HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

COMPILED BY : NEIL AMSTRONG

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND

LITERATURE
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
UHO

2015
 PREFACE

The compiler does realize that the needs for students’ references for this
subject are absolutely indispensdable since it seems quite difficult to find
references pertaining to the history of English in the full books. This module is
actually the precis of the long discussion concerning the origin and
development of this international language.
As a matter of fact, this module consists of three main parts, i.e. Old
English, Middle English and Modern English. Each of which has extended
discussion, especially in the modern English sessions.
By the end of this subject’s discussion, students are supposed to be able
to reconstruct and comprehend the origin, changes and development of English
language starting from the Proto Indo-European era to the late modern English
hitherto.
It should be borne in mind that this subject is the backbone and basic
guidelines to other subjects, such as English Phonology, Morphology, Syntax,
Semantics and Vocabulary.
Constructive and sustainable criticisms, suggestions and
recommendation are indispensable for further improvements.

Kendari, 1 March 2015

Chief compiler,

Neil Amstrong

2
 CONTENTS

Session 1………A Short History of the Origins and Development of English

…………………………………………………………………………………..4
Session 2………The English Language Development…………………………….9
Session 3………Old English……………………………………………………........16
Session 4………Middle English………………………………………………………23
Session 5………Early Modern English………………………………………………33
Session 6………History of American English……………………………………..42
Session 7………History of African American English in the U.S………………57
Session 8………Australian English Development and Peculiarities…………..66
Session 9………English, Maori, and Maori English in New Zealand…………..78
Session 10…….South African English………………………………………………97
Session 11…….The History of the English Language and Culture in India
…………………………………………………………………………102
Session 12…….Singapore Colloquial English (Singlish)………………………..104
Session 13…….The Transition to Early Modern English……………………….116
Session 14…….Differences Between English Accent and Australian Accent
…………………………………………………………………………121
Session 15……Differences Between Old English, Middle English and Modern
English………………………………………………………………..123
Session 16……Loanwords_Major Periods of Borrowing in the History of English
………………………………………………………………………….126
Session 17……Early Modern English Pronunciation and Spelling……………135
Session 18……Late Modern English (c. 1800 - present)………………………140
References……………………………………………………………………………….161

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 SESSION 1

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ORIGINS AND

DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH

What is English ?

The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three
Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes,
the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is
Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a
Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by
the invaders - mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles
came from "Englaland" [sic] and their language was called "Englisc" - from
which the words "England" and "English" are derived.

Germanic invaders entered Britain on the east and south coasts in the 5th century.

Old English (450-1100 AD)

The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain

developed into what we now call Old English. Old English did not sound or look
like English today. Native English speakers now would have great difficulty

4
understanding Old English. Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly
used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and
water, for example, derive from Old English. Old English was spoken until
around 1100.

Part of Beowulf, a poem written in Old English.

Middle English (1100-1500)

In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of modern France),
invaded and conquered England. The new conquerors (called the Normans)
brought with them a kind of French, which became the language of the Royal
Court, and the ruling and business classes. For a period there was a kind of
linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper
classes spoke French. In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain
again, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle
English. It was the language of the great poet Chaucer (c1340-1400), but it
would still be difficult for native English speakers to understand today.

An example of Middle English by Chaucer.

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Modern English
Early Modern English (1500-1800)
Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct change in
pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with vowels being pronounced
shorter and shorter. From the 16th century the British had contact with many
peoples from around the world.
Example of Early Modern English : Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be" lines,
written in Early Modern English by Shakespeare.

This, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, meant that many new words
and phrases entered the language. The invention of printing also meant that
there was now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more
people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English.
Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the dialect of London, where most
publishing houses were, became the standard. In 1604 the first English
dictionary was published.

Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be" lines, written in Early Modern English by Shakespeare.

Late Modern English (1800-Present)

The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is
vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two
principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a
need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one

6
quarter of the earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words
from many countries.

Varieties of English

From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the
creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations
and words "froze" when they reached America. In some ways, American English
is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some
expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British
expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain
(for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for
autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through
Hollywood gangster movies). Spanish also had an influence on American
English (and subsequently British English), with words like canyon, ranch,
stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English
through the settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana)
and West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American
English (and so, to an extent, British English).

Today, American English is particularly influential, due to the USA's dominance

of cinema, television, popular music, trade and technology (including the
Internet). But there are many other varieties of English around the world,
including for example Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian
English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean English.

7
The Germanic Family of Languages

Chart of the Germanic family of languages

English is a member of the Germanic family of languages.
Germanic is a branch of the Indo-European language family.

A brief chronology of English

55 BC Roman invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar.
Roman invasion and occupation. Beginning of
AD 43
Roman rule of Britain. Local inhabitants
436 Roman withdrawal from Britain complete. speak Celtish
Settlement of Britain by Germanic invaders
449
begins
450-480 Earliest known Old English inscriptions.
William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy,
1066
invades and conquers England.
Earliest surviving manuscripts in Middle
c1150
English.
English replaces Latin as the language of
1348
instruction in most schools.
English replaces French as the language of law.
1362
English is used in Parliament for the first time.
c1388 Chaucer starts writing The Canterbury Tales.
c1400 The Great Vowel Shift begins.
William Caxton establishes the first English
1476
printing press.
1564 Shakespeare is born.

8
 Table Alphabeticall, the first English dictionary,
1604
is published.
The first permanent English settlement in the
1607
New World (Jamestown) is established.
1616 Shakespeare dies.
1623 Shakespeare's First Folio is published
The first daily English-language newspaper,
1702
The Daily Courant, is published in London.
Samuel Johnson publishes his English
1755
dictionary.
Thomas Jefferson writes the American
1776
Declaration of Independence.
Britain abandons its colonies in what is later to
1782
become the USA.
Webster publishes his American English
1828
dictionary.
The British Broadcasting Corporation is
1922
founded.
1928 The Oxford English Dictionary is published.

9
 SESSION 2
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

The Anglo Saxon invasions 449AD

With the Roman Empire fast falling apart, the British provinces are cut loose
sometime in the early 5th century. Despite more than 400 years in charge, the
Romans don't leave much of their Latin language behind, beyond the occasional
place name.
Unsurprisingly, barbarian invaders, such as the Picts and Scots, are already
clamouring at the borders, and the beleaguered Britons turn to a variety of
Germanic tribes for 'protection'. From 449AD, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes
begin to arrive and aggressively set up home. Many native Britons take to their
heels and retreat west to Cornwall, Wales and Cumbria.
Cornish, Welsh and Cumbric languages develop, but the Celtic culture of
central, southern and north eastern England doesn't stand a chance in a land
ruled by Anglo Saxons.
Language development
The Anglo Saxons have little time for the native Celtic language, preferring to
use their own tongue and its runic script. Christian missionaries begin to arrive
in 597AD, led by Augustine. They bring with them a huge Latin vocabulary, and
produce large numbers of manuscripts, in the form of the Bible and other
religious texts. In the process, the missionaries sow the first seeds of literacy.
There is no standard system of spelling, so scribes spell words the way they are
sounded in their part of the country. As a result, we have evidence of Old
English dialects.
Four major dialects emerge in England: Northumbrian in the north; Mercian in
the midlands; West Saxon in the south and west; and Kentish in the south east.
Most Old English documents are written in West Saxon, the dialect of the
politically prestigious area of Wessex, where Alfred the Great would rule in the
9th century.

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The Norman Conquest 1066
In 1066, William of Normandy invades England, ushering in a new social and
linguistic era. But the change at the top takes a while to sink in, and
manuscripts continue to be written in Old English as late as 1100.
French is rapidly established as the language of power and officialdom. William
appoints French-speaking supporters to all the key positions of power, and this
elite of barons, abbots and bishops retains close ties with its native Normandy.
But English is far too entrenched and continues to be used by the majority of
people. With Latin the language of the church and of education, England
becomes a truly trilingual country.
Language development
English continues to evolve after the Norman Conquest, particularly in
grammar. Word order becomes increasingly important in conveying the
meaning of a sentence, rather than the traditional use of special word endings.
Clever new constructions enter the language, such as the auxiliary verbs 'had'
and 'shall' (had made, shall go).
Spelling and pronunciation begin to shift too, as Norman scribes spell words
using their own conventions, such as qu- instead of cw-. Slowly but surely,
distinctive Old English characters begin to die out.
The Resurgence of English 1200 - 1400
The 12th century witnesses a renewed interest in Latin, Greek, and Arabic,
which in turn spawns numerous English translations. There is a widespread
increase in literacy, while universities are established at Oxford and Cambridge.
Ever turbulent, the relationship between England and France hits a new low with
the onset of the Hundred Years War. England’s French estates are lost, severing
the umbilical tie with the Continent, and a sense of English national identity
emerges.
The influence of French, now the language of the enemy, declines until it is
spoken only at court, by the aristocracy and by the well-educated clergy.
Children of the nobility, who formerly spoke English as a second language,
begin to adopt it as their mother tongue.

11
Language development
English usurps French as the language of power when it is used for the first
time at the opening of parliament in 1362. French continues as the language of
the law, while Latin dominates in education and the Church.
Despite being edged out, French has already had an immense impact, with
10,000 of its words entering the language during the 14th century. Hundreds
of Old English words disappear into obscurity, but many others survive
alongside their French and Latin equivalent, each endowed with a slightly
different meaning: for example, 'ask' (Old English), 'question' (French),
'interrogate' (Latin).
The Invention of the Printing Press 1476
The arrival of the printing press is a major step towards a standard writing
system – and initiates an enormous boom in the production of printed
resources in English.
Once luxury items, books are now more affordable, and the spread of literacy
suddenly makes publishing a profitable business. Over 20,000 titles appear
following the setting up of England’s first printing press by William Caxton in
1476.
Literary output in Scotland reaches an all time high in the 15th century, driven
by the works of writers like Robert Henryson and William Dunbar.
Language development
The 'Great Vowel Shift' takes place during the 15th century, and represents a
major development in pronunciation which resulted in many words coming to
be pronounced more like they are today. A speaker in Chaucer's era
pronounced 'time' like the modern English 'team', 'see' like 'say', 'fame' like
'farm'.
The dialect of the East Midlands begins to establish itself as a form of 'standard
English'. This is the most populous region of England and home to important
social, administrative, and educational centres, including the royal court at
London. Spelling also becomes more standardised and the pace of grammatical
change slows down. But more dialects emerge, compared to the Old English
era. West Saxon is now Southern; Northumbrian is Northern; Mercian splits into
West Midlands and East Midlands; Kentish still encompasses the south east. In
Scotland, the dialect diverges radically from its English cousins, adopting Gaelic

12
words and developing a unique pronunciation. The change is dubbed by some
‘Middle Scots’ to distinguish it from 'Middle English'.
The Renaissance 1500 - 1650
The Renaissance sparks fresh interest in the classical languages and their
literature, and leads to momentous developments in studies relating to
medicine, science and the arts.
It is also a time of great religious and political upheaval, and the expansion of
known boundaries with the discovery of the Americas.
The union of the English and Scottish crowns sees the first publication of an
'authorised' English translation of the Bible in 1611, named for the monarch
who made it all possible, King James I of England (and VI of Scotland). The first
folio of Shakespeare's plays is published in 1623.
Language development
This is a time of great invention in the language, as writers struggle to find
appropriate terms to describe the groundbreaking techniques and concepts
they are pioneering. Not content with raiding Greek and Latin, they are soon
ransacking more than 50 languages from across the globe.
Controversy regarding the immense proliferation of terms follows. Some writers
see the introduction of 'new' Greek and Latin terms as an 'enrichment' of the
language, while enthusiasts for native English words condemn the newfangled
additions as 'inkhorn terms'.
In addition to this influx of foreign terms, many new words are created by the
addition of prefixes (uncomfortable, forename, underground); suffixes
(delightfulness, laughable, investment); and by cobbling together compounds
(heaven-sent, commander-in-chief).
The Colonisation of the New World 1600s
In the late 16th century, Walter Raleigh's expeditions lead to the first settlement
in America, at Chesapeake Bay in 1607. In 1620, the Mayflower arrives in Cape
Cod, and by 1640 around 25,000 people have settled there. By 1700,
inhabitants in the region number more than a quarter of a million.
The Elizabethan age witnesses the rapid geographical expansion of English in
the New World, with colonists arriving in droves. They come principally from the
Midlands and the North (settling in Pennsylvania) or are Irish or Scots Irish

13
(initially in Philadelphia, but moving swiftly inland). Immigrants from across the
world rapidly follow, flooding the language with new words from a variety of
nationalities.
Language development
In 1604, Robert Cawdrey's 'A Table Alphabeticall', listing the meanings of over
2,500 'hard words', is published. It is the first English dictionary.
Across the Atlantic, the deluge of settlers from all over the British Isles
influences the development of different American accents. The early settlers
come from the west of England; the 'Pilgrim Fathers' from Norfolk. Even to this
day, remnants of these accents can be discerned in these particular areas.
Many so-called 'Americanisms' today are actually remnants of Middle English
that crossed the Atlantic at this time: for example, 'I guess' for 'I think', 'gotten'
for 'got', 'mad' for 'angry', 'fall' for 'autumn'.
The Industrial Revolution and beyond
During the 19th century, Britain becomes the world's leading industrial and
trading nation, and the period is one of momentous change and upheaval.
The consequences of this ‘Industrial Revolution’ lead to major developments in
the sciences and technology, spearheaded by a generation of British
entrepreneurs and inventors.
In Africa and South East Asia, colonial expansion continues unabated. Sierra
Leone, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Gold Coast (Ghana) are among the many
places added to the long list of British acquisitions.
The 20th century sees the British Empire slowly fall apart at the seams, but
several major developments ensure its language nonetheless thrives.
The British Broadcasting Corporation is established in 1922, broadcasting first
to the Empire, then the Commonwealth from 1931.
With the days of Empire a distant memory, the electronic revolution begins in
1972 with the sending of the first network email. The creation of the world wide
web in 1991 diversifies communication – much of it in English - on an
unprecedented scale.
Language development
There is a frantic need for words and terms to describe the latest developments
and concepts in science and technology.

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A project is begun in 1884 to compile a 'New English Dictionary', which will
eventually become the Oxford English Dictionary. In America, the need to define
the identity of the new nation results in Noah Webster's 'American Dictionary of
the English Language' appearing in 1828.
The 'novel' becomes the literary genre of the age, exemplified by the works of
Dickens, Scott and Twain. These books introduce a wider range of spoken and
non-standard English into written expression.
In the first half of the 20th century, the 'received pronunciation' of English is
consolidated through public broadcasting, with the plummy ‘BBC accent’
perceived by many as the ‘proper’ way to speak.
In the twentieth century, English emerges as a world language, universally
embraced across the globe. Hybrid, local variations of the language appear,
such as Singlish (Singaporean English), as recently independent nations
promote their identity through local varieties of the language. There are also
moves to standardise English used in key areas of communication such as air
traffic control (Air Speak) and maritime travel (Sea Speak).
The advent of the Internet massively increases exposure to a wide range of
English styles and linguistic experimentation. New technology results in
idiosyncratic varieties of English, such as the ‘text speak’ invented by mobile
phone users communicating via SMS.

15
 SESSION 3
OLD ENGLISH
Old English is the name given to the earliest recorded stage of the English
language, up to approximately 1150AD (when the Middle English period is
generally taken to have begun). It refers to the language as it was used in the
long period of time from the coming of Germanic invaders and settlers to
Britain—in the period following the collapse of Roman Britain in the early fifth
century—up to the Norman Conquest of 1066, and beyond into the first century
of Norman rule in England. It is thus first and foremost the language of the
people normally referred to by historians as the Anglo-Saxons.
‘Anglo-Saxon’ was one of a number of alternative names formerly used for this
period in the language’s history. On the history of the terms see Old English n.
and adj., Anglo-Saxon n. and adj., English adj. (and adv.) and n., and also
Middle English n. and adj.

Historical background
Before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, the majority of the population of
Britain spoke Celtic languages. In Roman Britain, Latin had been in extensive
use as the language of government and the military and probably also in other
functions, especially in urban areas and among the upper echelons of society.
However, it is uncertain how much Latin remained in use in the post-Roman
period.
During the course of the next several hundred years, gradually more and more
of the territory in the area, later to be known as England, came under Anglo-
Saxon control. (On the history of the name, see England n.)
Precisely what fate befell the majority of the (Romano-) British population in
these areas is a matter of much debate. Certainly very few words were
borrowed into English from Celtic (it is uncertain whether there may have been
more influence in some areas of grammar and pronunciation), and practically
all of the Latin borrowings found in Old English could be explained as having
been borrowed either on the continent (i.e. beforehand) or during or after the
conversion to Christianity (i.e. later).

16
The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, which began in the late
sixth century and was largely complete by the late seventh century, was an
event of huge cultural importance. One of its many areas of impact was the
introduction of writing extensive texts in the Roman alphabet on parchment (as
opposed to inscribing very short inscriptions on wood, bone, or stone in runic
characters). Nearly all of our surviving documentary evidence for Old English is
mediated through the Church, and the impress of the literary culture of Latin
Christianity is deep on nearly everything that survives written in Old English.
Conflict and interaction with raiders and settlers of Scandinavian origin is a
central theme in Anglo-Saxon history essentially from the time of the first
recorded raids in the late eighth century onwards. However, the linguistic
impact of this contact is mainly evident only in the Middle English period.
Likewise, the cataclysmic political events of the Norman Conquest took some
time to show their full impact on the English language.

Some distinguishing features of Old English

In grammar, Old English is chiefly distinguished from later stages in the history
of English by greater use of a larger set of inflections in verbs, nouns,
adjectives, and pronouns, and also (connected with this) by a rather less fixed
word order; it also preserves grammatical gender in nouns and adjectives.
An example: The following couple of lines from Ælfric’s De temporibus anni:
‘Ðunor cymð of hætan & of wætan. Seo lyft tyhð þone wætan to hire neoðan &
ða hætan ufan.’
may be translated word-for-word as:
Thunder comes from heat and from moisture. The air draws the moisture to it
from below and the heat from above.
To pick out a very few grammatical features:
The nouns hæte, ‘heat’, and wæta, ‘moisture’, both have the inflection -an in
the first sentence, because both are in the dative case, governed by the
preposition of ‘from’.
In the second sentence they both again have the inflection -an, but this time
they are in the accusative case, as the direct objects of tyhð ‘draws’.
The forms of the definite article agree with these nouns, but you will note that
they are different in each instance, þone wætan ‘the moisture’ (direct object),

17
but ða hætan ‘the heat’ (also direct object). The difference arises because wæta
‘moisture’ is masculine but hæte ‘heat’ is feminine, and the article (like other
adjectives) agrees in gender as well as case.
For another example of gender agreement, look at the pronoun hire (i.e. the
antecedent of modern English her) referring to seo lyft (feminine) ‘the air’.
In vocabulary, Old English is much more homogeneous than later stages in the
history of English. Some borrowings from Latin date back to before the coming
of the Anglo-Saxons to Britain (i.e. they were borrowed on the continent), while
many others date from the period of the conversion to Christianity and later.
However, words borrowed from Latin or from other languages make up only a
tiny percentage of the vocabulary of Old English, and the major influx of words
from French and from Latin belongs to the Middle English period and later.
(There are also numerous loan translations and semantic loans from Latin in
Old English, reflecting the influence of Latin on the language of religion and
learning.)
Some Old English words of Latin origin that have survived into modern English
include belt, butter, chalk, chest, cup, fan, fork, mile, minster, mint, monk,
pepper, school, sock, strop, wine.
Some borrowing from early Scandinavian is attested in later Old English, but
again the major impact of contact with Scandinavian settlers becomes evident
only in Middle English.
There is also a great deal of continuity between Old English and later stages in
the history of the language. A great deal of the core vocabulary of modern
English goes back to Old English, including most of the words most frequently
used today.
For a very few examples see I pron. and n.², one adj., n., and pron., and conj.¹,
adv., and n., man n.¹ (and int.), woman n.
For further information on which Old English words are included in the OED,
and on how Old English material is dated in the dictionary, see Old English in
the OED by Anthony Esposito.
Some letters from the Old English alphabet which modern English has lost:
 þ, ð both represent the same sounds as modern th, as e.g. in thin or
then;

18
  æ and a represent distinct sounds in Old English, formed with the tongue
respectively at the front and back of the mouth.
The pronunciation of e.g. trap or man in many modern varieties of English
comes close to Old English æ, whereas Old English a was more like the sound in
modern German Mann ‘man’ or Spanish mano ‘hand’ (like the sound in modern
English father, but shorter).

The beginning of Old English …

It is very difficult to say when Old English began, because this pushes us back
beyond the date of our earliest records for either Old English or any of its
closest relatives (with the exception of very occasional inscriptions and the
evidence of words and names occurring in Latin or in other languages).
Everyone agrees in calling the language of our earliest extensive sources found
in contemporary copies ‘Old English’: these are Latin-English glossaries from
around the year 700. (Some other material was certainly composed before 700,
but survives only in later copies.) By this time Old English was already very
distinct from its Germanic sister languages (see below) as a result of many
sound changes (i.e. changes in how certain sounds were pronounced, chiefly
when they occurred near to certain other sounds) and other linguistic
developments. In fact, most of the most important changes which we can trace
through our surviving Old English documents had already happened before this
time. Some of them were very probably well in progress or even complete
before the time of the settlement in England.
Some Latin-English glosses from one of our earliest sources (the Épinal
Glossary):
 anser goos (i.e. ‘goose’)
 lepus, leporis hara (i.e. ‘hare’)
 nimbus storm (i.e. ‘storm’)
 olor suan (i.e. ‘swan’)
Some scholars distinguish the undocumented period before our earliest texts as
‘pre-Old English’, while others are happy just to use the name ‘Old English’ for
this period as well as for the documented period. In practice, the dividing line is
hazy. Most of our documentary evidence for Old English comes from much later
(late ninth century and onwards), and even in the later period there is much that

19
we do not know. In the earlier part of the documented period, the gaps and
uncertainties mean that we often know just as little about a certain topic as we
do for the preceding undocumented period.
If we trace its history back further, Old English belongs to the West Germanic
branch of the Germanic languages, along with Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old High
German, and the various dialects which later gave rise to Old Dutch. The major
early representatives of the North Germanic branch are Old Icelandic, Old
Norwegian, Old Swedish, and Old Danish (although the earliest extensive
remains for all of these are much later than the earliest Old English documents),
while the only representative of the East Germanic branch for which extensive
remains survive is Gothic. Ultimately, all of these branches diverged from a
single hypothetical ancestor, (proto-)Germanic, which itself constitutes a
branch of the larger Indo-European language family. Other branches of Indo-
European include Celtic, Italic (including Latin and hence the Romance
languages), Greek, Indo-Iranian (including Sanskrit and Persian), Baltic, and
Slavonic (these last two being regarded by many as a single branch, Balto-
Slavonic).
In fact, very many details of the pre-historic relationships between Old English
and the other Germanic languages are much debated and very controversial,
which greatly complicates any attempt to say when ‘Old English’ began.

The end of Old English

The conventional dividing date of approximately 1150 between Old English and
Middle English reflects (very roughly) the period when these changes in
grammar and vocabulary begin to become noticeable in most of the surviving
texts (which are not very numerous from this transitional period). In what is
often called ‘transitional English’ the number of distinct inflections becomes
fewer, and word order takes on an increasing functional load. At the same time
borrowings from French and (especially in northern and eastern texts) from
early Scandinavian become more frequent. All of these processes were
extremely gradual, and did not happen at the same rate in all places. Therefore
any dividing date is very arbitrary, and can only reflect these developments very
approximately.

