Reede as the berstl-es of a sow-es eer-es.
Several old genitives and plural forms continued to exist, and the
dative or prepositional case has usually a final _e_. Adjectives retain
so much of the old declension as to have -_e_ in the definite form and
in the plural--
The tend-re cropp-es and the yong-e sonne.
And smal-e fowl-es maken melodie.
Numerous old forms of comparison were in use, which have not come down
to Modern English, as _herre_, _ferre_, _lenger_, _hext_ = higher,
farther, longer, highest. In the pronouns, _ich_ lingered alongside of
_I_; _ye_ was only nominative, and _you_ objective; the northern _thei_
had dispossessed the southern _hy_, but _her_ and _hem_ (the modern
'_em_) stood their ground against _their_ and _them_. The verb is _I
lov-e_, _thou lov-est_, _he lov-eth_; but, in the plural, _lov-en_ is
interchanged with _lov-e_, as rhyme or euphony requires. So in the
plural of the past _we love-den_ or _love-de_. The infinitive also ends
in _en_, often _e_, always syllabic. The present participle, in Old
English -_ende_, passing through -_inde_, has been confounded with the
verbal noun in -_ynge_, -_yng_, as in Modern English. The past
participle largely retains the prefix _y_- or _i_-, representing the Old
English _ge_-, as in _i-ronne_, _y-don_, Old English _zerunnen_,
_zedon_, run, done. Many old verb forms still continued in existence.
The adoption of French words, not only those of Norman introduction, but
those subsequently introduced under the Angevin kings, to supply
obsolete and obsolescent English ones, which had kept pace with the
growth of literature since the beginning of the Middle English period,
had now reached its climax; later times added many more, but they also
dropped some that were in regular use with Chaucer and his
contemporaries.
Chaucer's great contemporary, William Langland, in his _Vision of
William concerning Piers the Ploughman_, and his imitator the author of
_Pierce the Ploughman's Crede_ (about 1400) used the Old English
alliterative versification for the last time in the south. Rhyme had
made its appearance in the language shortly after the Conquest--if not
already known before; and in the south and midlands it became decidedly
more popular than alliteration; the latter retained its hold much longer
in the north, where it was written even after 1500: many of the northern
romances are either simply alliterative, or have both alliteration and
rhyme. To these characteristics of northern and southern verse
respectively Chaucer alludes in the prologue of the "Persone," who, when
called upon for his tale said:--
"But trusteth wel; I am a sotherne man,
I cannot geste _rom_, _ram_, _ruf_, by my letter.
And, God wote, rime hold I but litel better:
And therefore, if you list, I wol not glose,
I wol you tell a litel tale in prose."
The changes from Old to Middle English may be summed up thus: Loss of a
large part of the native vocabulary, and adoption of French words to
fill their place; not infrequent adoption of French words as synonyms of
existing native ones; modernization of the English words preserved, by
vowel change in a definite direction from back to front, and from open
to close, _[=a,]_ becoming _[=o,]_, original _e_, _o_ tending to _ee_,
_oo_, monophthongization of the old diphthongs _eo_, _ea_, and
development of new diphthongs in connexion with _g_, _h_, and _w_;
adoption of French orthographic symbols, e.g. _ou_ for _u_, _qu_, _v_,
_ch_, and gradual loss of the symbols [j], th, dh, Th; obscuration of
vowels after the accent, and especially of final _a_, _o_, _u_ to _e_;
consequent confusion and loss of old inflections, and their replacement
by prepositions, auxiliary verbs and rules of position; abandonment of
alliteration for rhyme; and great development of dialects, in
consequence of there being no standard or recognized type of English.
But the recognition came at length. Already in 1258 was issued the
celebrated English proclamation of Henry III., or rather of Simon de
Montfort in his name, which, as the only public recognition of the
native tongue between William the Conqueror and Edward III., has
sometimes been spoken of as the first specimen of English. It runs:--
"Henr_i_ thur[gh] godes fultume king on Engleneloande Lhoauerd on
Yrloand_e_. Duk on Norm_andie_ on Aquitaine and eorl on Aniow. Send
igretinge to alle hise holde ilaerde and ileawede on
Huntendoneschir_e_. thaet witen [gh]e wel alle thaet _we_ willen and
vnne_n_ thaet thaet vre raedesmen alle other the moare dael of heom
thaet beoth ichosen thur[gh] us and thur[gh] thaet loandes folk on vre
kuneriche. habbeth idon and schullen don in the worthnesse of gode and
on vre treowthe. for the freme of the loande. thur[gh] the besi[gh]te
of than to-foren-iseide redesmen. beo stedefaest and ilestinde in alle
thinge a buten aende. And we hoaten alle vre treowe in the treowthe
thaet heo vs o[gh]en. thaet heo stedefaestliche healden and swerien to
healden and to werien tho isetnesses thaet ben imakede and beon to
makien thur[gh] than to-foren iseide raedesmen. other thur[gh] the
moare dael of heom alswo alse hit is biforen iseid. And thaet aehc
other helpe thaet for to done bi than ilche othe a[gh]enes alle men.
