“English as we know it”—that phrase is subject to interpretation, so let’s work backwards though history. What scholars call Modern English nominally dates from the the 17th century onward. The age of Shakespeare (fl. 1590–1613) is the hinge. read more
Last week, we told how the English language developed as a result of several invasions of Britain. The first involved three tribes called the Angles, the Jutes and the Saxons. A mix of their languages produced a language called Anglo-Saxon, or Old English. read more
Of these branches of the Indo-European family, two are, as far as the study of the development of English is concerned, of paramount importance, the Germanic and the Romance (called that because the Romance languages derive from Latin, the language of ancient Rome). read more