The English language has been attested in Ireland since the late twelfth century but did not become widespread until the beginning of the seventeenth century when vigorous planting of English settlers took place. Distinct forms of Irish English began to develop which were a mixture of diverse dialectal inputs from England and transfer phenomena from Irish as the native population began to switch to the language of the colonisers. Almost as the same time as planting of English settlers started there was a movement out of Ireland, either by deportation or voluntary emigration, largely due to economic circumstances. This led to areas in overseas anglophone regions showing centres of Irish emigration, e.g. Appalachia with eighteenth-century Ulster Scots or the north-eastern coast of the USA with nineteenth-century southern Irish Catholics. At these locations the linguistic impact of Irish English was slight but traces can be found still which testify to this input.

The New Cambridge History of the English Language is aimed at providing a contemporary and comprehensive overiew of English, tracing its roots in Germanic and investigating the contact scenarios in which the language has been an active participant. It discusses the various models and methodologies that have been developed to analyse diachronic data concisely and consistently. The new history furthermore examines the trajectories the language has embarked on during its spread worldwide and presents overviews of the varieties of English found throughout the world today.

In its history, the phonology of Irish English went through a number of stages in which features arose and subsequently declined. Many of the traits to be seen in the textual record for early modern Irish English were lost by the nineteenth century, with others being retained, such as the incomplete long vowel shift and dentalisation of stops before R. The early twentieth century saw a change in supraregional Irish English given the endonormative reorientation which set in after independence in 1922. Language contact between Irish and English has been a consistent theme in Ireland’s history and has led to a prolonged language shift, which culminated in the accelerated switch in the mid nineteenth century with the vast majority of the population being native speakers of English by the onset of the twentieth century. The language shift also resulted in many instances of grammatical transfer from Irish to English, a small number of which remained emblematic of Irish English and have survived to this day.

The city dialect of Liverpool has a unique profile in the context of other urban varieties in Britain. It is well known for such features as stop lenition and the NURSE–SQUARE merger, along with TH-stopping, these traits in combination forming a set which is not replicated elsewhere. The present study examines the historical background to Liverpool English, its geographical position in relation to the counties of Cheshire to the south and Lancashire to the north. In addition, the role of immigration to the city, especially that of Irish people in the nineteenth century, is discussed and the role which this input may have played in determining the developmental course for Liverpool English is evaluated. Finally, the current position of local speech in the city is examined and possible future pathways are indicated.

This chapter considers the recent history of spoken London English, from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the present. Focusing on the variety furthest from the standard, the chapter begins with an overview of the traditional dialect of Cockney, prevalent in London at the beginning of this period and associated with the densely populated, working-class neighbourhoods of the ‘East End’ of London. It then considers important socio-historical and demographic changes that have taken place in London since the mid twentieth century and that have had linguistic consequences. In the final sections, the focus shifts to two large-scale sociolinguistic studies conducted between 2004 and 2010 and describes the emergence and characteristics of Multicultural London English (MLE), arising as a result of language contact and group second language acquisition. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role that language attitudes may play in the entrenchment of this new urban London English vernacular.

The concluding chapter summarizes the results and emphasizes the impact of the findings on future heritage language research and studies on bilingualism and language change in general: It stresses the necessity of including grammatical and pragmatic contact phenomena and discusses the importance of the interplay of extralinguistic factors and various types of linguistic developments: acquisition context, impact of schooling and literacy, contact with different registers and speakers. It explains individual processes in heritage language speakers, such as entrenchment processes, co-active activation of languages in the bilingual brain, as well as language awareness and metalinguistic knowledge. In addition, the role of normativity in diaspora communities, the challenge of relic varieties and the role of Standard German as language of schooling are discussed. Moreover, the chapter includes general observations on language maintenance in German heritage communities. It emphasizes the implications for future research: implications for the development of the German language in general, implications for the theory of language contact and implications for heritage language research.

This chapter addresses the theoretical reflections on language contact, language attrition and other processes of cross-linguistic influence in minority and migrant settings. It starts with a definition of the term language attrition and the various factors that are responsible for attrition processes, such as L1 use and exposure, input and intergenerational transmission. The chapter also discusses the term “incomplete acquisition” and focusses on bilingual experience and different heritage language constellations. The second part of the chapter offers a novel approach to language contact based on cognitive grammar and usage-based assumptions. This includes a lexicon-syntax continuum based on different cognitive schemas that affect transfer processes. After defining the theoretical basis, the chapter proposes a typology of transference based on this model, distinguishing between full transference (form and meaning transference), meaning transference and structural transference. Further discussion is dedicated to reduction and restructuring processes that occur independently from the typological closeness of or distance from the contact language. The final section describes the consequences of the aforementioned phenomena for heritage language research focusing on the interdependence of individual and societal language change.

This chapter discusses the place of English within the Germanic language family and the broader Indo-European language family. It examines the kinds of evidence that have been used to reconstruct these language families, discussing the importance of regular sound changes and the vocabulary of the descendant languages. The key concepts of genetic inheritance, language contact, and divergence and convergence are also defined with reference to these language families, and the chapter discusses some of the key movements of peoples in the Migration Age. Some key linguistic features of Proto-Germanic are then discussed, such as its inflexional morphology, phonology, and lexis.

This chapter discusses the Middle English period, considering the historical events that influenced the language and its speakers from 1066 to around 1500 and the development of the language during this period. The influence of French on Middle English is discussed, including lexical and orthographic changes. The chapter also considers the development of Middle English dialects and the movements towards a new standard form of the language towards the end of the period. Middle English phonology and inflexional morphology are outlined, together with some key syntactic features, and the chapter then provides specimen passages of very early Middle English and fourteenth-century English, together with commentary. The chapter closes with a discussion of Middle Scots, outlining key features of the language and its development and providing a specimen passage.

This chapter examines the Old English period, outlining some of the key historical developments from the settlement of Germanic-speaking groups in England through to the Norman Conquest. The key features of Old English are discussed, including phonology and orthography, inflexional morphology, syntax, and lexis. The discussion also deals with Old English dialects, the impact of Old Norse on the development of English during this period, the preservation of textual material in Old English, and the West Saxon Schriftsprache. The chapter concludes with two specimen passages of late Old English prose and verse, accompanied by commentary on key linguistic features of the passages.

In this chapter, we focus on multilingualism and language contact, moving away from the strong focus on monolingualism characteristic of many traditional approaches to language history, and discussing various onsets, scenarios and outcomes of language contact. We introduce the concepts of borrowing and imposition as central constructs to understand contact-induced change in language, illustrating and critically examining these ideas in three case studies: the development of loanwords in Canadian French, Germanic substrate effects in the formation of American Englishes and mixed-language business writing in medieval Britain after the Norman Conquest. Building on these cases, we discuss which elements of the language can be transferred and explore possible pathways of social diffusion of borrowings, as well touching upon various traits and examples of code switching and similar multilingual practices in historical texts. Finally, we evaluate the constructs of pidgin and creole languages, discussing to what extent they can be seen as different in structural terms, or whether their distinctiveness arises primarily from the sociohistorical circumstances from which they arose.