TIMELINE

LANGUAGE EARLY MODERN ENGLISH

Year 1400: The death of the renowned poet Chaucer at the end of the
XIV century originated the transition between the Middle English to the
Early Modern English.

XV CENTURY:
Great Vowel Shift. Chaucer speech’s seven
vowel sounds went through a significant
change, primarily characterized by an
increase of vowel diphthongs in vocalization
and spelling.

YEAR 1476:
First printing press provided by William
Caxton.
There was a considerable amount of
uncertainty in the English level since it
was going through a process’s of structure
modifications.
Non-professional scribes (together with
women) were writing at length for the first
time.

YEARS 1485-1603:
ELIZABETHAN ERA
The embracing of the Renaissance movement in England
caused a liberal attitude in the language, which resulted in
words being taken from Latin and Greek, thus adding a more
enriched lexicon to English (which was already influenced by
Old French and Anglo-Norman). This time period was greatly
influenced by the Tudor dynasty and is also known as the
“Elizabethan Era” or the “Age of Shakespeare”. .

YEAR 1500:
Beginning of the Early Modern English (XVI
century).
English prose moved rapidly towards
modernity.

YEAR 1525:
Lord Barnes successfully delivered his
translation of Jean Froissart’s Chronicle.
The New Testament was translated by
William Tyndale.

YEAR 1539:
English Bibles. After the separation of the
English crown from the Roman Catholic church
due to Henry VIII's conflicts and the rise of
Anglicanism, different versions of the Bible in
English emerged

YEAR 1551:
The English translation for Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia (originally written in Latin) came to
light.
 YEARS 1570-1580:
At first, English was criticized for being simple
and coarse. However, between the 1570s and
1580s, it gained recognition and acclaim for
its easy grammatical structure and enriched
and mixed vocabulary.

YEAR 1593:
The first works of William Shakespeare were
printed, which were two poems called: 'Venus
and Adonis' (1593) and 'The Rape of Lucrece’
(1594), thus beginning the career of one of the
most prolific dramaturges ever known, who
brought numerous contributions and
improvements to the English language.

YEAR 1603:
After several political and monarchical
changes, English took over the Scottish
region, until it finally became the predominant
literary language, leaving the Scots language
mostly for speech.

YEAR 1611:
The King James Bible Version was published.

YEAR 1623:
Francis Bacon published his On the Dignity and
Advancement of Learning, an expansion of his
earlier Advancement of Learning in Latin: (De
dignitate et augmentis scientiarum).

YEAR 1662:
A charter was granted to The Royal Society of
London for the Promotion of Natural
Knowledge. Its first members were concerned
about the language, so they forged a 22-
people committee “to improve the English
tongue, particularly for philosophic purposes.
Nevertheless, the attempt was unsuccessful
and no results were obtained.

YEAR 1687:
Sir Isaac Newton wrote his Principia in Latin.

YEAR 1704:
Sir Isaac Newton published his Opticks in
English.

YEAR 1712:
The foundation of the ‘English Academy’ to
regulate the language usage.

YEAR 1755:
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary was distributed.
 YEAR 1761:
Robert Lowth aired his Grammar.

YEAR 1776:
the evolution of the language underwent once
more changes, now its syntax is sequenced by
Subject-Verb-Object (or complement). Subject
nouns were obligatory for simple causes rather
than imperatives.

YEAR 1795:
Lindley Murray’s English Grammar arrived
and produced multiple editions due to its
prosperous popularity.

Around the 17th century, England began their

emancipation to spread Modern English around
the world, thus beginning in the United States
when settlers reached American lands.

Until the late 18th century The British Empire

further expanded upon more lands thus
spreading the language around. Places like
India, Australia, Africa, and Southeast Asia
were the subjects of colonization, and,
Modern English’s dominance all over as a so-
called “global language”.

Greek (and Latin) also started to get a slight resurgence

in the 19th century thanks to scientific fields expanding
upon the vocabulary. Words like ‘oxygen’, ‘electron’,
‘caffeine’, and ‘bacteria’ are science terms that were
born at the hands of the advancements of the time.
That along with ‘ologies’ or ‘onomies’ like ‘biology’,
‘morphology’, ‘taxonomy’, and ‘petrology’.

The technological outputs of the years

1750 and 1900 were largely written in
English.

Morphology became simplified in the way that

nouns and adjectives reached present,
vestigial, and inflectional systems. This
however didn’t affect much the verb.

When moving on to Late Modern English,

the language possessed aspects like
adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions
that were mostly invariable. Adjectives
proceed nouns and auxiliaries were found
in questions.
 MODERN ENGLISH
Year 1800: Early Modern English becomes Modern English. Thanks to
the advancements in technology and the print press, education could
be more accessible, granting the majority of the population the gift of
reading.

