HISTORY OF ENGLISH

MAIN PERIODS
1. Old English  449 - 1066
2. Middle English  1066 - ca. 1500
3. Early Middle English  ca. 1500 - ca. 1800
4. Late Middle English  ca. 1800 – Present

OLD ENGLISH
Prehistoric Britain
About 500,000 years there was the first occupation of England by bands of hunters in Southern and
Western England. As temperature dropped, Britain was abandoned. And about 15,000 years ago
there was a permanent occupation.

About 8,000 years ago Britain became an island owing to the melting of the ice. Before 6,000
Neolithic immigrants from Western Europe introduced farming into the island.

Bronze age
Around 4500 years ago, Beaker people immigrated to Britain from the continent and brought
metal-working skills. For example, the stone circles or the famous Stonehenge are works of that
time (4500-3600 years ago).

The Celts in Britain

After that we have the Celtic people that first settled in England and then all over Europe. We have
two different groups of Celts:

1. 300-2400 years ago

a. Goidelic-speaking Celts (Ireland and Scotland)
b. Brythonic-speaking Celts (Wales, Cornwall)
2. 1 century BC - a smaller wave of Belgic Celts settled in Southern England (possibly
st

fleeing from Roman Invasions)

The Celts were a fragmented group of tribes, not a homogeneous people.

Celts in Continental Europe and Britain

From the 3rd century BC, the Celts settled in a large area all over Europe (Celtiberians, Galicia (NW
Spain), Galatia (Turkey), Galati, the Gauls – different names according to the area).

They were attacked by Romans on the Continent (Roman Gallia) and later on the island as well.
Some example of Celtic languages are:

 Continental
o Celtiberian, Galatian, Gallaecian, Gaulish, Lepontic, Noric
 Insular
o Brittonic (Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, Breton), Gaelic (Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic)

Today, there are only two groups of Celtic languages that survived:

 Gaelic or Goidelic  Ireland, Isle of Man, Ebridi, Scotland

 British or Brythonic  Wales, Brittany

Recent theories (genetics)

 Three quarters of Britons came as hunter-gatherers between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago
o after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland
and divided into islands
 Subsequent separation from Europe has preserves a genetic time capsule of south-western
Europe
o British related to the Basques?
 Based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles,
Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with “Basque”
pioneers
 Major genetic change with Beaker Peoples
 Open debate on these themes

Roman Britannia
There were Caesar’s raids in 55 and 54 BC, but the Roman conquest of Britain took place under
Claudius in 43 AD. They had no definite control over Caledonia (Roman name for Scotland) in the
North. Also Ireland was never Romanised. There were just 40,000 people who settled in Roman
England. They built streets, towns, schools, administration. There were 5 main towns:
Verulamium, Gloucester, Colchester, Licoln, York. Latin was used as 2nd language, never
became spoken by local people. Later, anyway, the use of Latin was strengthened by Celts’
Christianisation of the island: in 314 AD the Council of Arles was attended by bishops from
London, Colchester and York.

In 410 AD ca., Roman troops depart from Britain.

Old English: the roots

The Romans left Britain in 410 and in ca. 449 there were the first invasions by the Anglo-Saxons.
They settled in England until 1066 ca.
From the very beginning, it was a time of linguistic complexity: the Angles, the Saxons and the
Jutes just spoke their own dialect and there was also a substratum of people who spoke Celtic
languages.

Later, there was also Latin, that was left mainly as a written language and Latin influence was due
to the religious conversion. Later, there were Scandinavian invasions, so there was also this
influence on the island.

In the Anglo-Saxon England there were lots of kingdoms, but there was a certain supremacy of the
West Saxon kingdom, which eventually led to a language standard of the Old English.

Anglo-Saxons invasions
Anglo-Saxons mercenaries were hired by Celtic kings after 410 because there was a pressure
against them and they tried to defend themselves. They actually invaded England in 449.

Beda wrote Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum which is our main source about Anglo-Saxon
England from Roman invasions to his own times.

There was a Celtic resistance to Anglo-Saxon invaders (legendary figures King Arthur).

- Walas (Anglo-Saxon) = foreing, enemy, Celt, Roman  Wales, Cornewall, Welsh, Walsh,
Wallace, Walnut -

Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
There were 7 Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (some of them much smaller) called the Heptarchy:

1. Wessex 5. East Anglia

2. Sussex 6. Mercia
3. Essex 7. Northumbria
4. Kent

This political fragmentation was reflected in the languages they spoke, it meant a linguistic
fragmentation of course.

Some of these kingdoms had a large predominance in the country: Northumbria (7 th century),
Mercia (8th century), Wessex (9th-11th centuries).

Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity

This conversion changed the culture and had an impact on the language too.

 432-461: Scots (Ireland) converted by St Patrick

 563: St Columba moved from Ireland to Iona and there he founded an important community
of monasteries
 597: St Columba dies. Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, arrives in Kent and
converts Ethelbert, king of Kent, to Christianity
  627: Ethelburga, princess of Kent, marries king Edwin of Northumbria. Her chaplain
Paoulinus converts Edwin
 Wars among the different A-S kingdoms (either Christianised or otherwise)
 The conversion to Christianity was a slow long process
 Irish Christianity vs Roman Christianity – the Irish monks were more influential than the
Roman ones. Slowly, we saw that the Roman form of Catholicism had the upper hand
 The conversion to Christianity meant of course that Latin became the written language of
religion and culture, especially in the monasteries because the only people who could read
and write were monks
 Religion and political power

Scandinavian (Viking) invasions

The Scandinavian invasions began from the late 8th century inwards: they destroyed most of the
abbeys on the coasts of England (Lindisfarne – 793, Jarrow – 794, Iona – 795) and changed the
cultural history of the island because those were the most important cultural centres of England in
those years.

In 865 a Danish army occupies East Anglia and Northumbria (Mercia was occupied in 874). Then
the South of England was attacked too: in 870 Wessex was under attack but there was a resistance
led by king Aethelred and his younger brother Alfred (to be king 871-99). Alfred won against the
Vikings in 879 in Edington. After that, he conquered London in 866, so that’s why he became the
most important Anglo-Saxon figure.

Of course there were some linguistic consequences of Scandinavian invasions: Vikings spoke the
Old Norse and it became a cognate language with Old English (Anglo-Saxon). There were
loanwords and the ongoing change was made more evident and easier.

Danelaw
It was the area that was conquered and administrated by the Vikings/Scandinavians. The Southern
limit of the Danelaw was the Roman road known as Watling Street, running from London to North
Wales. North of that line the Danes ruled until the West Saxon kings re-conquered the Danelaw in
the 10th century.

Viking did not conquer all England.

King Alfred’s reign (871-899)

Under King Alfred, there was a cultural reconstruction that was meant to support the prestige of
the Anglo-Saxon Old English: translations from Latin into Old English were made or promoted by
the king himself. The idea was also to re-construct a sort of cultural and historical path, so they
began to write chronicles called Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, also to raise awareness of their own past.

King Alfred came from the South West of England (Wessex), so he made the West-Saxon dialect
the most important of all the dialect. From the 9 th to the 11th it was the most important form of
English because he used this variety of Anglo-Saxon to write some works and so we have many
witnesses of this language. It also helped giving the island a OE standard.

Anglo-Saxon poetry and prose

The most important poetry work of Old English is Beowulf: it is the only complete extant epic in
Germanic Middle Ages. Even though it is written in Anglo-Saxon, the story is set in Denmark and
Sweden: it draws a common Germanic background.

Another important work of the Old English period is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: it is a history of
England from Julius Caesar up to 1154. It is the main Anglo-Saxon prose work and was probably
begun under King Alfred’s reign.

