History-of-English.pdf

 HISTORY OF ENGLISH MABEL D. BUEN Instructor, College of Teacher Education MAIN PERIODS ◦England before the English (55 BC—AD600) ◦Old English (600—1100) ◦Middle English (1100—1500) ◦Early Modern English (1500—1700) ◦Present-Day English (1700—Today) England before the English (55...

 HISTORY OF ENGLISH MABEL D. BUEN Instructor, College of Teacher Education MAIN PERIODS ◦England before the English (55 BC—AD600) ◦Old English (600—1100) ◦Middle English (1100—1500) ◦Early Modern English (1500—1700) ◦Present-Day English (1700—Today) England before the English (55 BC to AD 600) The Celts ◦ The Celts or Celtic peoples are a set of peoples of Indo-European origin, distributed in various regions of Europe and Asia Minor, who likely originated in Western Europe around the fifth century BC. Celts ◦ Despite their dominance in Britain at an early formative stage of its development, the Celts have had very little impact on the English language, leaving only a few little-used words such as: brock (an old word for a badger) coombe (a word for a valley) crag and tor (both words for a rocky peak) British places with Celtic origins: Kent, York, London, Dover, Thames, Avon, Trent, Severn, Cornwall Roman Conquest of Britain Julius Caesar started the conquest of Britain in 55 BC. By AD 50, most of the land was already under Roman power. Hadrian’s Wall ◦ The linguistic legacy of the Romans’ time in Britain, like that of the Celts, was surprisingly limited to less than 200 “loanwords”: win (wine), butere (butter), caese (cheese), piper (pepper), candel (candle), cetel (kettle), disc (dish), cycene (kitchen), ancor (anchor), belt (belt), sacc (sack), catte (cat), plante (plant), rosa (rose), cest (chest), pund (pound), munt (mountain), straet (street), wic (village), mil (mile), port (harbour), weall (wall), etc. Decline of the Roman Empire ◦ The Romans, under attack at home from Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals, abandoned Britain to the Celts in AD 410, completing their withdrawal by AD 436. ◦ Resources were pulled out ◦ Britain became vulnerable to raiding “barbarians” (uncivilized people) ◦ Britons (Celts) were driven back to the mountain areas and were replaced with the Germanic speaking tribes (5th to 6th Century) Old English (600 to 1100) Invasions of Germanic Tribes ◦ Injected a new set of religious beliefs, military tactics, and literature into Britain ◦ Had no written language ◦ Had a pagan belief system closely related to nature ◦ Organized a social class system: ◦ King ◦ Nobles ◦ Knights ◦ Free peasants ◦ Slaves ◦ These Germanic tribes took over the lands of the Britons, intermarried with the locals, and overtime rose to power as heads of the villages. Settlement routes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes All these peoples all spoke variations of a West Germanic tongue, similar to modern Frisian, variations that were different but probably close enough to be mutually intelligible. Short poem (“Butter, bread and green cheese”) and numbers 1-10 in modern Frisian (16 sec) (from Peter Meijes Tiersma). Frisian words which were incorporated into English: miel (meal), laam (lamb), goes (goose), bûter (butter), tsiis (cheese), see (sea), boat (boat), stoarm (storm), rein (rain), snie (snow), frieze (freeze), froast (frost), mist (mist), sliepe (sleep), blau (blue), trije (three), fjour (four), etc. ◦ The Germanic tribes settled in seven smaller kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy: the Saxons in Essex, Wessex and Sussex; the Angles in East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria; and the Jutes in Kent. Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Heptarchy) c. 650 ◦ The new Anglo-Saxon nation, once known in antiquity as Albion and then Britannia under the Romans, nevertheless became known as Anglaland or Englaland (the Land of the Angles), later shortened to England, and its emerging language as Englisc (now referred to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon). Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Heptarchy) c. 650  The Coming of Christianity and Literacy ◦ St. Augustine and his 40 missionaries from Rome brought Christianity to the pagan Anglo-Saxons of the rest of England in AD 597. ◦ Augustine was made Archbishop of Canterbury in AD 601 and several great monasteries and centers of learning were established particularly in Northumbria. St. Augustine of Canterbury ◦ The Celts and the early Anglo- Saxons used an alphabet of runes, angular characters originally developed for scratching onto wood or stone. Anglo-Saxon runes ◦ The Latin language the missionaries brought was still only used by the educated ruling classes and Church functionaries, and Latin was only a minor influence on the English language at this time, being largely restricted to the naming of Church dignitaries and ceremonies. priest, vicar, altar, mass, church, bishop, pope, nun, angel, verse, baptism, monk, eucharist, candle, temple chorus, cleric, creed, cross, demon, disciple, hymn, paradise, prior, sabbath fork, spade, chest, spider, school, tower, plant, rose, lily, circle, paper, sock, mat, cook, ◦ Old English literature flowered remarkably quickly after Augustine’s arrival. This was especially notable in the north-eastern kingdom of Northumbria, which provided England with its: ◦ First great poet: CAEDMON in the 7th Century ◦ First great historian: VENERABLE BEDE in the 7th to 8th Century ◦ First great scholar: ALCUIN of York in the 8th Century CAEDMON VENERABLE BEDE ALCUIN of York ◦ The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is usually considered to be “Cædmon’s Hymn”, composed between 658 and 680.  ◦ The best-known Anglo-Saxon long epic poem is “Beowulf”. ◦ “Beowulf” may have been written any time between the 8th and the early 11th Century by an unknown author or authors, or, most likely, it was written in the 8th Century and then revised in the 10th or 11th Century. Beginning of the Prologue of “Beowulf” Common words today with Old English Roots water, earth, house, food, drink, sleep, sing, night, strong, the, a, be, of, he, she, you, no, not It is estimated that about 85% of the 30,000 or so Anglo-Saxon words gradually died out under the cultural onslaught of the Vikings and the Normans who would come after them, leaving a total of only around 4,500. This represents less than 1% of modern English vocabulary, but it includes some of the most fundamental words. man, wife, child, son, daughter, brother, friend, live, fight, make, use, love, like, look, drink, food, eat, sleep, sing, sun, moon, earth, ground, wood, field, house, home, people, family, horse, fish, far m, water, time, eyes, ears, mouth, nose, strong, work, come, go, be, find, see, look, laughter, night, day, sun, first, many, one, two, other, some, what, when, which, where, word to, for, but, and, at, in, on, from most important “function” words VIKING INVASION (8th to 11th Century) ◦ Invasions from Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, and Denmark) ◦ Happened over three centuries ◦ Brought their Scandinavian language with them, including Old Norse Their burning, plundering, and killing earned them the name víkingr, meaning “pirate” in the early Scandinavian languages.  Battle of Edington (878) By 871, the Vikings had defeated the armies of Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia. Alfred the Great The only Anglo-Saxon kingdom which wasn’t defeated was Wessex. Led by their king, Alfred, the West Saxons defeated the Viking leader Guthrum at Edington in Wiltshire in 878. Battle of Edington The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Originally compiled on the orders of King Alfred the Great and added to by generations of anonymous authors, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle narrates the history of England, the development of Christianity, Anglo-Saxon culture and so much more. VIKING INVASION (8th to 11th Century) The greatest of these Viking kings was King Cnut, who was king of Denmark as well as of England. A Christian, he did not force the English to obey Danish law; instead, he recognised Anglo-Saxon law and customs The last serious Viking invasion was led by a Norwegian king called Harald Hardrada in 1066, but he was defeated by the English King Harold at the battle of Stamford Bridge just two weeks before the famous Battle of Hastings. Harold Godwinson was the last Anglo- Saxon King of England, ruling from January 1066 until his death at the Battle of Hastings the same year. English Words from Old Norse Middle English (1100 to 1500) Norman Conquest (1066) Before he became the king of England, William I was one of the mightiest nobles in France as the duke of Normandy, but he is best remembered for leading the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, which changed the course of English history and earned him the sobriquet William the Conqueror. Decline of English (1066-1204) ◦ French became the dominant language in England, spoken by the upper classes from 1066 until late in the 14th century. ◦ The English language was relegated to the lower classes and was heavily influenced by French in matters of vocabulary, prosody, and spelling ◦ There was the development of bilingualism among Norman officials and supervisors; some marriages between French and English people ◦ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued to be written until 1154 Norman French- language of the royal court/ nobility Old English – language of peasantry/ lower class pig cow chicken From Old English pork beef poultry From Norman French Other examples of words of French origin: tax, estate, trouble, duty, pay, table, boil, serve, roast, dine, religion, savior; pray, trinity Resurgence of English ◦ King John lost significant territories in France in 1204, including Normandy, which reduced the influence of the French language among the English nobility. ◦ Because of this, the Norman nobles were forced to look more to their English properties. ◦ Increasingly out of touch with their properties in France and with the French court and culture in general, they soon began to look at themselves as English. ◦ Norman French began gradually to degenerate and atrophy. ◦ While some in England spoke French and some spoke Latin (and a