Nearly two thousand years ago the romans invaded britain and then stayed there for 400 years. the britons didn’t learn latin, they continued to speak their celtic language. the angles and the saxons came from germany and spoke a germanic language – they invaded britain in the 7th century, and they pushed the celtic speakers into scotland and wales. today some people in wales, scotland and ireland still speak celtic languages. in 1066 william the conqueror and the normans invaded england. they came from france and they spoke french. at first the two languages were quite separate. the king and the aristocrats spoke french and the ordinary people went on speaking anglo-saxon. and little by little the languages also mixed. the result was english. the grammar was mostly anglo-saxon and a lot of words were french. the first book written in english was chaucer’s the canterbury tales in about 1378. the setting up of the first english printing press in 1475 by william caxton was very important – it fixed the language in a sort of „official” form. from that time english has been changing more slowly перевести