Ri[gh]t for to done and to foangen. And noan ne nime of loande ne of
e[gh]te. wherthur[gh] this besi[gh]te mu[gh]e beon ilet other iwersed
on onie wise.' And [gh]if oni other onie cumen her on[gh]enes; we
willen and hoaten thaet alle vre treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan.
And for thaet we willen thaet this beo stedefaest and lestinde; we
senden [gh]ew this writ open iseined with vre seel. to halden amanges
[gh]ew ine hord. Witnesse vs seluen aet Lunden_e_. thane E[gh]tetenthe
day. on the Monthe of Octobr_e_ In the Two-and-fowerti[gh]the [gh]eare
of vre cruninge. And this wes idon aetforen vre isworene redesmen....
"And al on tho ilche worden is isend in to aeurihce othre shcire ouer
al thaere kuneriche on Engleneloande. and ek in tel Irelonde."
The dialect of this document is more southern than anything else, with a
slight midland admixture. It is much more archaic inflectionally than
the _Genesis and Exodus_ or _Ormulum_; but it closely resembles the old
Kentish sermons and _Proverbs of Alfred_ in the southern dialect of
1250. It represents no doubt the London speech of the day. London being
in a Saxon county, and contiguous to Kent and Surrey, had certainly at
first a southern dialect; but its position as the capital, as well as
its proximity to the midland district, made its dialect more and more
midland. Contemporary London documents show that Chaucer's language,
which is distinctly more southern than standard English eventually
became, is behind the London dialect of the day in this respect, and is
at once more archaic and consequently more southern.
During the next hundred years English gained ground steadily, and by the
reign of Edward III. French was so little known in England, even in the
families of the great, that about 1350 "John Cornwal, a maystere of
gramere, chaungede the lore (= teaching) in gramere scole _and_
construccion of [i.e. _from_] Freynsch into Englysch";[23] and in
1362-1363 English by statute took the place of French in the pleadings
in courts of law. Every reason conspired that this "English" should be
the midland dialect. It was the intermediate dialect, intelligible, as
Trevisa has told us, to both extremes, even when these failed to be
intelligible to each other; in its south-eastern form, it was the
language of London, where the supreme law courts were, the centre of
political and commercial life; it was the language in which the
Wycliffite versions had given the Holy Scriptures to the people; the
language in which Chaucer had raised English poetry to a height of
excellence admired and imitated by contemporaries and followers. And
accordingly after the end of the 14th century, all Englishmen who
thought they had anything to say to their countrymen generally said it
in the midland speech. Trevisa's own work was almost the last literary
effort of the southern dialect; henceforth it was but a rustic patois,
which the dramatist might use to give local colouring to his creations,
as Shakespeare uses it to complete Edgar's peasant disguise in _Lear_,
or which 19th century research might disinter to illustrate obscure
chapters in the history of language. And though the northern English
proved a little more stubborn, it disappeared also from literature in
England; but in Scotland, which had now become politically and socially
estranged from England, it continued its course as the national language
of the country, attaining in the 15th and 16th centuries a distinct
development and high literary culture, for the details of which readers
are referred to the article on SCOTTISH LANGUAGE.
The 15th century of English history, with its bloody French war abroad
and Wars of the Roses at home, was a barren period in literature, and a
transition one in language, witnessing the decay and disappearance of
the final _e_, and most of the syllabic inflections of Middle English.
Already by 1420, in Chaucer's disciple Hoccleve, final _e_ was quite
uncertain; in Lydgate it was practically gone. In 1450 the writings of
Pecock against the Wycliffites show the verbal inflections in _-en_ in a
state of obsolescence; he has still the southern pronouns _her_ and
_hem_ for the northern _their_, _them_:--
"And here-a[gh]ens holi scripture wole that men schulden lacke the
coueryng which wommen schulden haue, & thei schulden so lacke bi that
the heeris of her heedis schulden be schorne, & schulde not growe in
lengthe doun as wommanys heer schulde growe....
