The formation of the English national language (XV-XVI)

At the period after the Norman conquest, the linguistic situation in England was the
following: the government, the court, and the noblemen spoke French while the common
people of England spoke English. Besides there was a large group of people who spoke
both French and English; for nearly two centuries the English language fought for its
existence and it was only by the 15th century that English won the final victory. At that
period in England, there were many local dialects and there was no standard that could be
understood in all parts of England.

The national language is regarded to be a historical category. But it should be mentioned

that the vocabulary and the grammatical system of a national language are slightly
different from the language of a nation:

-the difference in their circulation and function. The language of a nation is considered a
colloquial form of communication. As for a national language, it has both the written and
colloquial forms;

-the difference in their word- stock. When feudalism came to an end many nations and
phenomena connected with that period disappeared. While capitalism gave rise to new
words and expressions;

- the difference in the position of a national language and different dialects. In the period
of existence of a national language, many dialects faded away or mixed with a national
language.

As for the English national language it developed on the basis of the London dialect- the
dialect of the economical, political and cultural center of the country.

In 1439 teaching in French was substituted by teaching in English. It was of great

significance for the circulation of the London dialect. In the 14-15th centuries there
appeared writers and poets who used the national language in their literary works (J.
Chaucer, F. Gauer).

The formation of a national language was greatly fostered by two events of the late
15th century. The most significant event of the period was the Wars of the Roses (1455-
1485) which marked the decay of feudalism and the birth of a new social order. They came
to an end in the battle of Bosworth, when Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor, who
became king of England. The result of this long-lasting struggle was the rise of an absolute
monarchy. This meant a high degree of political centralization that contributed to
centralization in language as well, that is, to a predominance of the national language over
local dialects.

Another great event was the introduction of printing. Printing was invented in Mayence
(Germany) by Johannes Gutenberg in 1438. The Englishman William Caxton (1422-1491)
became acquainted with this art. He published the first English printed book, “The Recuyeil
of the Histories of Troye”, in Bruges. Returning to England, he founded the first English
printing office in London in 1476, and in 1477 appeared the first book “The Dictes and
Sayinge of the Philosophers”. The spread of printed books was bound to fosten the
normalization of spelling and also of grammatical form.
 The language of the 16th and early 17th century was bound to appear wild and clummy.
Publications of Shakespeare’s works appearing in the 18th century are full of arbitary
changes designed to make Shakespeare’s text conform to the “correctness” of the
18th century. The greatest poet of the time, Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who edited
Shakespeare’s works in 1725, entirely failed to understand the forms in Shakespeare’s
texts.

In the 17th and 18th century a great number of grammarians and orthoepists appeared,

who set as their task the establishing of correct language forms.

In 1621 Alexander Gill’s book, “Logonomia Anglica” (English Word-law) was published. Gill

stuck to conservative views in the sphere of pronunciation and condemned new tendencies
in this field.

Next came Charles Bulter, author of English Grammar, which appeared in 1634. He
proposed a modernized and rationalized spelling system.

The most serious of the orthoepists was Christopher Cooper, author of “Grammatica
Anglicana”, published in 1685. Cooper was fully aware of the difference between sounds
and letters and gave a list of homonyms resulting from phonetic change. He testifies that
the following were pronounced alike: heart- hart; a notion-an ocean; are- airere, heir etc.

The idea of a strict norm in the language was expressed by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

The 15th century is marked in Europe by a great cultural movement named Renaissance.

Its homeland was Italy. It meant liberation of cultural life from the pressure of medieval
scholastics and rise of free scientific research. This movement was closely connected with
the young bourgeois culture in the epoch by primary accumulation. The chief men of the
Renaissance in Italy were Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch, 1304-1374) and Giovanni
Boccaccio (1313-1375). In England we may consider Geoffrey Chaucer as a forerunner of
the Renaissance.

It was not long before England became involved in this movement: Thomas More (1478-
1535), author of Utopia, and the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536),
author of Praise of Stupidity.

At the same time, another important change was coming over the cultural thinking of the
epoch. The great geographical discoveries had completely altered the outlook of the world.

All these new features of Renaissance life had a far-reaching influence on the English
language.

The sphere of influence of each language is to a great extend determined by the sphere of
culture in which the given nation played an important part. American Indian gave English
mainly terms of music and arts; American Indian languages yieled names of animals and
plants coming from America, etc.

At the same time the flourishing of classical philology, study of Greek and Roman
authors, and wide use of Latin as an international scholars’ language gave English a
number of words borrowed from the classical languages. These words, which at first
were bookish, proved in many cases quite viable, they ceased being an attribute of
leaned speech, and became part of a common word stock.