few spoke both), everyone, from the highest to the lowest, spoke English, and it gradually King John of England became the lingua franca of the nation once again. (aka John Lackland) Resurgence of English ◦ French remained the official language of England until the second half of 14th c.; ◦ by mid to late 14th c. English was the normal medium of instruction; ◦ In 1362 English became the official language of legal proceedings; ◦ everyone in England spoke English by the end of the 14th c., displacing French, Norse, and Celtic languages ◦ increase in English writing, more common in legal documents than French or Latin by 15th c. Resurgence of English ◦ The Black Death of 1349 – 1350 killed about a third of the English population (which was around 4 million at that time), including a disproportionate number of the Latin- speaking clergy. ◦ After the plague, the English-speaking laboring and merchant classes grew in economic and social importance and, within the short period of a decade, the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was largely over. Resurgence of English The Hundred Years’ War against France (1337 – 1453) had the effect of branding French as the language of the enemy and the status of English rose as a consequence. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) ◦ The 14th century is known as the age of Chaucer. It was the age of transition, a transformation of medieval to modern times. ◦ Geoffrey Chaucer began writing his famous “Canterbury Tales” in the early 1380s, and crucially chose to write it in English. ◦ The “Canterbury Tales” is usually considered the first great works of English literature, and the first demonstration of the artistic legitimacy of vernacular Middle English, as opposed to French or Latin. Introduction of the Printing Press to England by William Caxton (1476) Caxton was interested in literature and worked as a translator. He worked to translate French work by hand, which was a long process. He purchased a printing press and used it to print the first book in the English language in 1476 (Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye or the Collection of the Histories of Troy).  The first book printed in English was “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye” by Raoul Lefevre, translated by William Caxton in 1473 (from John Rylands University Library) ◦ The introduction of the printing press in 1476 helped stabilize spelling and grammar by distributing texts in a selected standard of English. ◦ Dictionaries also greatly influenced the standardization of English as they helped to stabilize the definition of words and their spellings. Early Modern English (1500—1700) Printing Press and Standardization ◦ The final major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the printing press, one of the world’s great technological innovations, introduced into England by William Caxton in 1476 (Johann Gutenberg had originally invented the printing press in Germany around 1450). ◦ At the time of the introduction of printing, there was a huge variety of different spellings. ◦ For example, the word church could be spelled in 30 different ways, people in 22, receive in 45, she in 60, and though in an almost unbelievable 500 variations.  Printing Press and Standardization ◦ The Chancery of Westminster made some efforts from the 1430s onwards to set standard spellings for official documents (e.g., modern spellings of such, right, not, but, these, any, many, can, cannot, but, shall, should, could, ought, thoro ugh, etc.) ◦ Chancery Standard contributed significantly to the development of Standard English. ◦ With the advent of mass printing, Chancery Standard became the de facto standard and, over time, spelling and grammar gradually became more and more fixed. “East Midlands triangle” (London-Oxford-Cambridge) (printing press preferences) Example: Use of Northern English they, their, and them in preference to the London equivalents hi, hir, and hem “the” was spelled as “ye” because no character for its Old English spelling was available (þe)  booke and boke axed and axyd had/hadd/hadde, dog/dogg/dogge, well/wel, which/whiche, fellow/felow/felowe/fallow/fallowe More than 80 different spellings of Shakespeare’s name have been recorded, and he himself spelled it differently in each of his six known signatures, including two different versions in his own will Dictionaries and Grammars ◦ The first English dictionary, “A Table Alphabeticall”, was published by English schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey in 1604. The book contained 2,543 of what he called “hard words” ◦ The first attempt to list ALL the words in the English language was “An Universall Etymological English Dictionary”, compiled by Nathaniel Bailey in 1721 (the 1736 edition contained about 60,000 entries).  ◦ An impressive academic achievement in its own right, Johnson’s 43,000 word dictionary remained the pre- eminent English dictionary until the much more comprehensive “Oxford English Dictionary” 150 more years later, although it was actually riddled ◦ The first dictionary considered with inconsistencies in both anything like reliable was Samuel spelling and definitions. Johnson’s “Dictionary of the English Language”, published in 1755, over 150 years after Cawdrey’s. Some terms from Johnson’s Dictionary which have not survived: digladation, cubiculary, incompossibility, clancular, denominable, opiniatry, ariolation, assation, ataraxy, deuteroscopy, disubitary, esurine, estuation, indignate, etc. Some of Johnson’s omitted words from his dictionary which survived: bang, budge, fuss, gambler, shabby and touchy, etc. Dictionaries William Caxton, French-English vocabulary for travelers (1480) Richard Mulcaster's treatise on education, The Elementarie (1582), 8,000 English words but no definitions Roger Williams's Key into the Languages of America (1643) First English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall (1604), 2,500 rare and borrowed words, intended for literate women who knew no Latin or French, and wanted to read the Bible; concern with correctness John Bullokar's An English Expositor (1616), marked archaic words Henry Cockeram's English Dictionarie (1623), including sections on refined and vulgar words and mythology Thomas Blount's Glossographia (1656), 11,000 entries, cited sources and etymologies Dictionaries John Kersey's A New English Dictionary (1702), first to include everyday words Nathaniel Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) and Dictionarium Britannicum (1730), 48,000 entries, first modern lexicographer, ordinary words, etymologies, cognate forms, stress placement Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), 40,000 entries, based on Dictionarium Britannicum; illustrative quotations Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) Oxford English Dictionary (OED), dictionary on historical principles; followed model of Johnson's dictionary; origins in 1857 proposals at Philological Society in London; first installment published 1884; first full version 1928; second edition 1989, 290,500 main entries  Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) based on Grammar classical models Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence (1577), dictionary of rhetorical tropes William Bullokar's Bref Grammar (1586) ◦ 18th-century attempts to define Alexander Gil's Logonomia Anglica (1621), very tied to Latin proper and improper usage; Jeremiah Wharton's The English Grammar (1654), aspiring middle classes desire to accepted lack of inflections define and acquire "proper" Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English linguistic behavior to distinguish Grammar (1762), most prominent of 18th c. grammars; themselves from lower classes authoritarian, prescriptive, moralistic tone Joseph Priestley's The Rudiments of English Grammar (1761), more enlightened and liberal attitude ◦ 18th c. grammarians: attempt to towards language usage, awareness of change and provide rules and prevent further conventionality of language features "decay" of language Noah Webster's Plain and Comprehensive Grammar (1784), American grammar, based on common usage but concerned with "misuse" by Irish and Scots immigrants  Proposed Spelling Reforms ◦ John Cheke (1569): proposal for removal of all silent letters ◦ Sir Thomas Smith (1568): proposal to make letters into "pictures" of speech; elimination of redundant letters like c and q; reintroduction of thorn (þ), use of theta θ for [ð]; similar proposals by John Hart (1570): vowel length marked with diacritical proposals for use of diacritics to indicate sound symbols like the macron (a horizontal length; elimination of y, w, c, capital letters bar on top of a vowel to indicate a William Bullokar (1580): proposed diacritics long sound) and new symbols, noted the desirability of having a dictionary and grammar to set standards Other Changes ◦ French and Latin words with unpronounced initial "h" led to English words with pronounced initial h: habit, hectic, history, horror (exceptions: hour, honor) (compare heir/heritage) ◦ apostrophe used in contractions and extensive use of contractions; Early Modern English preferred proclitic contractions ('tis), while Modern English prefers enclitic contractions (it’s) ◦ addition of phonemic velar nasal ([ŋ], as in 'hu/ng/') due to loss of g in final positions; evidence from alternative spellings: tacklin/tackling, shilin/shilling ◦ comma replaced the virgule (/) as punctuation for a pause ◦ attempt to preserve "purity" of English, reviving older English words; archaizers like Edmund Spenser (1552-1599); compounding of English words: Arthur Golding (1587): "fleshstrings" (instead of the French borrowing "muscles"), "grosswitted" (instead of the French borrowing "stupid") ◦ others tried to produce native English technical vocabulary: threlike (equilateral triangle), ◦ likejamme (parallelogram), endsay (conclusion), ◦ saywhat (definition), dry mock (irony) The Great Vowel Shift ◦ The Early ME was marked by the completion of the GVS ◦ Movement of vowels in vowel space ◦ Great Vowel Shift, a series of significant and parallel changes in the articulation of English long vowels, extending from approximately the 15th to the 18th century and marking a major phonological