20
Old English dialects
The surviving Old English documents are traditionally attributed to four
different major dialects: Kentish (in the south-east), West Saxon (in the south-
west), Mercian (in the midland territories of Mercia), and Northumbrian (in the
north); because of various similarities they show, Mercian and Northumbrian
are often grouped together as Anglian. This division is largely based on
linguistic differences shown by various of the major early sources, although
many of the details are highly controversial, and some scholars are very critical
of the traditional association of these linguistic differences (however
approximately) with the boundaries of various politically defined areas (which
are themselves only poorly understood), and today many of the details of where
each variety was centred geographically are subject to debate. For political and
cultural reasons, manuscripts written in the West Saxon dialect hugely
predominate among our later records (although much of the verse is something
of a special case), reflecting the widespread adoption of a form of West Saxon
as a written language in the later Old English period.
There are only a few named figures in the history of writings in Old English. In
the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography you can read about: Ælfric of
Eynsham, Wulfstan [Lupus], Alfred [Ælfred], Æthelwold, Cædmon, and Cynewulf.

Old English verbs

Verbs in Old English show an extensive range of inflections, reflecting
distinctions of person and number (e.g. first person singular, first person
plural, etc.), tense (present or past), and mood (indicative, subjunctive, or
imperative); many other distinctions are realized by periphrastic constructions
with be v., worth v., will v., or shall v. as auxiliary in combination with non-
finite forms of the verb.
With the exception of some (mostly high frequency) irregular or anomalous
verbs, Old English verbs belong to one of two main groupings: strong verbs and
weak verbs.
The strong verbs realize differences of tense by variation in the stem vowel.
They are assigned to seven main classes, according to the vowel variation
shown. Thus RIDE v., a Class I strong verb, shows the following vowel gradation
in its “principal parts”, from which all of its other inflections can be inferred:

21
  infinitive: rīdan
 past tense singular: rād
 past tense plural: ridon
 past participle: (ge)riden
Similarly, the Class III strong verb BIND v. shows the following principal parts:
 infinitive: bindan
 past tense singular: band (or bond)
 past tense plural: bundon
 past participle: (ge)bunden
The principal parts of the various classes can simply be memorized as fairly
arbitrary sets (with various subclasses and exceptions). To understand the
causes of this variation we need to go back to a much earlier system of vowel
gradation called ablaut, which Germanic inherited from Indo-European, and
which Germanic made extensive use of in the strong verb system.
Since ablaut also ultimately explains the relationships between many other Old
English words, it can be very useful to have some understanding of how it
works, although it is far from simple. See the text box for a very short sketch.
A very short introduction to ablaut The stem vowels ī, ā, i, i shown by rīdan
ultimately reflect Indo-European *ei, *oi, *i, *i (giving by regular development
Germanic * ī, *ai, *i, *i, giving ultimately Old English ī, ā, i, i). Thus the principal
parts in Old English can be explained as reflecting Indo-European *i in
combination with either *e (hence *ei), *o (hence *oi), or nothing (hence *i). For
these reasons, the infinitive rīdan is said to show the Indo-European e-grade,
the past tense singular rād is said to show the Indo-European o-grade, and the
past tense plural ridon and past participle (ge)riden are said to show the Indo-
European zero-grade, even though, confusingly, the Old English forms
themselves do not show e, o, or zero. Similarly bindan ultimately reflects a
sequence *en, *on, *n, *n, in which *e, *o, or nothing appear in combination
with *n. Similar variation figures largely in a great many etymologies: for some
examples see e.g. LOVE n., OWE v., RAW adj. and n., COOL adj., adv., and int.,
RED adj., n., (and adv.), RIFT n.,
The weak verbs form the past tense and past participle in a quite different way,
using a suffix with a vowel followed by -d-, which is the ancestor of the

22
modern inflection in -ed (see ‘-ED’ suffix¹). Thus lufian LOVE v.¹ (a weak Class
II verb) shows 1st and 3rd person past singular lufode.
Weak verbs often originated as derivative formations, and often preserve some
aspect of this in their meaning, as for example showing causative or inchoative
meaning: see below on cēlan ‘to (cause to) cool’ and cōlian ‘to become cool’.

Derivational relationships and sound changes

Many Old English words belong to large groups of words all derived ultimately
from the same base, and are related to one another in ways that would have
been fairly transparent to speakers of the language. However, in the period of
our literary documents the relationships between words were often much less
clear than they are likely to have been earlier, because sound changes and
other developments had obscured the derivational relationships.
For example, cōl ‘cool’ (see COOL adj., adv., and int.) has a small family of
related words in Old English, including cōlnes COOLNESS n., which clearly
shows the same base plus ‘-NESS’ suffix. The relationship is similarly clear in
the case of the derivative Class II weak verb cōlian ‘to become cool’ (see COOL
v.).
However, the relationship is less immediately clear in the case of the derivative
Class I weak verb cēlan ‘to (cause to) cool’ (see KEEL v.¹). In this case the
difference in the stem vowel was caused by an important process called i-
mutation which occurred before the date of our earliest records. The earlier
form was probably *k ōljan. In the process called i-mutation an i or j caused a
change in the vowel in the preceding syllable, in this case *ō > *ē. In this word
(as in many others) the j was then itself lost, so that by the time of our surviving
texts we find cēlan in the same word family as cōl, cōlnes, and cōlian.
The same process explains the variation that we find in the stem vowel in the
plural of some words. The word mouse of course shows in modern English the
plural form mice; similarly in Old English we find singular mūs but plural mȳs.
The earlier forms would have been singular *mūs, plural *mūsi (earlier *mūsiz);
i-mutation caused the change *ū > *ȳ in the plural, and then the i was in turn
lost, so that in our surviving texts we find singular mūs but plural mȳs.
This and similar processes explain many of the rather complex relationships
between related word forms in Old English.

23
 SESSION 4
MIDDLE ENGLISH
MIDDLE ENGLISH: Norman French/Middle English (1100-1500)

William The Conqueror

A historical event -- the Norman Invasion of Britain -- signaled a radical

change in English and marks the transition from Old English to Middle English
(1100-1450). Middle English is the long period of accommodation between the
Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons (Old English) and the Latin-based
language of the Norman French.

The Norman Invasion.

The end of the Anglo-Saxon period was ushered in abruptly with the Norman
French invasion under William the Conqueror in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings.
William, The Duke of Normandy, sailed across the British Channel. He
challenged King Harold of England in the struggle for the English throne. After
winning the Battle of Hastings where he defeated Harold, William was crowned
King of England. A Norman Kingdom was now established. The Anglo-Saxon
period was over.
The Norman invasion naturally had a profound effect on England's institutions
and its language. The Norman French in 1066 differed more strikingly
linguistically as well as culturally from the Anglo Saxons than did the Danish
conquerors of a few centuries earlier. Unlike the situation with the Norse
invasions, the Normans looked upon the conquered Anglo-Saxons as social
inferiors. French became the language of the upper class; Anglo-Saxon of the
lower class. The Norman French spoken by the invaders became the language

24
of England's ruling class. The lower classes, while remaining English-speaking,
were influenced nevertheless by the new vocabulary. French became the
language of the affairs of government, court, the church, the army, and
education where the newly adopted French words often substituted their former
English counterparts. The linguistic influence of Norman French continued for
as long as the Kings ruled both Normandy and England.
New Words: Consequently, the Norman invasion initiated a vast borrowing of
Latin-based words into English. Entire vocabularies were borrowed from
Norman French:
1) governmental: count, heraldry, fine, noble, parliament.
2) military: battle, ally, alliance, ensign, admiral, navy, aid, gallant, march,
enemy, escape, peace, war (cf. guerilla).
3) judicial system: judge, jury, plaintiff, justice, court, suit, defendant,
crime, felony, murder, petty/petit, attorney, marriage (Anglo-Saxon
wedding), heir.
4) ecclesiastical: clergy, altar, miracle, preach, pray, sermon, virgin, saint,
friar/frere.
5) cuisine: sauce, boil, filet, soup, pastry, fry, roast, toast.
6) new personal names: John, Mary (Biblical Hebrew and Greek names) and
Norman French (Charles, Richard)
About ten thousand French words had been taken over by English during the
Middle English period, and most of them have remained in the language until
the present day. Aside from the already mentioned new vocabulary, many
words relating to food and fashion were introduced as well. In some fields an
original English terminology did not exist. Therefore, many French terms were
borrowed. As a result, after the Norman invasion, many Anglo Saxon words
narrowed in meaning to describe only the cruder, dirtier aspects of life.
Concepts associated with culture, fine living and abstract learning tended to be
described by new Norman words. One example is the names of animals and
their meat. Whereas the names of the animals remained the same, their meat
was renamed according to the Norman custom. This correlated to the
sociological structures: the farmers that raised the animals were predominantly
English natives and could afford to keep using their own vocabulary while
farming -- those serving the meat at the dining room table to the mainly
French upper classes had to conform to the French language.

25
 animal (Anglo Saxon) meat (Norman French)
sheep mutton
cow beef
swine pork
deer venison
calf veal

As Anglo-Saxon and the Norman French gradually merged throughout the later
Middle Ages and the Normans and Anglo-Saxons became one society, the
speakers of English tried to effect some linguistic reconciliation between the
older Anglo-Saxon words and the newer Norman French words. Many modern
English phrases and sayings still include a word from Norman French alongside
a synonymous Anglo-Saxon: law and order, lord and master, love and cherish,
ways and means. These doublet phrases capture this attempt to please
everybody who might need to be pleased.
The Norman French influence was so extensive that even the grammar of
English was affected. The changes were mainly confined to the borrowing of
derivational affixes. All native prefixes dropped out or became unproductive
during this time; the few that survive today are non-productive: be- in
besmirch, or for- in forgive, forstall; they were replaced by Latin: ex-, pre,
pro, dis, re, anti- inter. Many Norman French suffixes were borrowed: -or vs. -
er; -tion, -ment, -ee, -able as a suffix.
Grammar: As far as grammar is concerned, the exclusive use of the pattern SVO
(subject - verb - object) emerged in the twelfth century and has remained part
of English ever since.
Spelling: Much of the French vocabulary remains. Today, 40% of our words are
of French origin (although many of these came originally from Latin). However,
most of our common words derive from Old English.
One big problem that resulted from mixing English and French has been that
our spelling system has become a mix of the two. Whereas Old English spelling
was fairly consistent, and modern French spelling is also fairly consistent,
modern English is a real mix-up. Curiously enough, Norman French borrowings
into English haven't changed in pronunciation for 800 years, whereas the
French pronunciation changed.

26
The letter c: For example, the use of the letter "c" to represent the [s] sound is a
French habit which was not used in Old English. So now we have the word
cinder instead of the OE 'sinder'; ice instead of OE 'is'; and mice instead of OE
'mys'.
But some words still use the letter "c"to represent the [k] sound. The [s] sound
is represented by "c" only before "i" or "e" - so "c" can still represent the [k]
sound before other letters - as in cat, cot, cut, climb and crust. In the 1200's
the [k] sound before "i" and "e" came to be represented by "k" - as in king and
keen. But the rules are not consistent, such as the recent word kangaroo (1770)
uses "k" before "a".
The letter h: Also, French words do not pronounce an initial [h]. So in English
we have the word able from the French 'habile'; but we retain letter "h" in words
where it is not pronounced, as in heir, honest, honour, hour. We now
pronounce initial [h] in words where Middle English did not pronounce it, as in
horrible, hospital, host.
The letters qu: In Old English the sound "qu" as in queen was spelt "cw". The
"qu" spelling was adopted in Middle English. But borrowings from French
included many words where the sound [k] was represented by "qu" - as in quay,
picturesque.
The letters ou: French borrowings also caused inconsistencies related to the
letters "ou". Words derived from French include group and soup. But "ou" is
more commonly pronounced in English as in house and loud.
The letters gh: The problem of "gh" also stems from this period. Middle English
words which were pronounced with the sound as in the [x], the hard "h" of the
Scottish word loch (or German ich) came to be written with a "gh", as in night,
high, ought, bough. These spellings have been retained even though the hard h
sound has disappeared. In some words this same sound has not been entirely
lost but has come to sound like [f], as in cough, laugh, tough.
The letters ch: The spelling "ch" appeared in the 1200's. However the
application of "ch" has not been consistent. Words borrowed from modern
French like chauffeur, champagne, and machine use "ch" to represent the [S]
'sh' sound. Words borrowed from Latin such as chorus and archive use"'ch" to
represent the [k] sound. Old Norman French borrowings have [tʃ] 'ch' sound:
Charles, choice, check. And words from Italian such as cello and concerto
represent the "ch" sound with a "c". When new words were borrowed into

27
English from French over the past few hundred years, lexical doublets were
created: chief/chef.
When King John (1167 - 1216) lost Normandy in the years following 1200, the
links to the French-speaking community subsided. English then slowly started
to gain more weight as a common tongue within England again. In 1399, King
Henry IV became the first king of England since the Norman Conquest whose
mother tongue was English. By the end of the 14th Century, the dialect of
London had emerged as the standard dialect of what we now call Middle
English.
Phonology: Norman French influence on phonology of English was relatively
minor. Initial [v] and [z] were adopted into the language: very is a Norman
word. Initial [z] is still considered marginal in English.

Chaucer (1300's)

By the late 1300's when Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales, more than half of
the English vocabulary consisted of Norman French words. Writer, poet, and
intellectual Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 - 1400) is often called the Father of English
literature. His most famous work is the wonderful Canterbury Tales, written
sometime around 1387 and published in 1400, the year he died.

28
 An example of written Middle English by Chaucer.

Portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer (the fifteenth century painting commonly known as

the Harvard Chaucer Portrait). He is buried in Westminster Abbey, London.
Having recently passed the six hundredth anniversary of its publication, the
book is still of interest to modern students for several reasons. For one thing,
The Canterbury Tales is recognized as the first book of poetry written in the
English language. Before Chaucer's time, even poets who lived in England wrote
in Italian or Latin, which meant that poetry was only understandable to people
of the wealthy, educated class. English was considered low class and vulgar. To
a great degree, The Canterbury Tales helped make it a legitimate language to
work in. Because of this work, all of the great writers who followed, from
Shakespeare to Dryden to Keats to Eliot, owe him a debt of gratitude. It is
because Chaucer wrote in English that there is a written record of the roots
from which the modern language grew. Contemporary readers might find his
words nearly as difficult to follow as a foreign language, but scholars are
thankful for the chance to compare Middle English to the language as it is
spoken now, to examine its growth.
In the same way that The Canterbury Tales gives modern readers a sense of the
language at the time, the book also gives a rich, intricate tapestry of medieval
social life, combining elements of all classes, from nobles to workers, from
priests and nuns to drunkards and thieves. The General Prologue alone
provides a panoramic view of society that is not like any found elsewhere in all
of literature. Students who are not particularly interested in medieval England
can appreciate the author’s technique in capturing the variations of human
temperament and behavior. Collections of stories were common in Chaucer’s

29
time, and some still exist today, but the genius of The Canterbury Tales is that
the individual stories are presented in a continuing narrative, showing how all
of the various pieces of life connect to one another.
The main difference between Chaucer's language and our own is in the
pronunciation of the "long" vowels. The consonants remain generally the same,
though Chaucer rolled his r's, sometimes dropped his h's, and pronounced both
elements of consonant combinations, such as "kn," that were later simplified.
The final -e [^] sound (still written today in words like cake and drive) wouldn't
yet disappear until about 100 years after his death. And the short vowels are
very similar in Middle and Modern English. But the long vowels are regularly and
strikingly different. This is due to what is called The Great Vowel Shift.

THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT (1400)

During the Renaissance (1400's and 1500's) the Latin language became
important in England, such as in the church and in medicine. So English
acquired many Latin words in this period.
The mixture of English and Latin also caused inconsistencies in spelling. For
example, late Latin developed the practice of using "o" in place of "u". So now
we have words like come, some, monk, son, tongue, wonder, honey, above,
done and love, none of which are pronounced like [^] and not the [o:] 'o'
written.
But the biggest change linguistically developed over many years: The Great
Vowel Shift.
The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) was a major linguistic rearrangement which took
place in English in the century or two during and after Chaucer’s lifetime:
perhaps 1350-1550. The GVS was perhaps the most important process in the
change from Middle English to Modern English.
Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be
pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different
place, higher up in the mouth.
The easiest way to understand the changes is to hear the changes. Listen
carefully to the vowels. The long vowels in the (it might help to review the ASCII
Phonetic Alphabet vowels you learned in Mod 3.

30
[a:] became [o:]

ME > ModEng
stan [sta:n] stone {sto:n]
hlaf [hla:f] loaf [lo:f]
rap [ra:p] rope [ro:p]
halig [ha:li:g] holy [holi]

[u:] became [au]

ME > ModEng
mouse [mu:s] [maus]
house [hu:s] [haus]
out [u:t] [aut]
south [su:th] sauth]
our [u:r] [aur]

[i:] became [ai]

ME > ModEng
mice [mi:s] [mais]
like [li:k] [laik]
wide [wi:d] [waid]
sight [si:t] [sait]

[e:] became [i:]

ME > ModEng
geese [ge:s] [gi:s]
bee [be:a:] [bi:]
beet [be:t] [bi:t]
me [me:] [mi:]

Many of today's spelling inconsistencies are traceable to Middle English. Our

spelling system still reflects the way words were spelled and pronounced before
the GVS of 1500.
For example: name Chaucer [na:m^] Shakespeare [ne:m] and clean Chaucer
[kle:a:n] Shakespeare [kli:n]

31
The GVS was limited only to English: contemporary and neighboring languages
like French, German, and Spanish were entirely unaffected. The shift affected
words of both native ancestry and borrowings from French and Latin, and the
many pairs of words in each category which for morphological reasons had a
short-long alteration in Middle English thus have quite radically differing
pronunciations in Modern English. The GVS has had long-term implications for,
among other things, spelling, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of
any English-language text written before or during the Shift.

End of the Middle English period.

By 1450 - 1500, English had reached a form somewhat similar to that of today,
so that we say that Modern English was in use from about that time. The two
languages of Norman and Anglo-Saxon had merged into a single linguistic
form. Actually, what happened was that the more numerous Anglo-Saxon
speakers triumphed over the Norman French, who came to adopt English in
place of French. But the English of 1500 contained a tremendous number of
Norman French words.

32
 SESSION 5
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH

Boundaries of time and place.

The early modern English period follows the Middle English period towards the
end of the fifteenth century and coincides closely with the Tudor (1485–1603)
and Stuart (1603-1714) dynasties. The battle of Bosworth (1485) marked the
end of the long period of civil war known as the Wars of the Roses and the
establishment of the Tudor dynasty under Henry VII (1485–1509), which
brought a greater degree of stable centralized government to England. Not long
before, the introduction of the craft of printing in 1476 by William Caxton
marked a new departure in the dissemination of the written word.
The end of the period is marked by the religious and political settlement of the
‘Glorious Revolution’ (1688), the transition to the Augustan age during the
reign of Queen Anne (1702–14), and the achievement of political unity within
the British Isles through the Act of Union between England and Scotland (1707).
The defining events of the sixteenth century were those of the Reformation,
initiated under Henry VIII in the 1530s, which severed both religious and
political links with Catholic Europe. During the seventeenth century the new
science gradually achieved prominence, beginning with the writings of Francis
Bacon (1561-1626) and issuing in the foundation of the Royal Society
(chartered in 1662).
At the start of our period English was spoken throughout England except in
western Cornwall, where it was rapidly replacing Cornish.
The English speach doth still encroche vpon it [Cornish], and hath driuen the
same into the vttermost skirts of the shire. Most of the Inhabitants can no word
of Cornish; but very few are ignorant of the English. Richard Carew, The Survey
of Cornwall (1602)
Wales was integrated administratively and legally into England by parliamentary
acts of 1536 and 1543; the former made English the only language of the law
courts and excluded those who used Welsh from any public office in Wales.
However, apart from the ruling gentry, the inhabitants remained Welsh-

33
speaking throughout the period. In Scotland, Scots (see below) was spoken in
most of the Lowlands, Gaelic (called Erse in this period) in the Highlands and
Galloway, and the Scandinavian language Norn in Shetland and Orkney.
The Tudor monarchs asserted their claim to the lordship of Ireland. Hitherto the
English speaking presence had been small, restricted to the English pale. A
series of military conflicts and plantations under Elizabeth, James I, and Oliver
Cromwell led to the political domination of the country by English-speakers.
The era of overseas commercial venture and colonization was initiated in 1496–
7 by the visit to Newfoundland (compare new-found adj. 2) of the Italian
explorer John Cabot, commissioned by Henry VII. Newfoundland was
subsequently claimed for England in 1583. Settlement on the mainland of North
America began with Jamestown (1607); the mainly Puritan Pilgrims [pilgrim n.
4a] or ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ founded the Plymouth Colony (1620). During the last
part of the seventeenth century economic hardship led to large-scale Scottish
emigration to Ireland and North America.
Bermuda was colonized in 1612, followed by St Kitts (1623) and Barbados
(1627) in the West Indies. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) English
merchant voyages to the Indian Ocean began. The East India Company
established its first trading factory in India in 1612 and took possession of
Bombay in 1668.

Variations in English.
During the Middle English period numerous regional dialects existed in England
and Scotland. Middle English manuscripts, even copies of the same work, differ
linguistically from one another to a greater or lesser degree. In the later Middle
Ages London gradually emerged as the seat of administration and the court.
The speech of the capital acquired social prestige and written forms of it
became usual in official documents and literature, though it could only loosely
be called a ‘standard’. Since printing was based in London this form of English
was adopted by the early printers. But Caxton himself was acutely aware of
variation and change within English.
Certaynly our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that which was vsed and
spoken whan I was borne. William Caxton, Prologue to Eneydos (1490).

34
Nevertheless, compared with Middle English texts, early modern texts seem
much more uniform. It was recommended that literary English should be based
on the speech of the London area.
Ye shall therfore take the vsual speach of the Court, and that of London and the
shires lying about London within lx. myles, and not much aboue. George
Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie (1589).
A high degree of spoken regional variety still existed and was generally
recognized. Although regional dialects were scarcely recorded, their extent can
be deduced from dialect study undertaken from the eighteenth century
onwards. Within England, northern and western dialects were generally known
to be markedly different from written English. Evidently (as today) particular
differences were specially prominent.
Pronouncing according as one would say at London I would eat more cheese if I
had it, the Northern man saith Ay suld eat mare cheese gin ay hadet, and the
Westerne man saith Chud eat more cheese an chad it. Richard Verstegan, A
Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (1605).
There was a stylized stage version of western speech, as, for example, used by
Edgar when posing as a countryman in King Lear.
Good Gentleman goe your gate, let poore volke passe: and chud haue been
zwaggar’d out of my life, it would not haue bene zo long by a vortnight: nay
come not neere the olde man, keepe out cheuore ye, or ile try whether your
costard or my bat be the harder, chill be plaine with you. Shakespeare, King
Lear, IV. vi (2nd Quarto, 1619).
Scots was a special case. In 1500 Scotland and England were separate countries
and during the sixteenth century Scots can be regarded as a language distinct
from the English spoken south of the border. In Scotland under James IV (1488–
1512) there was a cultural flourishing, with the beginnings of Renaissance
influence from the continent. After the accession of James VI of Scotland to the
throne of England in 1603 the status of Scots declined. The court moved to
London with the king, so that Scots lost its social prestige. Moreover writers like
John Knox, who were in the forefront of the Scottish Reformation (1560) and
greatly influenced Scottish literary culture, wrote mainly in southern English.
Already, around 1590, the number of books printed in Edinburgh in English had

35
overtaken those printed in Scots and after 1603 Scots ceased to be a book
language.
Gif ȝe, throw curiositie of nouationis, hes forȝet our auld plane Scottis quhilk
ȝour mother lerit ȝou, in tymes cuming I sall wryte to ȝou my mynd in Latin, for I
am nocht acquyntit with ȝour Southeroun. Ninian Winȝet, Letter to John Knox
(1563).
Social dialects (essentially those used by people regarded as inferiors) were also
widely recognized by contemporaries, but we can make only very partial
reconstructions from the surviving evidence, such as comments by
grammarians and the dialogue in stage plays. A particular, though perhaps
somewhat artificial, social dialect that received special attention was the canting
slang of rogues and vagabonds (see, for example, John Simpson on the first
dictionaries of English).

