and a synchronic route which aims to study the complexities involved in how languages actually work (Shetter, 2002, Page 1). This synchronic route can be studied in two ways: written language and language that is relayed in the form of speech, known as phonology, the latter being one area affected during language change. Orthography also alters over time and there is also a pronounced effect on lexis, semantics, and orthography. Evolving language has its roots in various factors, notwithstanding both internal and external history (Leith, 1996). Linguistics, grammar and vocabulary are directly attributable to the effects of internal history whilst it could be possible to ascribe the socio-linguistic aspects of language to the external exigencies of history. It is important to note that English was not a unified language initially, but the result of the Germanic influence from various Teutonic dialects. The original language spoken on the British Islands was Brittonic and there are differing opinions as to whether Brittonic became incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon language or not (Collingwood and Myers, 1936, Page 318) with research continuing to be divided as to the reason for this. The language spoken by the indigenous Britons at the time the Anglo-Saxons first arrived in Britain was a form of Celtic, known as Brittonic. This essay traces the development of English along a diachronic route whilst investigating the effects of the media synchronically. It begins with a discussion on Old English then investigates lexical diffusion and the Great Vowel Change, both the results of developments in society as towns begin to develop. The essay then focuses on contemporary English and the effect the media has had on its development, clearly showing in the process that, rather than having a detrimental effect on English, it has ultimately provided the tool for its survival and ultimately for its development as a lingua franca.
"...the breakdown of inflections owes as much to processes of contact between speakers of different languages as it does to pressures of a purely internal kind" (Leith, 1996, Page 120). As the inflectional change became integrated into contemporary usage, switch referenced utterances evolved into articles, prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns, with no set order to a sentence, i.e. any word could occupy any position without altering the context of the utterance prior to the general acceptance of grammatical devices (Coates, 2004). It has been suggested that from about AD 597 Christian missionaries arrived in Britain and contributed their Latin to the evolving English language, providing around 450 words into common usage (Crystal, 2003), whilst some parts of Britain were subject to Danelaw until around the early part of the 11th Century with many Danish words passing into northern English dialects especially, and providing an influence for many diectics, such as they, them, and their, together with the verb 'to be' correlating with 'are'. Additional influences were associated with the arrival of the French in 1066 and became absorbed into the English language over the next few hundred years and continued to evolve through trade with other nations from the 16th Century onwards, incorporating innumerable new words from countries such as Africa, India, Australia and the Americas through the development of the Commonwealth. Lexical Diffusion "Some linguists argue that the Old English inflectional system was inefficient and was, therefore, as the linguist Roger Lass has argued, 'ripe for remodelling'. Speakers themselves start to regularise the paradigms.deleting endings." (Leith, David, 1996, Page 118). From the end of the 12th Century Guilds came to be formed as trade flourished with the result that the styles of both lexis and orthography changed to meet the need, together with punctuation which developed in accordance with particular requirements for business documents and, as a result, Old English began to give way to a new form of language, the Middle English which was characterised, amongst other things by differences in intonation and stress on the language's phonology leading to the Great Vowel Shift which occurred over a period of time from around 1400 to 1700, pronunciation becoming almost comparable with the vowels of today. The changes in pronunciation coincide with the growth in towns and cities and the gradual

change in focus from the countryside, with an influx of different dialects from places such as Norfolk and the North towards London, with a corresponding unification of pronunciation, described as lexical diffusion (Chambers and Trudghill, 1991, Chapter 7).

Significantly, the introduction of the printing press coincided with this influx, a situation described as "destined to revolutionise the availability of information in civilised society. The political and educational consequences of this new technology will be profound" (Harris and Taylor, 1996, pp. 1 69). This perception, perhaps was related to the need to provide a standardised dialect in order to print books and Caxton chose the dialect prevalent in London near the location of his printing press, coinciding with the cultural and sociological moves towards a more secular society. "Most of the hobgoblins of contemporary prescriptive grammar (don't split infinitives, don't end a sentence with a preposition) can be traced back to these eighteenth-century fads" (Pinker, 1994, p. 374). Following the Reformation and England's break with the Roman Catholic Church Latin fell out of favour and learning came to be conducted in a standardised form of English with prescriptive grammar developing to reflect the prestige of the great Classical scholars. Language learning became dependent upon the teaching of grammar in a deductive manner, heavily reliant on the use of grammatical rules realised through translation, with prescriptive grammars based on the rules of Latin (Pinker, 1994, p. 374) which did not always fit too well with the more amorphous usage of English, an example being the concept of the 'split infinitive' from the Latin which was carried over into English until the last few years. Pinker suggests that "the very fact that they. [prescriptive rules]..have to be drilled shows that they are alien to the natural workings of the language system" (Pinker, 1994, p. 372).