"Also here-withal into the open si[gh]t of ymagis in open chirchis,
alle peple, men & wommen & children mowe come whanne euere thei wolen
in ech tyme of the day, but so mowe thei not come in-to the vce of
bokis to be delyuered to hem neither to be red bifore hem; & therfore,
as for to soone & ofte come into remembraunce of a long mater bi ech
oon persoon, and also as forto make that the mo persoones come into
remembraunce of a mater, ymagis & picturis serven in a specialer maner
than bokis doon, thou[gh] in an other maner ful substanciali bokis
seruen better into remembrauncing of tho same materis than ymagis &
picturis doon; & therfore, thou[gh] writing is seruen weel into
remembrauncing upon the bifore seid thingis, [gh]it not at the ful:
Forwhi the bokis han not the avail of remembrauncing now seid whiche
ymagis han."[24]
The change of the language during the second period of Transition, as
well as the extent of dialectal differences, is quaintly expressed a
generation later by Caxton, who in the prologue to one of the last of
his works, his translation of Virgil's _Eneydos_ (1490), speaks of the
difficulty he had in pleasing all readers:--
"I doubted that it sholde not please some gentylmen, whiche late
blamed me, sayeng, y^t in my translacyons I had ouer curyous termes,
whiche coud not be vnderstande of comyn peple, and desired me to vse
olde and homely termes in my translacyons. And fayn wolde I satysfy
euery man; and so to doo, toke an olde boke and redde therein; and
certaynly the englysshe was so rude and brood that I coude not wele
vnderstande it. And also my lorde abbot of Westmynster ded do shewe to
me late certayn euydences wryton in olde englysshe for to reduce it in
to our englysshe now vsid. And certaynly it was wreton in suche wyse
that it was more lyke to dutche than englysshe; I coude not reduce ne
brynge it to be vnderstonden. And certaynly, our langage now vsed
varyeth ferre from that whiche was vsed and spoken whan I was borne.
For we englysshemen ben borne vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche
is neuer stedfaste, but euer wauerynge, wexynge one season, and waneth
and dycreaseth another season. And that comyn englysshe that is spoken
in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so much that in my days
happened that certayn marchauntes were in a ship_e_ in tamyse, for to
haue sayled ouer the sea into zelande, and for lacke of wynde thei
taryed atte forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one
of theym named sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for
mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys, And the goode wyf answerde,
that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he
also coulde speke no frenshe, but wolde haue hadde egges; and she
vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde
haue eyren; then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstod hym wel. Loo!
what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren? certaynly,
it is harde to playse euery man, by cause of dyuersite & chaunge of
langage. For in these dayes, euery man that is in ony reputacyon in
his countre wyll vtter his comynycacyon and maters in suche maners &
termes that fewe men shall vnderstonde theym. And som honest and grete
clerkes haue ben wyth me, and desired me to wryte the moste curyous
termes that I coude fynde. And thus bytwene playn, rude and curyous, I
stande abasshed; but in my Iudgemente, the comyn termes that be dayli
vsed ben lyghter to be vnderstonde than the olde and auncyent
englysshe."
In the productions of Caxton's press we see the passage from Middle to
Early Modern English completed. The earlier of these have still an
occasional verbal plural in _-n_, especially in the word _they ben_; the
southern _her_ and _hem_ of Middle English vary with the northern and
Modern English _their_, _them_. In the late works, the older forms have
been practically ousted, and the year 1485, which witnessed the
establishment of the Tudor dynasty, may be conveniently put as that
which closed the Middle English transition, and introduced Modern
English. Both in the completion of this result, and in its comparative
permanence, the printing press had an important share. By its exclusive
patronage of the midland speech, it raised it still higher above the
sister dialects, and secured its abiding victory. As books were
multiplied and found their way into every corner of the land, and the
art of reading became a more common acquirement, the man of
Northumberland or of Somersetshire had forced upon his attention the
book-English in which alone these were printed. This became in turn the
model for his own writings, and by-and-by, if he made any pretensions to
education, of his own speech. The written _form_ of the language also
tended to uniformity. In previous periods the scribe made his own
spelling with a primary aim at expressing his own speech, according to
the particular values attached by himself or his contemporaries to the
letters and combinations of the alphabet, though liable to disturbance
in the most common words and combinations by his ocular recollections of
the spelling of others. But after the introduction of printing, this
ocular recognition of words became ever more and more an aim; the book
addressed the mind directly through the eye, instead of circuitously
through eye and ear; and thus there was a continuous tendency for
written words and parts of words to be reduced to a single form, and
that the most usual, or through some accident the best known, but not
necessarily that which would have been chosen had the _ear_ been called
in as umpire. Modern English spelling, with its rigid uniformity as to
individual results and whimsical caprice as to principles, is the
creation of the printing-office, the victory which, after a century and
a half of struggle, mechanical convenience won over natural habits.
Besides eventually creating a uniformity in writing, the introduction of
printing made or at least ratified some important changes. The British
and Old English form of the Roman alphabet has already been referred to.