Attitudes to English.
Early in the period, English was frequently compared unfavourably as a literary
language with Latin. It was also initially seen as not possessing advantages over
other European languages, as this dialogue shows.
‘What thinke you of this English, tel me I pray you.’ ‘It is a language that wyl do
you good in England but passe Dover, it is woorth nothing.’ ‘Is it not used then
in other countreyes?’ ‘No sir, with whom wyl you that they speake?’ ‘With
English marchants.’ ‘English marchantes, when they are out of England, it liketh
hem not, and they doo not speake it.’ John Florio, Florio his firste fruites
(1578), ch. 27.
The inferiority of English was often explained in terms of the mixed origin of its
vocabulary.
It is a language confused, bepeesed with many tongues: it taketh many words
of the latine, and mo from the French, and mo from the Italian, and many mo
from the Duitch, some also from the Greeke, and from the Britaine, so that if
every language had his owne wordes againe, there woulde but a fewe remaine
for English men, and yet every day they adde. Florio, Florio his firste fruites, ch.
27.
English was also criticized for being inelegant and uneloquent. But there was a
sudden change between 1570 and 1580. English began to be praised, in
contrast with other languages, for its copious vocabulary, linguistic economy (in

36
using words of mainly one or two syllables), and simple grammar. For example,
a lengthy and spirited defence of English, as compared with Latin, is given by
the educationist Richard Mulcaster.
The English tung cannot proue fairer, then it is at this daie. Richard Mulcaster,
The First Part of the Elementarie (1582).
During the seventeenth century the status of Latin rapidly declined and by the
end of the century even works of science were being written in English.

Vocabulary expansion.
The vocabulary of English expanded greatly during the early modern period.
Writers were well aware of this and argued about it. Some were in favour of
loanwords to express new concepts, especially from Latin. Others advocated the
use of existing English words, or new compounds of them, for this purpose.
Others advocated the revival of obsolete words and the adoption of regional
dialect.
A notable supporter of the introduction of new words was the humanist and
diplomat Sir Thomas Elyot (c.1490–1546). Among now common words, he
introduced participate v. in five of the senses given in OED and persist v. in
three. Among less popular words, he introduced obtestation n. and pristinate
adj. Elyot frequently explained his coinages: for example his use of the words
maturity (maturity n. 3: he was unaware that the word had already been used in
other senses in English) and modesty (modesty n. 1) in The Boke Named the
Gouernour (1531).
Yet of these two [sc. celeritie and slownesse] springeth an excellent vertue,
whervnto we lacke a name in englishe. Wherfore I am constrained to vsurpe a
latine worde, callyng it Maturitie. Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the
Gouernour (1531)

‘Inkhorn’ versus purism.

Many early modern writers criticized the use of Latinate expressions (usually
loanwords from Latin, sometimes words modelled on Latin) in order to elevate
the style of writing, especially in inappropriate contexts or for concepts which
had ordinary English equivalents. These were known as inkhorn terms (an
inkhorn being ‘a small portable vessel, originally made of horn, for holding

37
writing-ink’). A notable critic was Thomas Wilson, writing on the important art
of rhetoric.
This should first be learned, that we neuer affect any straunge ynkehorne
termes, but so speake as is commonly receiued. Sir Thomas Wilson, The Arte of
Rhetorique (1553).
Further on Wilson holds up to ridicule an example of a (probably fictitious)
‘ynkehorne letter’. A typical clause from this runs ‘I obtestate your clemencie,
to inuigilate thus muche for me’: all three italicized words were quite new in
1553; two of them have survived. It is notable that many of the words that were
objected to then as unnecessary were soon accepted into the language. Such
controversy waned after about 1600, partly because so many Latinate words
had been accepted and were now regarded as an enrichment.
By contrast the royal tutor Sir John Cheke translated part of the New Testament
avoiding loanwords wherever possible. (This translation was not, however,
published until 1843.) For example, he uses moond for ‘lunatic’, onwriting for
‘inscription’, and tabler for ‘banker’.
Our own tung shold be written cleane and pure, vnmixt and vnmangeled with
borowing of other tunges. Sir John Cheke, in his letter to Thomas Hoby, printed
at the end of Hoby’s translation of Castiglione’s Courtier (1561).
Ralph Lever, in his Arte of Reason, rightly termed, Witcraft (1573), attempted to
render Latin logic terms with English compounds such as nay-say ‘negation’,
but none caught on. Nathaniel Fairfax, a Baconian scientist, managed to write a
book devoid of obviously learned loanwords, called A Treatise of the Bulk and
Selvage of the World (1674), ‘bulk and selvedge’ here meaning ‘volume and
boundary’; other terms include bodysome ‘corporeal’, nowness ‘the quality of
being always present’, and onefoldness ‘singleness’. However, Fairfax’s
language is often misleading and sometimes incomprehensible.

Archaism and rhetoric.

The poet Edmund Spenser was the leading proponent of the use of archaic and
dialectal words, especially in The Shepheardes Calender (1579) and The Faerie
Queene (1590). The former has a preface defending the practice, written by
Spenser’s friend ‘E.K.’
And firste of the wordes to speake, I graunt that they be something hard, and
of most men vnused, yet both English, and also vsed of most excellent

38
Authours and most famous Poetes. ‘E.K.’, preface to Edmund Spenser, The
Shepheardes Calender (1579).
Examples of Spenser’s archaisms include nempt ‘named’ (nemn v.), prow adj.
‘worthy, valiant’, and queme ‘please’ (queem v.). A number of seventeenth-
century poets imitated Spenser, although they did not always use his archaic
and dialectal words correctly. Even errors, however, played a part in the
formation of poetic vocabulary: derrynge do (derring do n.) arose as a misprint
for the verbal phrase dorryng do ‘daring to do’ in sixteenth-century editions of
Lydgate’s History of Troy, which was then misunderstood by Spenser as a noun
phrase, explained in the Glossary to the Shepheardes Calender as ‘manhood
and chevalrie’.
An eloquent language was one which made use of the devices of classical
rhetoric. Rhetoric, originally referring to the art of public speaking, had come to
be applied to literature in general. It was a normal part of the study of Latin and
was carried over by educated writers into their use of English. From the mid-
sixteenth century onwards books on rhetoric began to appear in English, such
as Thomas Wilson’s The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) referred to above. The
figures of rhetoric covered a wide range of literary devices and their presence in
a work was noticed and praised. They would have been immediately spotted,
for example, in Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, III. ii.
‘I am no Orator, as Brutus is; But..a plaine blunt man [topos of
modesty]…I..Shew you sweet Cæsars wounds, poor poor [epizeuxis] dum
mouths [oxymoron and metaphor] And bid them speak [prosopopoeia] for me:
But were I Brutus, and Brutus Antony [synoeciosis]…’

Regulation and spelling reform.

The classical languages, not being current spoken languages, do not change,
and can therefore be described by a set of fixed grammatical rules. This was
frequently regarded as the ideal condition of a language. From about 1660
there were proposals for an academy similar to the Académie Française which
would regularize and purify the language: supporters included John Dryden and
later Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. Dryden’s Defence of the Epilogue (1672)
marks the beginning of the tradition of criticizing supposed grammatical errors
in English.

39
From Jonsons time to ours, it [English] has been in a continual declination. John
Dryden Defence of the Epilogue (1672).
Dryden criticizes Ben Jonson himself for such mistakes as placing a preposition
at the end of a sentence and using the plural ones. This desire for regulation
was to some extent met by the expansion of the number and coverage of
dictionaries and by the development of English grammars, most of which,
however, were modelled on grammars of Latin and had very little to say about
sentence structure. (For more on this see the related article on grammar in early
modern English.)
The Restoration period also saw the beginnings of criticism of affected
vocabulary, focusing initially on the adoption of French expressions.
We meet daily with those Fopps, who value themselves on their Travelling, and
pretend they cannot express their meaning in English, because they would put
off to us some French Phrase of the last Edition. Dryden, Defence (1672).
But this by no means implies the rejection of all foreign loanwords: John Evelyn
in his Letter to Sir Peter Wyche (20 June 1665; published in 1908) suggested for
adoption a number of French and Italian words which ‘we have hardly any
words that do so fully expresse’: a number of these did indeed become current
at around this time, including bizarre, chicanery, concert, and naiveté.
Between about 1540 and 1640 there was a movement for spelling reform in
England. Early advocates were Sir John Cheke (see above) and Sir Thomas Smith,
who as classical philologists were conscious of the disparity in spelling between
English and Latin. John Hart produced three works on the subject between 1551
and 1570 and proposed a phonetic spelling system using a number of
additional symbols. In opposition to this approach, Richard Mulcaster (above)
advocated only mild reform, and there are very few improvements in his word-
lists when compared with modern spelling. (For more, see early modern English
pronunciation and spelling.)

Fresh perspectives: Old English and new science.

Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) began to be studied during this period.
Manuscripts were collected and Old English texts published. The first Old
English dictionary (edited by William Somner) appeared in 1659 and the first
grammar of the language (edited by George Hickes) in 1689. The original
motivations for the undertaking were mixed: either to demonstrate the

40
continuity of the Church of England, to show that the English legal system
descended from Anglo-Saxon law, or to support the cause of biblical
translation. Nevertheless it had the effect of introducing a historical
understanding of the English language and paved the way for later etymological
and philological investigation.
At the same time the seventeenth-century scientific movement, heralded pre-
eminently by Francis Bacon, had the effect of establishing English finally as an
adequate medium of technical writing in place of Latin. It also led to the
cultivation of a plain style of writing, without the use of the devices of rhetoric.
Bacon, who wrote in both English and Latin, himself criticized the valuing of
style above matter. His followers carried the attack much further. The Royal
Society, according to its historian, Bishop Thomas Sprat, was to be praised for
correcting stylistic excesses in writing.
They have therefore been most rigorous in putting in execution, the only
Remedy, that can be found for this Extravagance, and that has been, a constant
Resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style;
to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver’d so
many things, almost in an equal number of words. Thomas Sprat, History of the
Royal-Society of London (1667).

41
 SESSION 6
HISTORY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH
The English that was brought to America in seventeenth century was, of course,
the language--or versions of the language--of Early Modern England. The year
of the Captain John Smith's founding of Jamestown (1607) coincides roughly
with Shakespeare's writing of Timon of Athens and Pericles, and the King James
Bible (the "Authorized Version") was published only four years later, in 1611.
It was not long before writers on both sides of the Atlantic began to
acknowledge the language's divergence. As early as the mid-seventeenth
century, Samuel Johnson, in a review of Lewis Evans's "Geographical, Historical,
Political, Philosophical, and Mechanical Essays," pays the [American] writer's
language a backhanded compliment:
This treatise is written with such elegance as the subject admits, tho' not without some mixture
of the American dialect, a tract ["trace"] of corruption to which every language widely diffused
must always be exposed. (In the World, No. 102, Dec. 12, 1754; quoted by Mencken 4)

Johnson's assessment was mild compared to that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

who asserted in 1822 that "the Americans presented the extraordinary anomaly
of a people without a language. That they had mistaken the English language
for baggage (which is called plunder in America), and had stolen it" (quoted in
Mencken 28).
Noah Webster attributed some of the marked features of New England speech
to a conservatism engendered by the relative isolation, vis à vis the rest of the
world, of the colonists, stating that New Englanders (of which he was one):
have been sequestered in some measure from the world, and their language has not suffered
material changes from their first settlement to the present time. Hence most of the phrases
used by Shakespear, Congreve, and other writers who have described English manners and
recorded the language of all classes of people, are still heard in the common discourse of the
New England yeomanry. (Dissertation on the English Language 384-85, quoted in Dillard 32-3)

Three stages of settlement and influence can be discerned:

1. Beginning with the English settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the
landing of the Puritans in Massachusetts in 1620 (though the Pilgrims
encountered Native Americans who were already speaking a pidgin

42
 English: Dillard 9ff.), the English language is established in America
(along with Dutch, German, French, and other tongues).

2. The American Revolution creates a separate political identity, and along

with it an expressed desire for a distinct linguistic identity. The Louisiana
Purchase and the consequent expansion westward, accelerated by the
discovery of gold in California contribute to linguistic intermingling and
dialect leveling in the West.

3. The period of European immigration to the U. S. after the Civil War marks
the next stage of large-scale linguistic infusions. Since the vast majority
of these immigrants settled in the North, that is arguably the region
where the greatest linguistic impact of immigration was also felt (see
Carver 96-7).
An issue that transcends periodization is the language that results from the
forced immigration of slaves from Africa: Black Vernacular English/African-
American English/Ebonics.

More Recent influences

Since the mid-twentieth century, large numbers of Spanish-speaking
immigrants have come to the U.S. from Mexico, Latin America, Puerto Rico, and
Cuba, many settling in the formerly Spanish-speaking states of California, New
Mexico, parts of Texas, and Arizona. Since the 1960s and the War in Vietnam,
large numbers of Indo-Chinese immigrants have arrived, especially in the
Pacific Coast states. One consequence of recent immigration, especially where
Spanish-speakers are nearing majority status, is the passage of "English Only"
or "Official English" laws. At present (1999), twenty-two states have adopted
such laws and three others have Official English laws of somewhat different
status: Louisiana has required records to be kept in English since 1811; Hawaii
has English and Hawaiian established as official languages; and English was
accorded official status by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts.

Early American English

The greatest linguistic influence results from first period of immigration and
the establishment of the settlements of the original thirteen colonies :

43
 Northern
o New England was first settled by English speakers between 1620-
1640. After the Puritans settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony in
1620, a second settlement center is established in 1635 in the
Lower Connecticut River Valley (on the western side of the river).
Even today, the Connecticut River is an important regional dialect
boundary, separating the r -less dialect of Boston from the more r -
ful dialects in western New England. Religious dissenters from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony found the Rhode Island Colony in 1638,
and the Narragansett Bay area forms another distinctive dialect
subregion.
o The Mid-Atlantic States: New York was first settled by the Dutch in
1614, but the colony was seized by the British in 1664, when fewer
than 10,000 Dutch settlers were living there; Pennsylvania was
settled by a mix of English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and Germans (the
Pennsylvania "Dutch"). From Philadelphia, Scots-Irish immigrants
spread westward, settling extensively in the Appalachians.
 Southern
o Virginia was the first area to be settled in the South Atlantic States.
The region attracted a variety of social outcasts of one kind or
another: criminals, royalists, indentured servants, and Puritans
from England; religious and political refugees from France
(Huguenots/Calvinists); and inland, Scots-Irish, and Germans. One
kind of argument for the distinctive character of Southern speech,
then, is that it was peopled by inhabitants from the "fringes" of the
British insular domain, and thus, perhaps, those with less
standardized pronunciations and usages. Black English is
increasingly regarded as another influence on the development of
Southern speech (see especially Dillard's chapter on "The
Development of Southern").
The language variations that develop from these broad early influences
will be examined in more detail below.

44
Linguistic Nationalism
As perception of the country as a nation separate from England grew, so too
did perception of language differences. In January 1774, and anonymous writer
(possibly John Adams) issued a proposal in the Royal American Magazine for a
national academy:
The English language has been greatly improved in Britain within a century, but its highest
perfection, with every other branch of human knowledge, is perhaps reserved for this land of
light and freedom. As the people through this extensive country will speak English, their
advantages for polishing their language will be great, and vastly superior to what the people of
England ever enjoyed.

I beg leave to propose a plan for perfecting the English language in America, thro' every future
period of its existence; viz. That a society for this purpose should be formed, consisting of
members in each university and seminary, who shall be stiled Fellows of the American Society
of Language: That the society, when established, from time to time elect new members &
thereby be made perpetual. And that the society annually publish some observations upon the
language and from year to year, correct, enrich and refine it, until perfection stops their
progress and ends their labour.

I conceive that such a society might easily be established, and that great advantages would
thereby accrue to science, and consequently American would make swifter advances to the
summit of learning. It is perhaps impossible for us to form an idea of the perfection, the
beauty, the grandeur, & sublimity, to which our language may arrive in the progress of time,
passing through the improving tongues of our rising prosperity; whose aspiring minds, fired by
our example, and arbour [sic] for glory, may surpass all the sons of science who have shone in
past ages, & may light of the world with new ideas bright as the sun. (British Museum, Colonial
Office Records, Class 5, Volume 938 [1772-74], p. 186; quoted in Mathews 40-41)

A few years later (September 5, 1780), John Adams wrote to the president of
Congress from Amsterdam proposing that Congress establish an "American
Academy for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English language":
Most of the nations of Europe have thought it necessary to establish by public authority
institutions for fixing and improving their proper languages. I need not mention the academies
in France, Spain, and Italy, their learned labors, nor their great success. But it is very
remarkable, that although many learned and ingenious men in England have from age to age
projected similar institutions for correcting and improving the English tongue, yet the
government have never found time to interpose in any manner; so that this day there is no
grammar nor dictionary extant of the English language which has the least public authority; and
it is only very lately, that a tolerable dictionary has been published, even by a private person,
and there is not yet a passable grammar enterprised by any individual.

The honor of forming the first public institution for refining, correcting, improving, and
ascertaining the English language, I hope is reserved for congress; they have every motive that
can possibly influence a public assembly to undertake it. It will have a happy effect upon the

45
union of the States to have a public standard for all persons in every part of the continent to
appeal to, both for the signification and pronunciation of the language. The constitutions of all
the States in the Union are so democratical that eloquence will become the instrument for
recommending men to their fellow-citizens, and the principal means of advancement through
the ranks and offices of society.

In the last century Latin,[sic] was the universal language of Europe. Correspondence among the
learned, and indeed among merchants and men of business, and the conversation of strangers
and travellers, was generally carried on in that dead language. In the present century, Latin has
been generally laid aside, and French has been substituted in its place, but has not yet become
universally established, and, according to present appearances, it is not probable that it will.
English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of
the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of this is
obvious, because the increasing population in America, and their universal connection and
correspondence with all nations will, aided by the influence of England and the world, whether
great or small, force their language into general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be
thrown in their way, if any such there should be. (The Words of John Adams, Second President
of the United States....by His Grandson, Charles Francis Adams (Boston, 1852), 7: 249ff.;
quoted in Mathews 7-8)

Vocabulary/Lexicon
An early factor in the evolution of American English was the need to name
unfamiliar features of the landscape, flora, and fauna of the New World. One
source for such words was the rich, but often difficult (for English speakers)
vocabulary of the Native Americans. Captain John Smith, in trying to transcribe
the Algonquian word meaning "he scratches with his hands"--arakun-- wrote
rahougcum (1608). This is the source of our now-familiar word, raccoon. Other
words derived from Native American languages include: caucus (possibly from
Algonkin cau'-cau-as'u, used by Captain John Smith, who spelled it "Caw-
cawaassough"), hickory (< pohickery), hominy, moccasin, moose, muskrat (<
muskwessu), opossum, papoose, pecan, persimmon, pone, powwow, skunk,
squash (< asquutasquash), squaw, succotash (from Narragansett msiquatash),
terrapin, toboggan, tomahawk, totem, wigwam, and woodchuck (< otchek).
Earlier Spanish and Portuguese explorers, encountering Native Americans in the
West Indies, Mexico, and Central and South American, had provided forms that
became the English words barbecue (<Arawak barbacoa, "a raised platform of
sticks"), cannibal, canoe (<Arawak canoa), chocolate (<Nahuatl chocolátl),
maize (<Arawak marisi), potato, tomato (<Nahuatl tomatl), and savannah.
Although it enters the language somewhat later (ca. 1825), the word coyote
also derives from the Nahuatl word coyotl (via Spanish).

46
The word "Amercanism" has been in use since after the Revolution to refer
disparagingly to words or usages of supposed American origin. John
Witherspoon, first president of Princeton University (then known as the College
of New Jersey), claims the credit for coining the term and details its
signification:
...Americanisms, by which I understand an use of the phrases or terms, or a construction of
sentences, even among persons of rank and education, different from the use of the same
terms or phrases, or the construction of similar sentences in Great-Britain. It does not follow,
from a man's using these, that he is ignorant, or his discourse upon the whole inelegant; nay, it
does not follow in every case, that the terms or phrases used are worse in themselves, but
merely that they are of American and not of English growth. The word Americanism, which I
have coined for the purpose, is exactly similar in its formation and signification to the word
Scotticism. By the word Scotticism is understood any term or phrase, and indeed any thing
either in construction, pronunciation or accentuation, that is peculiar to North-Britain. There
are many instances in which the Scotch way is as good, and some in which every person who
has the least taste as to the propriety or purity of a language in general, must confess that it is
better than that of England, yet speakers and writers must conform to custom. ( "The Druid,"
no. 5, May 9, 1781; reprinted in Mathews 17)

Among the usages identified by Witherspoon as "Americanisms" are the use of

either to refer to "one or the other of two"; notify to mean "inform"; fellow
countrymen, which he regarded as a redundancy; mad, as "a metaphor for
angry." Thomas Jefferson was taken to task ("belittled") by the European
Magazine and London Review in 1787 for his coinage and use of the verb to
belittle in his "Notes on the State of Viriginia":
Belittle! What an expression! It may be an elegant one in Virginia, and even perfectly intelligible;
but for our part, all we can do is to guess at its meaning. For shame, Mr. Jefferson! Why, after
trampling upon the honour or our country, and representing it as little better than a land of
barbarism--why, we say, perpetually trample also upon the very grammar of our language, and
make that appear as Gothic as, from your description, our manners are rude?--Freely, good sir,
will we forgive all your attacks, impotent as they are illiberal, upon our national character; but
for the future spare--O spare, we beseech you, our mother-tongue! (Quoted in Mencken 14)

A humorous view of the current divide between British and American usages is
provided at the Web site "Britspeak."

