Old English Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, as during this period the English language
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