This at the Norman Conquest was superseded by an alphabet with the
French forms and values of the letters. Thus _k_ took the place of the
older _c_ before _e_ and _i_; _qu_ replaced _cw_; the Norman _w_ took
the place of the _wen_ (Th), &c.; and hence it has often been said that
Middle English stands nearer to Old English in pronunciation, but to
Modern English in spelling. But there were certain sounds in English for
which Norman writing had no provision; and for these, in writing
English, the native characters were retained. Thus the Old English g
([g]), beside the sound in _go_, had a guttural sound as in German
ta_g_, Irish ma_gh_, and in certain positions a palatalized form of this
approaching _y_ as in _y_ou (if pronounced with aspiration _hy_ou or
_gh_you). These sounds continued to be written with the native form of
the letter as _bur[gh]_, _[gh]our_, while the French form was used for
the sounds in _go_, _age_,--one original letter being thus represented
by two. So for the sounds of _th_, especially the sound in _th_at, the
Old English _thorn_ (th) continued to be used. But as these characters
were not used for French and Latin, their use even in English became
disturbed towards the 15th century, and when printing was introduced,
the founts, cast for continental languages, had no characters for them,
so that they were dropped entirely, being replaced, [gh] by _gh_, _yh_,
_y_, and _th_ by _th_. This was a real loss to the English alphabet. In
the north it is curious that the printers tried to express the _forms_
rather than the powers of these letters, and consequently [gh] was
represented by _z_, the black letter form of which was confounded with
it, while the th was expressed by _y_, which its MS. form had come to
approach or in some cases simulate. So in early Scotch books we find
_zellow_, _ze_, _yat_, _yem_ = _yellow_, _ye_, _that_, _them_; and in
Modern Scottish, such names as _Menzies_, _Dalziel_, _Cockenzie_, and
the word _gaberlunzie_, in which the _z_ stands for _y_.
MODERN ENGLISH thus dates from Caxton. The language had at length
reached the all but flectionless state which it now presents. A single
older verbal form, the southern _-eth_ of the third person singular,
continued to be the literary prose form throughout the 16th century, but
the northern form in _-s_ was intermixed with it in poetry (where it
saved a syllable), and must ere long, as we see from Shakespeare, have
taken its place in familiar speech. The fuller _an_, _none_, _mine_,
_thine_, in the early part of the 16th century at least, were used in
positions where their shortened forms _a_, _no_, _my_, _thy_ are now
found (_none other_, _mine own_ = _no other_, _my own_). But with such
minute exceptions, the accidence of the 16th century was the accidence
of the 19th. While, however, the older inflections had disappeared,
there was as yet no general agreement as to the mode of their
replacement. Hence the 16th century shows a syntactic licence and
freedom which distinguishes it strikingly from that of later times. The
language seems to be in a plastic, unformed state, and its writers, as
it were, experiment with it, bending it to constructions which now seem
indefensible. Old distinctions of case and mood have disappeared from
noun and verb, without custom having yet decided what prepositions or
auxiliary verbs shall most fittingly convey their meaning. The laxity of
word-order which was permitted in older states of the language by the
_formal_ expression of relations was often continued though the
inflections which expressed the relations had disappeared. Partial
analogy was followed in allowing forms to be identified in one case,
because, in another, such identification was accidentally produced, as
for instance the past participles of _write_ and _take_ were often made
_wrote_ and _took_, because the contracted participles of _bind_ and
_break_ were _bound_ and _broke_. Finally, because, in dropping
inflections, the former distinctions even between parts of speech had
disappeared, so that _iron_, e.g., was at once noun, adjective and verb,
_clean_, adjective, verb and adverb, it appeared as if any word whatever
might be used in any grammatical relation, where it conveyed the idea of
the speaker. Thus, as has been pointed out by Dr Abbott, "you can
_happy_ your friend, _malice_ or _foot_ your enemy, or _fall_ an axe on
his neck. You can speak and act _easy_, _free_, _excellent_, you can
talk of _fair_ instead of beauty (fairness), and a _pale_ instead of a
_paleness_. A _he_ is used for a man, and a lady is described by a
gentleman as 'the fairest _she_ he has yet beheld.' An adverb can be
used as a verb, as 'they _askance_ their eyes'; as a noun, 'the
_backward_ and abyss of time'; or as an adjective, a '_seldom_
pleasure.'"[25] For, as he also says, "clearness was preferred to
grammatical correctness, and brevity both to correctness and clearness.
Hence it was common to place words in the order in which they came
uppermost in the mind without much regard to syntax, and the result was
a forcible and perfectly unambiguous but ungrammatical sentence, such as
The prince that feeds great natures they will slay him.
_Ben Jonson._
or, as instances of brevity,
Be guilty of my death since of my crime.
_Shakespeare._
It cost more to get than to lose in a day.
_Ben Jonson._"
These characteristics, together with the presence of words now obsolete
or archaic, and the use of existing words in senses different from our
own, as general for specific, literal for metaphorical, and vice versa,
which are so apparent to every reader of the 16th-century literature,
make it useful to separate _Early Modern_ or _Tudor_ English from the
subsequent and still existing stage, since the consensus of usage has
declared in favour of individual senses and constructions which are
alone admissible in ordinary language.