English Grammar in the New World: Usage Debates and Dictionary

Wars
Lindley Murray (1745-1826), an American expatriate living in England, all but
cornered the market during first quarter of eighteenth century with his English

47
Grammar, Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners. Published in York in
1795, Murray's grammar was first printed in America in Boston in 1800 and
went through more than 100 editions, selling more than 2 million copies.
Murray had attended Franklin's Academy as a boy in Philadelphia. In adulthood,
he became ill and was forced to give up his lucrative law practice. He emigrated
to England where with a small fortune he began a forty-year convalescence,
during which he tutored the headmistress of a nearby school in grammar and
was persuaded to write a grammar. Murray's work borrowed from Priestly's
grammar, Campbell's rhetoric, and Lowth's grammar (sometimes copying Lowth
verbatim) and relied heavily on teaching by showing incorrect examples (false
syntax).
Noah Webster (1758-1843) was descended from John Webster, governor of
Connecticut, and William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony. After he
graduated from Yale in 1778, he studied law and, though admitted to the bar,
failed to attract a sufficient clientele. Thus he abandoned the law and entered a
more lucrative occupation, as a school teacher! Dissatisfied with available
textbooks, he produced his own speller, grammar, and reader, published in
1783, 1784, and 1785 as A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The
speller, The American Spelling Book sold more than 80 million copies in 100
years, providing Webster with sufficient income to turn his attention entirely to
linguistic concerns. (Perhaps not surprisingly, Webster was a fierce advocate of
copyright legislation.) Webster's rhetoric is generally that of a descriptivist, one
who bases his claims on observations of usage rather than on the analogy of
the grammatical structures of Latin, though at points in his career he did
succumb, if only temporarily, to the siren song of prescription. Finegan tells the
story of Webster's changing views on who/whom:
Webster's growing familiarity with educated practice modified his views. He had condemned the
use of who in Who did you marry? when writing the Grammatical Institute (1784), but accepted
it in the 1789 Dissertations. In a passage that simultaneously illustrates the alteration of his
views and underscores his disdain for grammarians too much influenced by Latin, he wrote that
Whom do you speak to? was "never used in speaking, as I can find, and if so, it is hardly English
at all." He thought only who had been used in asking questions "until some Latin student began
to suspect it bad English, because not agreeable to the Latin rules. At any rate, whom do you
speak to? is a corruption, and all the grammars that can be formed will not extend the use of
the phrase byond the walls of a college" (Dissertations, pp. 286-287). ( Finegan 41)

He also took Lowth and Murray to task for stigmatizing you was (singular).
Cmiel paraphrases Webster's views on this point: "It was not a solecism,

48
Webster argued. The introduction of you were in the singular was a good
example of the silly overrefinement of late-eighteenth-century linguists" (77;
citing Webster's A Letter to the Honorable John Pickering [1817] and
Philosophical and Practical Grammar [1807], p. 25). Webster also argued
against the importance of preserving the few remaining inflections in English
(pace Lowth and others: Finegan 43).
In 1828, at the age of 70, Webster published An American Dictionary of the
English Language in two quarto volumes. His stated aim was to show the
distinctiveness of American English; yet he had not succeeded in making it as
distinctive as he had once hoped to. His first dictionary, A Compendious
Dictionary of the English Language (1806), had included the simplified spellings
"ake, crum, fether, honor, iland, ile (for aisle), theater, wether" (Mathews 45).
But even these innovations constituted a compromise; in his "Essay on a
Reformed Mode of Spelling" (an appendix to the Dissertations), he had
advocated "doctrin, medicin, examin, determin, disciplin, and opak" (Finegan
44). In the 1806 dictionary, he had also spelled boil (a tumor) as bile (Krapp
344). Many of the reforms introduced in the American Dictionary did succeed
and today constitute the primary differences between British and American
spelling. These include the simplification of the word-final -ck spellings (as in
musick, magick) to -c; the -our spellings (e.g., colour, honour) to -or; and the
-re spellings (inherited from French, in, e.g., centre, theatre) to -re.

The Prescriptivist/Descriptivist controversy continues...

In 1961, the publication of Webster's Third International Dictionary by the
Merriam Company (who had bought the remaining copies of the second edition
of the American Dictionary of the English Language, and the rights to
publication of subsequent revisions, from Webster's heirs when he died in
1843) was greeted by deluge of reviews, written largely by people who had not
seen the dictionary, criticizing the absence of usage labels, lack of
capitalization (only God is capitalized), absence of an authoritative (i.e. one
correct) pronunciation, and the provision of variant spellings. (There are in fact
words labeled as "slang," "nonstandard," "vulgar," and "obscene.") As a reaction
to the Third, a new wave of prescriptive dictionaries hit the market, including
the American Heritage Dictionary, the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary
Usage, and the Oxford American Dictionary.

49
Goold Brown published The Grammar of English Grammars in 1851. Finegan
observes that, ironically, "more than any other grammarian, Brown frustrated
part of his own design by parading before his readers a long, colorful line of
the very usages he hoped to annihilate" (57). Brown's moralistic prescriptivism
is perhaps best revealed in his assertion that "The grammatical use of language
is in sweet alliance with the moral" (1851, p. 94).
Richard Grant White, author of Words and Their Uses (1870) and Every-Day
English (1880), did not believe that Americans had right to establish their own
standard. Words and Their Uses went through thirty-three editions in thirty
years and was still in copyright as late as 1927. Among the words he
condemned were: donate, jeopardize, resurrect, initiate, practitioner,
photographer, pants, conversationalist, standpoint, presidential, gubernatorial,
shamefaced, and reliable (Finegan 70).

Pronunciation
Though Webster was to change his mind by the end of his life, he was earlier an
articulate advocate for something like tolerance of regional variations in
pronunciation:
Not to mention small differences, I would observe that the inhabitants of New-England and
Virginia have a peculiar pronunciation which affords much diversion to their neighbours. On the
other hand, the language in the middle States is tinctured with a variety of Irish, Scotch and
German dialects which are justly censured as deviations from propriety and the standard of
elegant pronunciation. The truth is, usus est Norma Loquendi, general custom is the rule of
speaking, and every deviation from this must be wrong. The dialect of one State is as ridiculous
as that of another; each is authorized by local custom; and neither is supported by any superior
excellence. If in New-England we hear a flat, drawling pronunciation, in the Southern States we
hear the words veal, very, vulgar pronounced weal, wery, wulgar; wine , winter, etc., changed
into vine, vinter; soft becomes saft; and raisins and wound , contrary to all rules and propriety,
are pronounced reesins, woond . It is the present mode at the Southward, to pronounce u like
yu, as in virtyue, fortyune, etc., and in a rapid pronunciation these become virchue, forchune,
as also duty, duel, are changed into juty, juel. (Grammatical Institute , Part 1, 1783, p. 6; quoted
in Krapp 11)

Dialects
American English is regarded as having preserved archaic features which have
since been altered in British English--i.e., American speech maintained features
of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English--such as the preservation of r
in most dialects, and "flat a" [æ] as in "path": features that were lost in southern

50
England at the end of the eighteenth century. In England the flat a became a
"broad a" [a]: the sound in "father." Americans generally pronounce either and
neither with [i] vowel (as in "bean"), while in England the pronunciation has
followed the pattern of the vowel shift to the diphthong [aI], as in "fight."
Since the initial settlements in the Northern, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern
colonies, other distinctive variations in American speech have evolved,
including the following:
1. Eastern New England: Parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont. The
speech of this region is characterized by the retention of rounded vowel
in words like "hot" and "top"; the use of "broad a" [a] in words like "fast"
and "path" (i.e., the vowel sound in father); the loss of r in car (Boston is
the "focal area" of this dialect).

2. New York City: the presence or absence of r has become class marker; cot
/caught are phonemically contrasted; the pronunciation of curl as "coil"
and bird as "boid" is characteristic of working-class speech. Mencken
reports that this feature was apparent in speeches by presidential
candidate Alfred E. Smith in 1928 (368).

3. Inland Northern: Western New England, upstate New York,and the basin
of the Great Lakes share features of pronunciation resulting from the
settlement patterns established during the western migrations along
lakes. This variety distinguishes "long" o in words like "mourning" and
"hoarse" from the "shorter" sound in "morning" and "horse"; the -th
sound (interdental fricative) is "voiced" in "with" (i.e., the sound at the
beginning of "the" as contrasted with "thin"); the [s] in "grease" [verb] and
"greasy" is voiced (and so rhyme with "sleaze" and "sleazy"); as contrasted
with Eastern New England, this is variety retains "post-vocalic r" (as in
"car") and has the "flat a" sound (as in "apple").

4. North Midland speech retains r in all positions (like Inland Northern) and
has flat a [æ] in "grass" and "ask." Within this region is a sub-area
including the eastern half of Pennsylvania, Southern half of New Jersey,
the northern half of Delaware, and adjacent parts of Maryland. Speakers
have an unrounded vowel ([a], the sound in "father") in words like
"forehead," "forest," and "hot"; "short" e (as in "pest") in "care," "Mary,"
and "merry"; and they merge long and short o before r in "four" and

51
 "forty." Another major subarea in this region includes speech of western
Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Features include a
merger of the vowels in cot /caught; "intrustive r" (e.g., "warsh" for wash);
and the syntactical construction "The car needs washed."

5. South Midland (Mid Southern): West Virginia, the mountains of Virginia

and North Carolina, most of Kentucky and Tennessee. Post-vocalic r is
retained in this variety; the diphthong in "right" and "bye" is often
pronounced more like the vowel in "father."

6. Southern: important focal areas are the Virginia Piedmont and the low
country near the coast of South Carolina. This variety is characterized by
the loss of r finally and before consonants; the unrounded vowel (as in
"father") in "top" and "hot," flat a in "grass," "dance," and "path." A very
distinctive feature is the treatment of the vowel in "house," "South," and
"out": instead of diphthong [aw], Southerners begin this diphthong with
[æ] before voiced consonants and finally, while in Virginia and South
Carolina the diphthong is pronounced similar to that in Canadian speech,
with an initial sound like the vowel in "shut," gliding towards the vowel
sound in "foot" (former presidential candidate Pat Robertson is
representative of this dialect). Also distinctive is the so-called Southern
"drawl": diphtongization or triphthongization of stressed vowels in words
like "yes." Final consonant cluster reduction occurs in words like "last"
and "kept" (i.e., these are pronounced something like "lass" and "kep").
Around Charleston and New Orleans the vowel in curl and bird is
pronounced as in NYC. Many speakers insert glide in Tuesday [tyuz-] and
make no distinction between the vowels in pin and pen.

7. General American used to be thought of as most of the Western half of

country, and refers to a dialect characterized by the retention of r, "flat
a," and an unrounded vowel in hot. This is a kind of "idealized" dialect
(broadcast English) generally thought of as "Standard."

Black English
The origins of Black English (referred to variously as Black Vernacular English,
African-American English, and Ebonics) are disputed. One theory holds that this
variety of English developed from a pidgin that resulted from the conditions of

52
the slave trade, during which speakers of different African languages were
thrown together and forced to communicate through a pidgin language. This
pidgin was used by slave traders and slave owners to communicate with blacks,
and by blacks of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate with each
other. Out of this developed a Black English creole spoken by the first
generations of slaves born in North America.This creole can be heard today
spoken by the Gullah and Geechee inhabitants of the Carolina Sea Islands.
Another view holds that Black English results from the retention of British
English features that have not been retained in other varieties of American
English. Also controversial is the question of whether Black English and
Standard English are on the path to convergence or increasing divergence.
Black English is characterized by pronunciations (phonology), syntactic patterns
(grammar), and morphological features (inflections) that in many instances also
occur in other varieties of English. Many features are shared by Southern white
speakers and by Appalachian speakers. The features below represent
tendencies toward speech patterns that occur some of the time in speakers of
Black English but that are certainly not to be regarded as universal, or
universally-occurring features.

Phonology
r-deletion:
door> [do:] ("doah")
sister>"sistah"
l-deletion:
help>"hep"
steal>"steah"
ball>"bah"
you'll >"youah"*
they'll>"deyah"/"dey"*
*Results in appearance of failure to inflect for the future tense
final consonant cluster reduction:
passed>"pass"
This gives the appearance of a morphological gap in the grammar (i.e., no past tense marker).
Note that even in Standard English speakers simplify final clusters in casual speech if the
following word in the phrase begins with a consonant: cold cuts>"col´ cuts"
loss of final dental [alveolar] stop:
good man>"goo´ man"

53
monophthongization:
like>[lak]
time>[tam]
why>[wha]
interdental fricatives become alveolar stops:
initially:
they>"dey"
them>"dem"
think>"tink"
thin>"tin"
But, if the following consonant is an r:
three>"free"
throat>"froat"
medially:
nothing>"nuffin'"
brother>"bruvvah"
finally:
tenth>"tenf"/"tent"
mouth>"mouf"/"mout"

Grammar
AUX-deletion (i.e., deletion of the auxilliary verb):

Where Standard English can contract, Black English can delete:

Standard English (informal) Black English

He's going He going

I've got it I got it

He'd be happy he be happy

Note that where Standard English cannot contract, Black English cannot
delete:

Standard English (informal) Black English

*What a fool you're. *What a fool you.

54
Iterative/habitual be:
He be coming home at six. (means: "He usually comes home at six.")
Double (or multiple) negation:
"Neither one of us ain't got nuthin' ta lose." (Eddie Murphy, 48 Hours)
"Can't no one tell you you ain't somebody." (Jessie Jackson)
cf. "Nor is this not my nose neither." (Shakespeare)

Morphology and Syntax:

With a numerical quantifier such as two, seven, fifty, etc., Black English
speakers may not add the obligatory in Standard English (and redundant)
morphemes for the plural: e.g., fifty cent, two foot

The use of the possessive marker:

Where the Standard English speaker says "John's cousin"; the Black
English speaker might say "John cousin." The possessive is marked in
Black English by the "genitival" position of the noun and its possessor

The third-person singular has no obligatory morphological ending in Black

English, so that "she works here" is expressed as "she work here."

Black English sometimes uses ain't as a past-tense marker:

Black English present tense: "He don't go."
Black English past tense: "He ain't go."

Future-tense:
Standard English: "I will go home"
Black English: "I'ma go home"

Conditional subordination:
Standard English: "I asked if he did it."; BVE
Black English: "I ask did he do it."

Pronoun case
Standard English: "We have to do it." BVE "
Black English: "Us got to do it."

55
Preposition:
Standard English: " He is over at his friend's house."
Black English: "He over to his friend house."

56
 SESSION 7
HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH IN THE
U.S.
Preliminaries: Language and Dialect
A language is
 a consistent set of sounds,
 a set of regular structural patterns, and
 a consistent set of meanings to associate with the sounds and the
structures.
Any variety of speech that has these features is a language (and a dialect).
A dialect, for a linguist, is represented by two mutually intelligible language
varieties, typically viewed as belonging to the same language. For a non-
linguist, a ‘dialect’ has a negative connotation, being somehow ‘less than a
language’. Dialect, as I will use it, has no negative connotations; it refers to the
linguist's interpretation.
This interpretation means that a dialect is a language, with all the structure,
sound patterns, and meaning regularities of any other language variety.

Black English
The origins of Black English (referred to variously as Black Vernacular English,
African-American English, and Ebonics) are disputed. One theory holds that this
variety of English developed from a pidgin that resulted from the conditions of
the slave trade, during which speakers of different African languages were
thrown together and forced to communicate through a pidgin language. This
pidgin was used by slave traders and slave owners to communicate with blacks,
and by blacks of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate with each
other. Out of this developed a Black English creole spoken by the first
generations of slaves born in North America.This creole can be heard today
spoken by the Gullah and Geechee inhabitants of the Carolina Sea Islands.
Another view holds that Black English results from the retention of British
English features that have not been retained in other varieties of American

57
English. Also controversial is the question of whether Black English and
Standard English are on the path to convergence or increasing divergence.
Black English is characterized by pronunciations (phonology), syntactic patterns
(grammar), and morphological features (inflections) that in many instances also
occur in other varieties of English. Many features are shared by Southern white
speakers and by Appalachian speakers. The features below represent
tendencies toward speech patterns that occur some of the time in speakers of
Black English but that are certainly not to be regarded as universal, or
universally-occurring features.
Phonology
r-deletion:
door> [do:] ("doah")
sister>"sistah"
l-deletion:
help>"hep"
steal>"steah"
ball>"bah"
you'll >"youah"*
they'll>"deyah"/"dey"*
*Results in appearance of failure to inflect for the future tense
final consonant cluster reduction:
passed>"pass"
This gives the appearance of a morphological gap in the grammar (i.e., no past
tense marker). Note that even in Standard English speakers simplify final
clusters in casual speech if the following word in the phrase begins with a
consonant: cold cuts>"col´ cuts"
loss of final dental [alveolar] stop:
good man>"goo´ man"
monophthongization:
like>[lak]
time>[tam]
why>[wha]
interdental fricatives become alveolar stops :

58
initially:
they>"dey"
them>"dem"
think>"tink"
thin>"tin"
But, if the following cononant is an r:
three>"free"
throat>"froat"
medially:
nothing>"nuffin'"
brother>"bruvvah"
finally:
tenth>"tenf"/"tent"
mouth>"mouf"/"mout"
Grammar
AUX-deletion (i.e., deletion of the auxilliary verb):
Where Standard English can contract, Black English can
delete:

Standard English (informal) Black English

He's going He going

I've got it I got it

He'd be happy he be happy

Note that where Standard English cannot contract, Black

English cannot delete:

Standard English (informal) Black English

*What a fool you're. *What a fool you.

Iterative/habitual be:
He be coming home at six. (means: "He usually comes home at six.")

59
Double (or multiple) negation:
"Neither one of us ain't got nuthin' ta lose." (Eddie Murphy, 48 Hours)
"Can't no one tell you you ain't somebody." (Jessie Jackson)
cf. "Nor is this not my nose neither." (Shakespeare)
Morphology and Syntax:
With a numerical quantifier such as two, seven, fifty, etc., Black English
speakers may not add the obligatory in Standard English (and redundant)
morphemes for the plural: e.g., fifty cent, two foot
The use of the possessive marker:
Where the Standard English speaker says "John's cousin"; the Black English
speaker might say "John cousin." The possessive is marked in Black English by
the "genitival" position of the noun and its possessor
The third-person singular has no obligatory morphological ending in Black
English, so that "she works here" is expressed as "she work here."
Black English sometimes uses ain't as a past-tense marker:
Black English present tense: "He don't go."
Black English past tense: "He ain't go."
Future-tense:
Standard English: "I will go home"
Black English: "I'ma go home"
Conditional subordination:
Standard English: "I asked if he did it."; BVE
Black English: "I ask did he do it."
Pronoun case
Standard English: "We have to do it." BVE "
Black English: "Us got to do it."
Preposition:
Standard English: " He is over at his friend's house."
Black English: "He over to his friend house."
II. The history of African American English
According to Dan Mosser’s notes on the origins of English in America,

60
The origins of Black English (referred to variously as Black Vernacular English,
African-American English, and Ebonics) are disputed. One theory holds that this
variety of English developed from a pidgin that resulted from the conditions of
the slave trade, during which speakers of different African languages were
thrown together and forced to communicate through a pidgin language. This
pidgin was used by slave traders and slave owners to communicate with blacks,
and by blacks of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate with each
other. Out of this developed a Black English creole spoken by the first
generations of slaves born in North America.This creole can be heard today
spoken by the Gullah and Geechee inhabitants of the Carolina Sea Islands.
Another view holds that Black English results from the retention of British
English features that have not been retained in other varieties of American
English. Also controversial is the question of whether Black English and
Standard English are on the path to convergence or increasing divergence.
(African slave trade and European imperialism)
· 1517: African slaves transported to the West Indies by the Spanish to
work on sugar plantations
· By 1550, West African Pidgin English was probably spoken widely along
the entire West African coast. It still is spoken there, along with Krio (Sierra
Leone, Liberia) and Nigerian English.
· Early 17th century: European ships transported West Africans to the
Caribbean and American coast to be traded for sugar, rum, molasses
· 1619: 20 African slaves arrived in Virginia on a Dutch ship
· After 1625, slaves from West Africa brought their African languages,
lingua francas, and West African Pidgin English, to be sold in Brazil, eastern
South America, the Caribbean, and the British colonies.
· By 1700, there are records of a fully developed Plantation Creole English.
· 1776 (American Revolution): half a million black slaves are in the US
· By 1790, 750,000 African Americans in U.S. (14% of U.S. population).
· By 1800, Plantation Creole English is undergoing decreolization, to create a
continuum from creole >> deceolized plantation >> standard southern.
· By 1850, 92% of African Americans live in the South.

61
· 1865 (end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery): over 4 millions
slaves in US
· 1900: migration to the North begins for large numbers.
· Migration from South accelerated in 20th century:
1920: 85% in the south
1940: 77% in the south
1960: 60% in the south
Interlude on Pidgins and Creoles (Crystal, 346)
A PIDGIN is a system of communication which has grown up among people
who do not share a common language, but who need to communicate, usually
for reasons of trade. In other words, it is a lingua franca that consists of a
hybrid language, greatly reduced in grammatical and lexical structure,
developed as a consequence of contact between two or more speech
communities. Characteristics of this ‘contact’ language:
· Limited vocabulary
· Reduced grammatical structure
· Narrow range of functions
In a multilingual community, people begin to use a pidgin as their main means
of communication outside the private domains of family. This leads to a major
expansion of the vocabulary, grammar, and range of situations in which the
language is used. The children come to hear it more regularly, and eventually,
children learn it as a mother tongue. E.g. Tok Pisin, of Papua New Guinea, is a
newly born pidgin/creole which has been growing to meet the requirements of
a fully fledged language.
A CREOLE is a pidgin language which has become the mother tongue of a
community. It develops the syntactic, lexical, and morphological sophistication
required by any language functioning as the primary language of a speech
community
Creolization is the process by which pidgins become mother tongues,
acquiring the linguistic resources necessary to serve a wide range of functions.
Decreolization is the process by which creoles change with increased contact
with and the influence of standard languages. This process has been repeated
in many places around the world.

62
 Pidgin West African Pidgin
|
|
CREOLIZATION
|
Creole Krio
|
| DECREOLIZATION
|
|
standard
language Nigerian English
As a result of the transportation of slaves from West Africa to the Americas
and the Caribbean via the middle passage, over time, English creoles developed
in the Caribbean, in Guyana, and in the southern U.S. These creoles are fully
formed languages, and the main source for modern dialects of African
American English. Jamaican Creole, Guyanese Creole, Bahamian Creole, Gullah,
Afro-Seminole, Louisiana Creole, Hawaiian Creole English.
Gullah Is the clearest holdover in the U.S. from earlier Creole English
languages (also Geechee). There are as many as 250,000 speakers today from
north Florida to North Carolina Sea Islands. Gullah may represent a source for
modern African American English.
Afro-Seminole, related to Gullah, is still spoken by several hundred people
in Brackettville, TX, mostly over 50 years old (near Mexican border).
An off-shoot of Florida and Georgia Gullah, escaped slaves settled in
Florida under Spanish and traded with seminole Indians. After seminole wars,
some African Americans were sold back to slavery, others went to Oklahoma
with the indians, others settled in Mexico by the Texas border. After slavery
was ended in 1865, some Afro-seminoles were invited to become scouts with
western cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers). Many settled around Brackettville.

