The English Is Coming! by Leslie Dunton-Downer

Author:Leslie Dunton-Downer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

DATE EVENT AND WHY IT WAS IMPORTANT

1066 William the Conqueror rules England and introduces Norman French words; some 900 of these survive in Modern English 6.

1154 The English crown passes to the House of Plantagenet, adding more French words to English.

1204 King John loses Norman holdings, so ties to French-speakers on the Continent are cut. English becomes more attractive as French loses prestige.

1348 Black Death. The plague wipes out more than 30 percent of the population. Surviving peasants move into cities from rural areas, bringing English with them.

1380s John Wycliffe translates the Bible into English and adds more than 1,000 words from Latin to the English language.

1400 Death of Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, which establishes English as a literary language and paves the way for Shakespeare.

1476 William Caxton sets up England’s first mechanized printing press. Foreign words enter English as works are translated for publication.

1582 Richard Mulcaster’s Elementarie, a word list and guide, shapes the teaching and learning of English.

1595–96 William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost. While most English-speakers use around 4,000 words, the Bard’s plays employ 30,000.

1599 Globe Theater built in London. With each performance, over a thousand commoners are able to hear English used in new ways.

1600 The East India Company is chartered under Elizabeth I. Words and products reach England from Asia.

1607 The Jamestown Settlement in Virginia is colonized under James I. English begins to spread and gains words from the New World.

1611 The King James Bible deeply influences speakers and writers of English.

1755 Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language attempts to standardize English during the so-called Age of the Dictionaries.

1776 Representatives of “the united States of America” pen the Declaration of Independence, heralding a new era in the history of English.

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