The beginning of the Tudor period was contemporaneous with the
Renaissance in art and literature, and the dawn of modern discoveries in
geography and science. The revival of the study of the classical writers
of Greece and Rome, and the translation of their works into the
vernacular, led to the introduction of an immense number of new words
derived from these languages, either to express new ideas and objects or
to indicate new distinctions in or grouping of old ideas. Often also it
seemed as if scholars were so pervaded with the form as well as the
spirit of the old, that it came more natural to them to express
themselves in words borrowed from the old than in their native tongue,
and thus words of Latin origin were introduced even when English already
possessed perfectly good equivalents. As has already been stated, the
French words of Norman and Angevin introduction, being principally Latin
words in an altered form, when used as English supplied models whereby
other Latin words could be converted into English ones, and it is after
these models that the Latin words introduced during and since the 16th
century have been fashioned. There is nothing in the _form_ of the words
_procession_ and _progression_ to show that the one was used in England
in the 11th, the other not till the 16th century. Moreover, as the
formation of new words from Latin had gone on in French as well as in
English since the Renaissance, we often cannot tell whether such words,
e.g. as _persuade_ and _persuasion_, were borrowed from their French
equivalents or formed from Latin in England independently. With some
words indeed it is impossible to say whether they were formed in England
directly from Latin, borrowed from contemporary late French, or had been
in England since the Norman period, even _photograph_, _geology_ and
_telephone_ have the form that they would have had if they had been
living words in the mouths of Greeks, Latins, French and English from
the beginning, instead of formations of the 19th century.[26] While
every writer was thus introducing new words according to his notion of
their being needed, it naturally happened that a large number were not
accepted by contemporaries or posterity; a long list might be formed of
these mintages of the 16th and 17th centuries, which either never became
current coin, or circulated only as it were for a moment. The revived
study of Latin and Greek also led to modifications in the spelling of
some words which had entered Middle English in the French form. So
Middle English _doute_, _dette_, were changed to _doubt_, _debt_, to
show a more immediate connexion with Latin _dubitum_, _debitum_; the
actual derivation from the French being ignored. Similarly, words
containing a Latin and French _t_, which might be traced back to an
original Greek [theta], were remodelled upon the Greek, e.g. _theme_,
_throne_, for Middle English _teme_, _trone_, and, by false association
with Greek, _anthem_, Old English _antefne_, Latin _antiphona_;
_Anthony_, Latin _Antonius_; _Thames_, Latin _Tamesis_, apparently after
_Thomas_.
The voyages of English navigators in the latter part of the 16th century
introduced a considerable number of Spanish words, and American words in
Spanish forms, of which _negro_, _potato_, _tobacco_, _cargo_,
_armadillo_, _alligator_, _galleon_ may serve as examples.
The date of 1611, which nearly coincides with the end of Shakespeare's
literary work, and marks the appearance of the Authorized Version of the
Bible (a compilation from the various 16th-century versions), may be
taken as marking the close of Tudor English. The language was
thenceforth Modern in structure, style and expression, although the
spelling did not settle down to present usage till about the revolution
of 1688. The latter date also marks the disappearance from literature of
a large number of words, chiefly of such as were derived from Latin
during the 16th and 17th centuries. Of these nearly all that survived
1688 are still in use; but a long list might be made out of those that
appear for the last time before that date. This sifting of the literary
vocabulary and gradual fixing of the literary spelling, which went on
between 1611, when the language became modern in structure, and 1689,
when it became modern also in form, suggests for this period the name of
Seventeenth-Century Transition. The distinctive features of Modern
English have already been anticipated by way of contrast with preceding
stages of the language. It is only necessary to refer to the fact that
the vocabulary is now much more composite than at any previous period.
The immense development of the physical sciences has called for a
corresponding extension of terminology which has been supplied from
Latin and especially Greek; and although these terms are in the first
instance _technical_, yet, with the spread of education and general
diffusion of the rudiments and appliances of science, the boundary line
between _technical_ and _general_, indefinite at the best, tends more
and more to melt away--this in addition to the fact that words still
technical become general in figurative or metonymic senses. _Ache_,
_diamond_, _stomach_, _comet_, _organ_, _tone_, _ball_, _carte_, are
none the less familiar because once technical words. Commercial, social,
artistic or literary contact has also led to the adoption of numerous
words from modern European languages, especially French, Italian,
Portuguese, Dutch (these two at a less recent period): thus from French
_soiree_, _seance_, _depot_, _debris_, _programme_, _prestige_; from
Italian _bust_, _canto_, _folio_, _cartoon_, _concert_, _regatta_,
_ruffian_; from Portuguese _caste_, _palaver_; from Dutch _yacht_,
_skipper_, _schooner_, _sloop_. Commercial intercourse and colonization
have extended far beyond Europe, and given us words more or fewer from
Hindostani, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Malay, Chinese, and from American,
Australian, Polynesian and African languages.[27] More important even
than these, perhaps, are the dialect words that from time to time obtain
literary recognition, restoring to us obsolete Old English forms, and
not seldom words of Celtic or Danish origin, which have been preserved
in local dialects, and thus at length find their way into the standard
language.
