Elaine Treharne edited an anthology on "Old and Middle English", (copyright 2000, by Blackwell Publishers Ltd); suggesting "In simplified terms, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes brought versions of this [West Germanic branch of Indo-European] dialect with them when they settled in the fifth century in what came to be known as England." . . . "Old English [West Saxon, Northumbrian, Kentish and Mercian] is the language used in speech by the Anglo-Saxons from the fifth century to the twelfth. In the case of written records, Old English was used regularly from the ninth century, although there are some texts surviving from the eighth." . . . "It is during the reign of King Alfred of Wessex (871-99) that . . . Old English became authorized as a language for written texts." . . . "While throughout the centuries of Anglo- Saxon rule, Latin had been used widely in addition to English as an official and literary language in England for a variety of administrative, ecclesiastical and scholarly writings, {13} after the Conquest, Latin and French displaced English as an official language. Thus there was no longer a standard English literary version for scribes to adhere to in their writings." . . . "English did continue to be copied throughout the period; numerous manuscripts survive from the second half of the eleventh century into the late twelfth and beyond." . . . "In the last quarter of the twelfth century, English was used for the composition of important, original texts . . . and by the beginning of the thirteenth century, English was used for many writings {9} originating in the West Midlands area, a region that had retained a nationalistic pride, and had continued the prose literary traditions of the Anglo-Saxon past." . . . "the twelfth century is the transitional phase, as Old English becomes early Middle English. . . . texts that survive are written in a variety of different dialects (Kentish, Southern, East Midland, West Midland, Northern) . . . represented in Middle English by different spellings of the same word . . . by different inflexions, or endings, on nouns, adjectives and verbs, and by different vocabulary." ["she, the feminine pronoun. Before the year 1000, there was no she in English; just heo, which singular females had to share with plurals of all genders because it meant they as well. In the twelfth century, however, she appeared, and she has been with us ever since. She may derive from the Old English feminine demonstrative pronoun seo or sio, or from Viking invasions." The Oxford English Dictionary explains: "The phonetic development of various dialects had in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rendered the pronouns he (masc.) and heo (fem.) almost or wholly indistinguishable in pronunciation. There was therefore, where these dialects were spoken, a strong motive for using the unambiguous feminine demonstrative instead of the feminine personal pronoun. Further, the districts in which she or sho first appears in the place of heo are marked by the abundance of Scandinavian elements in the dialect and place-names; and in Old Norse the demonstrative pronoun (of all genders) is often used as a personal pronoun."] "This extends into the fifteenth century when the beginning of Standard English can be traced, influenced primarily by dialects from the East Midlands and London area, and initiated by Chancery scribes, among others." . . . "Because scribes, or the compilers of manuscripts, often acted in an editorial capacity, we cannot always be sure that what we are reading is what the author actually intended." . . . "Printing in England did not begin until the end of the fifteenth century, and there is no comparable mass-production of writing materials prior to this invention. Literacy in the Anglo-Saxon period was confined to relatively few people: those of the aristocratic stratum of society, and those who chose to enter a monastic or regular religious life. . . . Manuscripts were . . . costly in terms of labour and resources to produce, and only relatively wealthy individuals and institutions, or educated people, owned or had access to them." Early Modern English (1500-1800) "The next wave of innovation in English came with the Renaissance. The revival of classical scholarship brought many classical Latin and Greek words into the Language." Late-Modern English (1800-Present) "At its height, Britain ruled one quarter of the earth's surface, and English adopted many foreign words and made them its own." . . . "The most significant linguistic consequence of the British Empire was the creation and spread of American English. The American dialect has been a major contributor to the language, and is on the path to overtake British English as the standard." http://www.wilton.net/histeng.htm#early Currently, Geoffrey Nunberg has noted in The American Prospect Online; Vol. 11, Issue 10 Mar 27-Apr 10, 2000; that "The Internet was basically an American development, and it naturally spread most rapidly among the other countries of the English-speaking world. Right now, for example, there are roughly as many Internet users in Australia as in either France or Italy, and the English-speaking world as a whole accounts for over 80 percent of top- level Internet hosts and generates close to 80 percent of Internet traffic." http://www.prospect.org/archives/V11-10/nunberg-g.html SEE ALSO: Anglo-Saxonists >From the 16th through the 20th Century http://www.u.arizona.edu/~ctb/saxon.html History of the English Language http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/hel/hel.html American Dialect Society "Founded more than a century ago, the American Dialect Society still is the only scholarly association dedicated to the study of the English language in North America - and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." http://www.americandialect.org/ Respectfully yours, Tom Tinney, Sr. Genealogy and History Internet Web Directory http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~vctinney/ "Free Coverage of the Genealogy World in a Nutshell" Who's Who in America, Millennium Edition [54th] - Who's Who In The West, 1998/1999 Who's Who In Genealogy and Heraldry, [both editions]