A History of the English Language

(C. Baugh)
The beginning of EME is conventionally placed in 1500 due to these factors:
- The printing press
- The rapid spread of popular education
- The increased communication
- The growth of specialized knowledge
- The adoption of the standards of grammar and pronunciation when lifting to a
new economic and social status
These changes are both radical in the vocabulary and conservative in grammar.
EME faced 3 main problems:
1) Recognition in the fields where Latin had for centuries been supreme
A strong tradition still sanctioned the use of Latin in all the fields of knowledge
because he had the advantage of being universal.
There were many defenders of the English language, like Mulcaster.
The factors that contributed to the victory of English are the humanism, the
Protestant Reformation, and the increasing book of English books.
2) The problem of orthography
The trouble was that there was no generally accepted system that everyone
could conform to. The confusion was increased when certain spellings
gradually became conventional while the pronunciation slowly changed. In
some cases, a further discrepancy between sound and symbol arose when
letters were inserted in words where they were not pronounced. The variability
of English spelling was an important part of the instability that people felt
characterized the English language in the 16th century.
In 1582 Mulcaster wrote one of the most extensive and important treatises on
English spelling. During the first half of the next century, the tendency toward
uniformity increased. The fixation of English spelling is associated in most
people’s minds with the name of Johnson.
3) The problem of enrichment
In 1531 Sir Thomas Elyot published the first book on education printed in
English, The Governour, in which there is the attempt to improve and enrich
the English vocabulary.
The rediscovery of Latin and Greek literature led to new activity in the modern
languages.
English was undoubtedly inadequate, as compared with the classical
languages, to express the thought that those languages embodied. Translators
 had to transfer and naturized in English important Latin radicals because they
lacked it in English, and this was so with Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish
too. In this way many foreign words were introduced into English.

The opposition to Inkhorn terms

The borrowing of words from other languages did not meet with universal favor.
Some considered the use of these words pedantry and ridicule, calling them
“inkhorn” terms.
The strongest objection to the new words, however, was about their obscurity

The defense of borrowing

The hostile attitude was apparently not the prevailing one. These were many more
who approved this practice.
Not only had English borrowed much in the past, but also all other languages,
including Latin e Greek, had enriched themselves in this way. The strangeness of the
new words, they argued, would soon wear off.

Compromise
At that time no one could completely avoid using some neologism, so the critics
began to condemn the abuse of these terms rather than the use.

Permanent additions
The words that we owe to this period seem now to be indispensable since many of
them are still in use today. The words that were introduced at this time were often
basic words, such as nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
Most of the words in this list are Latin, but some of them were earlier acquired by
Latin from Greek. Indeed, most of the Greek words in English have come to us either
through Latin or French, but some words were acquired directly through Greek.

Adaption
Some words, in entering the language, kept their original form; others underwent
changes. The adaptation consisted in the simple process of cutting off the Latin
endings. Latin nouns ending in -tas were changed in English to -ty (brevity >
brevitas). Many English verbs borrowed from Latin at this time end in -ate.

Reintroductions and new meanings

Sometimes the same word has been borrowed more than once in the course of time
and often carries a different meaning.
Rejected words
There were a goodly number of new words that we have not permanently retained.
Some are found used a few times and then forgotten.
The most convincing reason for the failure of a new word to take hold is that it was
not needed.

Reinforcement through French

It is not always possible to say whether a word borrowed at this time was taken over
directly from Latin or indirectly through French. Sometimes the occurrence of a word
in English earlier than in French points to the direct adoption from Latin. It is not
important which language was the direct source of the English words because in
either case they are ultimately of Latin origin.

Words from the Romance Languages

16th century purists objected to three classes of strange words, which they
characterized as:
- inkhorn terms
- oversea language (the language derived from the people who travelled abroad
and came back with a “contaminated” language)
- Chaucherisms (the poets brought back old words, and difficult coinages)

The method of introducing new words

If the words have not always been learned words, they have needed the help of
learned people to become known, like Sir Thomas Elyot or Thomas More.
It is estimated that about 12.000 new words have been introduced in this period.

The method of interpreting new words

Explanations were sometimes added parenthetically or if an equivalent word or
expression existed, the writers combined the new and the old in a self-interpreting
pair.

Dictionaries of hard words

The development of dictionaries was a consequence of the extensive additions that
had been made to the language and in turn helped to facilitate their adoption into
general use. The earliest dictionaries were those explaining the words in Latin or
some other foreign language considered “hard”.
The movement illustrated in Shakespeare
Shakespeare would have been classed among the liberals in his attitude toward
foreign borrowing. His use of the new words illustrates an important point in
connection with them because they were often used in a sense different from ours,
closer to their etymological meaning in Latin.

Shakespeare’s pronunciation and the Great Vowel Shift

Shakespeare’s pronunciation, though not ours, was much more like ours than has
always been realized. This is because in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries the
vowels, especially the long ones, underwent a shifting.
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English
language that took place primarily in the 15th and 18th centuries. Through this vowel
shift, the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels was changed.
The standardization of English spelling began in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the
Great Vowel Shift is the major reason English spellings now often deviate
considerably from how they represent pronunciations.
The spelling of English had become fixed in a general way before the Shift and
therefore did not change when the vowels changed. Consequently, the vowel symbols
no longer correspond to the sounds they once represented in English.

Grammatical features
English grammar in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century is marked more by
the survival of certain forms and usages that have since disappeared than by any
fundamental developments.
The s-plural had become commonly used, but in the 16th century there are certain
survivals of the old weak plural in -n, like kneen for knees.

The adjective
The forms of the comparative and superlative degrees have not always been precisely
those now in use. The two methods commonly used to form the comparative and
superlative, with the endings -er and -est and with the adverbs more and most had
been in more variation in their use. A double comparative or superlative is also fairly
frequent in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries: more larger.

The pronoun
The pronoun thou began to be used to address children or person of an inferior social
class, while the form you began to be used as a mark of respect in addressing a
superior.
The verb
The regular ending of the third person singular was -eth, but forms with -s
occasionally appear. During the 16th century their number increases, especially in
writings that seem to reflect the colloquial usage. By the end of this century the -s
form became the predominant one.

Usage and idiom

Shakespeare omitted the article in idioms in which now it is present (creeping like
snail).
The use of a double negative was highly present, and the use of prepositions was very
different from the one we know today.

General characteristics of the period

In the 16th century there is a considerable body of literature defending the language
against those who were disposed to compare it unfavourably to Latin or other modern
tongues, patriotically recognizing its position as the national speech, and urging its
usage for learned and literary use.
English in the Renaissance was much more plastic than now. Words had not always
distributed themselves into rigid grammatical categories, this reflects the spirit of this
age.
In spite of all the progress that had been made toward a uniform standard, many
features of the language were still unsettled: there still existed a considerable variety
of use