Early Modern English

FROM
MIDDLE TO
MODERN
MS. HANNAH RAKESTRAW
BRITISH LITERATURE
PERIOD 2

WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ENGLISH
SPELLING?
• Why don’t we pronounce words in English like we spell them?
• Have a look:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
ZXa8cO9mXFk

• This gap between the spoken and written word emerged during the Early Modern
English period after the printing press was brought to England.

STAGES OF ENGLISH
1. Old English (449-1200): GERMANIC
2. Middle English (1200-1500): LATIN & FRENCH
3. Modern English (1500-present): WORLD

EARLY MODERN ENGLISH
(15TH – 18TH CENTURY)
 Associate this stage with the Renaissance think Shakespeare, John Donne, and Milton.
 Don’t forget that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 ;)
 If you thought there were a lot of loan words for Middle English, then you never considered those in Early Modern English!

JOHANN GUTENBERG SETS
ENGLISH IN MOTION (1448)

WILLIAM CAXTON &
ENGLISH STANDARDIZATION
 Brought first printing press to England in 1476


During Edward IV’s reign
(War of Roses)

 Accredited for beginning the standardization of
English (homogenizing regional dialects)
 Printed in the East Midland dialect RISING IMPORTANCE OF THE EAST
MIDLAND DIALECT
• Geographically central
• Largest and most densely populated area
• Spoken in Oxford and
Cambridge
• Spoken in London

CONSEQUENCES OF THE PRINTING
PRESS
1.
2.
3.
4.

Strengthening of the London dialect
Books in English are more available
Literacy rises
Freezing of English spelling


ME: beauty, bealte, buute, beuaute, bewtee, bewte, beaute, beaultye

5. Gap in English pronunciation and spelling emerges 3 MAJOR LINGUISTIC CHANGES
1. Foreign borrowings / loanwords
2. Great Vowel Shift
3. Influence of Anglo-Norman scribes and
Dutch printers

3 MAJOR LINGUISTIC CHANGES
1. Lexical (vocabulary)
 Foreign sources of word borrowing
2. Phonological (pronunciation)
 Great Vowel Shift changed pronunciation of long vowels
3. Orthographical (spelling)
 Influence of foreign scribes and printers

1. FOREIGN BORROWINGS
 Borrowing (loanword): A word adopted from another language and completely or partially naturalized, e.g. very (French), macho (Spanish)
 The printing press made books more easily available for the new middle classes.
 Since the new middle classes did not speak Latin or French, they demanded books in English.
 Many Latin and Greek books were translated into
English.
 The Latin and Greek translations introduced many Latin/Greek loan words into English.

EXPANDING WORLD… OF
VOCABULARY
 By language – Latin, Greek, French,
Spanish, Arabic, Dutch, Flemish
 By use – In other words law, home, art, drama, science, money, products, trade
 Beyond the old categories of Middle English, new ones emerged.

THANK YOU, LATIN
 Two thirds of all the loan words of the period are borrowed/taken from Latin!
 Contributed greatly to the fields of
Science/Medicine, Education, and Religion
 EX: agile, abdomen, anatomy, area, capsule, compensate, dexterity, discus, disc/disk, excavate, expensive, fictitious, gradual, habitual, insane, janitor, meditate, notorious, orbit, peninsula, physician, superintendent, ultimate, vindicate

IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME
• Many borrowed via Latin transmission
• Contributed greatly to the fields of
Science/Medicine, Education, and Religion
• EX: anonymous, atmosphere, autograph, catastrophe, climax, comedy, critic, data, ecstasy, history, ostracize, parasite, pneumonia, skeleton, tonic, tragedy
• Greek bound morphemes: -ism, -ize

NOW, OFF TO CONTINENTAL
EUROPE

A FEW MORE FROM FRENCH
• French words were introduced through trade and, like Latin and Greek, to improve the
English language
• Many French words relate to government, law, fashion, social life, and the arts/high culture • EX: chocolate, comrade, detail, essay, mustache, progress, volunteer, identity, bigot

OF COURSE, SOME FROM ITALIAN,
SPANISH & ARABIC
• Through trade and economic/political expansion the English language began to incorporate words from these languages.
• Italian: design, balcony, violin, volcano
• Spanish/Portuguese: alligator, cocoa, hammock, mango, tobacco, papaya, hurricane
• Arabic: alcove, algebra, zenith, algorithm, almanac, azimuth, alchemy, admiral, amber, cipher, orange, saffron, sugar, zero, coffee

NOW FOR THE
FUN ONES…
 Assassin—from
Arabic for hashish eaters
 Damn—as in
“Not worth a damn” and the like, taken from the Hindi word for a coin dawm

2. THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT
(1400-1700)
 The GVS was massive sound change affecting the long vowels of
English, in which the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth.
 mis ( ﾔ mees ﾕ ) mice, bite, time, night
 gees ( ﾔ gayss ﾕ ) geese, beet, feet
 leef ( ﾔ lehf ﾕ ) leaf, cheat, plead, meat
 loude ( ﾔ lood ﾕ ) loud, house, flower, tower, about
 goos ( ﾔ gohs ﾕ ) goose, boot, pool, soon
 stoon ( ﾔ stawn ﾕ ) stone, no
 Because English spelling was becoming standardized in the 15 th and
16th century, the Great Vowel Shift, which finalized after the freezing of spelling, is responsible for many of the peculiarities in English spelling.

3. FOREIGN SCRIBES & PRINTERS
•

•

•

Anglo-Norman scribes (Middle English) inserted letters that were not pronounced to write a language they didn’t know well.
• Latin: debt, doubt; delight, tight
Dutch printers probably took advantage of the variability of spelling to “justify” a line to make the spacing more correct than the spelling.
• e.g. ghost, some random silent e Didn’t omit letters that were no longer being pronounced
Didn’t omit letters that were no longer being pronounced • e.g. knee, gnaw, talk, lamb

SPELLING REFORMS, YAY
OR NAY?
 Despite variety that
Elizabethan spelling presents, there was by 1550 a nucleus of common practice.
 There were numerous attempts to reform the chaotic English spelling; however, these did not truly stick, such as Shaw’s.
 Success: Insert an e at the end of the word to indicate vowel length: made, ride, hope AND NOW YOU KNOW…