10th-century England
 917-920: Anglo-Saxons re-conquered Danelaw (under Vikings control)
 959-975: greatest time of English monarchy under King Edgar
 There was a Benedictine/monastic revival
o Rise of a tradition of religious prose
o First: Dunstan, Oswald, Aethelwold | Later: Aelfric (homilies and a grammar of
Anglo-Saxon), Wulfstan (counsellor of two kings)
 Late 10th century is the time when Anglo-Saxon poetry was copied (many transcriptions -
manuscripts)
o Beowulf MS, Junius MS, Exeter Book, Vercelli Book

England between 10th and 11th centuries

 Late 10th century: renewed Danish attacks
 991: Anglo-Saxons defeated at Maldon; Olaf Tryggvason invades England
 1013: king Aethelred the Unready (978-1016) flees to Normandy; Sweyn of Denmark is
made king of England
 Sweyn’s son, Knut (1016.35) rules over Denmark, Normandy and England (which is
divided into 4 earldoms: Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria
 1042: Edward the Confessor, Aethelred’s son, becomes king of Wessex (1042-66)
 1066: when Edward dies, Harold, the son of Gowin of Wessex, is made king of England
 In the late September 1066 Harold repels (battle of Stamford Bridge) a joint attack by his
own brother Tostig and the king of Norway
 William of Normandy invades England from across the Channel  Battle of Hasting,
on October 14th, 1066.

Old English as a Germanic language

 Alphabet: runes, Latin alphabet
 Phonology: consonants continue largely unchanged, vowels changed a lot
 Morphosyntax: flexional system simplified, more rigid word order, development of
function words
 Vocabulary: basic lexis of Germanic origins
Old English – Phonology
 Consonants
o Substantial changes from Germanic to OE
o Large continuity from Old to Present-Day English
 Vowels
o Large continuity from Germanic to OE
o Substantial changes from Old to Present-Day English

Examples (English vs German)

modor/mother mutter
neaht/night nacht
deop (deep) tief
etan (eat) essen
muƥ (mouth) mund
stan (stone) stein
cyning (king) könig

Old English – Morphosyntax

Old English is a synthetic language: it has a rich morphology, no auxiliary verbs and no fixed
word order.

Noun declension – STAN Singular Plural

Nominative STAN STANAS
Genitive STANES STANA
Dative STANE STANUM
Accusative STAN STANAS

STRONG INFINITI PRETERI PRETERI PAST

VERBS VE TE, TE, PARTICI
SINGULA PLURAL PLE
R

1ST CLASS RIDAN RAD RIDON RIDEN

3RD HELPAN HEALP HULPON HOLPEN

CLASS A

The different endings became less and less phonologically relevant and developed the using of
prepositions.
Old English – Lexis
There were Celtic, Latin and Scandinavian influences on Old English.

 Marked Germanic character for

o Germanic roots of English
o Limited contacts with other languages during the Anglo-Saxon period
o Word formation strategies:
 “Internal” and “mixed” methods rather than “external” methods
 Basic lexis
 Anglo-Saxons invaders occupy the land:
o Walas (foreign, enemy, Roman)  Wales, Cornwall, welsh, Walsh, Wallace, walnut
o Engla-land; Ham (= village | TED. Heim); Tun (= enclosure, town | TED. Zaun,
hedge); Burh (= fortified town)  Burton (burh-tun), -byrig (Salisbury, Newbury,
Canterbury)
o –ing (= son of)  OE cyning, -ingas (= descendants of)  Reading, Worthing,
Barking, Hasting, Buckingham, Nottingham, Birmingham
o LAT via strata  OE stræt, stret  Stratford, Streatham; OE ford (cfr TED furt) 
Shalford, Bradford, Stamford, Oxford
 Derivation
 Composition

From Old to Present-Day English as a Germanic language

This family is divided into North Germanic (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) and
West Germanic (English, Frisian, Flemish, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Yiddish). The now defunct
East Germanic branch consisted of Gothic, which is extinct.

Although English is a member of the Germanic branch of Indo-European and retains much of the
basic structure of its origin, it has an exceptionally mixed lexicon. During the 1400 years of its
documented history, it has borrowed extensively a systematically from its Germanic and Romance
neighbours and from Latin and Greek, as well as more sporadically from other languages.

Old English loanwords

The English lexicon has been influenced by the vocabulary of other languages since even before
English itself developed. This is a natural process, since English (and, before it, the Germanic
languages on the European mainland) has always been in contact with other languages and cultures,
which meant it needed terms to describe new concepts and objects encountered through this contact.
Borrowing words from the contact languages was one way to accomplish this.

One main source of borrows was the Celtic language.

Also Latin was a great source of loanwords. There were three different ways of sources:

1. Romans (55-410 AD)  Celts (450-600 AD)  Anglo-Saxons

 a. Around 600 words from Romans to Celts, only a few from Celts to Anglo-Saxons –
especially place-names
2. Romans  Germanic tribes (Anglo-Saxons among them – before 450 AD)
a. About 400 loanwords from Latin to Germanic languages (350-450 AD)
3. Latin evangelizers  Old English (after 600 AD)
a. Re-borrowings
b. Culture
c. Religion
d. Calques

There were Scandinavian loanwords too.

 Peculiar features:
o Immigration of whole tribes/people
o Military phase followed by mixing of populations
o Common ancestry (i.e. Germanic roots) between Old English and Old Norse
o Old Norse was an oral language, not written
 Results: deep, long-lasting and long-dated influence
 Typology of Old Norse alloglot influence:
o Semantic loans
o Phonological loans
o Loanwords
 New additions to the English lexical store
 Existing OE words replaced
 Old Norse loans and Old English words coexist
o Place-names

MIDDLE ENGLISH
The Norman Conquest (1066)
There were social consequences to this nation: a new élite, the French Scandinavian, came to the
power and changed the political system. Consequentially, there were also linguistic changes: they
brought their own language, the Anglo-Norman language, the French language spoken in the
North of France at that time.
There were other indirect consequences:

 the Old English written tradition broke up;

 the Old English standard was abandoned;
 there was an acceleration of existing changes.
XII century
Henry II (1154-89) was a king that ruled for a long time; under his sovereign there were vast
dominions in France (in the South too): that monarchy was an Anglo-French one. He was also the
king who invaded and conquest Celtic areas (Ireland).

The following king, Richard I the Lionheart (1189-99), ruled just for ten years. He was a warrior, he
did not speak English but French and was seldom in Great Britain at that time. He left no heirs and
his brother succeeded him. John Lackland (1199-1216) he was the worst of Angevins because he
lost nearly all the land in France. He was forced to grant the Barons the famous Magna Charta in
1215.

Multilinguism
The Middle English period is characterized by a multilingualism.

 The Celtic tongues were widely used in vast areas of the British isle, such as Cornwall,
Wales, Scotland and Ireland (English was not used in these areas).
 There were Scandinavian tongues, spoken in the ex-Danelaw (area conquered by the
Vikings in the Midlands and North of England).
 Anglo-Norman French, used especially by what the nobility was at that time.
 Latin, the language of the Church, especially in the written form (only members of the
Church could write, the other people were illiterate).
 English, not a prestigious language, but was widely spoken by common people.

Influences on English
The Scandinavian influence was very strong in the previous centuries and went on during the
Norman Conquest.

There were semantic borrowings (prestito semantico, si trasporta il significato di quella parola
scandinava ad un’altra già esistente in Old English)

 dream with the same meaning as today is probably related to Old Norse draumr
 in Old English dream meant only joy, mirth and music

There are phonological borrowings

 yive changed to guttural “g” by influence of Old Norse gefa, to give)

 shirt/skirt, church/kirk (ON kirkja “church”)

There were also lexical borrowings (cnif, windowe, take, they/their/them)

Latin was almost the most important source of words in different categories.

 Religion (credo, bull, psalm)

 Culture (desk, incipit, library)
 Science (onyx, locust, juniper)
Anglo-Norman influence
Anglo-Norman was not a common language in this period in England. It was a language of power,
used by the noble élite in court. In fact, only the nobles were bilingual: merchants were bilingual
only for practical purposes.

Old Norse, the language of the Vikings or Scandinavians of 9th and 10th centuries, was never a
prestigious language, even though the Vikings invaded and conquered parts of England. Anglo-
Norman French was, on the other hand, a language of culture, it did have a literature, it was used as
a political language (written form), even though it was limited to those areas.

