1.

Anglo-Saxon
As the Romans Empire collapse, the Romans started to leave
Britain, a lot of Germanic tribes start flooding in, tribes such as The
Saxons in Germany and eastern Holland, the Jutes, possibly from
northern Denmark (the area now called Jutland), and the Angles,
probably living along the coast and on islands between Denmark and
Holland. It is also likely that the invaders included Frisians from northern
Holland and northern Franks from southern Holland.
The fact is, there were so many Angels in Britain, you may as well
call it Angle land England and their language called Englisc
English, tough this language were very different from English. Those
tribes living along together and get their culture and language mixed.
Their language is known as the Anglo-Saxon. We called this period as
the Proto English period.
The Romans left some very straight roads behind, but not much of
their Latin language. The Anglo-Saxon vocab was much more useful as
it was mainly words for simple everyday things like house, woman,
loaf and warewolf. Four of our days of the week were named in
honour of Anglo-Saxon Gods. They didnt bother on Monday, Sunday
and Friday as they all gone off for long weekend.
The Old English period began when the Christian missionaries stole
in, bringing with them leaflets about jumble sales and more Latin.
Christianity was a hit with the locals and made them much happier to
take on funky new words from latin like Martyr, Bishop and Font.
Around the year 800 A.D., the Vikings invaded Britain, with their
action-man words like Drag, Ransack Thrust and Die. They may
have raped and pillaged but they were also into Give and Take, two
of around 2000 words that they gave English.
2. The Norman Conquest
Everything was fine until 1066 when the Normans invaded and
won. True to his name, William the Conqueror, he and the Normans
invaded Britain and bringing new concepts from acrosss the channel
like the French language. French was de riguer for all official business,
with words like judge(1290), jury(1400), evidence(1300) and
justice(1154) coming in. All the noble and high class society speak
French while the poor or common men still using Old English to
communicate, and Latin was still used in Church.
One on the most important changes that still affect us today is the
fact that new Norman ruling class would refer to the meat they were
served using their own words like beef, pork, mutton, but the
poorer Anglo-Saxon still using their early old English words like cow,
pig, sheep, until this day. That is way English is one of the very few
languages on earth that has a different name for the meat of the animal
and the name of the animal it came from.

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All in all the English absorbed about ten thousand new words from
the Normans, this was more than a quarter of English vocabulary on
that time. This Middle English period ended when the English nation
took their new warlike lingo of armies, navies and soldiers and
began the hundred year war against France. It actually lasted 116 years
until 1635, but by that point no one could count any higher in French
and English took over as the language of power.
Shakespeare
The English language underwent extensive sound changes during
the 1400s, while its spelling conventions remained rather constant.
Early Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which
took place mainly during the 15th century.
In the mid of 16th century, a plays writer gave a huge impact to the
Early Modern English. As the dictionary tells us about 2000 new words
and phrases were invented by William Shakespeare. He gave us handy
words like eyeball, puppydog and anchovy and more showoffy
words like dauntless, besmirch and lackluster. The fact is, he
invented a new word every time he couldnt find a word in English for
something he wanted to say. By this time, English had become clearly
recognizable as Modern English.
King James Bible
In 1611, a team of scribes with the wisdom of Solomon write a
new translation of Bible. They went the extra mile to make King Jamess
translation all things to all man. This new bible was written in a handy
little book so all the preachers reading from it in every church. This was
the first time English spread all across the world. The King James Bible
is the book that taught us that a leopard cant change its spots, that
a bird in the hand is worth two I the bush, that wolf in sheeps
clothing is harder to spot than you would imagine.
The English of Science
Before the 17th century, scientist werent really recognized possibly
because lab coats had yet catch on. But suddenly Britain was full of
physicists: there as Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and even some people
not called Robert like Isaac Newton. The royal society was formed out of
the invisible college after they put it down somewhere and couldnt find
it again.
At first they worked in Latin. After sitting through Newtons story
about pomum falling to the terra from the arbor for the
umpteenth time, the bright sparks realized they all spoke English and
they couldnt transform their understanding of the universe much
quicker by talking in their own language. But science was discovering
things faster than they could name them: words like acid, gravity,
electricity and pendulum had to be invented just to stop their
meetings turning into an endless game of charades.
English and Empire (1583-1914)

