Curated category
Medieval languages
- Middle EnglishIn 1066, the Norman invasion replaced the top levels of English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies with rulers who spoke Old French.
- Old EnglishIn the mid-5th century, Germanic tribes known as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes crossed the North Sea to settle in Britain. These settlers brought languages that…
- Old FrisianIn 1276, a scribe in the region of Brokmerland copied the first full manuscript known as the First Brokmer Codex. This document marks the beginning of the…
- Old NorseIn the 8th century, a single tongue known as Proto-Norse began to fracture across Scandinavia. By the Viking Age, this language had divided into two major…
- Medieval LatinMedieval Latin emerged as the dominant written language across Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It served as the administrative tongue…
- Renaissance LatinIn 1359, Petrarch published his Epistolæ familiares, a collection of letters that signaled the start of a deliberate break from medieval Latin traditions.
- Classical TibetanClassical Tibetan emerged as a distinct form during the reign of King Sadnalegs in the 9th century. This period marked a crucial standardization effort that…
- Norn languageIn the early 9th century, Norse settlers arrived in the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland. These migrants came from the west coast of Norway in very…
- Classical ArabicThe earliest forms of Arabic survive in inscriptions from the 3rd or 4th century AD written in Greek alphabets. These A1 inscriptions reveal that short final…
- Coptic languageThe earliest attempts to write the Egyptian language using Greek letters date back to the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Scholars refer to this phase as Pre-Coptic…