by Risa Wolf

Created on: February 21, 2008   Last Updated: April 22, 2009

Twice in its history, English came very close to joining the list of dead languages. Yet, this language of a small island not only survived, but lived to be spoken by an estimated one billion, five hundred million people at the turn of the twenty-first century.

There are three critical periods in the history of the English language. Death is a common fate of unwritten languages. No written records of the languages spoken on the island of Britain exist before its conquests by Rome. These records show us how the English language became the language of the island and how it survived. We now turn to those written records.

The Critical Periods in the Survival of the English Language:

1) 410 CE to the mid-eighth century:

Early in the fifth century, Rome recalled its legions and told the Britons to defend themselves. Rich, unprotected, and attacked from all sides, King Vortigern on the East coast invited Germanic mercenaries to cross the channel to defend him against his enemies within and without. The monk Gildas, in the sixth century, comments that greed motivated the mercenaries to attack their employers. Slaughter and ruin followed in the East and South East of the island. These mercenaries, mostly Angle and Saxon clans of Germanic peoples, called their language "englisc" (pronounced "anglish").

The language of the Germanic mercenaries became the language of the conquered area. From the seventh through the mid-eighth centuries York in Northumbria, famed for its schools and for its literary productions, was the center of the English-speaking world.

2) Mid Eighth Century to the 899:

By the mid 700's, the Anglo-Saxons were on the receiving end of slaughter and ruin by Danish armies. The Danes overran all the Anglo-Saxon areas, including Northumbria, the heartland of literacy in Anglo-Saxon England. Wessex, ruled by Alfred the Great, remained the only area still controlled by English-speakers. The Danes were neither united nor had a united command; Alfred did. Eventually, Alfred forced the Danes back. Danish Northumbria submitted to Alfred in 886.

After a century and more of death and destruction, very few literate English-speaking people remained. Alfred set out to revive the language through education and writing. In 891 he sent out a call for anybody who could read or write. Outside of his personal staff, the handwriting of only *eight* new people appears in the earliest records. The center of literary production shifted from York in Northumbria to Winchester in Wessex.

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