As to the actual proportion of the various elements of the language, it
is probable that original English words do not now form more than a
fourth or perhaps a fifth of the total entries in a full English
dictionary; and it may seem strange, therefore, that we still identify
the language with that of the 9th century, and class it as a member of
the _Low German_ division. But this explains itself, when we consider
that of the total words in a dictionary only a small portion are used by
any one individual in speaking or even in writing; that this portion
includes the great majority of the Anglo-Saxon words, and but a minority
of the others. The latter are in fact almost all _names_--the vast
majority names of _things_ (nouns), a smaller number names of
_attributes_ and _actions_ (adjectives and verbs), and, from their very
nature, names of the things, attributes and actions which come less
usually or, it may be, very rarely under our notice. Thus in an ordinary
book, a novel or story, the foreign elements will amount to from 10 to
15% of the whole; as the subject becomes more recondite or technical
their number will increase; till in a work on chemistry or abstruse
mathematics the proportion may be 40%. But after all, it is not the
question whence words _may_ have been taken, but _how they are used_ in
a language that settles its character. If new words when adopted conform
themselves to the manner and usage of the adopting language, it makes
absolutely no difference whether they are taken over from some other
language, or invented off at the ground. In either case they are _new_
words to begin with; in either case also, if they are needed, they will
become as thoroughly native, i.e. familiar from childhood to those who
use them, as those that possess the longest native pedigree. In this
respect English is still the same language it was in the days of Alfred;
and, comparing its history with that of other Low German tongues, there
is no reason to believe that its grammar or structure would have been
very different, however different its vocabulary might have been, if the
Norman Conquest had never taken place.
A general broad view of the sources of the English vocabulary and of the
dates at which the various foreign elements flowed into the language, as
well as of the great change produced in it by the Norman Conquest, and
consequent influx of French and Latin elements, is given in the
accompanying chart. The transverse lines represent centuries, and it
will be seen how limited a period after all is occupied by modern
English, how long the language had been in the country before the Norman
Conquest, and how much of this is prehistoric and without any literary
remains. Judging by what has happened during the historic period, great
changes may and indeed _must_ have taken place between the first arrival
of the Saxons and the days of King Alfred, when literature practically
begins. The chart also illustrates the continuity of the main stock of
the vocabulary, the body of primary "words of common life," which,
notwithstanding numerous losses and more numerous additions, has
preserved its corporate identity through all the periods. But the
"poetic and rhetorical," as well as the "scientific" terms of Old
English have died out, and a new vocabulary of "abstract and general
terms" has arisen from French, Latin and Greek, while a still newer
"technical, commercial and scientific" vocabulary is composed of words
not only from these, but from every civilized and many uncivilized
languages.
[Illustration]
The preceding sketch has had reference mainly to the grammatical changes
which the language has undergone; distinct from, though intimately
connected with these (as where the confusion or loss of inflections was
a consequence of the weakening of final sounds) are the great phonetic
changes which have taken place between the 8th and 19th centuries, and
which result in making modern English words very different from their
Anglo-Saxon originals, even where no element has been lost, as in words
like _stone_, _mine_, _doom_, _day_, _nail_, _child_, _bridge_, _shoot_,
Anglo-Saxon _stan_, _min_, _dom_, _daeg_, _naegel_, _cild_, _brycg_,
_sceot_. The history of English sounds (see PHONETICS) has been treated
at length by Dr A.J. Ellis and Dr Henry Sweet; and it is only necessary
here to indicate the broad facts, which are the following, (1) In an
accented closed syllable, original short vowels have remained nearly
unchanged; thus the words _at_, _men_, _bill_, _God_, _dust_ are
pronounced now nearly as in Old English, though the last two were more
like the Scotch _o_ and North English _u_ respectively, and in most
words the short _a_ had a broader sound like the provincial _a_ in
_man_. (2) Long accented vowels and diphthongs have undergone a regular
sound shift towards closer and more advanced positions, so that the
words _ban_, _haer_, _soece_ or _sece_, _stol_ (_bahn_ or _bawn_, _her_,
_sok_ or _saik_, _stole_) are now _bone_, _hair_, _seek_, _stool_; while
the two high vowels _u_ (= _oo_) and _i_ (_ee_) have become diphthongs,
as _hus_, _scir_, now _house_, _shire_, though the old sound of _u_
remains in the north (_hoose_), and the original _i_ in the
pronunciation _sheer_, approved by Walker, "as in mach_i_ne, and
sh_i_re, and magaz_i_ne." (3) Short vowels in an open syllable have
usually been lengthened, as in _na-ma_, _co-fa_, now _name_, _cove_; but
to this there are exceptions, especially in the case of _i_ and _u_. (4)
Vowels in terminal unaccented syllables have all sunk into short obscure
_e_, and then, if final, disappeared; so _oxa_, _seo_, _wudu_ became
_ox-e_, _se-e_, _wud-e_, and then _ox_, _see_, _wood_; _oxan_, _lufod_,
now _oxen_, _loved_, _lov'd_; _settan_, _setton_, later _setten_,
_sette_, _sett_, now _set_. (5) The back consonants, _c_, _g_, _sc_, in
connexion with front vowels, have often become palatalized to _ch_, _j_,
_sh_, as _circe_, _rycg_, _fisc_, now _church_, _ridge_, _fish_. A
medial or final _g_ has passed through a guttural or palatal continuant
to _w_ or _y_, forming a diphthong or new vowel, as in _boga_, _laga_,
