The Proto-Indo-European Language Tree

Although Old English descends from the Original Germanic arm of the Indo-European Language Tree, after the Norman invasion in 1066, French was spoken by the ruling class for over 400 years. Notice the dotted line in the first tree diagram. This explains why 29% of our vocabulary is derived from the French language; while war, conquest, commerce and religion account for the fact that another 29% of the words we commonly use are derived from Latin. Only 26% of our vocabulary derives from the Germanic branch which forms the core of our language.

This is one of the reasons spelling and pronunciation conventions vary so dramatically in English. Modern English is actually a combination of languages that derive from two different branches of the Indo-European Language Tree.

Other Websites

For a blow-by-blow history from the year 6000 B.C to the present, checkout this website: http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/index.html

For a visually rich Adobe Flash Slideshow depicting the history of the English language check out this URL: http://www.bl.uk/englishtimeline

You may also like this timeline which can be found on the website Thought.co: https://www.thoughtco.com/events-history-of-the-english-language-1692746