In the 13th century (1204), French began to decline in England: it was very important for a century
and a half and began to decline when the English monarchy lost almost all its possessions in France
with John Lackland. Since then, French survived as a language of culture and trade.

There are lots of Anglo-Norman borrowings in English.

 Names of animals remained of Germanic origins

o Ox, sheep, swine, calf existed in Old English and survived into Middle English
period
 Their meat, eaten only by the noble, took French names
o Beef, mutton, bacon, venison, veal are words of French origins that became English
words in the Middle English period
 Family relation names remained Germanic
 Names of distant relatives were replaced by words of French origins
o Uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece
 Father-in-law and mother-in-law are calques on French
 Many words relating to power have French origins
o Administration: parliament, bill, act, chancellor
o Law & property: treasure, castle, court, judge, justice, prison, money
o Titles: prince, duke, marquis, baron, etc.
o War: battle, siege, assault, banner, tower, etc.

There were two varieties of French spoken in those centuries: Anglo-Norman French and Central
French.
The first was the type of French spoken at the time of the Norman conquest and in the following
decades.
The second was spoken in the following centuries by the Angevine nobility and was typical of the
Southern regions of France.
Anglo-Norman French became more influential from the 12 th century, then it was replaced by the
Central French because the Anglo-Norman was felt incorrect.

There were 10,000+ borrowings from French in Middle English. ¾ are still used today.

 ca. 1050 – 1250  900 loanwords

  ca. 1250 – 1400  4000 loanwords
 After ca. 1250  revival of English

Even though after 1250 the influence of French began to decline, it remained a source of loanwords
because French was a prestigious language of culture, especially in the written form.

Anglo-Norman & Central French

Differences AN CF
A + NASAL daunse danse
O + NASAL numbre, mount nombre, mont
BESIDES werre, waste, guerre, gaster,
carpenter, market charpentier, marché

There are cases in which we can have a double loan, both from Anglo-Norman and Central French:
there are words in English that have almost the same meaning.

Anglo-Norman Central French

ward(en) guard(ian)
wise guise
cattle chattel
gaol jail
warranty guarantee
wage gauge

Main changes Old English – Middle English

There were important changes that turned English language into something completely different.

The most evident change is the loss of inflections, that turned English from a synthetic to an
analytic language. It means that Old English was a language that had declensions like Greek and
Latin and then in the Middle English period became like Italian, Spanish, French, etc. This
happened because there was the strengthening of stress (accento) and the weakening of unstressed
syllables. As a consequence, there was a more rigid word order. By 1500 it was like today’s order,
but with some exceptions.

Another difference between Old English and Middle English is that in Middle English there were
more borrowings from other tongues in comparison to Old English period.

Some other changes that took place in the transition from Old English to Middle English were:

 a few changes in consonants

o loss of /h/ in clusters  OE hring > ME ring
 more significant changes in vowels
o few changes in stressed syllables
o weakening in unstressed syllables, where many vowels became schwa
  Premise of the loss of inflections
 Suffixes were dropped and replaced by prepositions

Verbs changed less than other parts of the language.

Simple Present OE South ME Central ME North ME

1st pers. sing. -e -e -e -(e)
2nd pers. sing -est -est -est -es
3rd pers. sing. -eþ -eþ -e, -es -es
Plural -aþ -eþ -e(n) -es

Middle English dialects

There are five areas of dialects of

Middle English:

1. Northern
2. West Midland
3. East Midland
4. Southern
5. Kentish

This means that Middle English was

not a unified language: in fact, the
Early Middle English period, as to
say the first centuries, was the period
of greatest dialect differences in the
history of the language. As a
consequence, the need of a standard
made itself felt.

There were many local varieties of the language, so people continued to use Anglo-Norman and
Latin as written languages, because they had a more stable and fixed form and so there were no
misunderstandings in the different parts of England.

Syntax
Some important innovations in Middle English period were:

 Articles (as OE was a language with declensions, the articles didn’t exist)
o “a” developed from “one”
o “þe” developed from “this, that”
 Possessive “of”  calque of the French “de”
  Progressive tenses  created following Latin and French models, they didn’t exist in Old
English (especially in translations)
 Development of Passive forms
 Great extention of auxiliary ‘do’

Revival of English
French was the literary language in the century from 1150 to 1250.

There was a revival of literature in English (12th-13th century), above all religion and poetry;
prose was only marginally. This are some examples written in those centuries:

 Ormulum (XII c. because it was written in the East Midlands by the monk Orm; the spelling
shows ME pronunciation at that time)
 The Owl and the Nightingale (Southern ME)
 Cursor Mundi
 King Horn
 Havelock the Dane

From 1250 the revival accelerated: around 1250 we have “Tretiz” by Walter of Bibbesworth, it was
a poem to teach English children French. An important document in the history of revival was the
Provision of Oxford (sort of Constitution): there are 3 versions, in Latin, French and English. It was
written because barons and middle classes were against Henry III, who had given too much power
to French public officers. It imposed on the King a government a council of 24 members, 12 chosen
by the King, 12 by the barons. Parliament met 3 times a year and controlled them.

Edward I was the first King who had a good knowledge of English: before that, the Kings were
kind of speaking French. It took about two centuries to have a King who could speak English well.

The 14th century

In the 14th century, there were social changes that after had consequences on the language. There
were the Black Death in 1349 (30% of the population died) and the Peasants’ Revolt, led by Wat
Tyler in 1381.

That was a time where there were more and more middle-class merchants and guilds (corporazioni).

Richard II (king at the end of the century) was the first mother tongue English King since
Harold (important turning point). In the same period, in 1362, there was the Statute of Pleading,
which stated that English was the obligatory language of law (before they were written in Latin
and/or French).

The 14th century was the century of literature.

 Mystical writings: Hilton, Dame Julian of Norwich

 Mystery and Miracle plays (religious works performed outside churches) started a
tradition that led to the modern drama. They were written in English.
 Sir Gawain and the “Green Knight” (West Midlands)
  William Langland (1362-87)  “Piers Plowman” (West Midlands) – visionary and
satirical problem about his time (like Divina Commedia)
 John Gower (c. 1330-1408 – London/East Midlands)  “Mirour de l’omme” (French),
“Vox clamantins” (Latin), “Confessio amantis” (English)
 Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400 – London/East Midlands)  From translation of “Roman
de la Rose” to “Canterbury Tales”

Late Middle English and the search for a standard

In the 15th century, we have the Late Middle English period, characterized by the search for a
standard. There were lots of local varieties. There were the reigns of Henry IV (1399-1413), Henry
V (1413-22), Henry VI (1422-61) and Richard III (1483-85). Richard III was the last of the
Plantagenet, that ruled since 1154.

We have good example of English language, for example “Paston Letters”, petitions to Parliament
written by the members of this family who lived in the North-Eastern part of London; they gave us
different styles of how people wrote at that time. Also the petitions written to Parliament are

In 1489 there were some Acts of Parliament who said that English should be the only language in
law. This was a signal of the fact that English was becoming so prestigious that laws could only be
written in that language. If you write laws in a language, you need to search for a shared style that
everybody can read and understand in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Surnames
One of the innovation of this period was the introduction of surnames, that appeared in Chaucer’s
time. Before that, only first names were used. Then, “son of” was introduced after the first name
(Johnson, Thomson – Celtic: Mc or Mac).

Later we have surnames that indicated origins:

 Placenames: Brooks, Rivers, Dale,

o Lincoln, Washington, Cleveland
 Occupation: Butcher, Hunter, Glover, Miller, Thatcher, Carpenter, etc.
 Continental names: Holland, French, Fleming
 French surnames: Gascoygne, Francis, Lorraine, Gerald

Standards
It is not so easy to develop a standard for a language.