XIX CENTURY:
YEAR 1800-1810: Ireland is part of the United Kingdom
The subjunctive mood is changed by
English is identified as a Germanic
auxiliaries like might, should, may, and
language by consonants. It was
would.
elaborated by Jacob Grimm in the
Will and would turn into future and
discovery of Friedrich von Schlegel
conditional.
and Rasmus Rask.
Extensive use of progressive forms.
William Hazlitt would publish A New
Loss of Inflections caused a word order.
and Improved Grammar of the English
Language.​
YEAR 1816:
The establishment of cheaper
newspapers allowed the expansion of
YEAR 1842-1844: standard speech across England.
The telegraph invented by Samuel
Morse spread communication
amongst speakers.
The British Philological Society is
founded.

YEAR 1873:
The English Dialect Society was formed in
order to gather information about
regional English.

YEAR 1879:
James AH Murray begins to edit the first
edition of what would be known as The Oxford
English Dictionary.
YEAR 1900:
The British Empire covered a large amount of
speakers with the spread of their language
across the world and colonies. The estimated
native speakers were about 160 million. This
included dialectical varieties like American,
Northern Ireland, Welsh, Scottish and
Australian.

During this century, there was an increase in

the proper use of grammar thanks to authors
like Lewis Carroll (Jabberwocky in 1872),
Charles Dickens (Tale of Two cities in 1859) or Ever since the start of the 20th
John Tennyson’s poems. century, English stayed roughly the
same state, only expanding more
The vocabulary is rooted in various
languages like Spanish, Portuguese
Arabic, or Hindi. This increased the
use of affixation in words originated
in Greek or Latin.

YEAR 1906:
The First Edition of The King’s English is
published by authors Henry and Francis
Fowler.
YEAR 1917:
Daniel Jones introduced to the world the
“Received Pronunciation” or what many
people know as “The Queen’s English” to
describe the standard linguistic route English
had been developing years prior. This variety
was largely spoken by the educated middle
and upper classes of society but became of
more public rename thanks to the radio and
television years after its invention. British
English is non-rhotic.
YEAR 1922:
The British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) was
founded in 1922, and headquartered in
Westminster, it became the oldest
broadcasting service in the world.

YEAR 1926:
Harry Fowler published his Dictionary of
Modern English Usage. YEAR 1928:
The Oxford English Dictionary, a large
resource of academic rename, was first
published in the year of 1928 under Oxford’s
first editor James AH Murray. The dictionary
gathered around 15,000 pages.

YEAR 1945:
The end of World War II established the English
language as a Lingua Franca thanks to the
victory of the Allies in 1945.

YEAR 1950:
Sir. Ernest Gowers, one of England's most
prolific authors, published The Complete Plain
Words, it introduced a simpler form of speech
that could target a plainer language for the
benefit of clarity, and brevity to drop off
technicalities of the rigid speech.

YEAR 1972:
Grammar of Contemporary English (by
Randolph Quirk, Sydney Greenbaum, Geoffrey
Leech, and Jan Svartvik) was published.

YEAR 1985:
A Comprehensive Grammar of the English
Language is published by Longman.

YEAR 1989:
The second edition of the Oxford English
Dictionary is published to the public. This time
consisted of 615,000 words.

YEAR 1995:
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English

YEAR 2000:
Language was published by author David
Crystal.
At the start of a new decade, in the 21st
century, The Oxford English Dictionary Online
was published in the year 2000.

YEAR 2009:
Nine years after that in 2009, Oxford released
a two-volume Historical Thesaurus of the
Oxford English Dictionary by Oxford University
Press.
YEAR 2012:
A fifth volume of he Dictionary of
American Regional English (DARE ) was
issued by Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press.

Thanks to the new technological wave of the

modern century, English has added many
words to its lexicon influenced by trends or
advancements, online, cyberspace, byte,
database, or hi-tech were one of the few seen
recurrently.
 References
Early Modern English – an overview. (n.d.). [Online
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https://www.oed.com/discover/early-modern-english-
an-overview/?tl=true#boundaries-time-place
[Consulted: 2023, October 16].
History of English (n.d.). Late Modern English (c.
1800 - Present). [Online Article] Retrieved from:
https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/late-modern-
english [Consulted: 2023, October 17].
Nordquist, R. (2020). Key events in the history of
the English language. [Online Article] ThoughtCo.
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history-of-the-english-language-1692746 [Consulted:
2023, October 17].
Nordquist, R. (2020). Modern English (language).
[Online Article] ThoughtCo. Retrieved from:
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StudySmarter UK (n.d.). Modern English. [Online
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[Consulted: 2023, October 17].
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2023).
English language | Origin, History, Development,
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/English-
language/Middle-English [Consulted: 2023, October 16].
Timetoast. (n.d.). LINEA DEL TIEMPO DE LOS PERIODOS
DEL IDIOMA INGLES timeline. [Online Article] Retrieved
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2023, October 18].

AUTHORS:
R. MORÍN (SECTION 2) V- 28.142.793
INTISAR MAKHLOUF (SECTION 1) V- 30.322.864
MARÍA EUGENIA ROJAS (SECTION 1) V- 30.197.684
FOREIGN LANGUAGES.