McCRUM, Robert; MacNEIL, Robert; CRAN, Willian. The mother tongue. In: The story of English. London: Penguin Books, 2002, pp. 46-89. The making of English is the story of three invasions and a cultural revolution (p. 46).

The Celts were natives of the British Isles long before the English. Their first arrival in them dates from about 600 BC. They were the first Britons.

The British Isles were occupied by the Romans from 55 BC to 410 AD. The Romans called their colony Brittany or Britannia.

449 AD: Anglo-Saxon invasions began in Brittany. The Celts were obliged to flee to the far North and West of the country, becoming isolated in what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. There they maintained their languages, the Welsh and the Gaelic. But their language left virtually no influence on Old English.

The Anglo-Saxon language is what we call Old English.

The Anglo Saxons were able to establish seven kingdoms in the British Isles: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. In all of them the language spoken was Old English (the Anglo-Saxon language), but each one of them had its own variety, its own dialect. Brittany started to be called Englaland, later England, the land of Angles.

The Anglo-Saxons were originally polytheistic.

597 AD: some Roman missionaries arrived in England, bringing the Christian faith with them, together with Latin. The conversion of England to Christianity was a gradual and peaceful process.

The contact with Latin enriched Old English with new words, more than 400 of which survive to this day, but also gave English the capacity to express abstract thought.

750 AD: Viking invasions started. The Vikings were generally from Sweden and Denmark. They were able to dominate almost all English kingdoms, with the exception of Wessex, ruled by King Alfred, who was able to resist the Vikings.

After Alfred, the Danes and the Saxons lived alongside each other for generations, more or less at peace. Because both their languages had the same Germanic roots, the language frontier broke down and a kind of natural pidginization took place that gradually simplified the structure of Old English (p. 67-9). In Old English, they said one stan (stone), two stanas (stones). The simplification of English by the Danes gradually helped to eliminate these word-endings (p. 69).

Beowulf, the most ancient epic written in English, was written during the period of Viking invasions in the 8th C. It is entirely written in Old English.

1066 AD: the Normans conquered England, imposing their language, French, as the language of government. For several generations after the Conquest all important positions in the country were dominated by French-speaking Normans (p. 73).

Yet the use of French in England was probably natural to only an lite of churchmen and magnates. The continuity of the English language in the mouths of the mass of ordinary people was never in doubt (p. 74).

1337-1454: the Hundred Years War between England and France. French became the language of the enemy. The war provided a major impetus to speak English, causing a revival of the English language in all levels of society, government and education.

This revived English is what we call Middle English.

Within the East Midlands, one small nucleous of power, trade and learning the triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London shared the same kind of English, which may be said to have become the basis for Standard English in the twentieth century (p. 80).

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) is the greatest work written in Middle English.

1476 AD: William Caxton introduces the first press in England, using the variety spoken in London as the standard for the books he published. This was a cultural revolution based on communication that helped to make the London variety the most prestigious in England until nowadays.

Three invasions: the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, the Normans One cultural revolution: the introduction of press by Caxton