The first example of standard is the Wycliffite dialect, a Central Midland variety. One of its author
was John Wyclif (c. 1330-84, born in Yorkshire). He was proto-reformer, he anticipated the ideas
and the principles of the religious reforms of the 15 th century. He was against the secular power of
the Roman Catholic Church and thought that anyone should read the Bible in his own language. So
that is why he translated the entire Bible (before there were only partial translations), but before
this he had to decide what kind of Middle English variety to use. He decided for the variety spoken
in Oxford and used that type of Middle English to translate the Bible.
There was a kind of movement of people who followed him, called Lollards: they were wondering
priests, people took vows and reached his ideas. At the beginning they became quite dangerous for
the powerful people in religion and politics. His ideas inspired the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, the
Lollards were some of the leaders of this revolt: they marched on London and this is why the
movement was declared heretical.
There were also other religious works written in this standard, but after 1430 they became to
decline for different religious points of view. The Wycliffite standard did not survive.

Another form of standard that developed was the so-called First-London Standard (1300-50) in
the 14th century. It was based on the Essex dialect, as to say the North East part of London. This
standard did not survive.

The standard that survived and eventually became the English we speak today (it is the basis of the
Modern Standard English) is the Second London Standard in the second half of the 14 th century
(1350-1400). It contained features of Central Midlands, introduced by immigrants in the London
variety of English. Examples of this standard are Chaucer, Hoccleve and some legal documents.

Another standard connected to this is the Chancery Standard (after 1430), the office where official
and political documents are written, so they must use their shared and common language. This is the
best example of transition from Latin and French to English, because they began to write just in
English.

In the 15th century we don’t have writers as good and original as Chaucer or other of the previous
years. But we have other texts that helped fixing these kinds of standards that developed. Certainly,
a major role was played by the introduction of printing with William Caxton. His first printing
house was established in Westminster in 1476. The standard is a little bit more regular than before:
it was an important consequence of printing, because it tended to standardize spelling, before that it
was extremely irregular. Printing the same version of book meant that people read the same kind of
spelling of a word and so that tended to become a set spelling of that word.

William Caxton
He was born in Kent: this is important for the variety of English he used because it is the one
spoken in South-East of England. He had an eventful life: he was a diplomat and a merchant, he
travelled a lot around the world so that is why he learnt about the art of printing in German. He
immediately understood how important and powerful it was in type of knowledge, so he introduced
it in England in 1476. He sat the first English press in Westminster Abbey. He was an editor-
publisher, an author and a translator too. He printed best-sellers of that time, such as Chaucer,
Lydgate and Malory. Books were very expensive, but still they costed a lot less than manuscripts.
The standardization of English and spelling owe a lot to Caxton and the following printers.
He used London and southern English.

Great Vowel Shift

This is a change in the pronunciation of vowels:

 high vowels began to be pronounced as diphthongs;

  stressed vowels became longer;
 unstressed vowels became shorter
o in some cases, they became schwa;
 mid vowels (/e:/, /o:/) were raised by one degree;
 lower vowels did the same as mid vowels.

GVS was prepared by the mutations in vowel length in late Old English and Middle English. It
properly began in the 15th century and ended in the early 17th century. It was a chain shift
(cambiamento a catena – il cambiamento di pronuncia di una sola vocale trascina con sé il
cambiamento di pronuncia di tutte le altre) associated to a drag shift, i.e. a mutation which started
from the highest vowels in the chain. Others believe that the process began from the mid vowels.
However, these changes were simultaneous. The causes are not clear, perhaps they have to be
searched in the society. The changes might be due to the dialectal pronunciation of lower classes in
the country around London. Later, they moved to London, whose middle and upper classes first
refused and later accepted them. Anyway, there was much more correspondence between the
spelling and the pronounce of a word at that time than today. This event starts the period of the
Early Modern English.

EARLY MODERN ENGLISH

Relevant events
The 16th century is a time of social changes that had consequences on the language of course.

 1534 – Henry VII, Act of Supremacy

 1536 – suppression of monasteries
 1539 – English Bible in every church (there were partial translations, the Bible of
Wycliffe was completely forgotten also because it was written in Middle English – they
had to provide new translations)
 1553 – Mary Tudor – she tried to reintroduce Roman Catholicism but she failed
 1558 – Elizabeth I – she made the Protestant Reform permanent in England
 1600 – East India Company was founded – it was important because it was the company
that was involved in colonialism and had also a tremendous impact on English language
- without colonialism, English would have remained just a local language of the North
Europe
 1603 – James I became King of England and Scotland after the death of Elizabeth I
 1611 – complete English Bible (King James Bible – Authorized Version, in use up to
1960s)  very influential text, its style became part of the language
 1616 – Shakespeare died (born in 1564)

Period
The Early Modern English period is not as clearly define as the previous ones. It started in ca.
1500 (early 16th century) and ended ca. 1800 (early 19th century). In these three centuries, we
can define two periods:
 1. 1500-1660 – the Restoration, when Charles II returned to England as a King
2. 1660-1800

There are more information, texts and data in this period than in comparison to the Middle English
period, this also because of the introduction of printing in 1476.

Mutations
 Consonants
/ç/ & /x/ (velar fricatives) after vowel disappeared or became /f/ (except in Scotland)
 Sight ME: [siçt]  EME: [sit]  ModE [sait]
 Initial /k/ & /g/ were not pronounced before /n/ after the late 17th century
 [K]nee – [K]night – [G]nome
In the late 18th century, the same happened for initial /w/ before /r/
 [W]rong – [W]rite
 Fewer strong (irregular) verbs
 North and Midlands forms spread in the South
 Syntax
o Negative clauses with and without do
 I doubt it not VS. I do not doubt it
 Multiple negatives were suppressed in the 18th century
o Interrogative clauses with and without do
 Come he not home tonight?
 Do you not love me?

16th-century novelties
 Printing  It became more and more common and had a very important and relevant
impact on the language.
 Spread of education and literacy  Many more people could read and write.
 Travel and colonies brought many new words into English (animal, plants, people,
customs, etc.)
 New social awareness of language  people began to think and talk about language much
more than before.
 Metalinguistic awareness

Metalinguistic awareness: the problems of English

Educated people considered English as an inferior language. It was mis-spelt (irregular spelling),
unruled (unclear grammar), rude (lexical poverty in comparison to Italian and French) and
barbarous (imperfect rhetoric).

So they tried to solve each of these problems:

 Mis-spelt  they felt they needed a spelling reform. There were quite few proposals of
spelling reform but all them failed. Spelling books, handbooks and dictionaries had a greater
impact because people wanted to know correctly the spelling of words.
  Unruled  they felt this desire of imposing rules on the language, but it was not so easy to
decide which kind of rules to impose and who could impose them and, especially, how to do
it. The results were visible only two centuries later, as to say the 18th century, the century of
linguistic codification.
 Rudeness  People were convinced that vocabulary could have been expanded. There were
controversies about that, especially about the source of the loanwords.
 Barbarous  there were handbooks that explained people how to speak and write perfectly.

Inferiority of English
People felt that English was less prestigious than Italian and French and especially than Latin. Latin
was considered as a superior language, an international language of religion and science
(Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey).

Richard Mulcaster, a teacher of that period, wrote in 1582 “Our English tung… is of small reatch, it
stretcheth no further then this iland of ours, naie nor there ouer all”. It means that English was just
spoken in England and not everywhere in the country, because there were some Celtic areas where
English was not spoken.

Francis Bacon wrote both in English and in Latin (Advancement of Learning, 1605 VS. Novum
Organum, 1620). Also Isaac Newton, at the end of the following century, wrote Principia (1689)
and Optics (1704).

Borrowings
Since people felt that English vocabulary was poor and limited in comparison to Italian, French and
Latin, they of course borrowed lots of words from these languages. In fact, in Old English
loanwords represented just 3% of the vocabulary; today, loanwords represent 70% of today’s
English vocabulary. In the 16th century, borrowings were between 40% and 50%: more new words
were created thanks to prefixes, suffixes, compound words or semantic mutations.

Increasing the prestige of English

As we said, people were concerned about the importance of English language in the world. This
also because nationalism was developing in the country: after the medieval Christianitas, there was
a development of modern nations in the 16 th century. In fact, in literature we have many history
plays, that deal with English history and helped people developing a nationalistic sense of their own
heritage (e.g. Shakespeare’s history plays King John and Henry V – 1590s).