_daeg_, _heg_, _drig_, now _bow_, _law_, _day_, _hay_, _dry_. _W_ and
_h_ have disappeared before _r_ and _l_, as in _write_, _(w)lisp_,
_(h)ring_; _h_ final (=_gh_) has become _f_, _k_, _w_ or nothing, but
has developed the glides _u_ or _i_ before itself, these combining with
the preceding vowel to form a diphthong, or merging with it into a
simple vowel-sound, as _ruh_, _hoh_, _boh_, _deah_, _heah_, _hleah_, now
_rough_, _hough_, _bough_, _dough_, _high_, _laugh=ruf_, _hok_, _bow_,
_do_, _hi_, _laf_. _R_ after a vowel has practically disappeared in
standard English, or at most become vocalized, or combined with the
vowel, as in _hear_, _bar_, _more_, _her_. These and other changes have
taken place gradually, and in accordance with well-known phonetic laws;
the details as to time and mode may be studied in special works. It may
be mentioned that the total loss of grammatical _gender_ in English, and
the almost complete disappearance of _cases_, are purely phonetic
phenomena. _Gender_ (whatever its remote origin) was practically the use
of adjectives and pronouns with certain distinctive terminations, in
accordance with the _genus_, _genre_, _gender_ or _kind_ of nouns to
which they were attached; when these distinctive terminations were
uniformly levelled to final _e_, or other weak sounds, and thus ceased
to distinguish nouns into kinds, the distinctions into genders or kinds
having no other existence disappeared. Thus when _thaet gode hors_,
_thone godan hund_, _tha godan boc_, became, by phonetic weakening, _the
gode hors_, _the gode hownd_, _the gode boke_, and later still the _good
horse_, the _good hound_, the _good book_, the words _horse_, _hound_,
_book_ were no longer grammatically different kinds of nouns;
grammatical gender had ceased to exist. The concord of adjectives has
entirely disappeared; the concord of the pronouns is now regulated by
_rationality_ and _sex_, instead of grammatical gender, which has no
existence in English. The man _who_ lost _his_ life; the bird _which_
built _its_ nest.
Our remarks from the end of the 14th century have been confined to the
standard or literary form of English, for of the other dialects from
that date (with the exception of the northern English in Scotland,
where it became in a social and literary sense a distinct language), we
have little history. We know, however, that they continued to exist as
local and popular forms of speech, as well from occasional specimens and
from the fact that they exist still as from the statements of writers
during the interval. Thus Puttenham in his _Arte of English Poesie_
(1589) says:--
"Our maker [i.e. poet] therfore at these dayes shall not follow Piers
Plowman, nor Gower, nor Lydgate, not yet Chaucer, for their language
is now not of use with us: neither shall he take the termes of
Northern-men, such as they use in dayly talke, whether they be noble
men or gentle men or of their best clarkes, all is a [= one] matter;
nor in effect any speach used beyond the river of Trent, though no man
can deny but that theirs is the purer English Saxon at this day, yet
it is not so Courtly nor so currant as our _Southerne_ English is, no
more is the far Westerne mans speach: ye shall therefore take the
usual speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying
about London within lx myles, and not much above. I say not this but
that in every shyre of England there be gentlemen and others that
speake but specially write as good Southerne as we of Middlesex or
Surrey do, but not the common people of every shire, to whom the
gentlemen, and also their learned clarkes do for the most part
condescend, but herein we are already ruled by th' English
Dictionaries and other bookes written by learned men."--_Arber's
Reprint_, p. 157.
In comparatively modern times there has been a revival of interest in
these forms of English, several of which following in the wake of the
revival of Lowland Scots in the 18th and 19th centuries, have produced a
considerable literature in the form of local poems, tales and
"folk-lore." In these respects Cumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Devon,
Somerset and Dorset, the "far north" and "far west" of Puttenham, where
the dialect was felt to be so independent of literary English as not to
be branded as a mere vulgar corruption of it, stand prominent. More
recently the dialects have been investigated philologically, a
department in which, as in other departments of English philology, the
elder Richard Garnett must be named as a pioneer. The work was carried
out zealously by Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte and Dr A.J. Ellis, and
more recently by the English Dialect Society, founded by the Rev.
Professor Skeat, for the investigation of this branch of philology. The
efforts of this society resulted in the compilation and publication of
glossaries or word-books, more or less complete and trustworthy, of most
of the local dialects, and in the production of grammars dealing with
the phonology and grammatical features of a few of these, among which
that of the Windhill dialect in Yorkshire, by Professor Joseph Wright,
and that of West Somerset, by the late F.T. Elworthy, deserve special
mention. From the whole of the glossaries of the Dialect Society, and
from all the earlier dialect works of the 18th and 19th centuries,
amplified and illustrated by the contributions of local collaborators in
nearly every part of the British Isles, Professor Joseph Wright has
constructed his _English Dialect Dictionary_, recording the local words
and senses, with indication of their geographical range, their
pronunciation, and in most cases with illustrative quotations or
phrases. To this he has added an _English Dialect Grammar_, dealing very
fully with the phonology of the dialects, showing the various sounds
which now represent each Old English sound, and endeavouring to define
the area over which each modern form extends; the accidence is treated
more summarily, without going minutely into that of each dialect-group,
for which special dialect grammars must be consulted. The work has also
a very full and valuable index of every word and form treated.
