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Article: English Language
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
The English language has its origins in about the fifth century a.d., when tribes from the continent, the Jutes, the Saxons, and then the larger tribe of Angles invaded the small island we now call England (from
Angle-land
). Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, is preserved in
Beowulf
(c. a.d. 800). Middle English developed following the Norman invasion of 1066, exemplified in Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
(c. 1400). Modern English, dating from the sixteenth century, is exemplified in the plays of William Shakespeare (1564
–
1616). From the time the Pilgrims landed in America (1620), the language began to take its own course in ...