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10 Historical Events That Shaped the English Language

by Larry Jimenez
fact checked by Darci Heikkinen

Words, like people, have stories to tell. Languages, like nations, have their histories. They have their peculiarities and quirks that can be traced back to some circumstance in their journey from our ancestors to us. The English language is replete with these curiosities. Inconsistent spelling and pronunciation are just two weird things about English that make learning it frustrating for non-native speakers.

This is not surprising, as English is one of the most evolved languages, encountering many twists and turns along the way to the present. “English is several tongues in a trenchcoat pretending to be one language,” goes the joke. But this did not prevent English from becoming the global language, indispensable in business, commerce, science, and technology. This list examines the historical turning points English went through that made it the way it is

Related: 10 Foreign Languages That Could Go Extinct in a Few Decades

10 The Coming of the Anglo-Saxons

Anglo Saxons Explained in 10 Minutes

When the Romans left Britain in the 5th century, the island was defenseless from invasion by Germanic tribes from the continent. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, collectively called the Anglo-Saxons, arrived from northern Germany and Denmark. The Germanic dialect they brought with them was the foundation of Old English. As the invaders pushed back the native Britons (Welsh “Brython”) and settled the land, the Celtic language (“Brythonic”) they spoke was gradually supplanted and now survives only in place names like Devon, Leeds, York, and Avon.

The 100 most common words in modern English are Anglo-Saxon in origin. Compare the German vater, mutter, bruder, and sohn to the English equivalents father, mother, brother, and son. About a quarter of our modern words are Anglo-Saxon—everyday words like be, sleep, night, sing, food, strong, house, water, and earth. Modern English is Germanic at its core despite the borrowing of other foreign words or phrases.

Many wonderful sagas and poems were written in Old English, the most famous being the epic Beowulf. Old English must seem a strange language to us, as can be seen in its opening lines:

Hwæt! Wé Gárdena in géardagum
þéodcyninga þrym gefrúnon
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas.

The Anglo-Saxons originally used a runic alphabet suitable for carving inscriptions onto stones. However, the coming of Christian missionaries who introduced the Latin alphabet replaced the cumbersome method, making possible the writing of long epics like Beowulf.[1]

9 England Converts to Christianity

The Christianisation of Anglo Saxon England

In 595, Pope Gregory I decided to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity and sent a mission of 40 monks led by the Benedictine prior (later a saint) Augustine to Britain. They successfully evangelized the inhabitants, and Augustine established Canterbury as his primary seat. Aside from the Gospel, the missionaries brought with them the liturgy and language of the Church—Latin.

The Anglo-Saxons were familiar with a few Latin words that had been used throughout the Roman occupation, mostly dealing with the military, government, commerce, and travel. The Latin for a military camp, castrum, gave us the suffix -chester for place names (Manchester, Lancaster). These simple, easy-to-remember words related to practical matters (cook, kitchen, mill).

Christianity introduced bigger words and new ideas, mainly religious (e.g., pope, archbishop, shrine, mass, offer, martyr) and, in later centuries, was extended to the spheres of law (legal, prosecute, custody) and medicine (lunatic, ulcer). It marked the beginning of English borrowing words freely from other languages, which enriched its vocabulary.[2]


8 The Viking Invasions

How the Vikings Changed the English Language

In the 9th century, the Vikings began raiding the coasts of the British Isles, probably to look for new land for Scandinavia’s growing population. Through the next century, many resettled in Britain, the Danes alone coming over with 35,000, about the same number as the inhabitants of London at the time.

As the Anglo-Saxons were pushed back, it seemed that they and their language would go the way of the Celts. But England found a savior in King Alfred of Wessex, the only English monarch to be called “the Great.” He defeated the Danes at the Battle of Edington in 878. By treaty with the Danish king Guthrum, the Danes were allowed to settle in the northeast area from London to Bedford, called Danelaw. We can locate the places where they put down roots by their names, those which bear suffixes like -by (village, as in Thornby, Whitby), -thorpe (outlying farmstead, as in Copmansthorpe), and -kirk (church, as in Ormskirk).

The more peaceful intercourse between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings resulted in the intermingling of their languages. Everyday speech shows the stamp of Old Norse, words like husband, sister, ugly, happy, berserk, anger, cake, and take. We owe the Vikings our pronouns he, him, her, they, them, and their. Finally, the days of the week bear the names of the Norse gods Ty, Wodan, Thor, and Freya.

Meanwhile, Alfred, a lover of learning, sought to educate his own people by translating Latin texts into Old English. He said, “Geðenc hwelc witu us ða becomon for ðisse worulde, ða ða we hit nohwæðer ne selfe ne lufodon ne eac oðrum monnum ne lefdon” (“‘Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning nor transmit it to other men.”). As we can see, Alfred’s English, the West Saxon dialect, was thoroughly Germanic. Of the 10,000 words preserved in Old English, only 600-700 were foreign. Many monks must have thought that translating great Latin works into this obscure tongue was pretty pointless.