That’s why they people wanted to create a great literature in English, as there was in Italian and
French. That’s why, for example, Edmund Spencer wrote The Faerie Queen (1590), the first long
epic poem. That poem had a specific nationalistic aim, it wanted to celebrate England as a nation.
At the end of the century there were works that extolled the beauty and the value of English: for
example, Richard Carew wrote The excellency of the English tongue (1595).

Printing was necessary in the development of reading public. Secular education became more
common in the 16th century: there were the so-called “petty schools” (elementary) and grammar
schools for basic literacy. That is why in the early 17th century, half of Londoners could read and
write. This was thanks to the Protestant Reformation that thought that everybody should be able
to read and understand the Bible: this is why illiteracy was very much common in Catholic
countries.

There was more education among the population but few people knew Latin. Of course, since
many people could read and write in English, there was a demand of translations that began to be
printed: the most translated books were by Greek and Latin historians, ancient philosophers (Pluto,
Cicero, Seneca), poets (Ovid and Horace) but also technical and scientific works about geometry,
sailing and war were translated into English. Most of these translations appeared in the latter half of
the century, after 1550.

The role of religion was indeed crucial: it was a time of religious controversies, it was the centre of
European culture. Religious controversies came by two later translations of works by Luther and
Calvin, as to say works of reformers printed in different languages: Luther wrote in German, Calvin
in French, so their influential works were translated in English and vice versa. And of course
translations helped the language to become more flexible, they often introduced new words. Bible
translations was a kind of central phenomenon that lead to King James Bible in 1611. It was a
novelty because in the Roman Catholic countries there were many translations into the vernacular
language, into French, Italian or Spanish up to the Counter Reformation (mid-16 th century): after
that, they were banned, Bibles were confiscated and burnt because the Roman Church wanted to be
the only authorized interpreter of the biblical text.

Against English
Not anyone supported this expanding role of the English language.

 They underlined the decline of learning: they thought that classical tongues would be
neglected.
 They thought it was (politically) dangerous to put knowledge in the hands of common
people.
 They argued that English was inexpressive and had no technical vocabulary of science.
 They pointed out that English was mutable.
 English was unknown on the Continent.

Supporters of English
They argued that:

 Scientific works in English are useful because people would not waste time studying Latin
when they could read in their own language.
 Spreading knowledge is good and useful.
 Borrowings and neologisms could expand and reinforce the language: as the language
was poor in vocabulary, loanwords or new words could make it stronger.
 Writing in English made the language more expressive and flexible.
 Greek and Latin were the mother tongues of classical authors. Romans wrote in Latin,
not Greek (which is partly false).
Debate on vocabulary
In the 16th century they felt the need of new words for many novelties: Renaissance, Reformation,
the discovery of America, Copernicus’ theory, etc.

There were three positions about this debate:

1. Neologists – they believed that English should borrow words from Latin and other
tongues.
2. Purists – they wanted English should use existing words and adapt them, creating
compound words, expanding them semantically or specialize them. They did not need to
introduce new words, but to work on the existing ones.
3. Archaists – they thought about introducing new words with a revival of archaic or
dialectic words.

Debate on vocabulary expansion: neologists

 Many words were introduced by translators from other languages. Latin remained the
main source for loanwords (vacuum, equilibrium, area, radius, calculus, caveat, affidavit,
miser, circus, etc.), even in the 16th century because it was the main language of culture. The
next most important language was French (e.g. condition, extortion, negation).
 Other sources of borrowing were synonyms and glosses (animate VS gyve courage to
others | persist VS continue | education VS bringing up children | explicating VS unfolding)
 Once you introduced a word into English, you could create a series of other words: from a
noun you can make an adjective or a verb (allusion, anachronism, atmosphere, dexterity,
encyclopaedia, conspicuous, extensive, external, insane, to adapt, disregard, exist,
extinguish).
 Other words were borrowed from Greek via Latin (anachronism, atmosphere, antithesis,
chaos, chronology, climax, dogma, emphasis, enthusiasm, pathetic, skeleton, system,
tactics).
 Some other words were borrowed directly from Greek (anonymous, criterion, lexicon,
misanthrope, polemic, thermometer).
 It was no difficult to introduce these words into English with little or no adaptation (in
pronunciation or spelling - climax, appendix, epitome, delirium, exterior; conjectural(is),
consult(are), exclusion(em), exotic(us))
 In other cases, there was an adaptation of the source word into English:
o Conspicuus  conspicuous
o Externus  external
o Consonantia, frequentia  consonance, frequency
o Creatus  create
 Other words were re-borrowings from Latin or Greek (words that already became English
words before and were re-borrowed with a slightly different meaning)
o Episcopus, discus 
 OE biscop, disc (bishop, dish)
  EME episcopal, disc
 In other cases, we don’t know the origins of a word:
o EME consist  LAT consistere? | FRA consister?
o EME explore, consequent, sublime  LAT explorare, consequentis, sublimis? |
FRA explorer, consequent, sublime?
o EME fact  LAT factum? | FRA fait (see ModE feat)

Not all borrowings survived.

 cautionate, consolate, | caution, console, attempt;

 approbate, consternate mansuetude, disaccount | approbation, consternation

 effectual, effective | effectuous, effectful

Debate on vocabulary expansion: Inkhorn Controversy

One side of this debate was the so-called Inkhorn Controversy and was about the risk of
obscurity or affectation.

Sir John Cheke wrote a letter to Thomas Hoby with his preface to his version of Cortegiano in 1561
and in this letter he wrote: “I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and
pure, vnmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges, wherin if we take not heed by tijm,
euer borowing and neuer payeng, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt”. It has to be
noticed that opinion, pure, bankrupt are Romance borrowings. It is very difficult to avoid
loanwords even if you are against them because without borrowings the language was poor and
limited.

Thomas Wilson, in his Arte of Rhetorique (1553), wrote An ynkehorne letter: he believed that some
words shouldn’t have been used (fatigate, impetrate, ingent, magnifical, verbosity) and some others
were adapt for English language, such as contemplate, communion, prerogative.

But he didn’t say WHY, maybe because the second group of words sounded better.

Debate on vocabulary expansion: purists

The aim of purist was to expand vocabulary by compound words and semantic changes.

 John Cheke, Matthew's Gospel: biwordes / parables, hunderder / centurion, tollers /

publicans, onwriting / superscription, washing / baptism, uprising / resurrection; freschman /
proselyte, gainbirth / regeneration, gainrising / resurrection, mooned / lunatic

Purist attitude continued in the next centuries.

Debate on vocabulary expansion: archaists
They wanted a revival of archaic, obsolete and dialect words.

 Chaucerisms (in the 17th century purists grew hostile to Chaucer because he used foreign
words)

 Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender (1579): algate / always, eld / old age, gar /
cause, make, sicker / certainly, soote / sweet, stour / conflict, underfong / receive, yblent /
confused, yfere / together, yode / went

 From Spenser and other archaists: belt, bevy, forthright, glen, glee, drizzling, surly,
glance, blandishment, birthright, endear, enshrine, fleecy, wary, gaudy, gloomy, merriment,
shady, verdant, wakeful, witless.

Shakespeare’s contribution
Shakespeare and King James Bible had a deep influence on the language. They used common
language, but also a creative language that later became common language. They had a great impact
especially on vocabulary.

There are many surviving neologisms from Shakespeare’s works.

accommodation (Othello) | assassination (Macbeth) | barefaced (Midsummer Night’s Dream) |

count-less (Titus Andronicus) | downstairs (1 Henry IV) | go-between (Merry Wives of Windsor) |
laughable (Merchant of Venice) | long-legged (Midsummer Night’s Dream) | priceless (Rape of
Lucrece) | successful (Titus) | well-read (Taming of the Shrew)

There are also some obsolete neologisms, such as abruption, appertainments, cadent, persistive.

Shakespeare also used conversion:

 I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase (R&J; “per me c’è l’adagio del nonno” - Grandsire
phrase = proverb)
 Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle (Richard II; York talking to his nephew -
“Intanto graziami di quel "grazioso", e soprattutto non chiamarmi "zio")
 It out-herods Herod (Hamlet)

Some expressions from Shakespeare works became idiomatic expression in today’s English:

 What the dickens! (Merry Wives | “Ma che diavolo!”)

