Welcome to
Brian Barratt's other websiteTHE BRAIN RUMMAGER TOO
Welcome to
Brian Barratt's other website
The story of the English Language
Shakespeare, Chaucer, The Saxon Chronicle, How English Grew, Anglo-Saxon, Indo-European languages, and more!
This is an extension of my main website, The Brain Rummager. It gives you a short history of the English language. If you are visiting for the first time, I recommend that you work through the Menu items (below) in numerical order.
As you work through from Section 1 you will be taken on a journey back through time. There are brief summaries of important aspects of the history of English. There are also short extracts from old books. When you have travelled for about 1,000 years into the past, you’ll find comparisons between different versions of English. There are also some surprise. For example, did you know that English belongs to the same language family as Gujurati, Kurdish and Persian?
Some of the pages have questions and items for you to think about. If the questions have straightforward answers, you can easily find them lower on the page. Please don’t look at the answers and notes until you have had a good THINK and probably a discussion with your friends.
Some of the graphics in these pages are quite large. If you have a slow computer, they might take some time to load. Please be patient!
Menu
| 1 Books from the past | 4 The Saxon Chronicle | 7 Invasions! |
| 2 The remarkable bard | 5 More Anglo-Saxon | 8 Some survivors |
| 3 The English of Chaucer | 6 How words were added | 9 Is English an Asian language? |
Please add this website to your Bookmarks of Favourites!
Click here to leave this site and go to my main website The Brain Rummager.
There are lots of sections in The Brain Rummager — puzzles, quizzes, activities, information, help for writers, creative challenges, word histories, and even some nonsense. It’s worth a visit!
Who is Brian Barratt?
Details of my background and activities are in my main website, The Brain Rummager.
Feedback
Teachers, please let me know how you and your students use this website. My address is in the section about me on The Brain Rummager. Thank you!
First launched June 2003
Revised and reformatted May 2005.
Revisions and corrections August 2006, November 2007.
Barratt Family History here: Personal genealogy pages