But Alfred had his way, and the result was to make the West Saxon dialect the standard “King’s English” until the 11th century. Without Alfred, English might not have survived the Viking onslaught.[3]

7 The Norman Conquest

How Norman French replaced Old English

In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, invaded England to wrest away the crown promised to him by King Edward the Confessor from Harold Godwinson. William defeated King Harold’s forces at the Battle of Hastings and took over the throne. The occupying Normans wrought great transformations in Anglo-Saxon society, especially in language, which transitioned from Old English to Middle English.

The French-Norman aristocracy made England their home, and along with their manners and customs, they made French the language of the court and the elite. They considered Old English a vulgar tongue fit only for the lower classes and peasantry. The poor cooked what they called a cow, but when it reached their French-speaking master’s table, it became “beef” (beouf). Similarly, the sheep became “mutton” (mouton), the calf became “veal” (veau), and the poor pig became “pork” (porc).

English lost up to 85% of its Anglo-Saxon words during the Norman period as French gained ascendancy. French words permeated politics (government, cabinet, Parliament, minister), war (military, army, commander), and law (court, jury, bailiff, tribunal). Thirty percent of our vocabulary today comes from French. A contemporary writer lamented: “Children in school, contrary to the usage and custom of other nations, are compelled to drop their own language and to construe their lessons and other tasks in French.”

King John’s loss of the ancestral land of Normandy in 1204 cut off the Anglo-Norman nobles from their connections to France. Gradually, they thought of themselves more as English than French. As England became conscious of unity, France increasingly became a foreign nation, whose king, Edward I said in 1295, had “his detestable purpose, which God forbid, to wipe out the English tongue.”

Many Normans learned English to communicate effectively with their subjects, while many commoners became more familiar with French. French, however, remained the official language of England for 300 years.[4]


6 The Black Death

How Did The World Change After The Black Plague

In June 1348, a sailor arriving in Weymouth from Gascony in France brought with him virulent bacteria carried by infected fleas, Yersinia pestis, that would ravage England and kill perhaps a third of the population, between 25 and 50 million. The Black Death was the greatest horror medieval Europe endured, and it profoundly changed society, including the English language.

The bubonic plague did not discriminate between rich and poor, noble or peasant. It cut down people regardless of age or sex. The French-speaking aristocracy and ruling elite were close to being wiped out. This turned society upside down—with an acute labor shortage and huge tracts of land left unattended, the surviving peasants realized they now had bargaining power and dared to demand more for their labor. The commoners now had a voice in society, and the language they spoke, English, began to be important. With the death of so many French speakers, English began to assert itself. The Black Death saved English from oblivion.

What kind of English did they speak? They would have pronounced words very much the same as they were written. Thus, steak rhymed with bleak, tears with bears (not beers), there were no silent k’s or g’s, the l before f,v,k,m is sounded (calf, halve, folke, palmer), the -gh as in thought is pronounced like -ch in German (ich) and the final -e a schwa (ə).

Changes in pronunciation were nevertheless already happening, and by the Renaissance, the long vowels had already acquired their modern sounds in what had been termed the “Great Vowel Shift.”[5]

5 The Statute of Pleading

Chaucer’s Middle English – Don’t Be Intimidated!

Geoffrey Chaucer, the Father of English Poetry, probably spoke French, as he belonged to the upper class. However, English was reemerging as a national language, and the government found it necessary to address the new situation. For one, commoners complained that they could not understand what was going on whenever they were involved in court cases, as legal proceedings were held in French.

In 1362, the Statute of Pleading in English Act was passed, allowing courtroom business to be conducted in English. The Parliament that enacted it was opened with a speech by the Chief Justice in English, the first time since the Conquest the native tongue was used. Now officially recognized, the slow but steady shift to the use of English in government and bureaucracy began.

By the time Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales (1387–1400) in Middle English, that language was replacing French as the medium of instruction in schools. To see how English had changed from the time of Beowulf, here is how The Canterbury Tales begins:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

Authors began to write for audiences who knew no French or Latin. Aristocrats dropped their disdain for English, and even those who knew French came to favor English literary works. Furthermore, the growing hostility between England and France that culminated in the Hundred Years War led nobles to speak in English as a badge of their identity. Henry IV (1367–1416) was perhaps the first king for whom Middle English was the language of choice.[6]


4 Caxton’s Printing Press

The invention that broke English spelling

In the 1450s, Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, caught up with Chinese technology and introduced printing by moveable type into Europe. An information revolution followed as thousands of printed works flooded the continent. The wealthy English merchant William Caxton saw the potential of the book business with the growing demand for English literature.

He translated Recueil des histoires de Troye (A Collection of the Histories of Troy) from French into English and published it in Bruges, Belgium, in 1475. It was the first book to be printed in English, followed by The Game and Playe of the Chesse, also translated from French.

Caxton returned to England in 1476 and set up his own printing press at Westminster. At the time, there were wide variations in the English being spoken, so Englishmen could not even understand their fellows. Caxton himself tells this story: “And one of (the merchants) named Sheffelde, a mercer, came into a house and asked for food; and especially he asked for eggs. And the good wife answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French, but wanted to have eggs, and she understood him not. And then, at last, another said that he would have ‘eyren.’ Then, the good wife understood him well.” Lo, what should a man in these days now writes, “eggs” or “eyren”?

