Legend tell us that the British Isles were originally inhabited by a race of giants called the Firbolgs. History tells us that Celtic people lived in Britain several thousand years ago.
Celtic languages were spoken in Britain before the Roman invasions. Some have died out, such as Manx, which used to be spoken on the Isle of Man, and Cornish, which was confined to the extreme south-western tip of England. These languages, living or dead, have a very long history. They were probably among the very first languages to be spoken by the people of Europe.
Thousands of years ago, there were peoples in central Europe known by the ancient Greeks as Keltoi. We know them as the Celts. They were adventurous and aggressive, travelling and invading many other areas, as far apart as what we now call Bulgaria and Spain, the Netherlands and Italy.
Over 2,000 years ago, the Celts reached Ireland and then England. From Ireland they went to Scotland. Irish and Scottish Gaelic are still spoken. Welsh, another Celtic language, is still spoken. In England, efforts are being made to keep the Celtic languages of Cornish and Manx alive.
In 55 BC, Julius Caesar and his Roman legions arrived from the south. The real invasion did not commence until 43 AD, and part of Britain was annexed by the Roman Empire for about 300 years. The rulers and militia spoke Latin, the ordinary people spoke their Celtic languages.
Major changes to the language of Britain started when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded from what we now call Germany and Scandinavia. The languages they spoke were the forerunners of modern German. The first invasion was in 449 AD. Over the next 150 years, they successfully took over the whole of England. Indeed, by about 1,000 AD it was known as Engleland, the land of the Angles. The language which dominated in this period is now known as Anglo-Saxon or Old English.
The Latin spoken by the Romans died out, but a new strand of Latin came with the arrival of Christian missionaries in the 6th century. For about 200 years, this had an influence on both the culture and the language of England.
But another series of invasions commenced — raiders came from Norway and Denmark, starting around the end of the 8th century. The marauding Norsemen, also known as Vikings, were on the move! They conquered various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain, and Norse almost became the official language.
Thanks to Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen eventually worked out how to live with each other. A division of the north and south of England was made by a line called the Danelaw. During this period, the young English language was absorbing words from Old Norse.
The language of the Vikings has not completely disappeared. Much of it can be heard in Modern Icelandic. A Danish ambassador explained this to me in an amusing way: ‘When the Vikings reached Iceland, both they and their language froze’!
In 1066, William the Conqueror arrived from the northern part of France, still known as Normandy, and swept all before him. King Harold was beaten at Hastings. William became king. For two or three hundred years, the Normans controlled the country. Norman French became the official language used in government, law and commerce. Latin remained the language of the church and schools. Peasants, labourers, ordinary folk continued to speak the Anglo-Saxon form of Old English but it was rarely put into writing during this period.
However, over time, the various peoples, their cultures and languages, came closer together. Norman French had an enormous influence over the language. We now have a special term for English between the 12th and 15th centuries: it is called Middle English. You cans see it in Geoffrey Chaucer's poems. It is said that Chaucer (1340?–1400) was responsible, through his writing, for the revival of the English language. William Caxton (1422?–1491?), who printed Chaucer’s works, also influenced this rebirth and the standardisation of the language.
The works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and the Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) show us what our language looked like as it moved into the phase we know as Modern English.
This timeline summarises the important events and periods in the slow development of our language over about sixteen centuries, with some important historical events. It also shows an approximate breakdown of the languages spoken by people in different sections of society.
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