English language in Europe following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Anglo-Norman language was the language of administration and few Kings of England spoke English. A large number of French words were assimilated into Old English, which lost most of its inflections, the result being Middle English. Around the year 1500, the Great Vowel Shift marked the transformation of Middle English into Modern English. The most famous surviving work from Old English is "Beowulf", and from Middle English is Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales". The rise of Modern English began around the fifteenth century, with Early Modern English reaching its literary pinnacle at the
Names given to the Spanish language called "el idioma de Cervantes" in a book published in 1830, and in another one published in 1838. Occasionally the term refers to the language of Spanish Golden Age literature generally, rather than simply to that of Cervantes. "The language of Cervantes" in English—as a term for the Spanish language generally—comes into use in the 1840s. Examples appear in Janin (1841) and Campbell (1849). The poet Gonzalo de Berceo, writing in the 13th century, used the phrase "román paladino" to mean simple, straightforward language, the language spoken by the common people, as opposed to Latin. In the famous passage from