AD 800 Irish Gaelic |
The Viking invasions and settlements leave a lasting effect on the Irish language and population.
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AD 900 Romani |
Romanies settle in Asia Minor (now Turkey) from India, sometime before the tenth century. Present day Romani still resembles Indian languages like Urdu.
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1066 English |
Norman French becomes the language of the elite, the Norman invasion having a dramatic influence on English place names, dialect and speech.
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1204 Guernesiais |
Mainland Normandy is conquered by the French, with Guernsey remaining allied to England.
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| 1250 Welsh |
The Black Book of Carmarthen, possibly the earliest account of written welsh, documents the heroes of the Dark ages.
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1400 English |
| English starts to undergo a great vowel shift, becoming the recognisable spoken language that it is today.
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1500s Romani
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Romani is the language of a travelling population (�Gypsies') that migrate into Britain from the early sixteenth century onwards.
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1600 Irish Gaelic |
Under English rule, Irish is banned, but illegal teaching continues in �hedge schools' in fields, barns and sheds.
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1609 Scots Gaelic |
The Scots Parliament sought to remove the �Irish' language in favour of English.
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1764 British Sign Language |
Thomas Braidwood opens the first deaf school in Britain, teaching combined finger spelling, sign, speech, reading and writing.
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1750 Manx
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The advent of smuggling on the Isle of Man leads to the more common use of English and the first truly bilingual generation of islanders emerges.
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1840 Irish Gaelic
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The potato famine causes a massive decline in the number of native speakers. Irish Gaelic is associated with poverty and children are beaten for speaking it in public.
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| 1874 English |
The 1874 Education Act acted as a catalyst to popularise Received Pronunciation (RP) as the �standard' form of spoken English.
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1901 Manx
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The Rev. Gill Malew writes that Manx �is a doomed language, an iceberg floating in the southern latitudes� amid the rapid demise of its native speakers.
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1922 English |
The British Broadcasting Corporation is founded, with the news read in RP, as it was seen as the most effective way of communicating to the widest number of people.
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1940 Jerriais |
Large numbers of Islanders are evacuated to the British mainland, cutting off the child population from their native language.
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1967 Cornish |
A Cornish language board is established, whose constitution is later reformulated to make it representative of the body of speakers and users.
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1990 Welsh |
It became compulsory for children to learn Welsh up to the age of 14.
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2003 British Sign Language |
The British government recognises BSL as an official language.
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