People who invaded Britain The Celts

Time Location for the arrival

Characteristics of the period

Language changes and development Their language left the name of some cities such as London, Leeds and Dover and it survived in the river names like Avon, Esk and Thames.

The Romans

Towards the A group of Indo-European speakers, were the end of the fifth first who moved from the north of the Alps in century BC Central Europe to the Black Sea, SW Spain, Central Italy, Britain and Ireland. As a consequence, different dialects developed: -Brythonic- a kind of Celtic in Southern England and Wales -Goidelic (Gaelic) - spoken in Scotland and Ireland In AD 43 and They invaded Britain, introduced a new way remained of life and a new language. The English there for became used to laws and police, roads and about 400 towns. -Latin was spoken and written in years England. In the 5th century AD they arrived from Germany and Denmark They spoke dialects of a language they called Englisc which soon became into Old English. The greatest piece of Literature is a long epic poem Beowulf which reflects The Anglo Saxon Culture.

Germanic Tribes

They left little behind, but with St. Augustine and a group of monks arrived during the Anglo Saxon times, they built churches and taught literature and science spreading Christianity and Latin words connected to religion and education such as monk (munuc) or school (scl). The Old English vocabulary developed by the Anglo Saxon was for basic things or ideas, as person(mann), wife (w (hif), child (cild), house (hs), drink (drinkan), etc. Poets created new words by combining old words such as high hill=mountain, book skill= literature, to make beautiful descriptions. Letters began to be added before or after a main word, ex: to go, to go in, or blood, bloody. Meaning was communicated by those endings which changed according to their function in the sentence. Nouns became different in plural form. The number of personal pronouns increased. Him=him, it, them. Verbs were irregular but many of them

The Vikings

The Normans

In 850 AD they invaded London and fought against the Anglo Saxons until they made an agreement to divide the country into two. They came from Denmark In 1066 AD William of Normandy arrived from what is now France, defeated the Anglo Saxon and became king of England. It was the last time the country was successfully invaded

The Anglo Saxon King Alfred made English the language of education and literature. He started THE ANGLO SAXON CHRONICLE (a diary of events about the History of England in English)

started to add ed. The Vikings and the Anglo Saxons made more similar their languages by dropping many different endings. Plural became simplier by adding s and more verbs by turning into regular. The 3 person of singular began to use s ending in present tense. The Viking presence can be seen in modem place names of England such as Whitby or Blacktoft. Many Danish words like want or ill became part of Old English. Many French words came into English and Old English ones left, but its vocabulary was much richer. Adjectives and nouns lost their gender and became the only form of the definite article. Just about 250 verbs remained irregular because most of them became regular. Words had to be in a particular order to express meaning Prepositions began to be used instead of noun endings. In some cases French and Old English words survived whit small differences in meaning as in ask (OE) and demand (F) or wedding (OE) and marriage (F). The suffixes ly and ful started to be used to create adjectives and adverb

A strict organization of mutual duties and obligations called feudal system was imposed. French became the language of church and government while Latin was used in law and literature. But when the Normans lost their lands in France, English became stronger although it had changed enormously. The greatest writer of this time was Geoffrey Chaucer who was both a poet and an important government official. His best know work is The Canterbury Tales where he described people in a society which was changing.