Three periods of the history of English

same time the development of English was slow, gradual and uninterrupted.
There is a considerable difference between the language of the 9th, 13th and, say, 17th centuries, in the vocabulary, grammatical systems and phonetic peculiarities.

English in Course of Time

It is customary to divide the history of English into three periods:
Old English,
Middle English and
New English.

dialects of the West Germanic invaders, which were gradually losing contacts with the related continental languages.
✓ The tribal dialects were only used for oral communication.
✓ The 7th century was the beginning of writing, the tribal dialects were gradually changing into local and regional dialects.

Britain till the beginning of writing, i.e. from the 5th to the close of the 7th century.

Bede (O.E.: Bǣda or Bēda; 672/673 – 26 May 735), also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede was an English monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter. His most famous work (The Ecclesiastical (духовный, церковный) History of the English People) gained him the title "The Father of English History".

extends from the 8th c. till the end of the 11th c. (the Norman Conquest, 1066).

language with a purely Germanic vocabulary and few foreign borrowings.
✓ As for grammar, Old English was an inflected or “synthetic” language with a well developed system of morphological categories.

regarded as the beginning of the Middle English period. It lasted from the 11th c. till the 15th c.

in England was French for 300 years.
The feudal system and foreign influence caused the greatest dialectal divergence (расхождение).

The time of great linguistic changes at all the levels of the language.
English absorbed two layers of borrowings: the Scandinavian element in the North-East (due to the Scandinavian invasions since the 8th c.) and the French element in the South-East (due to the Norman Conquest).
Grammatical changes were so drastic that by the end of this period they transformed the English language into mainly an analytical one.

Early Middle English

position of the state and literary language and the time of literary flourishing.
The main dialect used in writing and literature was the mixed dialect of London, which arose in the 14th century.

is considered the beginning of the New English period.

William Caxton is the first English printer. The first English book, printed in 1475, was Caxton’s translation of the story of Troy.

from the introduction of printing (1475) till the middle of the 17th c. The period from the mid-17th c. to the close of the 18th c. is usually called “the age of normalization and standardization / correctness”.

of the forms of the national literary language – its Written Standard – had been established.
Its growth and recognition as the correct or “prestige” form of the language of writing had been predetermined by
the unification of the country;
the progress of culture.

of normalization was very significant.
The greatest achievement of the 18th c. English lexicography is certainly connected with the name of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who believed that the English language should be purified and corrected.

discoveries had in mathematics" (Webster).

Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.

grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but Late Modern English has many more words. These words are the result of two historical factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that had not previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height, Britain ruled one quarter of the earth’s surface, and English adopted many foreign words and made them its own.

Late Modern English (1800-Present)