The researches of Prince L.L. Bonaparte and Dr Ellis were directed
specially to the classification and mapping of the existing
dialects,[28] and the relation of these to the dialects of Old and
Middle English. They recognized a _Northern_ dialect lying north of a
line drawn from Morecambe Bay to the Humber, which, with the kindred
Scottish dialects (already investigated and classed),[29] is the direct
descendant of early northern English, and a _South-western_ dialect
occupying Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Gloucester and western Hampshire,
which, with the _Devonian_ dialect beyond it, are the descendants of
early southern English and the still older West-Saxon of Alfred. This
dialect must in the 14th Century have been spoken everywhere south of
Thames; but the influence of London caused its extinction in Surrey,
Sussex and Kent, so that already in Puttenham it had become "far
western." An _East Midland_ dialect, extending from south Lincolnshire
to London, occupies the cradle-land of the standard English speech, and
still shows least variation from it. Between and around these typical
dialects are ten others, representing the old Midland proper, or
dialects between it and the others already mentioned. Thus "north of
Trent" the _North-western_ dialect of south Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby
and Stafford, with that of Shropshire, represents the early West Midland
English, of which several specimens remain; while the _North-eastern_ of
Nottingham and north Lincolnshire represents the dialect of the _Lay of
Havelok_. With the _North Midland_ dialect of south-west Yorkshire,
these represent forms of speech which to the modern Londoner, as to
Puttenham, are still decidedly northern, though actually intermediate
between northern proper and midland, and preserving interesting traces
of the midland pronouns and verbal inflections. There is an _Eastern_
dialect in the East Anglian counties; a _Midland_ in Leicester and
Warwick shires; a _Western_ in Hereford, Worcester and north
Gloucestershire, intermediate between south-western and north-western,
and representing the dialect of _Piers Plowman_. Finally, between the
east midland and south-western, in the counties of Buckingham, Oxford,
Berks, Hants, Surrey and Sussex, there is a dialect which must have once
been south-western, but of which the most salient characters have been
rubbed off by proximity to London and the East Midland speech. In east
Sussex and Kent this _South-eastern_ dialect attains to a more
distinctive character. The _Kentish_ form of early Southern English
evidently maintained its existence more toughly than that of the
counties immediately south of London. It was very distinct in the days
of Sir Thomas More; and even, as we see from the dialect attributed to
Edgar in _Lear_, was still strongly marked in the days of Shakespeare.
In the south-eastern corner of Ireland, in the baronies of Forth and
Bargy, in county Wexford, a very archaic form of English, of which
specimens have been preserved,[30] was still spoken in the 18th century.
In all probability it dated from the first English invasion. In many
parts of Ulster forms of Lowland Scotch dating to the settlement under
James I. are still spoken; but the English of Ireland generally seems to
represent 16th and 17th century English, as in the pronunciation of
_tea_, _wheat_ (_tay_, _whait_), largely affected, of course, by the
native Celtic. The subsequent work of the English Dialect Society, and
the facts set forth in the _English Dialect Dictionary_, confirm in a
general way the classification of Bonaparte and Ellis; but they bring
out strongly the fact that only in a few cases can the boundary between
dialects now be determined by precise lines. For every dialect there is
a central region, larger or smaller, in which its characteristics are at
a maximum; but towards the edges of the area these become mixed and
blended with the features of the contiguous dialects, so that it is
often impossible to define the point at which the one dialect ends and
the other begins. The fact is that the various features of a dialect,
whether its distinctive words, characteristic pronunciations or special
grammatical features, though they may have the same centre, have not all
the same circumference. Some of them extend to a certain distance round
the centre; others to a much greater distance. The only approximately
accurate way to map the area of any dialect, whether in England, France,
Germany or elsewhere, is to take a well-chosen set of its characteristic
features--words, senses, sounds or grammatical peculiarities, and draw a
line round the area over which each of these extends; between the
innermost and outermost of these there will often be a large border
district. If the same process be followed with the contiguous dialects,
it will be found that some of the lines of each intersect some of the
lines of the other, and that the passing of one dialect into another is
not effected by the formation of intermediate or blended forms of any
one characteristic, but by the overlapping or intersecting of more or
fewer of the features of each. Thus a definite border village or
district may use 10 of the 20 features of dialect A and 10 of those of
B, while a village on the one side has 12 of those of A with 8 of those
of B, and one on the other side has 7 of those of A with 13 of those of
B. Hence a dialect boundary line can at best indicate the line within
which the dialect has, on the whole, more of the features of A than of B
or C; and usually no single line can be drawn as a dialect boundary, but
that without it there are some features of the same dialect, and within
it some features of the contiguous dialects.