History of English History of English English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon settlers from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands, displacing the Celtic languages that previously predominated. The Old English of the Anglo-Saxon era developed into Middle English, which was spoken from the Norman Conquest era to the late 15th century. A significant influence on the shaping of Middle English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavians who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during 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