History of the English Language Study Guide
Match the event with the date:
4000 BC 54 BC 410 450 500s 700s 800s 1066 1300s 1450 1485 1611
_1_/\/\/\__2______3__5___6___7____8___9___11___12__13__14
4 10 15
A) King Alfred unites England, creating a school system
B) Romans leave Britannia
C) Scandinavians (Norsemen, Vikings, and/or Danes) invade England
D) Christian missionaries “invade” Angle-land
E) End of the Middle Ages, beginning of the Modern Era
A) Julius Caesar and his Romans invade the land of the Celts
B) Gutenberg invents the printing press
C) Common language, Indo-European, spoken by peoples of the Fertile Crescent; dawn of civilization
D) The Anglo-Saxon or Old English period
E) The Battle of Hastings; William of Normandy conquers Angle-land
A) The Celts, left vulnerable to attack by the Picts and Scots, bring Germanic warriors, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, across the channel to help them fight
B) Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, blends with Norman French to form Middle English
C) The Romano-Celtic period
D) Modern English period begins
E) King James version of The Bible printed; more readers>written English becomes more standardized
16) Modern English’s progression can be traced (list, in order, the languages on Mod. English’s branch of the family tree):
17) Given that English is a Germanic language, immediately related languages include:
18) One branch of languages is called “romance” because all in this group
19) Given that French is a Romance language, immediately related languages include:
20) Upon driving the Picts and Scots back into northern Britannia, the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes tell their hosts, the Celts, to…
21) “Neo-Classical” means
22) In eighteenth century (1700s) England, Dr. Samuel Johnson was frustrated by English’s lack of
23) A Neo-Classicist, Dr. Johnson wanted English to have a grammar based on that of
24) In the 1700s, Samuel Johnson’s desire was unrealistic because English
25) The “invasion” of England by the Christian Missionaries during the Anglo-Saxon period
26) After the initial wave of violent Viking invaders, Scandinavians arriving in England…
27) The printing press forced English writers to use standard spelling, grammar, and usage because
28) English is rich in connotations because
29) The era of Shakespeare, this period has a name meaning re-birth because a new emphasis was placed on the ancient Greek ideals of exploration, discovery, and learning. The origin of 60% of our words is Greek or Latin; many of these entered English during this time period.
30) Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in (which language?)
31) William Shakespeare wrote in
32) Some of the things we can tell about a person when listening to him or her speak are