History of English (My Notes)

This page is just a compilation of my notes on the History of English (both - the language, and the people). This is going to be a work in progress for a considerable time. It's currently about 80% complete.

Read on, if you have:

1. A lot of interest in understanding, how English developed as a language, and as a culture.

and 

2. A little patience.

~10,000 BCE: End of the last Ice-age. The British Isles become an island.

~7000 BCE: Eurasian Steppes are formed with a significantly high population of Horses, whereas horses vanish from many other regions. The largest agricultural settlement begins (between Indus and the Mediterranean and is found in today's Mehrgarh, Baluchistan).

~5700 BCE: Sheep and Cattle begin to arrive in SE Europe. (Now, WTH am I talking about horses, sheep, and cattle here will become evident later).

~5200 BCE: People of the Steppe started cattle herding and moved from being Hunter-Gatherers to Herders. Agricultural communities emerged in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. This is also the period of the early Harappan era.

~4800 BCE: Horses were domesticated.

~4200 BCE: Indo-European speakers graduated from eating horses to riding them.

~4000 BCE: They began to spread to the Balkans (ancestors of the Hittites and Anatolians) and near the Danube Valley. Potters started using potters-wheel in Sumeria.

~3600 BCE: Wheeled vehicles appear in Sumeria. A branch of Indo-European speakers migrated to North-Western China (ancestors of Tocharian speakers, which also explains why Tocharian is a Centum language as this migration happened before the Centum/Satem split)

~3500 BCE: The first group of Indo-Europeans – believed to be the ancestors of the Hittites – were on their way to modern-day Turkey. There are about 50 known Usatovo sites that have been excavated in this region. Based on artefacts found in graves, archaeologists have confirmed that these people used bronze daggers and axes. So this was a Bronze Age society. (See map)

~3400 BCE: Wheeled wagon was introduced to the steppes.

~3100 BCE: The earliest Egyptian civilization started to emerge from farming settlements along the Nile.

- 3000 BCE: Sumerian cities, the world's first, emerged. Post-glacial warming at its peak. Forests of elm, lime, and oak trees, and most importantly "honey bees" spread across Northern Europe up to the Ural Mountains (but not east of it). 

~2500 BCE: Horses were still rarely found in much of central Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. So the Indo-European tribes who were migrating into new areas had massive advantages due to their ability to ride horses and horse-drawn chariots. Chariot technology was quickly adopted throughout the Western world, but initially, it gave the Indo-Europeans a major military advantage. This enabled them to eventually establish the Persian Empire and the early Indus civilization in India (see my notes on Early Indians).

~2100 BCE: Near East was far more advanced with "Writing", Arithmetic, and Irrigation systems have been developed, but people in Steppes were still herders. However, these people had developed Lactose-Tolerance.

    This means now sheep, goats, and cows were used more for dairy than for meat. More efficient for herding, give more calories --> feed more people --> more warriors, and are also taller and stronger. Also, no cities to defend and the ability to ride horses --> More expansion when compared to Sumeria/Mesopotamia. 

~2000 - 1900 BCE: The Hittites had penetrated into Anatolia where they soon established the Hittite Empire. And within a century or so, the early Hittite language and other Anatolian languages were being spoken in Anatolia – modern-day Turkey. The Indo-Europeans established their own civilization centred around the city of Mycenae. Therefore, this civilization is known to us today as the Mycenaean civilization, and their language was the ancient ancestor of Classical Greek and eventually modern Greek.

~1500 BCE: Sanskrit writing appeared in northern India.

~1000-800 BCE: The Hebrews and the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet for trading and commercial purposes. The original Greek language had many vowels, but the Phoenician language had very few vowels, and the Phoenicians had consonant sounds that the Greeks didn’t. So, they took the Phoenician letters for consonants they didn’t need and converted them into vowels.

    For example, the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet was “aleph,’ and it represented a consonant sound that did not exist in Greek. So the Greeks converted the letter into the vowel which we know today as ‘A’. They added an ‘a’ to the end of the name and the Phoenician consonant ‘aleph’ became the Greek vowel ‘alpha.’ 

The very early Greeks also adopted the Semitic pattern of writing from right to left like the Phoenicians (which is still found in modern Hebrew). But sometimes the Greeks changed directions at the end of a sentence in a back-and-forth style of writing.

     [Eventually, they shifted to the left-to-right style that we use today. The ancient Greeks also did not use punctuation. There were no spaces between words so words flowed into each other. Eventually, the Greeks began to place a short mark under the first word in a line where a new thought or idea was being expressed. This line was called a paragraphos meaning to write beside. This came to mean ‘paragraph’.

