Dates
410-1066 CE
What is the date range for Old English?
The Germanic tribes that came to England in 410AD from Denmark and Germany?
Who are the Angles, Saxons, and the Jutes?
The vocabulary of a language
What is a Lexicon?
A group of people that had a significant influence on English vocabulary (and some grammar), and launched the beginning of the Middle English Period
Who are the Normans?
An object credited with facilitating the standardization and spread of the English language through texts.
What is Caxton's printing Press?
43-410 CE
What is the Roman Era of influence in the British Isles?
Indigenous tribes that mostly retreated into Scotland, Ireland, and Wales by the mid-400s
Who are the Celtic Britons
The way you pronounce the word "raven" in Chaucer's time. [💰 Daily Double!]
What is "Rah-ven"?
The linguistic influence of Celtic / indigenous British Isles peoples' languages on the development of Old English.
What is "virtually nothing?" (other than some loan words and place names)
Pronouns in ME and EME corresponding to singular nouns, intimacy/informality/affection, and lower rank.
What is thou, thy, thine, thee?
The end of Middle English (and the year the Caxton brought his printing press to England).[💰 Daily Double!]
What are the mid-1470s?
Norman King who invaded England and started French rule over Anglo-Saxons in England for a few hundred years
Who is William the Conqueror?
A grammatically correct way to strengthen a negative statement in Middle English
What are double negatives?
A modern language that is close to English in its grammatical structure
What is German?
A modern equivalent of the word "thine"
What is "yours"?
The Late Old English period and beginning of the Viking age in the British Isles
What are the ~800s?
The English Monarch who united England against the Danes in the late 800s and wrote the first substantial English law does and texts in Old English?
Who is Alfred the Great?
A super important pronunciation change affecting the long vowels of English that happened 1500-1700s
What is the Great Vowel Shift (where the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth)
The case of the word "knight" in the sentence, "The maiden slapped the knight." [💰 Daily Double!]
What is Accusative? (the knight is the DO)
Person credited with creating the first comprehensive English (not American) dictionary in 1755.
Who is Samuel Johnson?
The year the KJV bible was published
What is 1611?
The first person to translate the Bible in 1382
Who was John Wycliffe?
Two important syntactical changes that happened in the Early Modern English period
What are helping verbs like "do" in questions and negative statements and simplified inflections (no more -eth)?
The language that gave English 3 imp't linguistic features: “Are”; they/them/their; simpler inflections.
What is Old Norse?
The period of English that pronounced our modern-day version of "sweet" as sway-teh
What is Middle English?