LECTURE 16

Historical Grammar “Early Modern English”

 What is Early Modern
English?

Early Modern English is the earliest form of the English that we speak and that you’re
reading today. It can be defined as the stage of English from the beginning of the
Tudor period to its transition to modern English in the late 17th century. This form of
English developed from Middle English that spread from the 11th century to the 15th
century. Though unlike the transition from Old English to Middle English, this change
wasn’t just a change of vocabulary of pronunciation but was the beginning of a new
era of the English people, the English influence on the world and the English
language.
 Early Modern English
(1500-1650)
The Opening Years of the 16th century mark the beginning of Modern
English

English faced these great problems:

1. Recognition in the fields where Latin had been for centuries supreme.
2.The establishment of a more uniform orthography
3.The enrichment of a vocabulary in order to meet the demands that
would be made upon it in its wider use
So how did Middle English shift to become
Early Modern English?
Great Vowel Shift
• This arguably began the 13th century and continued until the 17th
century.
• This dramatically altered the pronunciation of the language.
• This brought a large borrowing of words and forms from other
languages of Europe, obviously requiring different pronunciations
which would go on, to affect the words already in English.
• To put this into context, whilst Geoffrey Chaucer’s works (of
Middle English) can be read in the Modern English tongue (with
some difficulty), if Chaucer were to read it to us, his pronunciation
would be nearly completely unintelligible to the modern ear.
The English Renaissance
• The next wave of innovation in English vocabulary came with the
revival of classical scholarship known as the Renaissance.
• The English Renaissance roughly covers the 16th and early 17th
Century (the European Renaissance had begun in Italy as early as
the 14th 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.
• The additions to English vocabulary during this period were
deliberate borrowings and not the result of any invasion or influx of
new nationalities or any top-down decrees.
• Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek and French) was still very much
considered the language of education at this time, and the great
enthusiasm for the classical languages during the English
Renaissance brought thousands of new words into the language,
peaking around 1600.
• A huge number of classical works were being translated into
English during the 16th Century, and many new terms were
introduced where a satisfactory English equivalent did not exist.
LET’S RECAP
• Taking place in Britain from the 16th century to the 17th, this ‘age of enlightenment’ brought plenty
of new ideas across from the continent.
• One of these was being educated in Latin, Greek and sometimes French. As a result, this brought
thousands of words over to the British Isles.
• Alongside this, many texts were translated from Latin, Greek, and other European languages into
English.
• Many new terms were introduced that didn’t have an English counterpart, so words were newly
constructed, or the Latin or Greek were just left intact to have a place in English. Examples of this
included ‘genius’, ‘species’, ‘system’ and hundreds more. Words with the endings of ‘ism’ and ‘ize’
were also introduced at this time.
Printing Press and
Standardization
 • The printing press also had a huge part to play.
• Introduced in 1476, this system of copying texts quickly and
efficiently, resulted in English texts becoming more popular than
books in Latin.
• Furthermore, at the time, English had five major dialects, and it
was via the printing press that these were slowly reduced to one.
For example, the press used the Northern English ‘they, ‘their’ and
‘them’ in preference to the London ‘hi’, ‘hir’ and ‘hem’ (which were
easily mixed up with ‘he’, ‘her’ and ‘him’) — this was among many
other word-based dialect decisions.
• Effectively the press controlled the development of English, which
reduced the dialect differences, altered spellings, and ultimately led
to the standardization of English into Early Modern English.
• A major text that was officially printed in English for the first time
(after several unofficial translations), was the Bible in 1611.
• This, of course, was a major influence on English speakers, most
being heavily religious, so spread and helped standardize Early
Modern English.
William Shakespeare
 • Whatever the merits of the other contributions to this golden age,
though, it is clear that one man, William Shakespeare, single-handedly
changed the English language to a significant extent in the late 16th
and early 17th Century.
• Shakespeare took advantage of the relative freedom and flexibility and
the protean nature of English at the time, and played free and easy with
the already liberal grammatical rules,
for example in his use of nouns as verbs, adverbs, adjectives and
substantives – an early instance of the “verbification” of nouns which
modern language purists often decry – in phrases such as “dog them at the
heels, the good Brutus ghosted, “Lord Angelo dukes it well”, “uncle me no
uncle”, etc.
British Trade
• Alongside the Renaissance, the prospects of world trade opened up
as colonizing began of the Americas and East Asia.
• As a result, more foreign phrases and words were brought back
home, alongside new items (like chocolate) and phrases like ‘crew’
and ‘infantry’ (which came from the French).
What were the main factors that contributed to the language shift from Middle English to Early Modern English?

1.Great Vowel Shift

2. The Renaissance
3. Printing Press & Standardization
4. William Shakespeare
5. British Trade
PLEASE STUDY
THIS LECTURE
Thank you!:)

Historical Grammar 3rd Year