 A foregone conclusion (Othello | “un esito scontato”)
 Caviare to the general (Hamlet | “perle ai porci”)
 It’s Greek to me (Julius Caesar | “E’ arabo per me”)
 Make a virtue of necessity (Pericles)
 I must be cruel only to be kind (Hamlet)
 All our yesterdays (Macbeth)
Shakespeare: examples of contemporary spoken language
 Nathaniel: I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's, who is intituled,
nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado (Love’s Labour’s Lost)
 Brutus: My life is run his compass (Julius Caesar)  my life has run its compass
 I cannot go no further  I cannot go any further
 Me thinks he did  I think he did
 Says she so?  Does she say so?

The 18th-century codification reduced the 16th-century variability.

ENGLISH SINCE 1660

Periodization
We said that Early Modern English is divided into 2 periods:

1. From 16th century to 1660

2. From 1660 to 1776 (or early 18th century, or -1789, -1800, -1815)

A debate on periodization is still going on.

Spelling & punctuation

There was a changing in spelling and punctuation. There was an increasing difference between
printing and handwriting, because spelling and punctuation became more and more standardized
and less variable.

Some people thought English language needed a spelling reform. There were some proposals:

 James Howell, 1662

 John Wilkins, 1668
 Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift took an interest about this topic and wrote
about this.

In the 18th century, the capitalization of common nouns was slowly abandoned: before that,
people wrote as in German today, as to say the nouns with capital letters.

Morphology & phonology

 Loss of post-vocalic /r/ (and consequently the lengthening of stressed vowel)
o Pronounced inside words before a vowel
o Optional between two words (e.g. “fair isle” with or without “r”)
o “r” is always pronounced in Scotland, Ireland, Canada and USA (except in East &
South Coast areas)

Thou & You

Before 1660, “thou” was informal, “you” formal. After 1660, “thou” became obsolete orally, but it
survived in writing as a formal pronoun.
The second person singular & plural of verbs became identical. However, there were:

 You was (sing.) VS you were (plur.)

 Yous (Scotland – many US and South-African dialects)
 Yez/Yiz (Hiberno-English vernacular)
 You-all (plural form in southern USA)

Syntax
The most significant changes took place in the Renaissance (1500-1600).

Since the 17th century, there were fewer forms as an effect of standardization  E.g. the position of
adjectives, that in the 16th century often came after nouns

Reaction to borrowing
The abundance of borrowing to raise the prestige of English caused a reaction: many people thought
that too many borrowings damaged the language.

Origins of borrowings
 Latin (more than 50% up to 1660)
o Medicine, natural sciences, theology, arts
 French (20-30%, 1660-1800)
o Aristocratic life (now obsolete)
o Easy adaptation, often only to English pronunciation

There were also borrowings from other languages:

 European languages, less than 10% of borrowings
 Greek (scientific, technical, philosophic vocabulary, often via Latin)
 Italian (arts, trade, science, society)
 Spanish, Dutch and others

In the 18th century, borrowings from non-European tongues were more than 10% for the first time.

Varieties
Speaking “correct” English was a form of class distinction, because it differenced aristocracy from
common people. This idea emerged in the 15th century and it became more and more common in the
18th century (e.g. Lord Chesterfield).

English, Latin and French

English is mutable and ephemeral, but it had elegance, correctness and propriety in comparison to
Latin and French: English grammars were based on Latin models. However, purism remained
marginal.
Literature & standard language
The “standard English” and the history of English literature developed in the same period, as to say
the 18th century. Literary English and Standard English influenced each other. Since 1970,
there is a revision of the traditional and linguistic canons.

From the early 16th century up to 1660 (Erasmus to Milton), English followed Latin as model.

But from 1660 to the late 18th century, Greek and Latin remained models, but writers tried to
achieve the same aesthetic effects using English according to its nature. So there is a passage
from imitation to equivalence of effects.

Literary Models
 16th century  soldier, noble and poet
 18th century  the Grub Street hack
o a bourgeois reading public replaced the Court

Stylistic ideals
 Renaissance_ abundance and variety (copia)
 After 1660: perspicuity
o Clarity, conciseness, naturalness
o Clarté of the Académie Française
 Speakers must first of all be clear
 Words must clearly refer to their subject
 Thomas Sprat (1667) said “reject all amplifications, digressions and swellings of style”

Puns & ambiguity

John Wilkins created an artificial language where every word had only one meaning and referred to
a single object.

 No puns
o Survived in satire in the 18th century
o Standardization of spelling
 E.g. Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, wrote “choler” and “collar” in the
same way; they were distinguished in the 18th century.
 Other examples: travel/travail, sun/son, etc.

Limitation of vocabulary
 Restriction of literary language
o No to neologism (unlike Shakespeare)
o Archaism (Spenser)
o Compounds (Sidney)
o Latinisms (Milton)
 Samuel Johnson said: “it’s better to avoid technical terms”
Grand Style
 Reintroduced thanks to “the Sublime”
 In the Renaissance, there was a high style in politics and law
 In the 18th century, the Sublime was mainly used in poetry
o From a public domain of “rational” persuasion to a private domain of passionate
feelings

Dialects
 Standard language and dialect
 “standard” referred to language, 1836
 “non-standard” is a 20th-century coinage
 Little dialect in the Renaissance literature
o Shakespeare in some plays (Henry V, King Lear)
o Spenser, Shepheardes Calendar
o Few written sources (except for Scotland)

Revival of dialect
 18th century, above all in Scotland
 Not much in England, even in drama
 Cockney was used only in some novels (e.g. Defoe)
 Henry Fielding used a South-western dialect
 Tobias Smollett used the Scots
 English dialect poetry revived in the 19th century

Malapropism
 Mrs Malaprop, in Sheridan’s The Rivals, 1775
 Traditional device of comedy – more common as a result of 18th-century standardization
 In the Renaissance, there was a gravy area between correct and incorrect Latinisms
o Unfixed spelling
o Many neologisms
 E.g. vastness, vastity, vastitude, vastacy, vastidity, vesture

Key dates and events

 1566: first edition of an essay on Old English
 1640: first chair of Old English
 1664: London Royal Society Committee for the improvement of English
o Royal Society: founded in 1662 to discuss and spread knowledge
 1697: Daniel Defoe’s proposal for an Academy (like the Académie Française)

Jonathan Swift
 1712: proposal of an Academy to standardize the language
 Essays and letters to halt and reverse the decline of English
o His models: the “immutable” classical tongues
 o No to abbreviations
o Standardization of spelling
 Unrealized project
o House of Hannover (since 1714) had no interest in English
o Colonial dissemination of English

Early dictionaries
The first dictionaries were compiled and published in the 16th century. But they were not
dictionaries in the sense that dictionary has today, as to say that at that time dictionaries only had
explanation of difficult words, mostly borrowings and neologism that people didn’t know. They
were more like a glossary than a dictionary.

In the 18th century dictionaries became like a collection of common words, along with the difficult
words: they were a selection for Gentlemen, they were addressed to a certain kind of public.

The first English dictionary was compiled by Robert Cawdrey.

In 1674, John Ray compiled the first dialect dictionary. There was a sense that local varieties
needed a different dictionary.

In 1721, Nathan Bailey wrote the first etymological dictionary, with more than 42,000 entries.

Samuel Johnson
He wrote the most important dictionary, published in 1755 (based on the 18th century’s ideas). It
was based on stability, clarity and order, three principles related to the frame of mind of the
18th century. Johnson’s approach was based on an empiric common sense rather than abstract
ideals (just the opposite of Swift – Johnson saw how the language was used by common people and
then wrote his dictionary on the basis of what he studied): he thought that linguistic changes could
not be stopped and academies are useless; these ideals were explained in the Preface of his
Dictionary. He completed his Dictionary in 9 years, a very short time. He wrote his 40,000
definitions in 80 notebooks, he used 114,000 quotations of texts between the 16 th and 18th centuries.
He used existing dictionaries and he excluded (or included occasionally) burlesque, dialectal,
technical, obscure, low and vulgar, obsolete, ill-composed words. It remained the main English
dictionary up to 1900; it influenced the way words were spelled for a century and a half.