To solve this problem, Caxton used the power of his printing press to propagate a standard English, and this variety of Middle English, spoken in London and surrounding districts, was called the “King’s English.” Caxton took the first step in making English a truly national language, ready to one day conquer the world.[7]

3 The English Renaissance

A Very British Renaissance: Episode 1 – The Renaissance Arrives (BBC Documentary | 2014)

England could not fail to be affected by the great revival of learning and culture sweeping continental Europe called the Renaissance. From the late 15th to the 17th centuries, during the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, English was transformed from a simple vernacular into a rich and complex literary language that continued to absorb new words and phrases, evolving more precise grammar and syntax.

It was a period that saw great writers and poets, the greatest of which, undoubtedly, was William Shakespeare. The Bard from Avon introduced over 1,700 new words into our vocabulary that are still being used today: alligator, bedroom, eyeball, fashionable, gossip, hurry, lonely, manager, traditional, and worthless, to name a few. Shakespeare also originated many familiar phrases. When we say, “Love is blind,” “Good riddance,” or “Wear your heart on your sleeve,” we are quoting Shakespeare.

Another work that has enriched the English language is the King James Bible (KJV) of 1611, the crowning point of the long struggle to wrest the Scriptures away from the Catholic Church and translate it from Latin into English so that the common people might read it. Its majestic prose is quoted, often unknowingly, even in our secular age.

When we “put words into someone’s mouth,” see the “handwriting on the wall,” dread the “signs of the times,” rally “from strength to strength,” or find a “fly in the ointment,” we are, deliberately or not, referencing the KJV. Contemporary idioms have 257 such phrases popularized by the KJV, most of which are copied from the earlier English translation of William Tyndale. It also introduced 40 or so new words, like backsliding, scapegoat, longsuffering, and peacemaker.

Some 10-12,000 loanwords entered the vocabulary, mostly from Greek and Latin, but also from other European languages, further diluting English’s Teutonic character. Spelling was also being standardized (e.g., dette/debt, doute/doubt, indite/indict, quire/choir, faute/fault), and the Great Vowel Shift was making words more recognizable to the modern ear (e.g., shape/sheep, may/me, meen/mine, maat/mate, oot/out, hus/house).[8]


2 Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary

15th April 1755: Samuel Johnson publishes ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ in London

The first English dictionary, “A Table Alphabeticall” by Robert Cawdrey, appeared in 1604 and listed 2,543 “hard words” derived from Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and French. Obviously, it was not very useful, and other dictionaries followed throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language, which he conceived as “a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened.” Though the ever-changing character of the language thwarted Johnson’s attempt to “fix” it, the dictionary nevertheless standardized spellings and usage for future authors.

Johnson provided the template for good and effective lexicography. The Dictionary comprehensively defined 42,773 entries and had quotations to illustrate their usage. He didn’t hesitate to include “vulgar” words like bum, fart, piss, and turd. There were even curiosities like belly-god (“one who makes a god of his belly”) and amatorculist (“a little insignificant lover”), as well as insults, including fopdoodle (“a fool; an insignificant wretch”), bedpresser (“a heavy, lazy fellow”), and pricklouse (“a word of contempt for a tailor”).

Until the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1884, Johnson’s dictionary was the go-to reference for writers and speakers, and its impact on the English language still resonates today.[9]

1 Expansion of the British Empire

How English Took Over the World | Otherwords

The age of discovery and exploration, beginning in the 15th century, opened up new lands for European colonization. England, a growing maritime power, did not lag far behind Spain and Portugal in exploiting the opportunities. By the 18th century and on to the 19th, the British held sway over much of North America, Africa, India, and Australia. At its peak, Britain was the mother country to a quarter of the planet, ruling a quarter of its population. To all these places they colonized, they introduced the English language.

Britain did not only export her language. Contact with far-flung cultures added more new words to the vocabulary. Early on, Arabic gave us algebra, zero, zenith, giraffe, gazelle, sultan, caravan, mosque, to name a few. Chimpanzee, goober, gumbo, impala, jumbo, mamba, zebra, and zombie are African in origin. From the Chinese comes tea, that beloved British drink, and from Sanskrit, we have avatar, karma, and yoga. The list goes on.

When the thirteen American colonies declared their independence from Britain and went their own way, their English evolved in peculiar ways that made it distinct from British English. It borrowed words from Native Americans (e.g., skunk, bayou, hickory, squash, raccoon, tepee) and Spanish (bronco, avocado, canyon, siesta, plaza), often describing things not found in Britain. When the United States became a world power, she exported her brand of English throughout the world via schools, business, pop culture, Hollywood, and now, the Internet. It is not the King’s English the world speaks and spells, but American English.

From the simple tongue of obscure tribes in the forests of northern Germany to the global lingua franca, English had gone through one great adventure.[10]

fact checked by Darci Heikkinen

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