With English making its name as the language of science, the Bible
and Shakespeare, Britain decided to take it on tour. From 1583-1914 the
Kingdom of England asked only for land, wealth, natural resources, total
obedience to the crown and a few local words in return. They went to
the Caribbean looking for gold, discovering the word barbeque,
canoe and cannibal. From India it got words like yoga,
cummerbund, crimson and bungalow. Meanwhile in Africa they
picked words like voodoo and zombie. From Australia English took
words nugget, boomerang and walkabout. All in between toppling
Napoleon and the first World War the British Empire gobbled up around
10 millions square miles, 400 million people and nearly a hundred gin
and tonics, leaving new varieties of English to develop all over the
globe.
7. The Age of Dictionary
With English expanding in all direction, along came a new breed of
men called Lexicographies who wanted to put an end to this anarchy,
a word they defined as what happens when people spell words slightly
differently from each other. One of the greatest was dr. Johnson whose
dictionary of the English language took him nine years to write.
Containing 42.773 entries, and became the first dictionary used as a
standard spelling reference. But words kept being invented and in 1857
a new book was started that would become the Oxford English
Dictionary. It took another 70 years to be finished and eventually
appeared in 1928 and has continued to be revised ever since.
8. American English
From the moment Brits landed in America they needed names for
all the new plants and animals so they borrowed words like raccoon,
squash, and moose from the Native Americans. Waves of
immigrants fed Americas hunger for words. The Dutch came sharing
coleslaw and cookies. Later, the Germans arrived selling pretzels
from delicatessens, and the Italians arrived with their pizza, their
pasta and their mafia.
The development of English in America were slightly different from
English in England. Not only the accent, but also the vocabulary and
grammar. This difference later known as American English and British
English. Those terms arent actually correct. The Brits actually have
many different accents like POSH, Cockney, South London and Received
Pronunciation or The Queens English. This also happen in USA, people
in DC have different accent with the people in Texas.
9. Internet English
In 1972 the first email was sent. Soon the internet arrived, a free
global space to share information, and ideas. Before then English
changed through people speaking it but the net brought typing back
into fashion and hundreds of cases of repetitive strain injuries. Nobody

had ever had to download or upload anything before, let alone use
a toolbar. And the only time someone set up a firewall.
Conversations are getting shorter than the average attention span. Why
bother writing a sentence when an abbreviation would do and leave you
more time to blog, poke and reboot when your hard drive
crashed?. In my humble opinion become IMHO, By the way became
BTW, For Your Information FYI, and to tell someone that you think
something is funny, you just say LOL even when you dont think that
its funny at all. Some changes even passed into spoken English.
10. Global English
In the 1500 years since the Romans left Britain, English has shown
a unique ability to absorb, evolve, invade and even steal. After foreign
settlers got it started, it grew into a fully-fledged language all of its own.
Before leaving home and travelling the world, first via the high seas, the
via the high speed broadband connection, pilfering words from over 350
languages and establishing itself as a global institution. All this despite
a written alphabet that bears no correction to how it sounds and a
system of spelling that even Dan Brown couldnt decipher. Right now
around 1.5 billion people speak English. Of these about a quarter are
native speakers, a quarter speak it as their second language, and half
are able to ask for directions to a swimming pool.
There is Hinglish which is Hindi-English, Chinglish (ChineseEnglish), and Singlish (Singaporean English), but despite of those
differences, English has become the language of the world. It has
become standard in every aspect of live, its taught in almost every
school in the world. It now belongs to no countries, not the UK nor the
USA. So in conclusion the language has got so little to do with England
these days, it may well be time to stop calling it English.