He gave a significant continuation to the standardization of the language.

The 19th century and later

First of all, Johnson’s dictionary helped define the standard language. After the 18 th century and the
codification, there was a clearer distinction between standard(s) and dialects.

There were more dictionaries and there were other varieties of English that were better defined:
people started to study them to compile dictionaries.

There was the passage of English from a national to an international and global language.
Dialects in the 19th century
Dialects had stability up to 1900. But in the 19th centuries, the main attitude was ambiguous: there
was a school policy aimed at eradicating them, but rural dialects were revalued as “original” and
authentic forms of English. There was some attention to Cockney (London urban dialect) and in the
mid-19th century, English language and literature became academic disciplines. In 1873 the English
Dialect Society was founded (studying of English dialects) and in 1889 Alexander Ellis completed
the first complete study of English dialects.

Modern English dialects

There are many definitions of modern dialects. The map shows the five main dialect areas: they
more or less correspond to the same areas of the Middle English.

1. North
2. West Midlands
3. East Midlands
4. South West
5. South East

There is an increasing difference between northern dialects and Scottish English: they used to be
closer before.

19th-century dictionaries
There were other dictionaries after Johnson’s one.

 1806, Noah Webster

o first dictionary of American English,
o introduced the American spelling (differences between –or and –our, -er for –re,
etc.)
o end to a single standard English.
 1847, J.O. Halliwell: dialect dictionary (main dictionary up to 1900)
 1884-1933  Oxford English Dictionary (OED) edit by James Murray and others
o 20 volumes, with supplements (4 vols., 1972-86, ed. By Robert Burchfield)
o Main sources of quotations have changed
 Journalism replaced literature
 Science replaced the humanities
 USA replaced UK (today, about 63% USA, 33% UK, the rest from other
English-speaking countries)
 ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE
English speakers
There are three groups of
English speakers:

o Inner circle:
ENL (English
as a Native
Language), it
includes the
countries where
English is the
native
language.
o Outer circle:
ESL (English
as a Second
Language), it
includes all the
countries where
English is the
second official
language (formal colonies as India, Singapore, etc.)
o Expanding circle: EFL (English as a Foreign Language), it includes countries where
English is learnt and spoken as a foreign language.

Standard varieties
Ideally, we can talk about this world standard English (which does not exist). Each country where
English is spoken has its own variety of English.

 East Asian Standardizing English

 Australian, New Zealand & South Pacific Standard English
 British and Irish Standard English
 American Standard English
 Canadian Standard English
 Caribbean Standard English
 West, East and South(ern) African Standard(izing) English
 South Asian Standard English
Pidgins
A pidgin is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more
groups that do not have a language in common: typically, a mixture of simplified languages or a
simplified primary language with other languages' elements included. It is most commonly
employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the
language of the country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between the
groups). Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is
constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people. A pidgin is not
the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language.

A pidgin differs from a creole, which is the first language of a speech community of native speakers
that at one point arose from a pidgin. Unlike pidgins, creoles have fully developed vocabulary and
patterned grammar. Most linguists believe that a creole develops through a process of nativization
of a pidgin when children of acquired pidgin-speakers learn it and use it as their native language.

First American colonies

The first colonizers landed in Virginia in 1607 and came from Somerset (South-West part of
England).

This variety of English had some peculiarities:

 Voices /s/ in initial position and in some medial positions

o Sink > Zink | Zummerzet > Sommerset
 /r/ was pronounced after vowels

Pilgrim Fathers
The Pilgrim Fathers arrived in Massachusetts in 1620. They came mainly from East Anglia and
other areas with similar pronunciation.

Peculiarities:

 /r/ after vowel was NOT pronounced

 No /j/ before tonic vowel in words like “new” or “tune”, pronounced [nu] & [tun]

Other features of AmE derive from 18th-century English dialect pronunciation:

 Gotten for got

 Ate pronounced [eit], not standard BrE [et]
 Fall for autumn

Northern Irish
Another regional variety of English that gave significant contribution to a part of AmE was the
Northern Irish.

The Northern Irish came in the States in the 18th century, initially in Pennsylvania. Then, they
moved towards the Appalachians in the plains of the rivers Ohio and Tennessee. It was the
first accent that spread West beyond the Mississippi.

These “country” accents still exist in the Sunbelt (South US, from the Appalachians to California).

In the Appalachians, there is a mixture of Scots-Irish, English and German (because there were
people of German origins who settled in this area): this is a language of poor mountaineers and has
a low social prestige.

US varieties and their areas

There are three main areas of US varieties:

1. North: from New England toward the Great Lakes

2. South: the Gulf coast, from Florida to Texas
3. Centre: first across the plains, then across the mountain areas to California

US Standard
There is no single standard form, as in UK there is the London accent.

Normally, when we refer to America, we use the so-called General American, the variety which is
normally used as a reference. It is used by ca. 90 million Americans and is spoken from Ohio to
the West Coast (the Centre-Western area of American).

General American
Main features:

 Rhotic accent (the /r/ is always pronounced)

 Voiced /t/ between vowels after a stressed vowel
o Data > [deida]
 /æ/ for long /a/ in words like bath, dance, path
 Larger use of secondary accents
o E.g. BrE Auditory | AmE Auditory

Spelling
 BrE ou VS AmE o
o Colour | color
o Labour | labor
 BrE en VS AmE in
o Enclose | inclose
o Enquiry | inquiry
 BrE L VS AmE LL
o Fulfil | fulfil
 o Skilful | skilfull

Morpho-syntax
BrE AmE
five past six five after six
half an hour a half hour
in future in the future
I’ve just eaten I just ate
He’s in hospital He’s in the hospital
I haven’t seen her for ages I haven’t seen her in ages
I’ll start on 3rd August 2016 I’ll start August 3, 2016

IRELAND, WALES AND SCOTLAND

IRELAND
The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
 1157: Henry II invaded Ireland
o The English were absorbed later; they never became a dominant group: they mixed
up with the population and eventually they stopped being English and became Irish.
There were no consequences socially or linguistically speaking, the English language
after that invasion left no traces on the Irish language and did not survive.
 1542: Henry VIII proclaimed himself King of Ireland
o This was a time of reformation: Irish didn’t want to convert to Protestantism, they
remained Roman Catholic and so English was rejected for this ideological reasons.
 17 century: English and Scottish planters were sent in Ulster (northern part of
th

Ireland) to colonize the country. These planters were Protestants; they spoke Scottish or
English. There are two stages of this “colonization” of Ulster:
o 1607-1640s
o Cromwell, the leader of the Republican party decided to send some more planters to
Ulster. They sent people from Scotland because they were more rigid and radical
Protestants, a form of Presbyterian Calvinism.

Emigration to USA
The next episode that had a very important impact on the languages of Ireland was the emigration
to the States. In the 19th century, almost 2 million people emigrated from Ireland to America and
moved to Pennsylvania and to the Appalachians (war against natives).
They brought their own culture, for example the ballads, which gave an important contribution to
American music and songs. The major influence in the State was Scots-Irish, especially from
Ulster.

The Irish Ascendancy

Another important social aspect of Irish linguistic history is the Irish Ascendancy: it is a group of
people, mainly landlords (people who owned large portions of lands - Most of them were of English
origins, people who were given these lands as a reward for something they’ve done for the Crown).
These people spoke different varieties of English but with a more British accent (sense of identity).

This group had a debate on what the right pronunciation should be:

 Great must be pronounced like state (Lord Chesterfield)

 Great must be pronounced like seat (Sir William Yonge) – Only an Irishman would say
[grait]

The Rise of Irish English

Irish English rose in the 17th century and is a combination of three elements:

1. Irish Gaelic
2. Renaissance English
3. Scottish English (component of Northern Irish)

From Irish to English

How did the Irish switch from Gaelic to English?