    Over time, the Greeks found it useful to actually develop a system of punctuation to make reading easier. As a result, many of the punctuation marks we use today date back to the Greeks. The hyphen (–) for example was originally a curved line that resembled a smile that linked two words together. The name comes from the Greek word hypó meaning ‘under’ and hen meaning ‘one.’ And we get the word hyphen from that. The Greeks used the apostrophe to indicate that a vowel had been dropped before or after another vowel. And the comma, period, and colon all come from Greek as well.]

776 BCE: The region around today's Greece was divided into smaller city-states with frequent infighting between them. However, beginning in that year, Greeks developed a tradition to stop their infighting every four years for a series of games at the shrine of Zeus at Olympia, which we know today as the Olympics.

700-650 BCE: Various settlements around Rome joined together to form the city-state. This early settlement of Rome was located in a region known as Latium and the inhabitants were known as the Latins. (Hence, the language came to be known as Latin.)

    This settlement was controlled by their neighbours in the North, known as the Etruscans.

    The Etruscans encountered the Greek Alphabet and applied it to their language.

    Also, see how closely they resembled today's alphabets in this Etruscan ceramic wine container, dated to around 620 BCE:

600 BCE: Latin-speaking Romans inherited the Phoenician --> Greek --> Etruscan alphabet.

509-510 BCE: Romans drove out the last Etruscan king & became a republic.

400 BCE: Celtic tribes spread across Western Europe, including the British Isles.

396 BCE: Rome captured the entire region under the Etruscans and is at the peak of its expanded empire. Latin became the lingua-franca. 

      Note: Early Latin was Scriptio continua, i.e. written without any punctuation or spaces. However, around this time, Greeks started to put a little mark (¶) in the margins to indicate a change in topic. Since it was beside the text, they combined para (meaning beside, as in parallel) and graphien (meaning to write, as in biography) to call these symbols - paragraphos, which eventually became paragraphs.

In a few centuries, Romans also adoped this practice of marking the 'paragraphs'. However, instead of putting any mark, they evolved into writing a letter K or C (for Kaput / Caput for head, which later became Capital) to mark a new idea. This eventually became the practice of simply capitalizing and decorating the first letter of a new paragraph. 

390 BCE: The situation reverses with the Celtic-speaking Gauls sacking Rome. (in fact, this invasion was the last time a foreign invader would sack Rome until the fall of the Roman Empire many centuries later. Hannibal defeated Romans several times but never invaded Rome itself, and later Romans plundered Carthage to expand their territory.)

338-326 BCE: Philip from Macedonia invaded the Greek regions and established a larger military power combined with the strength of Athens' naval power and Spartan army. Alexander, son of Philip II, expanded this empire to Persia (including Egypt) and all the way to India.

    Interesting note: Alexandar's tutor was Aristotle whose mentor was Plato, whose mentor was Socrates.

Roman period and influence in Britain. During this entire time, Rome continued attacking various parts of Great Britain and had success towards the Southern and Eastern parts, but the Western and northern parts continued to push them back. This led to huge Roman/Latin influence in the Eastern/Southern regions, but Western/Northern regions remained under Celtic influence.

55-54 BCE:  Julius Caesar's first invasions of Britain

44 BCE: Caesar's assassination

31-30 BCE: Octavius (aka Augustus) defeated Mark Antony.

14 AD: Augustus died - the end of the Roman golden era.

54 AD: Nero came to power.

80 AD: Rome was destroyed by Fire.

By 370 AD: Huns (esp. Attila) started to approach the borders of the Goth and the Roman empire. (The Great Wall of China had made incursions into China more difficult for the Huns, and hence they started to move more westwards). One of the factors of their success could be their usage of horse stirrups.

376-476 AD: Fall of the Western Roman Empire. 

400-500 AD: The Germanic language family began with a group of early Germanic speakers in Scandinavia. Over time they migrated southward into the heart of continental Europe, previously controlled by the Romans. (This included southern Britain in the area we know today as England.)

Early on, these tribes were divided into three distinct groups which are represented by the three branches of the Germanic language family. The tribes who remained in Scandinavia are known as the northern tribes and their language developed into Old Norse – the language of the Vikings – and eventually into modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic.

The tribes which moved southward were divided into two separate groups. One group moved eastward into Eastern Europe, and these linguistic groups are known as the East Germanic tribes. The most notable of these tribes were the Goths who played a large role in the fall of the Roman Empire. (Remember Asterix).

Others migrated westward to the areas of modern Germany and eventually modern France.

The Saxons in the east were known as the ‘East Saxons’ and their territory eventually became known as Essex from ‘East Saxons.’ (Similarly, Sussex from ‘South Saxons’, ‘Wessex’ from West Saxons, and the middle parts - Middlesex.)

These Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons defeated and displaced much of the native Celtic-speaking Britons and established several independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which eventually coalesced in the face of Viking invasions beginning in the 8th century to become a unified nation. Latin was spoken before the arrival of these tribes and hence the heavy influence of Latin is still found. (Latin is the main trunk of the Romance languages tree).

~560-570 AD: Bertha, A Christian Frankish princess agreed to marry Aethelbert (Aethel = Noble Bert = Bright), the pagan king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent on the condition that she continues to practice Christianity. Kent, by this time, was surrounded by Christian Franks in the south, Welsh, Irish, and Cornish Christian kingdoms in the west, and even in the north, Irish Christian monasteries had widely spread. Now the most powerful kingdom also had a Christian queen.

~590-597 AD: Monk Gregory became Pope in Rome, and he sent St. Augustine to Kent to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. After some persuasion, Aethelbert allowed him to preach and also establish his first church in the fortified town of Kent people (fortified = buruh or the modern borough + Kent's people = Cant were ==> Canterbury. Hence, the head of the modern church of England is called the 'Archbishop of Canterbury'). 

By 598 AD: Aethelbert, along with over 10,000 of his citizens were converted. To assimilate with the King's and the citizens' original Pagan views, their existing temples, customs, and festivals were not destroyed but integrated within Christianity. Ex. the pagan festival of the fertility goddess Eostre, was now also being celebrated as the rebirth of Christ, and the Pagan mid-winter festival was now also celebrated as Christ's Mass.  No prizes for guessing the name of these festivals today. 

     Now, the reason for mentioning this story in this blog, is what follows. 

     To ensure that even the successors of Aethelbert follow the same religious practices and for the protection of the church, Augustine wanted to put the religious codes in writing. Written religious codes were popular in other regions, and Latin was the de-facto language of the church. However, this Anglo-Saxon kingdom wasn't Romanized. So, Aethelbert authorized the very first written document in their native language - Old English - written in the Roman alphabet.

~602-603 AD: First text written in Old English. Anglo-Saxons were speaking a common language. Can be considered the official beginning of the Old English period.

664 AD: The reconciliation between Irish and Roman monasteries.

700 AD: The real beginning of English - the first time this language was written in the way, we read it today.

793-878 AD: Viking invasions of the British Isles, but the West Saxon kingdom survived under King Alfred. As various Anglo-Saxons merged under the leadership of Alfred and his successors, a single unified Anglo-Saxon kingdom began to emerge. As all written documents were in the West Saxon dialect, it became the standard written Old English.

880-899 AD: Alfred wrote the first substantial English law codes. He brought scholars to his court and translated a number of important books into Old English.

924-939 AD: Æthelstan claimed to be the king of the land of all the Angles - OR Engla-Land.

991 AD: The peace treaty between Engla-land (Aethelred) and Normandy (Richard) to stop the Vikings from using Normandy as a base for their raids against Engla-land. [ (Normandy = Land of the Normans. Normans = "North Men", as they were the people from the North of France - i.e. Scandinavia)] However, Normandy did little to stop the Vikings and the raids continued. Only London was successful in pushing the Vikings back. Engla-land made the mistake (several times) to pay off the Vikings. [The payments being called the Dane-Geld and Rudyard Kipling minced no words when he penned:

"It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation To puff and look important and to say Though we know we should defeat you we have not the time to meet you We will therefore pay you cash to go away.

And that is called paying the Dane-geld But we’ve proved it again and again That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane."]

996-1002 AD: Richard, the Duke of Normandy dies and Aethelred attacks Normandy to punish them for not honouring the treaty. However, Engla-land lost the battle but negotiated a second treaty with Normandy (Richard II). This time the treaty is sealed with a marriage alliance. Aethelred married Richard II's sister - Emma making her the queen of England. Emboldened with this new arrangement, Aethelred ordered a wipe-out of the Danes from England and this started a massacre. Amongst those killed, was also the sister of the king of Denmark, who was married to an Englishman. [This king of Denmark was Sweyn Forkbeard, son of Harold Bluetooth who unified Denmark and Norway and gave us the name 'Bluetooth']. As retribution, Forkbeard re-started his raids on England and burned agricultural fields. The English farmers were busy fighting or saving their crops.

1005-1010 AD: This all led to a great famine in England. Owing to the famine, high taxes on the land to pay for the Danegeld, and safety in London, people started to flock to London, making the city not only bigger and greater but also a cultural and linguistical melting pot.

1013-1014 AD: Forkbeard established a permanent base at Gainsborough, gained more local support and soon conquered Northumbria, eastern Mercia and then most of Danelaw, Oxford and even Wessex.