63
 Ghetto life in the northern cities maintained the African American English
features commonly brought from the south. This is why all cities have similar
African American English varieties despite great geographical separation
(Chicago, NY, Washington DC, Detroit, LA).
III. African American English today: the Ebonics controversy.
· AAVE in education: The Ann Arbor Case
In 1979, A Michigan federal court ruled that Ann Arbor public schools were
discriminating against African American children by denying them training in
Standard English as these children speak an independent dialect, Black (African
American) English.
In the Ann Arbor decision, "Black English is therefore not synonymous with
'broken English,' 'ungrammatical language,' 'slang,' or 'street talk.'
Like all language, it is systematic and rule-governed in its syntax (grammar),
phonology (sound system), and semantics (system of meaning)" (Chambers
1983:ix).
"The ruling required that schools take note of the fact that language used at
home and in the local community is a barrier to the students' learning only
when teachers do not understand it and do not incorporate it into their method
of instruction" (Chambers 1983:xi).
The outcome of the Ann Arbor decision was that teachers needed to become
aware that African American English was a consistent linguistic system and that
teachers should have a better knowledge of the resources children bring to
school with them (Labov 1983:29).
· The Oakland Case and Ebonics
Charles Fillmore (a linguist) comments:
The words "dialect" and "language" are confusingly ambiguous. These are not
precisely definable technical terms in linguistics, but linguists have learned to
live with the ambiguities. I mentioned "the language of the resolution" where I
meant the actual words and phrases found in the text of the board's resolution.
We can use the word "language" to refer simply to the linguistic system one
acquires in childhood. In normal contexts, everybody grows up speaking a
language. And if there are systematic differences between the language you and

64
your neighbors speak and the language my neighbors and I speak, we can say
that we speak different dialects.
The word "language" is also used to refer to a group of related dialects, but
there are no scientific criteria for deciding when to refer to two linguistic
systems as different dialects of the same language, or as different languages
belonging to the same language family. There are empirical criteria for
grouping ways of speaking to reflect their historical relationships, but there is
an arbitrary element in deciding when to use the word "language" for
representing any particular grouping. (Deciding whether BBC newsreaders and
Lynchburg, Va., radio evangelists speak different dialects of the same language
or different languages in the same language family is on the level of deciding
whether Greenland is a small continent or a large island.)
There is a different and misleading way of using these words for situations in
which, for social or political reasons, one dialect comes to be the preferred
means of communication in schools, commerce, public ceremonies, etc.
According to this second usage, which reflects an unscientific "folk theory",
what the linguist would simply call the standard dialect is thought of as a
"language", the others as "mere dialects", falling short of the perfection of the
real language. An important principle of linguistics is that the selection of the
prestige dialect is determined by accidental extralinguistic forces, and is not
dependent on inherent virtues of the dialects themselves. But according to the
folk theory, the "dialects" differ from the language itself in being full of errors.
From: A Linguist Looks at the Ebonics Debate, Charles J. Fillmore (Department
of Linguistics, U. C. Berkeley)

65
 SESSION 8
AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT AND
PECULIARITIES
The history of Australian English starts with kangaroo (1770) and Captain James
Cook’s glossary of local words used in negotiations with the Endeavour River
tribes. The language was pidgin.
Aboriginal Vocabulary

The aboriginal vocabulary, which is one of the trademarks of Australian English,

included billabong (a waterhole), jumbuck (a sheep), corroboree (an assembly),
boomerang (a curved throwing stick), and budgerigar (from budgeree, “good”
and gar, “parrot”).
The number of Aboriginal words in Australian English is quite small and is
confined to the namings of plants (like bindieye and calombo), trees (like boree,
banksia, quandong and mallee), birds (like currawong, galah and kookaburra),
animals (like wallaby and wombat) and fish (like barramindi). As in North
America , when it comes to place-names the Aboriginal influence was much
greater: with a vast continent to name, about a third of all Australian place-
names are Aboriginal.
The Aborigines also adopted words from maritime pidgin English, words like
piccaninny and bilong (belong). They used familiar pidgin English variants like
talcum and catchum. The most famous example is gammon, an eighteenth-
century Cockney word meaning “a lie”.
Non-aboriginal Vocabulary

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Australian population
were either convicts, ex-convicts or of convict descent. The convict argot was
called “flash” language, and James Hardy Vaux published a collection of it in
1812, the New and Comprehensive Vocabulary of the Flash Language. Most of
the words and phrases Vaux listed remained confined to convict circles and
have not passed in the main stream of Australian English. There are a few
exceptions, of which the best known is swag meaning “a bundle of personal

66
belongings” in standard Australian. Swagman, billy, jumbuck, tucker-bag and
coolibah tree are early Australianisms.
The roots of Australian English lie in the South and East of England, London,
Scotland and Ireland. To take just a few examples, words like corker, dust-up,
purler and tootsy all came to Australia from Ireland; billy comes from the
Scottish bally, meaning “a milk pail”. A typical Australianism like fossick,
meaning “to search unsystematically”, is a Cornish word. Cobber came from the
Suffolk verb to cob, “to take a liking to someone”. Tucker is widely used for
“food”. Clobber has Romany roots and is originally recorded in Kent as
clubbered up, meaning “dressed up”.
Australian Peculiarities

In 1945 Sidney J. Baker published the book The Australian Language which was
a milestone in the emergence of a separate Australian Standard. Since 1945 the
Australian vernacular continues to flourish.
Australian English incorporates several uniquely Australian terms, such as
outback to refer to remote regional areas, walkabout to refer to a long journey
of uncertain length and bush to refer to native forested areas, but also to
regional areas as well. Fair dinkum can mean “are you telling me the truth?”,
“this is the truth!”, or “this is ridiculous!” depending on context - the disputed
origin dates back to the gold rush in the 1850s, “dinkum” being derived from
the Chinese word for “gold” or “real gold”: fair dinkum is the genuine article.
G'day is well known as a stereotypical Australian greeting - it is worth noting
that G'day is not synonymous with the expression “Good Day”, and is never
used as an expression for "farewell". Many of these terms have been adopted
into British English via popular culture and family links.
Some elements of Aboriginal languages, as has already been mentioned, have
been incorporated into Australian English, mainly as names for the indigenous
flora and fauna (e.g. dingo, kangaroo), as well as extensive borrowings for
place names. Beyond that, very few terms have been adopted into the wider
language. A notable exception is Cooee (a musical call which travels long
distances in the bush and is used to say “is there anyone there?”). Although
often thought of as an Aboriginal word, didgeridoo/didjeridu (a well known
wooden musical instrument) is actually an onomatopoeic term coined by an
English settler.

67
Australian English has a unique set of diminutives formed by adding -o or -ie
(-y) to the ends of (often abbreviated) words. There does not appear to be any
particular pattern to which of these suffixes is used.
Examples with the -o ending include :

abo (aborigine - now considered very offensive),

aggro (aggressive),
ambo (ambulance office),
arvo (afternoon),
avo (avocado),
bizzo (business),
bottleo (bottle shop/liquor store),
compo (compensation),
dero (homeless person – from derelict),
devo (deviant/pervert),
doco (documentary),
evo (evening),
fisho (fishmonger),
fruito (fruiterer),
garbo (garbage collector),
gyno (gynaecologist),
journo (journalist),
kero (kerosene),
metho (methylated spirits),
milko (milkman),
Nasho (National Service – compulsory military service),
reffo (refugee),
rego (vehicle registration),
Salvo (member of the Salvation Army),
servo (service station/gas station),
smoko (smoke or coffee/tea break),
thingo (thing, whadjamacallit),
vejjo (vegetarian),
etc.
Examples of the -ie (-y) ending include
aggie (student of agricultural science),

68
Aussie (Australian),
barbie (barbeque),
beautie (beautiful, stereotypically pronounced and even written bewdy),
bikkie (biscuit),
bitie (biting insect),
blowie (blowfly),
bookie (bookmaker),
brekkie (breakfast),
brickie (bricklayer),
Brizzie (Brisbane – state capital of Queensland),
Bushie (someone who lives in the bush),
chewie (chewing gum),
chokkie (chocolate),
cozzie (swimming costume – mostly used in New South Wales),
Chrissie (Christmas),
exy (expensive),
greenie (environmentalist),
kindie (kindergarten),
lippy (lipstick),
mozzie (mosquito),
oldies (parents),
possie (position),
postie (postman),
prezzie (present),
rellie (sometimes relo – relative),
sickie (day off sick from work),
sunnies (sunglasses),
surfy (surfing fanatic),
swaggie (swagman),
trackies (track suit),
truckie (truck driver),
vedgie (vegetable)
etc.
Occasionally, a -za diminutive is used, usually for personal names. Barry
becomes Bazza, Karen becomes Kazza and Sharon becomes Shazza.

69
There are also a lot of abbreviations in Australian English without any suffixes.
Examples of these are the words
beaut (great, beautiful),
BYO (Bring Your Own restaurant, party, barbecue etc),
deli (delicatessen),
hoon (hooligan),
nana (banana),
roo (kangaroo),
uni (university),
ute (utility truck or vehicle)
etc.
We cannot but mention unique and, indeed, colourful Australian metaphors and
similes, as
as bald as a bandicoot,
as cunning as a dunny rat,
as lonely as a country dunny,
flat out like a lizard drinking,
grinning like a shot fox,
look like a consumptive kangaroo,
let alone Australian expressions, as
a feed, a frostie and a feature,
bring a plate,
in full feather,
rough end of a pineapple,
to plant the foot,
to big-note oneself,
to give it a burl,
not to know Christmas from Bourke Street,
not to have a brass razoo,
dingo’s breakfast,
to have kangaroos in the top paddock,
to have tickets on oneself
etc.

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American Influence

In the middle of the century, the hectic years of the gold rush in Australia drew
prospectors from California to the hills of New South Wales, bringing with them
a slew of Americanisms to add to the Australian lexicon. The invasion of
American vogue words marked the beginning of tension in Australia between
the use of British English and American English. Should an Australian say biscuit
or cookie, nappy or diaper, lorry or truck? The answer seems to be that
Australian English, like its British ancestor (and like Canadian English), borrows
freely according to preference, but on the other hand the British influence is
much greater in Australia than in Canada. So Australians get water from a tap
not a faucet, but tend to ride in elevators as well as lifts. Their cars run on
petrol not gas, but they drive on freeways not motorways. American influence is
evident in such words as caucus (in politics), sedan (BrE saloon), station wagon
(BrE estate car), truck (BrE lorry), high school (BrE secondary school). On the
other hand British English influence is evident in class (AmE grade), cinema
(AmE movies), boot (AmE trunk). With foodstuffs Australian English tends to be
more closely related again to the British vocabulary, e.g. biscuit for the
American cookie. However, in a few cases such as zucchini, snow pea and
eggplant Australian English uses the same terms as the Americans, whereas the
British use the equivalent French terms courgette, mange-tout and do not care
whether eggplant or aubergine is used. This is possibly due to a fashion that
emerged in mid-nineteenth century Britain of adopting French nouns for
foodstuffs, and hence the usage changed in Britain while the original terms
were preserved in the (ex-)colonies. (For some uncertain reason, Australia uses
the botanical name capsicum for what both the British and the Americans would
call (red or green) pepper.) Finally, the oddest of all borrowings from America is
kangaroo court.
Australian English Worldwide

In the 1980s Australian English has hit the international headlines. Films like
Gallipoli and My Brilliant Career have won critical acclaim and found large
audiences in the United Kingdom and the United States. The “New Australians”
(Turks, Yugoslavs, Sri Lankans and Italians) influenced on the language (pizza,
kebab). There is not and cannot be any doubt that there is a great respect for
Australian English in the English-speaking world.

71
General Australian Pronunciation

Australians have a distinct accent, which varies between social classes and is
sometimes claimed to vary from state to state, although this is disputed.
Accents tend to be strongest in the more remote areas. (Note that while there
are many similarities between Australian accents and New Zealand ones, there
are also a number of differences.)
In Australia they commonly distinguish between 3 accents, these are as follows:
1. Cultivated. An accent, used by about 10 per cent of the population, on which
Received Pronunciation continues to exert a considerable influence. In some
speakers the accent is very close to educated southern British, with just a hint
of its Australian origin in certain vowels and in the intonation. In its most RP-
like form, speakers of other varieties tend to think of it as affected.
2. Broad . At the opposite extreme, this accent, used by about 30 per cent of the
population, is the one most clearly identified with the notion of an Australian
twang. It is heard in many countries in the voices of the characters portrayed by
such actors as Paul Hogan and Barry Humphries.
3. General. In between there is a mainstream group of accents used by most of
the population.
The Australian vowel system is quite different from other varieties. Other
standard varieties have tense vowels, lax vowels, and diphthongs. Australian
English on the other hand has turned most of the tense vowels into diphthongs,
and turned some of what are diphthongs in Received Pronunciation into long
vowels, thus replacing the tense-lax distinction (one of quality) with a long-
short distinction (one of quantity). The table below shows these.

Received Pronunciation General Australian Example

/i:/ /əɪ/ see /səɪ/

/ɑ:/ /a:/ heart /ha:t/

/u:/ /əʊ/ school /skəʊl/

72
/æ/ /e/ bad /bed/

/ʌ/ /a/ cut /kat/

/eɪ/ /æɪ/ say /sæɪ/

/aɪ/ /ɑɪ/ high /hɑɪ/

/aʊ/ /æʊ/ now /næʊ/

/əʊ/ /ʌʊ/ no /nʌʊ/

/ɪə/ /i:/ near /ni:/

/eə/ /e:/ hair /he:/

Australian accent is non-rhotic: star /stɑ:/.

1. The long ee sound (as in see) is heard as the diphthong er-ee (the first
element of which is the schwa, or neutral sound as it is sometimes called),
so that see turns into seree, or, for foreigners, even sehee (sayee).
2. The long oo sound is heard as o, so that soup turns into soap.
3. The long ah sound (as in heart) tends to be fronter, sounding similar to what
begins the diphthong i (as in lie), but longer.
4. The short u sound (as in love) tends to be fronter too, sounding as if it
begins the diphthong i (as in lie).
5. The diphthong ay (as in play) tends to be wider, as if its first element is the
sound a (as in bad), or sometimes it can sound as the sound i (as in lie), so
that may turns into my.
6. The diphthong air (as in care) becomes monophthong eh (as in pen), but
long.
7. The first element of the diphthong i (as in lie) is pronounced as a short ah
sound (as in heart).

73
8. The first element of the diphthong ow (as in now) is produced at the front of
the mouth and it is raised, so that it sounds as a (as in bad).
9. The diphthong ere (as in here) sounds as pure ee (as in see), so that here
turns into he.
10. When there is a choice between the er (teacher ) and the short ee (ladies) in
an unstressed syllable, the er sound replaces the short ee in most cases but
in the -ed ending where the long ee is often produced. So boxers and boxes
sound the same (both with the er sound) whereas studied and studded
sound differently (the first word has the long ee and the second one has the
er).
11. Vowels next to a nasal consonant tend to retain the nasality more than in
RP: such words as down and now are often strongly nasalised in the broad
accent, and are the chief reason for the designation of this accent as a
twang.
The phonetic basis for the three accent types emerges from a consideration of
these qualities. The broad accent makes much use of tongue movements which
are more open or further forward than the RP norms. The cultivated accent is,
literally, further back.
Australian Vocabulary

These are the best-known Australianisms in the English-speaking world.

Australian English World Standard English

Amber beer

Arvo afternoon

Barbie barbecue

Barrack cheer

Beaut great

74
Bloke man

Chook chicken

Clobber clothes

Crook ill

Daks trousers (BrE), pants (AmE)

Dinkum genuine, true

Evo evening

G'day hello

Lolly sweet (BrE), candy (AmE)

Nana banana

Oil information

Oz Australia

Pom(my) English

Sheila woman

Snag sausage

75
 Australian-American-British English Lexical Differences

Australian English American English British English

Bathers bathing-suit swimming-costume

bloke Guy chap

cozzie bathing-suit swimming-costume

crook Sick ill

daks (dacks) Pants trousers

duchess Buffet sideboard

durry cigaret(te) fag

fairy floss Cotton candy candyfloss

fisho fish seller fishmonger

footpath sidewalk pavement

garbo garbage man dustman

garbologist garbage man dustman

grog Liquor spirits

ice block Popsicle ice lolly

icy pole Popsicle ice lolly

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jocks underpants pants

lolly Candy sweet

mate Buddy (bud) fellow (feller, fella)

port baggage luggage

postie mailman postman

Proprietary (Pty) Incorporated (Inc.) Limited (Ltd)

semitrailer Tractor-trailer articulated lorry

servo gas station petrol station

station Ranch farm

strides Pants trousers

swimmers bathing-suit swimming-costume

togs bathing-suit swimming-costume

truckie, trucky truck driver lorry driver

tuckshop cafeteria canteen

underdaks underpants pants

unit apartment flat

ute utility truck utility vehicle

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wag play hookey play truant

Sample Text in Australian English

I got up and put on my black daks. They are the most exy piece of my clobber
as they’re my Dad’s last Chrissie prezzie. My Dad’s a bonzer bloke and I like
him most of all my rellies. That’s cos I’ve got no Mum and my brother’s a
bloody bludger and an ignorant ocker. We’ve never been matey with each other
and I often get aggro with him.
I had a nana and a sanger for brekkie and then took my ankle biters to the
kindie. In the arvo I talked to my nibs about our new Kiwi bizzo partners, and I
had a snag and a durry during the smoko. In the evo I dropped in to the shop to
buy some tucker and grog for the barbie we’ll have on Sunday. It’s London to a
brick that no one will bring anything, we’ve agreed it would be a BYO party
though.
I had a chook, some vedgies and amber for tea and then Shazza lobbed in. She
looked beaut and in full feather, so she earbashed all night long. In the end I
had to walk her to her unit, cos my car had gone cactus. When I was back I felt
a bit crook, so I hit the sack right away.

78
 SESSION 9
ENGLISH, MAORI, AND MAORI ENGLISH IN NEW
ZEALAND

A Brief History of New Zealand

i. Exploration
New Zealand (NZ), also called Aotearoa (‘the land of the long white
cloud’), is geographically comprised of two large islands—North Island and
South Island—in the Southwest Pacific Ocean. Polynesian tribes, the Tangata
Whenua or 'People of the Land’, began arriving in canoes from the mythical
land of Hawaiki in about AD 1000. Maori New Zealanders are descendants of
these original Polynesian settlers. The first European to sight NZ was Abel
Tasman, a Dutch explorer who discovered this land in December 1642 and
named it Stateen Landt (later ‘Nieuw Zeeland’ and finally, the Anglicized ‘New
Zealand’). Tasman’s initial contact with the Maori was not successful; three of
his crewmen died in a clash with tribesmen in a spot that was subsequently
named Murderers’ Bay (Gordon and Deverson 7). Despite this early contact, NZ
was not destined to become a Dutch territory. In 1769, more than a hundred
years later, James Cook, an English Lieutenant (later Captain) embarked on
three South Pacific expeditions to this area of the world. Cook, a navigator and
cartographer, mapped NZ and published his journals upon his return to Britain.
Communication with the Maori was facilitated by the presence of translators
who spoke the Polynesian language of Tahiti. It would be Britain that would
eventually annex and colonize NZ, Cook making declarations on 15 November
1769 and 30 January 1770 in Mercury Bay and Queen Charlotte that “helped
ensure that Britain would dominate New Zealand’s subsequent history.”[1]
ii. Settlement and Conflict
In the 1790s, European whaling ships sailed through NZ waters and, by
the 1800s and 1810s, European traders and missionaries were settling in the
coastal regions of NZ. Samuel Marsden, a Sydney prison chaplain, preached
NZ’s first sermon on Christmas Day 1814 (Turner 5). The Musket Wars – tribal
wars in which Maori used European weapons – raged in the 1810s, 20s and 30s,

79
and, by the time that peace was regained, at least 20,000 Maori had
perished.[2] The founding document of NZ is the Treaty of Waitangi, which was
signed by British representatives and over 500 Maori chiefs in 1840 to establish
British Sovereignty in this region. NZ was subsequently populated in three
waves by British, Australian, and Scottish immigrants, much of the settlement of
NZ being organized by the New Zealand Company. An influx of migrants to NZ
occurred after gold was unearthed in 1861 in Otago, which is located in the
South Island. The New Zealand Wars (hitherto called the Maori Wars or Land
Wars) in the 1860s resulted in Maori land being confiscated in the New Zealand
Settlements Act (1863). Colonial forces wanted more control of the
predominately Maori North Island. By 1900, the Maori people had lost the
majority of their lands. NZ became a dominion in 1907 and achieved more
complete autonomy from Britain in 1947. NZ is now member of the
Commonwealth of Nations, which mainly consists of former British colonies.
Introduction: New Zealand English.
i. History
New Zealand English (NZE), one of the younger varieties of English, is the
product of this region’s particular colonial experience and history as an
independent commonwealth nation. Immigration to NZ from Australia and
different parts of Britain has had a significant bearing on the way NZE
developed; this variety evidences the linguistic influences of both British English
(BrE) and Australian English (AusE). Linguists reference the ‘melting pot’ theory
when explaining how NZE emerged. Essentially, “a new dialect arises when
speakers of various dialects of English are thrown together, as in these colonial
situations” (Gordon et al 76). NZE or ‘New Zild’ is generally thought to have
emerged in its present form as late as the 1940s. However, the process of
linguistic change began earlier, spoken English in NZ having undergone great
change in the nineteenth century. New Zild – a very recent documentary on
NZE, which aired on May 16, 2005 on NZ television – drew on the work of NZ
linguists and put forth a theory about the origins of NZE:
It was in Arrowtown – heart of the 19th-century gold-fields – that our
own distinctive accent was born […] the new accent was probably
emerging everywhere – it just happened faster in the English-speaking
crucible of the gold-fields. And it happened first among women and the
poor.[3]

80
ii. Heterogeneity and New Zealand English
In NZ’s population, different varieties of NZE have emerged, and
determinants like geography, ethnicity, education and general social standing
have influenced linguistic variation within the country. Linguists interested in
the impact of socio-economics on speech have loosely divided NZE accents into
three groups—cultivated (the accent of privileged New Zealanders), general
(middle-class) and broad (lower classes). In the introduction to The New
Zealand Dictionary (1995), Elizabeth and Harry Orsman identify that another
major classification of NZE accents is based on ethnicity: Maori (New Zealanders
descended from the original Polynesian settlers) and Pakeha (New Zealanders of
European descent).
Geography and Language
i. North Island and South Island
The internal geography of NZ, as in most nations, has had a profound
impact upon language distribution and linguistic variation. There are several
notable instances in which geography and language demographics are
interrelated in NZ. The Maori population is most concentrated in the northern
half of the North Island. Understandably, this region is linguistically distinct
from the South Island, sometimes called the Mainland, and from Southland (the
southernmost region of South Island) in particular (Bauer 42). South Island
historically has been more Pakeha than North Island. Some words are
pronounced differently in South Island; for example, departure from Maori
pronunciation of place names is more common in the South Island than in the
North, though more of South Island’s place names are English (Turner 197).
Maori English/ Maori-accented English, a variety of NZE primarily spoken by
men and women who identify themselves as ethnically Maori, is unsurprisingly
much more prevalent in North Island.
Despite differences like these, “with one or two well-known exceptions
such as the rhotic accent of parts of Southland… the English [in NZ] is more
noted for its uniformity than for its regional dialects” (Bauer 41). Immigration to
areas of NZ from particular regions of Britain has not generally resulted in
regional variation in NZE. There are noteworthy exceptions to this general
trend, however. Where Scottish settlers have most densely populated areas of
NZ in Southland and Otago (southern region of the South Island adjacent to
Southland), traces of the original linguistic variant remain (Bauer 41). Moreover,

81
Auckland is an unusual city in relation to the rest of “monoglot” NZ, being home
to a large population of Asian and Pacific Island Polynesian settlers who
maintain contact with their homelands (Kuiper and Bell 12).

New Zealand Language Demographics

According to the latest census taken by Statistics New Zealand
Tatauranga Aotearoa in 2006, NZ has a population of 4.098 million. The 2006
census data indicates that 14.6% (565,329) of New Zealanders identify
themselves as belonging to the Maori ethnic group. The language of the Maori,
Te Reo Maori, is, after English, the language most frequently used by New
Zealanders. It is spoken by 4.1% of the population and, 23.7% of Maori New
Zealanders. NZ is one of the most monolingual countries in the world,
however. According to the 2006 census data, 80.5% of New Zealanders speak
only one language. Nonetheless, Kuiper and Bell recognize other linguistic
communities in NZ, namely the considerable Polynesian population in Auckland,
which has become the largest Polynesian city in the world (Kuiper and Bell 14).
Asian immigrants, who have been moving to NZ since the 1980s, and Pacific
Island Polynesian settlers, who have been relocating to NZ since the 1950s, are
“the only two groupings of immigrants [who] still speak their languages
extensively out of the home domain” (Kuiper and Bell 12). The 2006 census
indicates that there are 265,974 people in NZ who identify themselves as Pacific
peoples and 354,552 who identify themselves as Asian (twice as many as in
1996).
Te Reo Maori: Decline and Revival
i. Initial Prestige
When Maoris outnumbered the early European settlers, Te Reo Maori
possessed more prestige than in later colonial NZ society, and it was the
language in which the missionaries taught until the 1850s (Bell 67). During this
initial period of cultural contact, a number of settlers learnt the Maori language;
hence, this was the time in which the most Maori words entered the English
lexicon. The oral culture of Maori was transformed by the technology of writing,
which was taught by the English and French missions. An orthography of Maori
was created by the early 1800s and “by the 1840s there were proportionally
more Maori literate in Maori than English people in New Zealand” (Benton 12).