 1600-1800: Gaelic moved West, fewer and fewer people spoke Irish in the West of the
country.
 1800: there were about 2 million people whose mother-tongue was Irish; 1,5 million was
mother-tongue English and 500k who were bilingual.
 A century later, 85% of the population was monoglot English speaker and there were just
21,000 people who were mother-tongue Irish (in the West)

The British linguistic policy in Ireland was always to try to impose English as a commonly spoken
language and so the decline of Irish was caused also by this British education. In 1831, the English
language was made obligatory language at school: before that, Irish was used in education.

The turning point on this transition was around 1850 due partially to the Great Famine and there
was a mass emigration to America. As they wanted to emigrate, they had to know English before
leaving: that’s why people switched from Irish to English.
Irish Emigration
After the Great Famine, but before it too, (1845-49), Irish had a great influence on colonial English.

For example, in the Barbados, some Irish soldiers were exiled there by Cromwell and so they
formed part of the local population, having an impact on their variety of English. (today,
marginalized whites)

We find some people of Irish origins in Monserrat, some part of Canada (Newfoundland), Australia
(30% of Irish descendent in the 19th century) and USA of course, where today 40 million people are
Irish descendant.

Scouse (abitante di Liverpool)

Irish had a great impact also on the variety of English spoken in Liverpool. In fact, in Liverpool,
there was a strong immigration in the 19th century because it was an industrialized area.

They contributed to rise of Scouse, as to say the Merseyside accent.

Some features derive from Hiberno-English:

 Dat for that

 Youse as plural of you

English in Ireland
This is a map of English in Ireland. There are three areas:

1. Ulster
2. Gaeltacht
3. Pale (English spoken since the 17th century)

Irish English
 NO STANDARD IRISH ENGLISH  Irish English = definition for all spoken varieties.
 Anglo-Irish is the most common form, used by the middle and lower classes.
 Hiberno-English, properly, is the English spoken in the Gaelic areas; it is often used as a
synonym for Irish English
 Ulster Scots is a conservative variety, with features of the 17th-century English.

The Irish language

Irish is considered as an official language (also of European Union) and has 100,000 speakers
today.

Some features
 Simplification of some diphthongs
 “l” and “r” are always pronounced
  Th- is often pronounced as –t (thorn pronounced like torn)
 Close back vowel /Λ/ (rather than open – in words like but, plug)
 Them as plural demonstrative pronoun
o I like them biscuits! = I like those biscuits!
 Is with plural and singular 3rd person
 Inflected do
o He does come when he hears the noise
 Inflected be
o There bees no partition between the cows
 Do + be
o That’s how the masters does be
o They indicate repeated or habitual actions (do not mix it up with emphatic do)
 Calques on Gaelic verbal forms
o She is after reading the book = She has just read the book
 Brogue (English term for “Irish accent”)
o From Irish bròge, “shoe”

WALES
 Welsh comes from OE weleas, “foreigners”
 Welsh is akin to Breton, NOT Irish.
 The conflicts between Wales and England began in the 13th century and went on for about 3
centuries up to the Acts of Union in 1536 and 1542, where England conquered Wales.
(impact on the language)
 1588: William Morgan translated the Bible into Welsh.
 Welsh lost ground in the 18th century
o 1888: Education Act  obligatory English-language education
 English became common in lower classes too – Welsh used at home and in church (or used
in the schools run by Free Churches)

Wales in the 20th country

In 1901, about 50% of the population spoke Welsh in Wales (more than in Ireland). Today, this
percentage is about 25% (ca. 500,000).
In Wales there is an official bilingualism: Welsh is taught at school and also radios and TV are in
Welsh (Channel 4 since 1982).

There was a greater influence in the North Wales. There is a famous festival, the Eisteddfod at
Cardigan Castle (1st edition in 1176), which is about poetry and music.

Welsh English
 Relatively similar to standard English – different cadence
 There are 3 varieties
o Industrial South-East
o South-West (more Welsh influence)
o North (greatest Welsh influence)
 3 components
o Welsh substratum
o West English dialects (influence especially on East Wales)
o Standard English

Features of Welsh English

 Southeastern variety
o The most common and most similar to British English
o Non-rhotic
 Unvoiced (in lieu of voiced) explosive consonants
o “Pring the pottle, Petty”  “Bring the bottle, Betty”
 In fact, they are aspirated consonants
o /b, d, g/  strong aspiration in initial position
o /p, t, k/  aspirated in every position
 /h/ often dropped in initial position
 Singular subjects with plural verbs and vice versa
 Do for habitual actions (not for emphasis)
o “a garden where leeks did grow” | “he do go to the cinema”
 Fronting (for emphasis – a calque on Welsh)
o Singing they were
o Coal they are getting out
 Expletive there (a calque on Welsh dyna = there)
o There’s tall you are! = How tall you are!
 Isn’t it (also “yes” in North Wales) as tag in lieu of personal pronouns
o You are going home, isn’t it/yes?

SCOTLAND
There are 3 languages in Scotland:
 Scottish
 Scots
 English (Scottish variety of English)

Highlands
Up to the 18th century, only Gaelic was spoken in the Northern part of Scotland. Later, it was
anglicised and English was introduced. Today there are 80,000 Gaelic speaker and all of them are
bilingual of course.

Scots
Scots is an entirely different language (NOT a Celtic language), it belongs to a different linguistic
group. It is also a Germanic language. What happened was that in the 5th century Angles settled in
the Lowlands (Southern part of Scotland). This Germanic people did not invade the Northern part
and this is the origin of Scots. Another name for Scots is Lallans (kind of version for Lowlands). It
went on up to the 11th century when the English influence began. In the Late Middle Ages we have
two parallel languages, English and Scots: both are two branches of Old English and they were
more or less like Danish and Swedish today.

Normally we speak of Old Scots up to 1450. Up to the 15th century, it was called Inglis (English)
and later Scots. It was a consequence of makars’ (makers) great poetry, they gave a fixed form to
the language and a kind of more prestigious position. It became an official language through the 16th
century. Scots has a greater Viking and French influence in comparison to British English.

The period between 1450 and 1700 is called Middle Scots. There was no Bible translation into
Scots, even though it was the more important translation at that time: they did use an English Bible
called Geneva Bible (the one before King James Bible). In 17th century, Scots began to decline
because there was no daily usage.

In the 18th century there was a mosaic of dialects: there was no standard as it was in the Middle
Ages. On the other hand, in the 18th century there was a literary revival after the Act of Union in
1707. There was also a debate on language: there was a group that supported English, another
(artists, writers, etc.) was supporting Scots. In 1840, English was made mandatory at school. Today,
there has been again a revival of Scots due to the devolution. Scots is still alive but not many people
use it normally. There is a debate on its status.

Standard Scottish English

It is a variety of English which replaced Scots in the Lowlands and it is used in public situations. It
is an adaptation of Scots to English over the centuries: this adaptation is stronger in syntax and
vocabulary but has a weaker adaptation in accent.

Features of SSE
 Rhotic variety
 Wh- and w- have some differences in pronunciation in Scottish English
 o Which pronounced as /hw-/
o Witch pronounced as /w-/
 U is pronounced ü in some dialects
o Moon  muin /mün/ (spelt “ui”)
 Some plurals are irregular!
o Een (eyes) | Hors (Horses) | Shuin (Shoes) | Wifes | Wolfs | Leafs
 No and –na
o He’s no in
o You canna tell
o You didna tell
 Definite article
o The now (just now)
o The day (today)
o He wears the kilt (he wears a kilt)

Some etymologies
 Whisky > from the Gaelic uisce beatha (“water of life”)
 Scots words in Standard English
o Glamour > from Latin and Old French “grammar”, that meant “learning”,
“incomprehensible thing”, also “black magic” – In the 18th-century Scotland, it was
spelt with and “L”, so it became “Glamour” with the meaning of “charm, fashion”
o Caddie > from the French “Cadet”
o Golf appeared in the 16th century; perhaps it comes from the Dutch “Colf”, a stick or
club used in some games
o Uncanny, weird, scone