As London was still safe, Aethelred initially moved there and Emma was sent to Normandy for protection, but soon Aethelred also had to flee to Normandy. All the England accepted Sweyn as the full King. However, he couldn't enjoy the fruits of his victory and died within days. Aethelred was called back and given back the kingship but under an established counsel. He. along with his ally Olaf, recaptured London after bringing down the London Bridge (hence the rhyme - London Bridge is falling down....)

1016-1017 AD: After Aethelred's death, Sweyn's son Cnut defeated Aethelred's eldest son and became England's king. However, Emma and two other sons in Normandy could have posed a challenge and to avoid any difficulties, Cnut himself went into a marriage alliance with Emma and Normandy. Emma's return as queen gave England a Scandinavian-Danish King and a Norman Queen and their son another possible successor to Cnut. Cnut also had 2 sons from his previous marriage to a Mercian noble's daughter. 

1017-1043 AD: There were, hence, 5 claimants to the throne, but eventually, 4 of them died or were killed, and the kingdom was passed onto Edward, the son of Aethelred and Emma, who was living in Normandy and was more French than English. In the meantime, the Duke of Normandy died and designated his illegitimate son- William as his successor, at the young age of 7 years. Edward did not have any children of his own and also considered William as his potential successor. He apparently had promised William, the kingdom, after his death.

1066 AD: Edward dies in January (on the twelfth day of Christmas) but apparently names Harold as his successor. William of Normandy starts planning to attack England as revenge and to drum up the support of the Roman church for his mission, he agrees with them to make Latin the language of the church again and stop using the (old) English translations. He conquers England and was crowned on Christmas day. Next 300 years, French becomes the official language.

English almost dies out, but instead, it absorbed new words and expanded. It almost became an Anglicized dialect of French. The transition from “Old English” or “Anglo-Saxon” to the period known as “Middle English.” 

Romans were fascinated by Greek culture, and they adopted the best parts of it into Roman culture. And that meant they borrowed a lot of words from Greek. 

1072 AD: Capture of Jerusalem by Turkish Muslims.

1095-1180 AD: Start of the Crusades. Persian and Arabic influences in Western Europe and England. Europeans discovered the Muslim Libraries in Spain with the translated Greek texts, including Euclid's Geometry, Ptolemy's Astronomy, Hippocrates' medicine, Indo-Arabic numerals, writings of Aristotle, etc. 

Around this time, an Italian scholar started started to replace the middle dots for short pauses in the written text, with a forward-slash (/) like symbol, called virgule.

1189-1192 AD: Richard I, son of Henry II, became the king of England and commanded the Third Crusade and achieved considerable victories against his Muslim counterpart, although he finalised a peace treaty and ended the campaign without retaking Jerusalem.

1199-1216 AD: In a dramatic turn of events, the King apparently changed his heir to the throne on his deathbed with only the new heir's mother present and claimed that the throne should instead pass off to her son (House of the Dragon, anyone?). This, combined with subsequent goof-ups, expectedly resulted in the loss of Normandy and a re-division between the French and the English territories. As a result, usage of English again started to increase in and around England with a reduction of, but under the heavy influence of French.

1206-1240 AD: By 1206 AD, Genghis Khan united Mongolian tribes into one and became the ruler of the world's most powerful kingdom. He looted Beijing in 1215, then conquered most of China, Persia, and Turkey, reached the Caucasus region in 1221 and then invaded Russia. Genghis Khan died in 1227, but his son, Ogedei, continued his campaign and by 1238, conquered most of Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Hungary. They also conquered Kashmir and reached the Indus Valley. While one of the secrets to their success remained the usage of "Metal Stirrups", they also had the ability to ride long distances non-stop on horseback. And, to solve the food problem while riding, they kind of invented, what we today call Hamburgers.

1241-1294 AD: Ogedei Khan died in 1241 and his son Kublai Khan instead of continuing the conquest of Europe, focussed on - China, Korea, and Tibet and established the Yuan dynasty, and left the governance of European regions to local rulers. (Around two hundred years later, Babur would finally establish the Mughal (Mongol) Empire in India.)

1277-1283 AD: Meanwhile, King Edward I, conquers Wales and takes over the title of Prince of Wales.

The 1300s - Mongolian empire begins to fall apart and the Ming dynasty takes over.

1314 AD: Scots victory over the English forces, makes the local English dialect, then called Inglis became the independent Sctoland's national language and later came to be known as Scottish.

In the late 1300s - The hundred years' war - War made French an 'enemy language' and the nationalist feelings contributed to the growth of English in England. French was replaced with English, as the official language of England. For the first time, English was used in the English Parliament. The Black Death also contributed to the ending of feudalism and the growth of the English language.