distinction between Middle English and Early Modern English. child, loud, good, tooth  Middle English Modern English (Before the Shift) (today’s pronunciation) House “hoos” House Meet “mate” Meet Mouse “moos” Mouse Been “bain” Been Her “here” Her Wife “wefe” Wife The English Renaissance ◦ The English Renaissance roughly covers the 16th and early 17th Century and is often referred to as the “Elizabethan Era” or the “Age of Shakespeare” after the most important monarch and most famous writer of the period. Queen Elizabeth I presided over the English Renaissance The English Renaissance ◦ interest in classical learning; many loanwords; attempts to improve English according to vocabulary, grammar, and style of classical languages like Greek and Latin ◦ new vocabulary developed for technical and scientific work; also new words related to exploration, discovery, and colonialism ◦ Between 1500 and 1650, an estimated 10,000-12,000 new words were coined, about half of which are still in use today. Francis Bacon: thermometer, pneumonia, skeleton and encyclopaedia Isaac Newton: Lens, refraction, etc. Sir Thomas Elyot: animate, describe, dedicate, esteem, maturity, exhaust and modesty Sir Thomas More absurdity, active, communicate, education, utopia, acceptance, exact, e xplain, exaggerate John Milton: lovelorn, fragrance and pandemonium William Shakespeare William Shakespeare single-handedly changed the English language to a significant extent in the late 16th and early 17th Century. He had a vast vocabulary (34,000 words by some counts) and he personally coined an estimated 2,000 neologisms or new words in his many works bare-faced, critical, leapfrog, monumental, castigate, majestic, obscene, frugal, aerial, gnarled, homicide, brittle, radiance, dwindle, puking, countless, submerged, vast, lack-lustre, bump, cranny, fitful, premeditated, assassination, courtship, eyeballs, ill-tuned, hot-blooded, laughable, dislocate, accommodation, eventful, pell- mell, aggravate, excellent, fretful, fragrant, gust, hint, hurry, lonely, summit, pedant, gloomy (and hundreds of other terms still commonly used today) Shakespeare’s phrases in common use today: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, brave new world, in my mind’s eye, laughing stock, love is blind, star-crossed lovers, as luck would have it, fast and loose, once more into the breach, sea change, there’s the rub, to the manner born, a foregone conclusion, beggars all description, it’s Greek to me, a tower of strength, make a virtue of necessity, brevity is the soul of wit, with bated breath, more in sorrow than in anger, truth will out, cold comfort, cruel only to be kind, fool’s paradise and flesh and blood  Note: The effects of the Great Vowel Shift were underway, but by no means complete, by the time of Shakespeare. A comparison of a passage from “King Lear” in the 1623 First Folio with the same passage from a more familiar modern edition above gives some idea of some of the changes that were still underway in Shakespeare’s time International Trade ◦ While all these important developments were underway, British naval superiority was also growing. ◦ In the 16th and 17th Century, international trade expanded immensely, and loanwords were absorbed from the languages of many other countries throughout the world, including those of other trading and imperial nations such as Spain, Portugal Major global trade routes, 1400-1800 and the Netherlands. ◦ French (e.g. bizarre, ballet, sachet, crew, progress, chocolate, salon, duel, brigade, infantry, comrade, volunteer, detail, passport, explorer, ticket, machine, cuisine, prestige, garage, shock, moustache, vogue); ◦ Italian (e.g. carnival, fiasco, arsenal, casino, miniature, design, bankrupt, grotto, studio, umbrella, rocket, ballot, balcony, macaroni, piano, opera, violin); ◦ Spanish (e.g. armada, bravado, cork, barricade, cannibal); ◦ Portuguese (e.g. breeze, tank, fetish, marmalade, molasses); ◦ German (e.g. kindergarten, noodle, bum, dumb, dollar, muffin, hex, wanderlust, gimmick, waltz, seminar, ouch!); ◦ Dutch/Flemish ( e.g. bale, spool, stripe, holster, skipper, dam, booze, fucking, crap, bugger, hunk, poll, scrap, curl, scum, knapsack, sketch, landscape, easel, smuggle, caboose, yacht, cruise, dock, buoy, keelhaul, reef, bluff, freight, leak, snoop, spook, sleigh, brick, pump, boss, lottery); ◦ Basque (e.g. bizarre, anchovy); ◦ Norwegian (e.g. maelstrom, iceberg, ski, slalom, troll); ◦ Icelandic (e.g. mumps, saga, geyser); ◦ Finnish (e.g. sauna); ◦ Persian (e.g. shawl, lemon, caravan, bazaar, tambourine); ◦ Arabic (e.g. harem, jar, magazine, algebra, algorithm, almanac, alchemy, zenith, admiral, sherbet, saffron, coffee, alcohol, mattress, syrup, hazard, lute); ◦ Turkish (e.g. coffee, yoghurt, caviar, horde, chess, kiosk, tulip, turban); ◦ Russian (e.g. sable, mammoth); ◦ Japanese (e.g. tycoon, geisha, karate, samurai); ◦ Malay (e.g. bamboo, amok, caddy, gong, ketchup); ◦ Chinese (e.g. tea, typhoon, kowtow). ◦ Polynesian (e.g. taboo, tatoo). Present-Day English (1700—Today) Braj Kachru's Three Concentric Circles Model of the English Language Modern English Vocabulary