82
ii. Decline
The Maori language began to decline as the population of European
settlers dramatically increased and that of the Maori decreased due to regional
conflicts (namely the Musket Wars) and infections diseases for which Maori had
no immunity (i.e. measles). The Maori population fell from 86,000 in 1769 to
42,000 in 1896 (Belich 27). As a result of the declining native population, Maori
was displaced by English, the language of the country’s colonial administrators.
Bell notes that “in 1840 English was the minority language, but within a few
decades it was the majority language and Maori was stigmatized” (67). Racist
attitudes toward Maori culture and utilitarian arguments resulted in Te Reo
Maori’s historical status as a “second class” language. The imperial language
was actively promoted by Pakeha and some Maori, English being perceived as
the language most useful in terms of the political and economic situation of
colonial NZ. Hence, with English instruction beginning in native schools in
1867, by 1903 all use of Maori was officially discouraged, Maori children often
being punished for using their mother tongue in the classroom (Bell 67). The
decline in the use of spoken Maori was exacerbated in the late twentieth
century as a large number of Maori, hitherto residing mainly in rural areas,
began to relocate to urban centres, where individuals became disconnected
from traditional Maori culture.
ii. Revival
The late twentieth century saw Maori actively opposing their marginalized
status and fighting against the decline of their language. The 1960s were “a
period of political and cultural protest” (Long and Ihimaera 3). Sit-ins, petitions,
and protests by groups like the Ngā Tamatoa (the young warriors) resulted in
Maori eventually being declared one of the three official langauges of NZ in an
Act of Parliament in 1987 (the others being English and New Zealand Sign
Language). In response to pressure by the Maori people, programs to maintain
the Maori language, including pre-school immersion, began to be supported by
the NZ government. In 1982 the kohanga reo (‘language nest’) program,
whereby Maori children were taught in Te Reo Maori and steeped in Maori
culture, was inaugurated. Nonetheless, in the general population, there has
been ambivalence regarding the teaching of the Maori language in NZ schools.
Some Pakeha have been antagonistic towards Maori immersion because of the
“prevailing myth that New Zealanders are one people and that Maori have an

83
equal chance of success in mainstream education” (Hollins 58). Therefore “many
Pakeha believe that the Maori language should be allowed to die its natural
death… since English dominates social, economic, political and cultural life in
New Zealand” (Hollings 58). Though Maori can now be utilized in legal
proceedings, Koenraad Kuiper and Allan Bell observe that “the indigenous
language Maori is seldom spoken in general public communication, despite
major revitalization initiatives since the 1980s” (12). Bell in “The Politics of
English in New Zealand” cautions:
Maori is following the sad, common pattern of indigenous languages
around the world…Languages do not die natural deaths. They do not fade
away without outside influence. Languages are killed by other languages.
In Aotearoa we face the possibility of linguicide of the Maori language by
English (67).
New Zealand English in the World
Gordon and Deverson remark that “during the twentieth century NZE has
evolved from a non-standard colonial form of the language, very new and much
maligned, into a legitimate and maturing national variety of English” (107). This
process occurred earlier in Australia, and, hence, by the end of the twentieth
century, NZE took centre stage both inside and outside NZ. Extensive work on
English in NZ, particularly by Kiwi scholars, has resulted in the study of NZE
being recognized as a complex and important sociolinguistic field by the
international academic community. Since the 1960s linguists have probed the
complexities of linguistic diversity within NZ and exhaustively catalogued the
differences between NZE and Received Pronunciation (Britain’s acrolect or
prestige dialect), Australian English, and North American English. In “ ‘No-one
Sounds like Us?: A Comparison of New Zealand and Other Southern Hemisphere
Englishes”, for example, W.Scott Alan and Donna Starks highlight the linguistic
similarities between the English spoken in three former British colonies: New
Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, Their study concluded that there is “clear
evidence for a southern hemisphere English” (83). The local prestige of RP and
the proximity of Australia have obviously spurred the dialect comparisons that
have been made by scholars.
NZE and British English
a. Phonology

84
 It has been noted by linguists that NZE is actually closer to RP, the
prestige model of British English, than the English of neighbouring Australia.
The cultivated NZ accent is the closest to RP, while the broad NZ accent displays
the most variation from RP. Though the phonology of NZE differs in many ways
from RP, similarities between the two varieties abound. The correspondence
between NZE and British dialects from the south-east of English is
understandable considering the immigration patterns in NZ history.
Immigration from the south-east of England was vigorous, as 46.7% of the NZ
Company settlers from 1839-50 were from London and the south-east of
England (Gordon et al. 249). Another period of intense immigration from
England occurred during the 1870s and consequently, the NZ population
doubled from 1870-1880. It has been determined that “the number of sound
changes which had the effect of increasing the south-east-of-England
appearance of NZE appear to intensify greatly at precisely this period of the
1870s’ wave of immigration from England” (Gordon et al. 249).
b. Lexicon
The NZ lexicon also bears evidence of a direct British influence. New
Zealanders use many of the same lexemes as the British, including autumn,
fortnight, footpath and chemist, as opposed to American equivalents--fall, two
weeks, sidewalk, and drugstore (Gordon and Deverson 115). As well, some
lexemes in NZE are actually British words that are now considered archaic.
These words, arriving in NZ in the nineteenth century with immigration from
Britain, continue to be used in NZ while they disappeared from the vocabulary
of British men and women. The New Zealandism larrikin, a “high spirited young
person, usually male, whose behaviour occasionally—but not always—verges on
social irresponsibility” exemplifies this phenomenon (Cryer 124). This word,
used in some parts of Britain in the nineteenth-century, is still heard in NZ,
though it eventually petered out in the mother country. Many contrasts between
NZE and BrE can be attributed to ‘dialect survival’, the adoption into general
Australasian use of words from various non-standard regional dialects in
Britain” (Orsman and Orsman xxiii).

i. NZE and Australian English

Alternately, linguists and laypeople alike have stressed the similarities
between AusE and NZE. NZE has even been jokingly referred to as “Australian

85
Lite.” Until NZE was considered as more than simply “English transported” or a
form of AusE, “New Zealand was lumped together with AusE in descriptions
which were essentially based on AusE only” (Hundt 5). Hundt notes that it was
not until the 1994 edition of Trudgill and Hannah’s International English that
the label AusNZEng was dropped from the text.
a. Phonology.
Gordon in “The Development of Spoken English in New Zealand” observes
that “a broad NZ accent is still linked to Australian speech” (25). Studies (i.e.
several conducted by Bayard) have shown that travelling New Zealanders are
often erroneously identified as Australians. Moreover, Australian speakers are
frequently misidentified as NZ accents by New Zealanders themselves. These
findings are not overly surprising, considering the phonological similarities
between NZE and AusE. These similarities can be attributed to Australia’s direct
influence on NZE or to the common origins of NZE and AusE. Gordon goes so
far as to assert that NZE is “in its origins […] a dialect of Australian English”
(21). The Australian accent, which emerged in the first couple of decades of the
nineteenth century, is older than that of NZ. As the influence of the Australian
accent on the NZ accent is an accepted fact, the origins of the former variety of
English must be considered. Many of the convicts in the prison settlement of
Australia were from the London area, and more specifically the East End of
London. It is through the indirect influence of the Australian accent that
Cockney English – a dialect used by working class Londoners – influenced NZE.
New Zealanders and Australians sounded even more similar in the nineteenth
century, when New Zealanders spoke in what could be termed the “Australasian
accent” (Orsman and Orsman x).
b. Lexicon
There is significant overlap in the lexis of NZE and AusE. Words used in
both Australia and NZ are sometimes termed “Australasians.” As Australia was
colonized earlier than NZ, “the majority of Australasian terms were current in
Australia first, spreading from the older to the younger colony in the nineteenth
century especially, when Australian influence was at its height” (Gordon and
Deverson 57). The “Australian connection” can be observed in the
colloquialisms and in specific farming lexemes and other vocational terms
(Orsman and Orsman xxi). Some Australasians that came to NZ from Australia
include dinkum (real, genuine) and skite (brag, boast). Lately, this process has

86
been reversed, with words and phrases like “boots and all” travelling to
Australia from NZ. These transmissions are logical considering that NZ’s history
is closely tied to that of neighbouring former British colony, Australia. Strong
economic and social ties have confirmed tangible linguistic ties. It has been
noted that “the base or foundation of New Zealand English is the English
brought to this country from or via Australia in the early 1800s by the first
traders and settlers in the far north” (Gordon and Deverson 29).
The Influence of Te Reo Maori:
Variations between NZE and BrE are the product of not only the influence
of Australia and the physical separation of New Zealanders from English
speakers in Great Britain but from contact with speakers of Te Reo Maori. The
new environment of NZ necessitated the processes of word-formation and
word-borrowing. Consequently, most of the differences between BrE and NZE
are lexical. Through the process of language borrowing, Teo Reo Maori
influenced the formation of NZE, contributing in marked ways to its distinctive
lexicon. NZE, studied most intensely by linguists in recent decades, is replete
with words taken from Te Reo Maori’s lexicon. This process has not ended as it
has been observed that the use of Maori lexemes, especially in the North Island,
is on the rise. John Macalister’s A Dictionary of Maori Words in New Zealand
English catalogues the Maori-derived words that are unique to this geographic
region. Some of these words include native birds: (kākāpō; kea; kiwi; kōkako;
moa; pūkeko; takahē; tūī; weka); plants: (kahikatea; kānuka; kauri; kūmara;
mānuka; mataī; matakoura (known as “matagouri”); rimu; toetoe; tōtara; and
tutu) and fish: (Tarakihi; Hapuku)[4]. Of the 0.9% of NZE that consists of Maori
words, many of these are the place names. Wanganui (previously Whanganui
from Maori whanga ‘harbour’ and nui ‘large’) is the largest city with a Maori
name. Other cities with Maori names include Timaru, Takapuna, Rotorua and
Whangarei. Maori names are generally used for smaller places, and Turner
notes that “Maori names are always thought appropriate to lakes, rivers and
natural scenery generally” (Turner 195). Though many Maori proper names were
anglicised in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, efforts have been made in
the last few decades to pronounce these words correctly to demonstrate a
greater respect for the Maori people and their language.

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The Phonology and Grammar of New Zealand English
i. Phonology
a. Vowels
In NZE, the DRESS, KIT and TRAP vowels have been raised (AusE has
raised all short front vowels). For example, the DRESS vowel (short e) has been
raised, making ‘dress’ sound like ‘driss.’ It is helpful to consider the vowel
sounds of NZE in relation to those of other national varieties of English. Some
notable examples are: the ‘I’ in NZE, like in South African English, is flattened.
As well, vowels in NZE by and large sound ‘more clipped’ than in Australian
English. Though the similarities and differences between NZE and AusE and NZE
and SAfE have been considered, NZE is most often compared against RP.
Linguists have noted that vowels in NZE are generally pronounced higher in the
mouth than in British English. The ‘long a’ (i.e. card) is a front vowel in NZE and
a back vowel (produced in the back of the mouth) in RP. The diphthongs in bait,
bit, boy, boat and bout are vocalized with a higher or more close vowel
position, making ‘bait’ sound like ‘bite’. It has been reiterated in many sources
that a vowel shift has taken place in NZE, distinguishing this variety in a fairly
systematic way from Britain’s acrolect. When one vowel sound shifts the others
followed. ‘Pan’ is pronounced like ‘pen’ in and ‘pen’ therefore sounds like ‘pin’.
Consequently, ‘pin’ is pronounced ‘pun’. The most popular example of this is
‘fish and chips,’ which to non-New Zealanders, sounds like ‘fush and chups.’[5]
The air/ear merger (New Zealanders’ ‘air’ sounds like ‘ear’) is a linguistic
phonemonon that has been studied by many linguists, including Janet Holmes.
Holmes in “Three Chairs for New Zealand English: The Ear/Air Merger” suggests
that the ear/air merger has developed in the last forty years. To people ‘from
away,’ as New Zealanders would say, bare/ beer, shear/share and chair/cheer
are homonyms, creating some cause for confusion in certain situations. Despite
this /eə/ and /Iə/ merger, New Zealanders obviously do not have problems
understanding their compatriots.
b. Consonants
The consonant system of NZE is phonologically identical to RP, though
there are of course some exceptions (i.e. the consonant ‘l’ is pronounced
differently in NZE, as the ‘l’ sound in a world like ‘milk’ is frequently replaced
with a ‘w’ sound). Another significant trend in NZE is the increasing use of t-
glottling, the use of a glottal stop, as opposed to /t/ in words like might, lot,

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and hit. According to Holmes, young New Zealanders are using more glottal
stops for final /t/ than older people. As well, young women appear to be
leading the spread of T-glottaling in NZE (16).
ii. Grammar
The difficult question as to whether NZE possesses its own grammar,
distinct from that of other Englishes, has been raised by Marianne Hundt, who
published New Zealand English Grammar Fact or Fiction?: A Corpus-Based
Study in Morphosyntactic Variation in 1998. Hundt concludes that there are
marked differences between the grammar used in Australasia and that in Britain
and the United States, as NZE and AusE use more irregular verb forms.
Nonetheless, she is obliged to conclude:
On the whole, the present study has only produced meagre evidence on
differences between NZE and AusE. This suggests that the two Tasmanian
cousins differ in terms of accent and vocabulary but are virtually
indistinguishable when it comes to grammar. In view of the fairly recent
struggles towards a separate linguistic identity in New Zealand this result
may be rather unpopular (139).
Early Attitudes Towards NZE
Around the time of World War One, in which NZ soldiers were nicknamed
‘Kiwis,’ it became clear that NZE was moving further away from British English.
This trend was a matter of concern to many New Zealanders, perhaps because
they were still devouring British cultural productions and maintained economic
and political ties to ‘the Homeland’. According to a study done as late as in
1947, “New Zealand literature was hardly being read at all among these New
Zealand children” (Turner 68). RP was regarded as the linguistic model for New
Zealanders until the break in NZ’s economic dependency on Britain in the early
1970s. Britain joining the European Common Market (now the EU) occasioned
this breach. The forces of linguistic standardization in NZ were perhaps most
energetic in the early twentieth century. In 1912 the Cohen Commission was
established to investigate NZ education. NZE was referred to in report that came
out of the commission as “this objectionable colonial dialect” (qtd in Gordon
and Deverson 24). School inspectors found the NZ accent an unwelcome
deviation from British English. Phonetic exercises were suggested to combat
particular features of the NZ accent, upon which a moral judgement fell. Cohen
harshly asserted that “the degradation of the spoken English in the Dominion is

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due mainly to carelessness, laziness, and slovenliness” (qtd in Gordon and Abell
27).
The Codification of NZE
i. Dismissive Studies of NZE
A distinctly pro-British sentiment among cultural commentators can be
discerned during this period. Nonetheless, the conservative individuals
objecting to NZE and simultaneously identifying particular lexical departures
from RP actually put into motion the codification process. Professor Arnold Wall
in New Zealand English: How it Should be Spoken (1938) earnestly criticized the
ways in which NZE diverged from RP. This book, conservative but definitely not
anomalous, was explicitly “designed for use by residents in New Zealand who
wish to speak ‘good’ English or ‘standard’ English as spoken by the ‘best’
people in the Old Land” (qtd in Gordon 21). He was careful to explain to his
readers that his book was not a celebration of deviance and “not intended for
those who wish to develop a new dialect of English for this country” (qtd in
Gordon 21). Wall’s agenda, like that of other pundits during this time, was to
check the ‘debasement’ of English by drawing attention to the “faults” of NZE.
Rather ironically, work on how NZE was “wrong” inevitably advanced the project
of determining how NZE was “unique,” and hence, valuable.
ii. Serious Efforts at Codification
More objective studies followed Arnold Wall’s publications, as there was a
growing interest (seen in Sidney Baker’s 1941 New Zealand Slang) in the
important work of codifying NZE. Tony Deverson summarizes the efforts made
in the late twentieth century to codify the NZE lexis. Deverson distinguishes
between two types of lexicographical projects centred on NZE. He notes that
“there have been a number of so-called ‘inclusive’ or general purpose
dictionaries of NZE (Orsman 1979, 1989; Burchfield 1986b; Deverson; et al) in
which the specifically local and wider international vocabularies are integrated
in a single alphabetical list” (Deverson 25). The problem with these types of
dictionaries is that they do not identify the lexemes that are unique to NZE.
More recently, there have been dictionaries that have focused on cataloguing a
specifically Kiwi vocabulary. Notable examples of “the so-called ‘exclusive’
dictionary of New Zealandisms” include H.W. Orsman’s The Dictionary of New
Zealand English: A Dictionary of New Zealandisms on Historical Principles,
which includes over 6,000 headwords. There have also been several less

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scholarly collections of New Zealand’s colourful idioms or ‘Kiwisms’. Some of
these include Lynn E. Grant and Gaylene A. Devlin’s In Other Words: A
Dictionary of Expressions Used in New Zealand, Max Cryer’s Curious Kiwi
Words, and David McGill’s Up the Boohai Shooting Pukakas: A Dictionary of Kiwi
Slang. More specific projects involving the codification of NZE have been
undertaken in the last decade. John Macalister recently published A Dictionary
of Maori Words in New Zealand English. In this he collects the numerous
lexemes (oftentimes the names of flora and fauna of NZ) derived from the
language of the Maori and used by the predominantly monolingistic English
population. More general projects involving the codification of NZE as a
homogeneous variety have subsequently led to endeavours to track the
variations within NZE. For example, linguists have begun compiling the
characteristics of the mode of English spoken by the Maori population in NZ.

Maori English
i. Maori English ?
The influence of the Maori language on standard NZE is discernible, albeit
somewhat superficial (as the impact of the language of the colonized on the
language of the colonizers tends to be). Te Reo Maori more noticeably
permeates the variety of NZE spoken by the Maori population, however. Maori
English, for instance, borrows more lexemes from Te Reo Maori than NZE as a
whole. Linguists like Allan Bell and Janet Holmes come to the conclusion that
“Maori English is less likely to be identified through features unique to it than
through more or less frequent occurrence of features shared with Pakeha
English” (Bell and Holmes 8). A heated debate has arisen as to the existence of
Maori English as an actual variety of English, as opposed to a style of English—
possessing only superficial lexical, phonological and syntactical differences.
Though some linguists (an early example is Mitcalf in 1967) maintain that Maori
English is a valid distinction, the opposing argument is that socioeconomic
factors—rather than ethnicity—mainly determine the kind of NZE spoken (i.e.
the broad NZ accent can often not be distinguished from the Maori accent). Yet
there are some linguists who take both ethnicity and class into consideration,
establishing that there are two varieties of Maori English: Maori I (or standard
Maori English) spoken by middle-class Maori people and Maori II (Vernacular
Maori English) spoken by Maori people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
(Richards first made this distinction in 1970). Nonetheless, some linguists point

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out that not all Maori speak Maori English and this variety is heard from some
Pakeha speakers who live and work in close contact with Maori people. Though
the label ‘Maori English’ has been debated in recent years by linguists in the
larger field of NZE (Holmes and Bell 5), there is a consensus among linguists
that more work has to be done on this variety of English.
ii. Attitudes Towards Maori English.
In the same way that Te Reo Maori and NZE were censured in nineteenth
and early twentieth-century classrooms, Maori English also has a history of
being disparaged and discouraged. “Maori English” began as a pejorative term,
used in the 1960s and early 1970s to describe the ‘incorrect’ brand of English
being used by Maori New Zealanders. It was initially seen as a style of English
that prevented Maori children from thriving in the educational system and Maori
adults from securing economic prosperity. In 1971, Maori English was referred
to by a Department of Education handbook for primary school teachers as “a
very restricted form of the English language” (qtd in Gordon and Deverson 144).
Yet, as vernacular Englishes became an important topic of debate both in and
outside of NZ, attitudes towards Maori English began to soften and more
sensitivity was officially shown towards ME speakers. By 1994, a very different
viewpoint was expressed by NZ institutions. Teachers were reminded that
“Maori-accented English is part of its speakers’ identity and must be treated
with respect” (qtd in Gordon and Deverson 144). However, you still encounter
views of Maori English as “bad English.”

iii. Characteristics of Maori English

a. Phonology
NZE, like RP, is classified as non-rhotic. Nonetheless, linguists have noted
that “the situation in NZE is complicated as both linking and intrusive /r/ are
variable features” (Allan and Starks 55). For example, the post vocalic /r/ is
more often found in Maori English than Pakeha English. W. Scott Allan and
Donna Starks in “No One Sounds Like Us?” note other features of Maori English,
including the deapsiration of /t/. In one study it was found that “the Maori
contributors use the unaspirated [t] more than seven times as often as the
Pakeha,” plausibly explained by the fact that “the Maori language is traditionally
characterised by unaspirated stops” (Holmes. ‘Using Maori.’ 95). Also observed
is /z/ devoicing or the merger of /z/ with /s/ (57). A totally devoiced variant [s]

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is used almost four times as much by Maori as by Pakeha. More generally, Maori
English has a more forward pronunciation of back vowels.
b. Rhythm
Rhythm has been important in determining the existence of the dialect of
Maori English. Bauer for instance, observed in 1995 that Maori English is more
syllable-timed—the rhythm units are syllables—than other forms of NZE,
though NZE in general is more syllable-timed than RP (Warren and Britain 151).
Maori school children were found by Benton to use a full vowel rather than a
reduced vowel, creating what he described as “a jerky rhythm.” Essentially, “the
unstressed syllables are not skipped over as is normal in English Speech”
(Benton 15). On “home gardens,” for example, the children would place the
primary stress on secondarily stressed syllables. One possible explanation for
this can be found by examining Te Reo Maori, which has been acknowledged as
a mora-timed language, a mora being a unit of time similar to a short syllable.
Consequently, it “might be expected to exhibit a timing pattern that is more
like syllable—than stress-timing, with less variation in syllable length” (Warren
and Britain 50-1).
c. The High Rising Terminal
Elizabeth and Harry Orsman in their introduction to The New Zealand
Dictionary note the HRT as a feature of NZE. The “High Rising Terminal” (HRT),
is the use of a rising intonation in sentences that are statements. To outsiders
these phrases sound like questions. Scott Allan, in a paper entitled “The Rise of
New Zealand Intonation,” examines in great detail this feature of NZE, “the
rising intonation at the end of a declarative clause” (Holmes and Bell 8). Allan’s
subjects are all female, and all from the same age group and socio-economic
background. However, he draws from the two main ethnic groups in NZ—Maori
and Pakeha. His results can be read as evidence for the existence of Maori
English. Allan determines that “Maori women use HRTs more frequently than
their Pakeha counterparts by a factor of 1.8, i.e. if a Pakeha uses 10 HRTs then
her Maori counterpart is likely to use 18” (119). Its function is primarily
interactive, serving to casually engage the listener’s interest and establish
“conversational solidarity” (Warren and Brittain 167). The HRT works like an eh?
in Canadian English. HRT is part of the ‘creation of involvement,’ a co-
operative process of communication found in oral cultures. This aspect of
informal discourse, observed among Maori men and women, is common among

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other Pacific cultures. Paul Warren and David Britain indicate that this linguistic
characteristic is reflective of the Maori worldview, as “such societies appear to
share a more socio-centric perception of self than most Western cultures with
greater emphasis placed on interpersonal rather than individualistic
constructions of personality and identity” (166).
v. Functions of Maori English
Jenette King in “Talking Bro: Maori English in the University Setting”
expands our understanding of the functions of Maori English. She catalogues
these functions into four groups: “whanaungatanga (creating family), awhi
(group support), and manaaki tangata (hospitality) as well as cultural identity”
(King 22). As an examination of HRT has shown, “Maori New Zealanders use
English in ways that are compatible with Maori values, and in some cases
reinforce ethnic boundaries” (110-111). The conversation strategies used by
Maori subjects are different from those of their Pakeha counterparts. The
results of a study done by Maria Subbe (1998) show that Maori subjects
provided less conversational feedback (about 1/3 less) than Pakeha (Holmes
101). Unlike in western culture, “silence is interpreted positively, speakers are
allowed to continue uninterrupted until they have finished… attentive silence is
an important way of signalling listener interest in many contexts” (101-2). Janet
Holmes in “Using Maori English in New Zealand” rightfully concludes that Maori
English can be compared to “other varieties of English which express the ethnic
identity of a minority group.” (92).
Moving Towards Acceptance: NZE, Maori, and Maori English
i. NZE in the Media
Running parallel to the “complaint tradition,” the vocal condemnation of
the NZ accent, were concerted attempts in the media to convey information in
English that was as close as possible to RP. This foreshadows the way
condemnatory views of Maori English as an incorrect, disagreeable mode of
speech barred its presence in the media. The pro-British agenda regarding the
standardization of pronunciation was spearheaded on “both functional and
aesthetic grounds” (Gordon and Deverson 169). NZE, according to some cultural
commentators, had a displeasing sound and could leave listeners confused (i.e.
fares/fears are rising: the diphthong added to ‘fares’ makes it a homonym of
‘fears’). A preoccupation with using RP English in audio media is evidenced by
The Pronunciation Guides for New Zealand Announcers. The editions from

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1961, 1969, and 1982 are based on Daniel Jones’ Pronouncing Dictionary of RP
(Deverson and Gordon 171). The changing content of NZ media serves as
evidence of a movement towards acceptance of different ways of speaking and
writing in NZ. Though thirty years ago radio announcers were RP-speaking, NZ
voices are now consistently heard on NZ television and radio programmes. But
most of the programmes are still from North America, Britain, or Australia
however. Donn Bayard notes that only 19% of programmes on TVNZ are locally
made, 20% of these being repeats (322). Thus in recent years, concerns have
been voiced regarding the potential rise and influence of a second acrolect—
North American English—on NZE. As early as 1982 Bell asked the question: "will
New Zealand English fall 'out of the British frying pan into the American fire'?"
(qtd in Bayard 323).

ii. Maori in the Media.