Note that there were two dominant languages in the Roman Empire. Latin dominated the Western Empire, but Greek was dominant in the East (even before the Roman conquest). The Roman Empire was eventually divided into western and eastern portions. The Latin-speaking west evolved into the Western Roman Empire, and the Greek-speaking east evolved into the Eastern Roman Empire – or later called the Byzantine Empire – with its capital at Constantinople. 

After 1430: Beginning of the Chancery English. While spoken English was becoming more fluid and variable (Early vowel shifts), written English was becoming more standardized.

1424-1487: Portugues Prince Henry, The Navigator, started sending expeditions around the dreaded Cape Bojador, west coast of Africa - which was believed to be the end of the world. By 1462, the Portuguese had explored the coast of Africa as far as present-day Sierra Leone. In 1487, Bartolomeu Dias proved that Africa could be circumnavigated when he reached the southern tip of the continent, and kindled hope of a new route to India (ie the land beyond the river Indus) and hence called it the Cape of Good Hope.

1440-1450: Gutenberg's Printing Press came into being. The popularity of cheaper printed books further led to the growth of local languages (English in England) and the decline of Latin, French, etc. It also started to make the spelling and overall language more standardised. The notion developed of a correct way of using the language.

Remember the paragraph markers (¶) and the eventual Capitalization and the Historated Initial - i.e. large decorated first letter in a paragraph? The practice before the advent of the printing press, was for the scribes to leave some space near the first letter of the paragraphs for the illustrator to draw the large letter with pictures. Now, the printing press did not have time to fill tohse blank spaces. So they did the easiest thing - they left it blank. This empty whitespace still served the purpose, and hence gave rise to the practice of leaving whitespaces and the indentations.

 In 1453 - Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire and that led to the disbursement of Greek scholars throughout Western Europe. They brought with them manuscripts that had been written in ancient Greek which were previously unknown in the West. The discovery of this pre-Christian Greek culture caused an intellectual, social, and cultural revolution in the West. This was the Renaissance. Ottomans also levied heavy taxes on the trading routes as they now controlled both the major trading routes between the East and the West. Most affected were the Italian cities of Venice and Genoa, whose main source of income was as trading ports.

"Fun Fact: Genoa was known to produce a kind of coarse cloth which was called, a Genoa faustian (aka Genoa Cloth) → gene faustian → Jeane → jean → jeans." 

"Fun Fact 2:  Nimes, a city in Southern France, also produced a similar cloth, which was called de Nimes. No points were guessing, what is it called now."

Now, as the Portuguese had figured out an alternate way to sail to Africa, a route around Africa was now considered possible and the trading volume shifted towards Portugal. Several Italian sailors and merchants flocked to Portugal, including a Genoese sailor named Columbus.

1455-1487 AD: Wars of the Roses. Due to the war and the heavy trading taxes by the Ottomans, England was weakened economically and when the war ended, Henry VII had to encourage trading and building of ships, docks, and overall trading via the ships. This was also the period of the Great Bullion Famine, causing shortage of Gold and Silver.

1473-1475: The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye was published as the first book printed anywhere in English. 

1492-1498: Vasco da Gama became the first European sailor to reach India by sea. This also led to colonization and the spread of the language worldwide. And of course, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in 1492. Owing to the shortage of Gold and Silver, Columbus wanted to have a more reliable source of these precious metals.

1501: Columbus' journey was sponsored by Ferdinand, the king of Aragon and Isabella, the queen of Castile, whose marriage unified those regions and produced the modern nation of Spain. With Columbus' discovery of the new world, the then Spain was getting rich and emerging as one of the most powerful countries in Europe. England, hence, wanted to enter into a relationship with Spain; and Spain was also eager as they had a common enemy in France. So, in 1501, Arthur, Prince of Wales married Catherine of Argon. Catherine was also a descendant of John of Gaunt and hence a Lancastrian, strengthening the claim of Arthur's descendants to the Iron Throne, I mean the England Throne.

1502: However, within 6 months of the marriage, Arthur died at the age of 15, leaving a 16 years old Catherine a teenage widow. To salvage the situation, it was decided that she marries the next heir to the throne - a ten-year-old Henry VIII.

1516: After multiple miscarriages, Catherine finally delivers a child. However, it was a girl, named - Mary. In the meantime, Henry was already having extra-marital affairs and even produced a son, but being illegitimate, this son could not have been an heir to the throne. A male heir was required, and Henry was dependent on Catherine as the Church still didn't allow divorces or polygamy.

1517: Martin Luther, a teacher and a monk, published a document about Christianity and invited people to debate with him. These ideas were controversial because they directly contradicted the Catholic Church's teachings. As the published books were gaining popularity, there was a demand for the Bible to be translated into non-Latin languages. This gave birth to The Protestant Reformation. As expected, the Church not just banned the translated Bibles, but anyone found to have one can be tried for heresy and burnt at the stake.

