Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. It is a West Germanic language and is closely related to Old Frisian. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of approximately 700 years– from the Anglo-Saxon migrations that created England in the 5th century to some time after the Norman Conquest of 1066 when the language underwent a dramatic transition. A large percentage of the educated and literate population of the time were competent in Latin.
Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language in use between the late 11th_century"th and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press to England by William Caxton in the late 1470s"s.
Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern English, or more specifically, are referred to as using Early Modern English or Elizabethan English.
Modern English has a large number of dialects spoken in diverse countries throughout the world. This includes American English, Australian English, British English, Canadian English, Caribbean English, Hiberno-English, Indo-Pakistani English, New Zealand English, Philippine English, Singaporean English, and South African English.