The changing relationship between English and Maori is reflected in the
progressively more manifest place of Maori in broadcasting and the arts.
Greater acceptance of NZE was followed by the heightened prominence of Te
Reo Maori and Maori English in the media. By the mid 1960s, the Maori
language was being treated with greater respect on Pakeha programs. Though,
in the past, Maori names were frequently mispronounced, by the mid 1960s,
broadcasting authorities mandated a correct pronunciation of Maori names.
Notably, Radio Aotearoa was established in 1977, and, in 1980, a Maori
television production unit was set up. In a report published by Te Puni Kokir
Ministry of Maori Development, “The Health of the Maori Language in the
Broadcasting Sector,” radio stations broadcast a total of 61, 000 hours in Maori
in 2002. As well, 73% of Maori listen to Maori radio stations, which are required
to broadcast at least 4 hours a day in Maori. There are many genres of Maori
programs—news, sports, drama, etc. Thus, the report concludes that “Maori
radio and television are seen as important mediums for increasing Maori
language knowledge and use.”[6]
iii. Maori, Maori English and the Arts
Forms of high culture also began to highlight the Maori’s presence,
hitherto less visible, in NZ society. The first wave of the “renaissance” of Maori
verse occurred in the late 1960s. During this period, a concerted effort was
being made by Maori and Pakeha scholars to transcribe and translate the
traditional Maori songs and poems that make up the oral tradition of Maori

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literature. Jane McRae notes that “from the 1960s a new lease on life was given
to the publishing of Maori language texts through the work of scholars in the
Maori Studies departments of New Zealand universities” (17). In the arts, a
Maori and South Pacific Arts Council was established in 1978 (Ihimaera and
Long 3). In terms of language and literature, something important was
happening in Maori writing: bilingual texts. Maori authors were increasingly
indulging in code-mixing, the “blending English with another language,” and
were being read by both Maori and Pakeha readers (Jenkins 15). Powhiri
Wharemarama in “Margin or Centre? ‘Let me Tell you! In the Land of my
Ancestors I am the Centre’: Indigenous Writing in Aotearoa” discusses the
significance of code-mixing:
More often than not, Maori words and phrases, often without translations
for monolingual Anglophones, are used, and stand for the latent
presence of Maori culture. The reader is then forced into an active
engagement with another culture in which these words/term have
meaning. (155).
As “the inclusion of Maori language emphasizes the coexistence of that
language with English, as a living language,” this kind of literature presented a
new ideal for language ecology in NZ, one in which different languages and
dialects could enhance – rather than warring to supplant – each other
(Wharemarama 155).
Conclusion.
Through the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first
century, New Zealanders have grown to see their unique variety of English with
fervent interest and increasing respect. NZE has indeed become an integral
aspect of national identity, distinguishing Kiwis—both Pakeha and Maori—from
their Australian neighbours and from English speakers throughout the world.
G.W. Turner explains that “New Zealanders, like Canadians, define themselves
negatively, explaining in England that they are not Australians and in Australia
trying not to feel rather English” (Turner 21). Despite NZE’s debt to both BrE
and AusE, New Zealanders—as linguists have proven—do not speak like anyone
else. Language is vital to self-identification within New Zealand as well. NZE’s
movement from derision to acceptance has been repeated with Te Reo Maori
and with Maori English. Though the Maori language experienced a substantial
decline in the nineteenth century and in first half of the twentieth century,

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educators, linguists and writers have contributed to Te Reo Maori’s renewal.
Maori’s formal recognition by the NZ government was accompanied by
programs that aimed to increase the number of Maori speakers and by a more
prominent place in the arts and in the media. You can now listen to the news in
Maori, read bilingual government documents, and peruse one of several
anthologies of Maori verse; you can even download a program to spell-check
your Maori prose. While Maori culture is enjoying greater visibility in NZ and the
rest of the world, presented in films like Once Were Warriors (1994) and Whale
Rider (2002), Te Reo Maori and Maori English are also receiving more attention
in academic circles. Like NZE and Te Reo Maori, Maori English, is undergoing
the process of becoming recognized as a valid linguistic variation and
acknowledged as an important element of Maori ethnic identity.

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 SESSION 10
SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH

The English language in South Africa (SAE) dates from the arrival of the British
at the Cape of Good Hope in 1795. As was the case in most colonies, English
was introduced first by soldiers and administrators, then by missionaries,
settlers, and fortune-seekers. English took root during the 19th century as a
southern African language, as a result of the British settlements of 1820 (in the
Eastern Cape), 1848–51 (in Natal), and the subsequent rushes to the diamond
mines of Kimberley and the gold mines of the Witwatersrand.
Modern SAE is part of a complex linguistic and cultural mix. The Constitution of
1994 recognizes 11 official languages, namely English, Afrikaans, and the nine
major African languages (including isiZulu, isiXhosa, seTswana and seSotho), as
well as additional ‘community and religious languages’ such as Khoi-San,
Telegu, Hindi, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Arabic.

SAE and multilingual South Africa: the politics of

language
The position and role of English were deeply political from the start. English
was the language of power during the 19th century, and was imposed in 1822
as the official language of the Cape Colony, replacing Dutch, the cause of great
resentment among citizens of Dutch descent–a resentment which was later
intensified and hardened among Afrikaners by the South African War of 1899-
1901.
For twentieth-century Afrikaner nationalists, the promotion of the Afrikaans
language was central, and under the National Party (1948–94) English was
displaced by Afrikaans in government, administration, the police, and the
armed forces. However, English was a major influence in business and higher
education. It was also the language of choice of the African National Congress
and other liberation movements, as it enabled communication both between
speakers of the country’s many languages and with the outside world.
SAE is a language of many paradoxes. There are 3 million first-language SAE-
speakers, about the same as the number of English-speakers in New Zealand,

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but they are in a minority, greatly outnumbered by second- and third-language
speakers. English is perceived both as the language of communication and
aspiration, and as an oppressive juggernaut because of its global power. While
politicians often brand English as a ‘colonialist’ and disempowering force, many
black parents see it as a crucial instrument for their children’s advancement.
And while the government espouses multilingualism, in practice SAE is
dominant in public life, for reasons of practicality and cost-efficiency.
Although English is far from neutral as lingua franca, it is more neutral than
Afrikaans, which was tainted by its use in enforcing apartheid: it was the
attempt to make Afrikaans a teaching language in black schools which led to
the Soweto uprising of 1976. And the choice of one African language above the
others was not an option.

The vocabulary
SAE has become a particular regional version of English, firmly rooted in South
Africa by the influence of the languages surrounding it. South Africans are often
unaware of just how different SAE is from other Englishes in both vocabulary
and pronunciation.
Initial borrowings tended, as elsewhere, to be introduced as local colour in the
journals of visiting explorers and travellers describing the local peoples and
their cultures, the animals, plants, and geographical features of the country.
Some of the earliest SAE words (mainly from Dutch and the Khoi languages),
such as kloof, krantz, dagga, buchu, Boer, kraal, springbuck, and quagga (all
18th-century borrowings) are still entrenched in SAE. Others, such as Hottentot
(a name given to the Khoi peoples in an attempt to imitate their click
languages), and particularly Kaffir (from 1589 onwards, a name given to the
black peoples of South Africa) are now considered deeply offensive and are no
longer in use.
Dutch, and subsequently Afrikaans, has had the most powerful influence on
SAE. Veld, vlei, pan, koppie, nek, rand are words used to describe the country’s
natural features. Deurmekaar or in a dwaal is how a state of confusion is
described. Nogal has supplanted ‘what is more’. During apartheid,
administrative terms such as group areas, job reservation, reference book and
endorse out were translated from the Afrikaans equivalents.

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Many SAE words have also been borrowed from the African languages of the
region: for example bonsella, indaba, donga, impala, mamba from the Nguni
languages, and tsetse, tsotsi, kgotla, marula from the Sotho languages.
Malay words such as atchar, bobotie, sosatie, kaparrang, and kramat came into
SAE during the 19th century (via Afrikaans), originating in the community of
slaves and political exiles at the Cape, who were sent from what are now
Indonesia and Malaysia during the 17th and 18th centuries.
But borrowings are not the full story. Some very well-known words, such as
tackie, tickey, rondavel, and bundu have mysterious origins. Some specifically
SAE words are examples of words once current in British English, but now out
of use there: geyser (a water-heater or boiler), robot (a traffic light), and, until
the 1960s, bioscope (a cinema), are examples. Some English words mean
something different in SAE: a bond is a mortgage, a dam refers to the stretch of
water rather than to the wall, just now means ‘in a little while’, a packet is a
plastic shopping bag, a café is a convenience store or corner shop, and (in the
context of traffic) a circle is a roundabout. Non-lexical features of other South
African languages have also made their way into SAE, as in two ways of
indicating emphasis — by reduplication (from Afrikaans), as in now-now, soon-
soon, and (from the African languages) by the use of falling pitch, from high to
low, as in ‘fa-a–a-ar away’.

Pronunciation
As a result of apartheid, there is no single, reasonably uniform SAE accent. With
some exceptions, communities lived and were educated separately according to
ethnic background, until the 1990s. There were thus many varieties–white
English-speaking SAE, white Afrikaans-speaking SAE, black African SAE, Indian
SAE, Coloured SAE. But things are changing: with urban children of all
backgrounds now being educated together, ethnically determined differences in
SAE are tending to break down.
The SAE of English-speakers is often confused with Australian or New Zealand
English. There are some common characteristics: NZE and SAE both centralize
the /I/ vowel, saying ‘pin’ as what sounds like ‘pun’ (while Australians tend
towards ‘peen’). All three varieties pronounce other vowels further forward in
the mouth than British speakers, so ‘penny’ sounds like ‘pinny’, ‘bad’ like ‘bed’,

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and ‘bed’ like ‘bid’. Unlike in British English, SAE consonants are pronounced
crisply: glottal stops, as in ‘bu’er’ for ‘butter’, are not common.
Amongst English-speakers there is a range of pronunciation from educated ‘RP
SAE’ to strongly accented SAE. Until about the 1970s, the British standard was
viewed as the acme. But the variations in accent have come into their own with
a growth in consciousness of, and pride in, South Africanism — local music,
local products, local words, and local accents. The phrase ‘local is lekker’ (nice)
sums this up.

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 SESSION 11
THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN
INDIA

The East India Company or the Honorable East India Company as it preferred to
be known, sailed forth in search of new trading posts in the 1600s. It sought
trade relations with other nations in the European continent, as well as what
they called the East Indies, i.e. the Indian subcontinent. They landed in Surat, in
Gujarat, as early as 1608 or thereabouts and in Goa, about the same time. It
would be safe to assume that India’s first brush with English began here.

Indian history famously records the ambitions of the trading company as they
gradually involved themselves in local politics and soon established themselves
as rulers little by little. Over the next centuries, they commandeered all our
resources, introduced railways, expanded industries and then set about to
create a band of clerks who would document and maintain these developments.

In the 19th century, this was the vision of Lord Macaulay (1800-1859), the Whig
politician and historian, who advocated the teaching of English in India with his
famous notion of creating “a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but
English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”.

This set the trend for the next 150 years. Learning English and adopting British
mannerisms and customs gave us wealth and power and position – and
therefore that is what people sought to do. Pre-independence, getting a
government job involved passing clerical exams in English. This people did to
get that coveted job and the post-retirement pension. Any other occupation
was often a stop-gap till the ‘son’ of the family got a government job. The
daughters were preferably married off to government officials as well.

After independence, in 1947, the brown sahib culture gained momentum. The
posts hitherto occupied by the British were now filled by educated (read
‘English speaking graduate’) Indians. And an unfortunate class divide began
appearing among men of a single country – officers and non-officers. This
happened in the administrative services, in the army, the railways and

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eventually in the nationalized banks and other Public Sector units. Given India’s
caste-ridden society, this was especially detrimental, because the tribal and the
urban and rural poor had no access to an English-medium education. They
remained where they were, while the middle and upper classes raced ahead.

Surprisingly, the English did not affect the religious life of people at all. The
middle classes, for instance, hankered for government jobs and English
medium education, but usually chose to marry within their communities. But it
did affect the cultural preferences of the younger population. Even in the days
of LP records, affluent people would appreciate western music and hum along
with the Beatles or Elvis Presley. Hindi cinema, one of the biggest influences on
social behavior, was hugely impacted. The heroes and heroines dressed
stylishly, preferred English and loved the ‘twist’. The young India of the 60s and
70s watched, wanted and got all of this.

In the 1980s the brouhaha over ‘reserved seats’ for the previously downtrodden
classes gained momentum, and thus you saw a leniency in the entry and exit
points of mainstream education. With the democratization of education came
the democratization of English as well. Small, medium and large, poor,
mediocre and good institutions of education began selling their ‘courses’ in the
English medium. "There were now too many schools, too many students, but
not enough qualified teachers".

India, which had begun priding itself on having the largest number of English
speaking graduates had to eat its ‘Hinglish’ words. Aspiring young men and
women, who knew their core skills, flocked to fly-by-night courses in ‘Spoken’
English. Young companies hired corporate trainers to work their English and
soft skills magic on their ‘otherwise’ skilled employees. I have been part of this
difficult process and know firsthand that a job deadline always won over
cracking a grammar worksheet or practising phonetics or learning how to write
and e-mail correctly. If the employee had to be sent abroad, then an even more
expensive trainer would be hired to give them a crash course in accents and
dining etiquette. Familiarity with English language and culture was now an
economic necessity.

Of course, not everyone followed this pattern docilely. There were dissident

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groups who would protest against this imposition of ‘foreign language’ and
insist that children be taught in the vernacular at schools. Parents however
wanted English, given its status as an international language. And so the tussle
continues. The political solution to this was to introduce the vernacular as the
‘third ‘language in schools (because Hindi, being the national language had to
be above the regional).

Every few years bring a new development. The new media, for instance means
that everyone has a mobile phone. So, the poorly schooled daily household
maid stores the numbers of her contacts and their names in English. People
who have graduated from so-called English medium schools and colleges often
speak a highly Indianized version of the Queen’s language, their spelling is
poor and the pronunciation often perplexing. India, which had become a
popular outsourcing hub, is gradually losing out to China there as well.

The situation today is that educated English is still sought after for professional
reasons. In all other spheres, owing to the return of Indianness and tradition in
TV and films, people are comfortable in their own space and their own Hinglish
idiolect.

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 SESSION 12
SINGAPORE COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH (SINGLISH)

BACKGROUND

Modern Singapore is traditionally dated from 1819, which was when Sir
Stamford Raffles claimed the island of Singapore for the East India Company,
with the intention of creating a trading post for Britain in a strategis place. This
'founding' of modern Singapore took place against a background of multiethnic
trade going back many centuries. The Malay peninsula was an important
crossroads in trade from East Asia to India and points westward, as the pattern
of winds and the lay of the land created a natural meeting point.

The region had a history of Indian and Thai influence and rule, but by the
time of European involvement (from this sixteenth century) the area consisted
of a series of rather cosmopolitan Malay sultanates, which were Muslim, but
with distinctive cultural practices that reflected the centuries of contact with
other nations, especially with India. Many Chinese had also settled in the
region, to foster their trading interests, and there were links of all sorts around
the whole of Asia.

Singapore, a trading post at the southern tip of the Malay peninsula, was
multicultural from the start. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to seek a
share in the riches of the Malay peninsula, and after their defeat in Malacca in
1641 the Dutch dominated. After the British came on the scene in the
eighteenth century, there was a jostling of power between British and the Dutch
which continued until the middle of the twentieth century. Negotiations took
place involving the colonial powers and the local rulers of the various Malay
sultanates.

Over the nineteenth century the East India Company extended its influence,
and gradually the British colonial government took over the areas which had
been controlled by the East India Company, including Singapore. Singapore
(with Penang and Malacca) was one of the Straits Settlements. For many years

105
ruled from Calcutta, the capital of British India, it later was directly ruled from
London.

During the years of British rule, Singapore grew massively in size. In pre-
colonial times, Malays were the largest ethnic group. But the British encouraged
immigration. While many people came to Singapore from other British colonies,
especially from India and Ceylon, and others came into Singapore from
neighbouring areas, the largest group of immigrants were from Southern parts
of China. The population of Singapore is now approximately 77% Chinese, 14%
Malay, and 8% Indian (Singapore Census 2000, see Statistics Singapore). There
has also been a small scattering of other ethnic groups including Europeans of
various sorts, Japanese, Arabs, and Jews.

Even during the colonial period the numbers of British people in Singapore
were very small compared to the three major ethnicities. Singapore has always
had many ethnic groups, and a dazzling range of languages. It is extremely rare
for a person to be monolingual -- most people are bilingual from infancy and it
is common for people to know and use four or five languages in their daily life.
All these languages have influenced each other.

Singapore English has its origins in the schools of colonial Singapore. In the
nineteenth century very few children went to school at all, and even fewer were
educated in English. The local lingua franca was a pidginised variety of Malay,
called Pasar Melayu, or Bazaar Malay. This can still be heard in the region,
especially from older people. The people who spoke English and sent their
children to English medium schools were mainly the Europeans, the Eurasians
(people of mixed racial ancestry), some of the small minorities, such as the
Jews, some of the Indians and Ceylonese, and also a group of Chinese people
usually called the Straits Chinese, who had ancestors of long residence in the
region, and who spoke a variety of Malay usually called Baba Malay which was
influenced by Hokkien Chinese and by Bazaar Malay. The fact that all these
children would have known Malay probably explains why most of the loan
words in Singapore Colloquial English are from Malay. The largest group of
teachers were Eurasians, and there were also many teachers from Ceylon and
India. European teachers were never more than a quarter of the total teaching
staff in a school, and they usually taught the senior classes. These Europeans

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may have been from Britain (which at that time included Ireland) but were also
from the USA, Belgium and France. The children in these schools would have
been exposed to many varieties of English.

In the first twenty years of the twentieth century, English medium education
became popular for all groups. Girls started going to school in larger numbers
too. By the 1950s nearly all children went to school, and the majority were
educated in English. By the 1980s. all education was in the medium of English
(with children learning another language alongside English). Singapore English
probably grew out of the English of the playground of these children of various
linguistic backgrounds who were learning English at school. As more and more
of its people experienced learning English at school, English became widely
spoken, alongside Singapore's many other languages. Since Singapore became
an independent Republic in 1965, the use of English has increased still further.
For many Singaporeans, English is the main language. Many families speak
English at home and it is one of the the first languages learnt by about half of
the current pre-school children. Well over half of the population born since
1965 are native speakers of English, and the proportion of native speakers of
English is still rising.

Nearly everyone in Singapore speaks more than one language, with many
people speaking three or four. Most children grow up bilingual from infancy
and learn more languages as they grow up. Naturally the presence of other
languages (especially various varieties of Malay and of Chinese) has influenced
the English of Singapore. The influence is especially apparent in the kind of
English that is used informally, which is popularly called Singlish, but which is
called Singapore Colloquial English or Colloquial Singapore English in most
academic writing.

Singlish is a badge of identity for many Singaporeans, and, as you can see
from the satirical website, Talkingcock, there are some websites that are written
in it. Many Singaporeans move smoothly between Singapore Colloquial English
and Standard English. As most Singaporeans use a lot of Singapore Colloquial
English to their children, children tend to speak Singapore Colloquial English
before they speak Standard English. It is still the case in Singapore that the
younger you are and the richer your family is, the more likely you are to have

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English (and that usually means Singapore Colloquial English) as your native
language. But Standard English is used in formal contexts, as it is all over the
English-using world. Take a look at Singapore's leading English newspaper, The
Straits Times.

Since the 1960s linguists and sociologists have studied the features and the
functions of English in Singapore from a number of perspectives. Those who
would like to know about studies of Singapore English should look at my
annotated list of the major works on Singapore English. You might also like to
look at the articles which I wrote on Singapore English for Speech Therapists.
David Deterding maintains a full scholarly bibliography of academic work on
Singapore English.

There is also plenty of creative work in English by Singaporeans and you can
find lots of information about Singapore literature at the Contemporary and
Postcolonial and Postimperial Literature in English site maintained by George
Landow.

VOCABULARY

As you will see from the examples in the sections below, the vocabulary of
Singlish is mostly shared with other varieties of English. Like all varieties of
English, the standard English of Singapore needs special words to deal with
local institutions for example:

 Singapore's light rail system, partly above ground and partly below, is
called the MRT;
 Singapore's major system of government managed housing, in which over
80% of the population live, is called the HDB;
 The HDB run flats. Wealthy people may live in condominiums (made up of
apartments), or even in luxurious bungalows (detached properties of one
or two storeys);
 Children start nursery school at age 3, kindergarten at 4, primary school
at 6. They attend secondary schools from age 12 up to 16 (when they
take O-Levels) then go to junior college (where they take A-levels), or
perhaps a VITB before moving on to university or polytechnic;

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  in Singapore people normally go barefoot in the house. They wear
slippers at the beach; the same footwear which in other places is called
"thongs" or "flip flops".