The commas started being used as quote marks by using a couple and inverting them - hence the "Inverted Commas".

1527: Henry still did not have any male heir and he was now in a relationship with Anne Boleyn, whom he was thinking of making the official queen.

1529-1536: The Parliament enacted a series of laws to formally separate the Church of England from Rome's Catholic Church. This was a financial decision to keep England's money from flowing to Rome, but also, fueled by Henry's displeasure of the Catholic Church is not giving him an annulment on his marriage.

1533: Anne was pregnant and Henry had declared himself as the head of the church and had forced the archbishop of Canterbury to annul his marriage with Catherine and declare Anne as the legitimate wife and queen. However, in September, Anne gave birth to a baby girl. In spite of everything, Henry still didn't have a male heir. This girl was named Elizabeth.

1534: Act of Succession and Act of Treason was passed in Parliament. Thus Henry's marriage to Catherine was made null and void and any successor was not to be recognised, but any heir to Anne was to be recognised as the legitimate successor. At the same time, anyone not accepting Henry as the supreme authority, questioning the succession, or even criticising Henry was to be executed.

                     Tyndale was working on the first English translation of the Bible during this time. The virgule, which was introduced in the 1100s, was by now Italicized and curved to give us the modern Comma. This Comma (means to cut off), and a few other punctuation marks were also entering common usage. However, Tyndale was still using the virgule, instead of the commas.

1536: In the last few years, Henry had to undergo several bouts of illness and accidents (with serious head injuries), and Anne even had a miscarriage - of a male child. This made Henry look at Anne as the root cause of his bad luck. Anne was accused of adultery and was beheaded (also three of the other accused, including her own brother). Henry married Jane Seymour just 11 days after Anne's execution.

The series of executions also claimed Tyndale, who was strangulated and burnt at the stake for translating the Bible into English. The irony is, Henry had himself approved, just a few months before, the publishing of the English Bible. Henry supported the English translation to establish his supremacy over the Roman Church but used it as an excuse to get rid of Tyndale, who was opposed to the idea of Henry being the supreme head of the church and legitimising his marriage to Anne. Tyndale's work was allowed to be carried on by his assistant (who by the way used the modern comma, instead of the virgule). This helped establish English as a more accepted language than Latin.

                   Henry forced certain objectionable notes to be removed from Tyndale's translation and asked a dedication for himself, to be added. He also ordered a copy of the new English Bible to be placed in every Church of England. This ensured that the Church service now started to be conducted in English. Over the new few years, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments became popular in the popular language - i.e. English.

1537: Jane gave birth to a male child, named Edward. However, just 12 days later, Jane died.

1538: English-translated Bible also started using the semi-colon, colon, and the early versions of the question mark, parentheses, and inverted commas.

1540: Henry marries Anne of Cleves, but gets it annulled within 6 months and just 5 days later to this annulment, marries for the fifth time. This time it's Anne's maid of honour - Katherine.

1542: Katherine, too, was executed on charges of adultery.

1543: Henry takes Catherine as his sixth wife.

1547: Henry dies, and the crown passes to Edward, who was just 9 years old, and if anything happened to him, Mary and then Elizabeth were next in the line of succession. Mary, being the daughter of Catherine of Aragon was a devout Catholic, and Elizabeth, being born out of an annulled marriage and the rise of the Protestant Reformation, was a Protestant.

Note: 1300-1600 was also the era when Theater and Proverbs became popular.

1548: A chronicle was published on the history of England from the reign of Henry IV (1399) to Henry VIII (1547) which became a source for Shakespeare's history plays.

1549: The Prayer Book Rebellion took place over the usage of English vs Latin for prayers.

1551-1571:  English translation of Euclid's Elements was published. Also, the first English book to use the plus, minus, and equal-to signs was published in 1557.

1553: Edward, the young prince, catches TB and is on his deathbed. He nominates Jane Grey as his successor, to avoid Mary being crowned and reverse the Protestant decision to go back to Catholicism. He dies soon after and Jane Grey is convinced to take up the crown. However, in the line of succession, Mary was first and hence with public support and revolt behind her, she snatches the throne back within the next 9 days and puts Jane Grey in prison. One of the first acts she passes is to allow the Catholic symbols, prayers, and the usage of Latin again. And, by the end of the year, singing any communion in English was banned. The clock was turned back. However, May was 37 years old by this time, and with no husband/heir, Elizabeth was next in line and was a risk of going back to the Protestant Reformations. She had accepted the marriage proposal from her first cousin - Philip of Spain, against the advice of several noblemen who did not like the idea of becoming a subject of a Spanish King.

