English has its roots in the languages of the Germanic peoples of northern Europe. During the Roman Empire, most … See more

The Germanic settlers in the British Isles initially spoke a number of different dialects, which would develop into a language that came to be called Anglo-Saxon. It displaced the indigenous Brittonic Celtic (and the … See more

Middle English is the form of English spoken roughly from the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the end of the 15th century.
For centuries after the Conquest, the Norman kin… See more

English underwent extensive sound changes during the 15th century, while its spelling conventions remained largely constant. Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mainly duri… See more

The first authoritative and full-featured English dictionary, the Dictionary of the English Language, was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755. To a high degree, the dictionary standardized both English spelling an… See more

Over the last 1,200 years or so, English has undergone extensive changes in its vowel system, but many fewer changes to its consonants.
In the Old English period, a number of umlaut processes … See more

The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to Latin, Greek, modern German and Icelandic. Old English distinguished among the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases, and for strongly … See more