1554: Early rebellions to overthrow Mary were quelled and Jane Grey was executed to remove the potential threat to Mary. Jane's father was also executed and Elizabeth was also taken to the Tower of London but eventually released as no evidence of her involvement could be established. Mary had become a ruthless monarch. Mary and Philip were married under the terms that Philip will receive the title of King, but will not take any active role in the government. In spite of these terms, Spanish was added as an official state language and Spanish influence on the English language started to become more prominent.

1555: The law to burn the heretics (non-Catholics) at stake was brought back and started the "Bloody Mary" period. Over 300 people were burned at the stake. The same year, Mary had her first false pregnancy. Eventually, the truth came to light and Philip moved out of England and Mary became increasingly isolated, depressed, and paranoid.

1556: Another plot to overthrow Mary was discovered.

1557: Yet another plot was quelled. However, this time, Philip and Spain were in a war with France and this plot to overthrow Mary also had French help. As a result, Mary also declared to be at war with France.

1558: Mary again had abdomen pain, which she believed to be because of pregnancy, but this was again a false pregnancy and possibly due to cancer. Mary finally dies from the condition and the throne passes to a 25-years old Elizabeth, who even before her formal coronation, issued a proclamation for certain Church services and prayers to be again conducted in English.

1567: In Scotland, in a revolt, the Queen of Scots was put in prison and her 13-month-old boy was proclaimed King James VI of Scotland, and unlike his mother, he was raised as a Protestant.

1568: Spanish attacked and killed several English privateers, which further soured the relationship between England and Spain.

1569-1571: John Hart proposed to make English spelling completely phonetic. While his suggestions did not catch on, they helped standardise the shape of letters, and overall focus on having standard spellings. 'Beware the Cat' was published in 1570, and is widely considered as the first English original fictional novel.

1580s: In spite of all these developments, the English language was still considered crude and vulgar and incapable to express sophisticated ideas. Not just the spelling, but even the grammar was not yet standardized for English. However, in the 1580s, various people started to argue against that notion and started to claim and favour English. Richard Mulcaster even argued against the spelling reform of John Hart and wanted to keep English as it was. (He still wanted to have structured grammar and spelling - i.e. consistency was important, instead of phonetic). His influence ultimately resulted in the English as we see it today. 
(Fun fact: he also contributed to football, as we know it today).

As a first step, he listed out the English letters, though only 24 at the time, as 'J' wasn't adopted yet and 'U' & 'V' were still the same letter.

Mulcaster also listed and influenced the spelling of 8000 words. He is to be blamed credited for the way we spell many English words today. He also called for someone to create an English dictionary.

1585: The Pope declared Elizabeth a heretic and gave Philip nearly 2 million crowns (> 1 billion USD in today's money) to remove her. Elizabeth had to do something urgently to survive. Philip's biggest treasure was the money flowing in from the 'New World'. To attack his treasure and also to establish her own source of money, Elizabeth decided to establish an English colony in this 'New World'.

1586: The Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth was uncovered and Queen Mary of Scots was beheaded for her role in the plot.

1587: The first 'English' child was born in the New World.

1400-1700 AD: Sound changes - The Great Vowel Shift, The High German Consonant Shift.

/sk/, /k/ and /g/ in the back of the mouth became /sh/, /ch/, and /j/ in the front of the mouth. /ah/, /æ/ and /oh/ in the back of the mouth became /ay/ in the front. And /ay/ in the front eventually moved even further to the front and became /ee/.

Ex. Angles becomes English.

Trick Question:

There were three periods of English – Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Which period does Shakespeare belong to? 

Not  “Old English” or “Middle English.” The correct answer is “Modern English.”

Taking a time leap to find how this history was discovered:

1600 AD: The British East India Company was chartered and soon established trading ports with Mogul Empire. (Reference: This is Shakespeare's time)

The 1700s: Mogul Empire began to fall apart after the death of Aurangzeb and India fell into a state of unrest and civil conflict. This was not good for business. In fact, the turmoil was enough to cause the Dutch and Portuguese to leave town altogether. That left the French and British – and neither wanted to abandon India and thereby leave the Indian market to the other. This was the height of the Franco-British rivalry in Europe and both extended their competition to control the Indian trade.

By the mid-1700s, the British East India Company was operating with a private army staffed largely with native Indians and led by British officers. The French were doing the same. In the 1750s, the French and the British East India Companies fought for control of parts of India. This was actually part of a larger conflict between the French and British known as the ‘Seven Years War’ which is considered by many to be the first world war.   (The first battle of Plassey was fought in 1757 with the French fighting for Siraj-ud-Daulah against Robert Clive from EIC.)

However, EIC was a trading company. Governance wasn't their cup of tea (pun intended). 

By the late 1700s, the East India Company was on the edge of bankruptcy and the British government itself wasn’t doing a whole lot better. The government had racked up a massive debt as a result of the Seven Years' War. The British government passed the Tea Act in 1773. 

All of this tea and tax business ended pretty poorly for the East India Company in North America. (Remember the Boston Tea Party which ultimately culminated in an American War for Independence and also that the Americans were inspired by Hyder Ali's victories and named their warship Hyder Ally)

And while the result of all of this was the loss of the 13 British colonies in North America, it also left the British with a new colony in India. One which the British government never really intended to acquire. 

It was in this complicated political-commercial mixture that Warren Hastings arrived as the first formally appointed Governor-General of Bengal. Hastings had an appreciation of the ancient native Indian culture. He also realized the limitations that were inherent in a commercial enterprise trying to govern a vast territory like India. He believed that the British ‘company governments’ should be based on traditional Indian models and that most of the administrative work should be done by Indians. As far as the administration of the courts was concerned, British judges were to supervise the courts. Still, Hindu law would be applied as a general rule (except in predominantly Muslim areas where Islamic law would be applied). The company would try to work within the existing culture rather than impose a new and foreign culture upon it. But for British judges, this posed another problem. How exactly were the British supposed to supervise the courts and apply Hindu law when they didn’t know what those laws were? Most of the Hindu legal traditions were written in ancient Sanskrit. There were no Western-style legal codes that could be easily consulted for answers.

1783: Arrives Mr William Jones, who is believed to have studied and known 28 languages. He also envisioned the creation of an Asiatic Society to investigate and promote Indian culture and society. But Jones didn’t actually speak or know Sanskrit. So soon after arriving in Bengal, he embarked on the study of the language so he could translate traditional Hindu laws and customs. What he quickly discovered is that Sanskrit – this ancient Indian language – shared many similarities with Greek and Latin. And these similarities were much the same as those found in other European languages as well as Persian.

The following quote from Jones’ lecture is often cited as the first formal statement that there was an ancient Indo-European language: 

“The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.”

So, how do we know when and where did the language originate?

 

( I have intentionally skipped the bits about why is the letter 'C' sometimes pronounced with a /k/ sound and sometimes with the /s/ sound. Also, why is it the third letter in the English alphabet and why does it look so similar to the letter 'G'? The Centum / Satem split is not linked to the story as of yet, but is very interesting to know nevertheless.)

In the Proto-Indo-European language, there were words for the otter, beaver, wolf, lynx, elk, red deer, and also HORSE (There is a reason it's mentioned in all-caps. I'll come to it a little later.).

They had words for goose, crane, starling, swallow and duck. Also for cow, bull, steer, sheep, and lamb, as well as wool, weave and sew.  This means, the people who spoke the language, not only encountered sheep, they knew how to weave and shave them and use their wool to make textiles. 

Question Time: Why is the plural of Ox = Oxen, but Fox = Foxes?

The words Ox and Oxen were also found in the original Indo-European language. This particular word has been retained in Old English, and all the way into Modern English, in pretty much its original form. On the other hand, 'Fox' has a Germanic origin and its plural was decided while creating the Standard English Dictionaries.

Similarly, Man/Men; Child/Children; Woman/Women originated from Indo-European.

Back to the story, Indo-Europeans also had words for elm, hazel, and also beech trees. Note that Beech trees were initially not found in any areas east of a line from the Baltic Sea down to the north of the Black Sea.

They also had words for fish and sea [The Indo-European word for the sea was Mere (Note the words Meer in German, and Mermaid, Marine, Moor, Marsh, etc. in English.)]

They also had words for honeybees and honey and also for mead (which, no points for guessing, was Medhu - remember Mad, Madira, Madhu, etc. in Hindi/Sanskrit?). In fact, the word not only occurs in English, but we also find it in Dutch, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, German, Irish, Lithuanian, Russian, Greek, Sanskrit, and even modern Persian.

Also present were the words for snow and winter. [Hence any location too warm is ruled out.]

What we don't find are the words for Camel, Elephant, Crocodile, Penguin, etc. but the words found are only for those animals whose habitat is in temperate climates. There were also no words for Grape, Pear, or Olive.

So, can we connect the dots now?

Based on several archaeological and linguistic evidence, it has been established that these Indo-Europeans lived north of the Black Sea between 2500 and 4500 BCE.

Note that the three oldest language families are: Hittite, ancient Greek, and Old Indic. Old Indic writing evidence is as far back as 1500 BCE and is known to have evolved from Indo-European --> Indo-Iranian --> Old Indic --> Sanskrit.

It can also be established that these Indo-Europeans were farmers and herders and not hunter-gatherers; had access to honey, drove wagons, weaved, ploughed, gave a lot of importance to cows, and worshipped sky-Gods.