Naturally Singlish uses all these words too. In addition there are some words
especially associated with Singlish, and you can find many dictionaries and
glossaries of these in book form and on the web (start at Talkingcock. Some of
these words come from English e.g.

blur (adjective, meaning 'confused, ignorant')

Others come from other languages spoken in Singapore, especially Malay

and Hokkien. We have already seen the pragmatic particles like lah, ah, and hor,
which are frequently used. Speakers of Singlish are not necessarily aware of
which language they are from however. These include:
habis 'finished'
makan 'to eat, meal'
chope 'to lay a claim to, as when putting bags at a table to indicate
reservation'
cheem 'difficult, obscure'
ang mo 'a white person'
rojak 'mixed, something mixed'

Even these words may (after a struggle) start being used as part of Singapore
Standard English. The word kiasu, from Hokkien, started being used in the
Singapore press in the 1990s, with italics: in October 2000 I first saw it in
Singapore's leading newspaper without the italics. It's a vital word. It means
'always wanting the best for oneself and willing to try hard to get it': the kiasu
student is always the first to get the book out of the library (they may even hide
the book in the wrong shelf so that no-one else can read it), and always the
first to get they assignments in to the teacher. At a buffet the kiasu person may
be so concerned that the restaurant will run out of oysters that they take all the
oysters onto their plate, to make sure there are enough. Kiasuism is a keenness
that might be (mildly) exploitative. This has been taken on board in Singapore,
in a spirit of self-mockery, as a national characteristic, and I think the word can
be said to have now passed into the local standard!

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SOUNDS

All speakers of English have an accent which gives information about where
they come from (or, in some cases, where they want people to think they come
from!). It is often important to a speaker to try to convey an impression to
hearers. In their 1985 book, Acts of Identity (CUP), R B Le Page and André
Tabouret-Keller discuss some of the ways in which people mark their identity
through language. The Singaporean English accent is quite recognisable. Here I
will talk about the main features. I cannot use the symbols of the International
Phonetic Alphabet here -- if you read some of the references in my
bibliography you will get much more information.

Consonants

In some accents of English, RICE and RISE sound different. In Singapore

English they usually sound the same. Singapore English does not distinguish
between voiced and voiceless fricatives in final position. This also affects the (f)
and (v) sounds and the (th) and (dh) sounds. Sometimes, especially in informal
speech, people do not distinguish between voiced and voiceless plosives in final
postion, so that sometimes in Singapore HOP=HOB, BIT=BID, BACK=BAG. In
final position (t) is often a glottal stop, and (d) is sometimes too. In words like
THINK and BATH a /t/ sound is often used. In words like THEN and LEATHER a
/d/ is often used. In careful speech a dental fricative is used for (th). Some
speakers end words like BREATH with a /f/ sound, but this is more unusual.

Traditionally in Singapore English (as in most kinds of English from England,

Australian English, etc) /r/ is pronounced only when it is followed by a vowel. In
recent years, however, under the influence of American media, some younger
Singaporeans have started to use an /r/ in words like HEART and PORT, when
they are speaking very carefully. You can sometimes hear an /r/ in other places
('farther and mother', 'Veronicer')! In words like ACT, CAST, STOPPED etc which
end with a consonant cluster, the cluster is often reduced (e.g. 'ac', 'cas', 'stop').
This can make it hard to tell whether a person is using a past tense form or not.

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 Vowels

Singapore English does not have a distinction between short and long
vowels. In this way it is rather like Hawai'i Creole English. Below I use the IPA
symbols where I can. I have also underlined the word which is pronounced
similarly to the sound in the British accent, RP, and in reference varieties of US
English, but remember that in Singapore English they are all short. Below are
listed the words which are pronounced with the same vowel (using the list in
Wells's book Accents of English).

KIT, FLEECE (/i/)

FACE (/e/)
TRAP DRESS SQUARE

FOOT, GOOSE(/u/)
GOAT (/o/) (pronounced as in most varieties of US English)
LOT, CLOTH, THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE

NURSE, commA, lettER

STRUT BATH PALM START

There are diphthongs similar to those used in many varieties of English in

England in the following:

PRICE
CHOICE
MOUTH
NEAR
CURE, POOR

Stress and intonation.

Singapore English has a distinctive rhythm, which has been described as

'machine gun' style. There is less distinction between stressed and unstressed
syllables than in reference varieties of English. It also has its own tunes of
speech -- as in many varieties of English, this is often very noticeable in

111
identifying the variety. The whole basis of intonation is different from that in
more studied varieties -- the references to work by Deterding and by Low in my
bibliography will give you more information.

GRAMMAR

( Note: All examples are given in normal English orthography. )

Morphology

A lot of grammatical endings that are required in Standard English are

optional in Singapore Colloquial English. Marking plurals and past tenses is a
matter of choice, so may be omitted, e.g.

What happen yesterday ?

You go where?
Got so many car!
Then bicycle go first ah. (='So the bicycle went first')
I just sit and everything do for me. (='it does everything')
You know what happen lah. Fine. (='you know what happened? I got
fined.')

There are very few complex verb groups in Singapore Colloquial English.
Grammatical relationships are shown mostly by position, e.g.

The house sell already. (='I have sold the house' OR 'the house has been
sold')
Big bicycle taken away.
I got big one for you.

The verb TO BE

The verb TO BE is used in Singapore Colloquial English, and when it is used,

it changes (AM, ARE etc) as in standard English. But it is often optional, e.g.

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She so pretty.
That one like us.
The first one downstairs.
This new revision ah, REALLY new !

Particles.

Singapore English uses about 11 particles, mostly borrowed from Hokkien or

Cantonese, to indicate attitude to what is being said. They work rather like you
know and you see. The three most common are ah (usually expects agreement),
lah (strong assertion) and what (usually corrects something). You can read more
about them in various references in my bibliography.

Here are some examples:

There's something here for everyone lah.

Otherwise, how can be considered Singaporean ah ?
No parking lots here, what.
OK lah, bye bye.
And then how many rooms ah?
You see my husband's not at home lah. That's the problem, ah.
Her price is too high for me lah.

Questions

Questions with a part of the verb TOBE are much as in Standard English, e.g:

Is it ?
Are you sick ?

But questions with other verbs do not usually change the order of the subject
and the verb. Here are some examples:

Go where?
Why you so stupid ?
Why she never come here ?

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 How to fix ?

Other grammatical features

There are many other features of Singapore Colloquial English which have
been discussed in anlayses. For example, you can miss out the subject much
more freely in Singapore Colloquial English than you can in standard English,
e.g.

Finish already. (someone has finished -- could be 'I', 'he' etc. -- the
context will tell you)

Don't want.

You can also find many conditional sentences without subordinating

conjunctions, e.g.

You do that, I hit you.

You want to swim, then swim here.

Examples

Finally, here is a short conversation I recorded between CK, a boy of nearly 6,

and his next door neighbour, who he calls 'Uncle'.

[N is at the door of the CK's' house]

CK: Uncle! Uncle get me my ball, I got big one for you.
N: Why?
CK: Inside the house.
N: Where's that big bicycle?
SK: Gone. [SK is CK's mother]
CK: Big bicycle taken away.
N: Taken away already.
CK: No. Because going Toa Payoh.
N: Going Toa Payoh. Oh oh. Then bicycle go first ah. OK you go with them.
CK: Don't mind hah. Know where also.

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N: Ah.
CK: There my gra- my grandmoth- my my- My uncle also went.
N: Next time you grow up you take over the big one.
CK: Yeah. [N laughs]
CK: Then my mo- brother take over my one. [CK & N laugh] Yeah ah.
N: As soon as he take yours ah,you take your father's one. [N laughs]

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 SESSION 13
THE TRANSITION TO EARLY MODERN ENGLISH

Background: Culture, Society, Religion, Literacy

Part I: Forces for change and the spread of literacy, 1300-1400

As the medieval world entered its late phase in the 1300 and 1400s, English
society (and indeed, the society of all Europe) began to undergo a rapid
transformation.
After England began to recover from the worst bouts of the Black Death, the
economy improved along with general health and a middle class began to
emerge, especially in the towns. Literacy was spreading among the top
economic half of the populace and as life improved many people began to have
a little more leisure time for reading and writing, especially personal documents
such as letters.
English became the language of the law courts in 1362 for the first time since
the Conquest, and a clerk class had to be educated in written English for
purposes of administering the business of the courts. The royal court and its
legal administration were based in London and London duly became the hub of
a newly developing Standard English, both spoken and written.
The development of legal and administrative English further encouraged the
spread of literacy in English. At the same time public readings of poetry and
stories became popular, at first especially in French, but written stories and
poems in English also began to appear in the 1300s. Geoffrey Chaucer, a well-
connected courtier and civil servant, began writing in English in the 1380s,
starting a new trend for creative literature in English instead of French.
The Hundred Years' war began in 1337 and with it the start of English
nationalist feelings. People throughout the country felt part of a national state
that was opposed to Normandy and other dukedoms across the channel, and
especially opposed to the growing power of the kingdom of France based
around Paris. Royal proclamations by this time were in English, and English was
the native language of the monarchs.

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During the 1300s and 1400s the old religious and social certainties began to
give way. A strong pressure toward church reform began to develop and the
church and the state (whose nucleus was the royal court) came to be at odds.
The royal court also came into conflict with the rest of the aristocracy, i.e. the
nobility, and there was a good deal of jockeying for power between them. The
English parliament emerged in an attempt by nobles to limit royal prerogatives,
particularly regarding their property. Serfdom was on its way out as peasants
were in a better bargaining position with landowners because of the labor
shortage created by the plague.
As part of a grassroots movement for church reform, during the late 1300s
calls for the translation of the Bible into English began to gather force, most
notably in connection with an underground cult whose members were called
Lollards. Lollards wanted greater accessibility of religious texts and ideas, and
also wanted to make the church hierarchy more responsive to their
congregations. (Ultimately, they wanted to do away with the ecclesiastical
power structure altogether.) Lollards also wanted a greater measure of political
freedom and democracy. For these reasons they were considered highly
subversive to both church and state and were jailed or killed when exposed. A
famous popular rebellion called The Peasant's Revolt or Wat Tyler's Rebellion
occurred in 1381, led, it turned out, by Lollards. The revolt was brutally
suppressed.
During the Old English period there had been various translations of the Bible
into the vernacular for practical rather than ideological reasons (e.g. it was
easier to train priests in English than in Latin). But by the 1300s the question of
language became an ideological one. The forms of liturgy and prayer had
become fossilized and religious doctrine, with its centuries of interpretation
and codification to determine which ideas would count as true doctrine and
which as heresy, had become a straightjacket for thought. The church hierarchy
preferred scripture, liturgical services, and theological literature to be all in
Latin, directly interpretable only by a priesthood under centralized ecclesiastical
control. Limitation to an ecclesiastical language known only to the church elite
enabled the systematic control of theological ideas by church authorities. The
church became increasingly wealthy, as it collected money and property from
the wealthy in exchange for spiritual benefits it could confer. The wealth and
power of the institution was increasingly resented, above all because it was
widely seen as corrupt and self-serving, as well as ungodly. Church officials lost

117
respect as they no longer even tried to keep up the appearance of following the
rules of their holy orders.
John Wycliffe, one of the most prominent of the religious reformers, translated
the Bible into English in 1382. Hand-written copies were widely disseminated
among Lollards, although the text itself was banned in England.
The church reform movement did not succeed at the time, as the trend toward
reform was stamped out with the Peasants' Revolt. The rebellion horrified many
people, especially those with even a little property, and made them associate
reform with political destabilization and anarchy. Nevertheless, many of the
reformers' ideas came back in later eras and ultimately, in fact, prevailed.
The idea of accessibility of scripture to the common people that led to English
Bible translations was one of many at first heretical ideas that later became part
of the normal fabric of life in England. The increasing desire for and
expectation of accessibility of religious texts was another important motivation
for people to become literate.
Law, literature and religion were therefore all developing domains for the
spread of literacy in the late medieval period. Once printing was introduced to
Britain in 1476, literacy really began to take off. Books, no longer being
completely hand-made artifacts but instead reproducible items, came down
rapidly in price and could be owned by others besides the very rich.
Most of the earlier printed books were still religious in nature as were
manuscripts of the era before printing. But once printing took hold, other
genres began to develop: poetry, travel tales, plays, histories, legal treatises,
and scientific texts all began to appear and the market for written work in
English grew quickly.

Part II: Religious and political developments in England post-1500

and consequences for the monarchy
Religious developments picked up speed in the 16th century. In the 1530s
Henry VIII broke from the church of Rome and founded the Church of England
with himself as the supreme head. He still considered himself a good Catholic
and tried to ban Protestant reforms that were coming from the European
continent where Lutheranism was taking hold. His son Edward was raised
secretly as a Protestant and when he came to the throne as Edward VI in 1547

118
he began to try to turn England to Protestantism. But he died in 1553 at the age
of only 15, unable to carry out his plans.
Edward's elder sister Mary I came to the throne in 1553 and tried to undo all of
the religious moves away from Rome that had taken place during her father's
and brother's reigns. She wanted to return England to the Church of Rome; in
the process, she burned Protestants and forced her subjects to worship
according to the old Catholic rites and liturgy.
Mary died in 1558 after 5 short but terrible years for Protestants. She was
unable to turn back the forces of Protestantism, by then equated with church
reform, partly because her own brutal suppression of Protests and burning of
holy men for heresy created a public backlash; but also because increased trade
and contacts with Europe brought new religious ideas that were sweeping the
populace.
The most powerful of these ideas was that people did not need priests to relate
to God; they could pray in a personal way without such a religious intermediary
controlling their access to forgiveness and salvation. Secondly, the idea of
accessibility of scripture to the common people popularized by the Lollards
continued to gain force. If scripture and theological ideas in general should be
directly understood by the people, they needed access in their own language. It
became obvious and accepted that what was needed were translations not only
of the the Bible but also of all religious services and writings into the common
language, and the continued development of a religious literature in English.
Thirdly, the idea that "the church" should really refer to the congregation of
worshippers rather than the ecclesiastical power structure of priests and
bishops was a major tenet of the new view taking hold. And finally, the Roman
Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation of the Eucharist during mass -- the idea
of the literal turning of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ --
was rejected by Protestant theologians.
At this point (1558) a third child of Henry came to the throne, namely Elizabeth
I. Elizabeth had largely Protestant sympathies but she recognized a large
conservative strain in the population who did not want to accept all the tenets
of Protestantism, and she also recognized a large contingent of Catholics who
preferred to continue to worship through the Latin mass and Latin prayers.
Elizabeth worked to provide a religious settlement that balanced the interests
of the Catholicism, radical Protestantism (Puritanism, which advocated total

119
church reform from the ground up), and all variations in between. Her policies
tended to the middle of the spectrum, with neither extreme of puritanism nor
catholicism favored.
Elizabeth ruled for 45 years and during her long and eventful reign England
became a firmly Protestant country. The English Church under Elizabeth as
Supreme Head continued its progression toward Protestantism and re-
formation of the liturgy. Prayers were newly codified in the Book of Common
Prayer and other religious texts in English incorporating formerly heretical ideas
were composed.
Scotland, the north of England, and Cornwall had many more Catholics than the
politically dominant and heavily Protestant part of Britain (southeastern
England). But before long Scotland itself became home to a variety of
Protestantism called Calvinism.
James I, the first Stewart monarch, took the throne after Elizabeth's death. Like
her he was Protestant, and he consolidated the Church of England in essentially
its modern form. James commissioned the famous King James Bible or King
James Version (KJV) in 1611. Translation of the Bible into English was no longer
a controversial idea.
However, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant doctrine sharpened, and
interacted with nationalism: there were Protestant vs. Catholic countries, and
alliances and wars among them began to follow religious lines. This conflict
also interacted with the status of the monarchy, as the religion of the monarch
motivated people to fight for or against that monarch.
James I's successor monarchs in the male line, Charles I, Charles II and James II,
it turned out, were either secretly Catholic, publicly Catholic, or too sympathetic
to Catholicism for the populace, leading to a huge political conflict between
Catholicism and Protestantism. The latter was espoused by the growing
majority of the populace and thus there was increasing support for a Protestant
monarch and resistance to potential heirs who were or were perceived as
Catholic. The Catholic/Protestant tensions were also bound up with the struggle
between royal authority and parliamentary authority and the growing insistence
of the propertied classes on having a say in government. What followed was
civil war, regicide, and restoration of the monarchy with somewhat diminished
powers.

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The Catholic/Protestant and royalist/parliamentarian conflicts led ultimately, in
the last part of the century, to the deposing of the reigning Catholic monarch
James II in favor of his Protestant daughter and her Dutch husband. This so-
called "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 brought Mary II and her husband William of
Orange (Orange was part of Holland) to the English throne. Mary's father James
II was deposed and her Catholic brother, James' heir (also called James) rejected
as king. The conflict continued as long as Catholic descendents of James II
lived, since those descendents formed the focus of plots to return England to
Catholicism.
The English throne next passed to Mary's Protestant sister Anne in 1702 (again
excluding Mary's and Anne's Catholic brother). The Scottish throne, until then
separate, was incorporated into a new United Kingdom of Great Britain under
Anne in 1707. Anne was the last Stuart monarch; after her death without an
heir in 1714 the succession passed to the Protestant House of Hanover.

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 SESSION 14
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH ACCENT AND
AUSTRALIAN ACCENT

English Accent vs Australian Accent

The English accent varies greatly across the world and even within a country
where English is the native language. Strictly speaking linguists feel that there
is difference in accents in English when used in England, Scotland, Northern
Ireland and Wales. It is true that even among native English speakers different
accents are in vogue. The regional accents can be identified by certain
characteristics. This is the reason why English accents differ widely across the
Britain.
On the other hand the Australian accent centers on vowel pronunciation. In fact
it can be said that vowel pronunciation is the most important difference
between the English accent and the Australian accent. In the Australian accent
words ending in ‘ay’ sound are pronounced ‘ie’. Similarly the long a, ‘a:’ is
pronounced as ‘æ.’
Though Australian accent does not vary much from region to region, there are
some regional variation has been documented. Some studies have shown that
people in Victoria have a tendency to pronounce the vowel in words like dress,
bed and head as ‘æ’. As a result, the words “celery” and “salary” are pronounced
alike. In Western Australia, a tendency to pronounce words such as “beer” with
two syllables (‘biː.ə’ or ‘be-ah’), where other Australians use one syllable ‘biə.’
It is also interesting to note that the Australian accent is being more influenced
by American Accent. Since 1950s the Australian accent has been influenced
more by American mainly due to the pop culture, the mass media and the
influence of internet. For example: “yair” for “yes” and “noth-think” for
“nothing”.
More to this, Australian accent can be deciphered if spoken quickly so that the
words run together. On the other hand the English accent can be deciphered if
spoken slowly in such a way that the words do not appear to run together.

122
Australian slang plays a very important role in the understanding of the
Australian accent.
As a matter of fact the Australians use many words used by the English. For
example, the Australians use the word ‘lift’ to indicate an elevator. One of the
most important differences between the English accent and the Australian
accent is that the Australian accent is the result of the predominant use of the
back of the tongue in the act of pronunciation. They limit the movement of the
lips.
On the other hand you would find that the English do not limit the movement of
their lips while speaking and they do not use the back of the tongue in the act
of pronunciation. The tip of the tongue is held close to the roof of the palate by
the Australians while speaking. The English do not hold the tip of the tongue
close to the roof of the palate while speaking.

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 SESSION 15
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN OLD ENGLISH, MIDDLE ENGLISH AND
MODERN ENGLISH

Old English, Middle English and Modern English have differences in the
construction of a sentence, but what is it ? Is there anything else that makes
the 3 different from each other ?
Here is one really simple generalization about Old, Middle and Modern English
sentence structure :

In Old English, words tended to have inflectional endings that described their
role in the sentence. For example, a noun would have a different ending if it
was the subject or object of a sentence, if was possessive, etc. The word order
in an Old English sentence wasn't as necessary to determine what the sentence
meant as it is now.

In Middle English, many of these endings were lost, and the role a word played
in the sentence was determined by word order, like it is today. The word order
in Middle English is pretty similar in most cases to Modern English. (There are
differences of course, but in general a Middle English sentence is like a Modern
English sentence.)

Old English also had grammatical elements that Middle and Modern English
lost, such as a dual person (now we only have singular and plural), strong/weak
adjectives, and a difference between masculine and feminine (like French still
has).
Basically it changed from early Old English (Subject-Object-Verb) SOV with V2
focussing to SVO in modern English.

Another difference is the lexicon. Old English is mostly West Germanic with a
few borrowings from Latin (penny, street) then later it was influenced by Old
Norse. Middle English has a lot of Old Norse influence (more so in the North)
and started taking on Norman French loan words. Modern English started
borrowing words directly from Latin.

124
Another major difference is inflection. In OE there was gender
(masc./fem./neuter). There was also case inflection for Nominative, Genitive,
Dative, and Accusative... there was also vestigial Instrumental ('hwi' for
example) though that was on the way out even in Old Saxon. Middle English
lost nearly all inflection for case and gender. From Middle to Modern English
there was the Great Vowel Shift.

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 SESSION 16
LOANWORDS
MAJOR PERIODS OF BORROWING
IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH

Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different
language (the source language). A loanword can also be called a borrowing. The
abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words from
a source language into their native language. "Loan" and "borrowing" are of
course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. There is no
transfer from one language to another, and no "returning" words to the source
language. They simply come to be used by a speech community that speaks a
different language from the one they originated in.
Borrowing is a consequence of cultural contact between two language
communities. Borrowing of words can go in both directions between the two
languages in contact, but often there is an asymmetry, such that more words go
from one side to the other. In this case the source language community has
some advantage of power, prestige and/or wealth that makes the objects and
ideas it brings desirable and useful to the borrowing language community. For
example, the Germanic tribes in the first few centuries A.D. adopted numerous
loanwords from Latin as they adopted new products via trade with the Romans.
Few Germanic words, on the other hand, passed into Latin.
The actual process of borrowing is complex and involves many usage events
(i.e. instances of use of the new word). Generally, some speakers of the
borrowing language know the source language too, or at least enough of it to
utilize the relevant words. They adopt them when speaking the borrowing
language. If they are bilingual in the source language, which is often the case,
they might pronounce the words the same or similar to the way they are
pronounced in the source language. For example, English speakers adopted the
word garage from French, at first with a pronunciation nearer to the French
pronunciation than is now usually found. Presumably the very first speakers
who used the word in English knew at least some French and heard the word
used by French speakers.

126
Those who first use the new word might use it at first only with speakers of the
source language who know the word, but at some point they come to use the
word with those to whom the word was not previously known. To these
speakers the word may sound 'foreign'. At this stage, when most speakers do
not know the word and if they hear it think it is from another language, the
word can be called a foreign word. There are many foreign words and phrases
used in English such as bon vivant (French), mutatis mutandis (Latin), and
Schadenfreude (German).
However, in time more speakers can become familiar with a new foreign word.
The community of users can grow to the point where even people who know
little or nothing of the source language understand, and even use the novel
word themselves. The new word becomes conventionalized. At this point we
call it a borrowing or loanword. (Not all foreign words do become loanwords; if
they fall out of use before they become widespread, they do not reach the
loanword stage.)
Conventionalization is a gradual process in which a word progressively
permeates a larger and larger speech community. As part of its becoming more
familiar to more people, with conventionalization a newly borrowed word
gradually adopts sound and other characteristics of the borrowing language. In
time, people in the borrowing community do not perceive the word as a
loanword at all. Generally, the longer a borrowed word has been in the
language, and the more frequently it is used, the more it resembles the native
words of the language.
English has gone through many periods in which large numbers of words from
a particular language were borrowed. These periods coincide with times of
major cultural contact between English speakers and those speaking other
languages. The waves of borrowing during periods of especially strong cultural
contacts are not sharply delimited, and can overlap. For example, the Norse
influence on English began already in the 8th century A.D. and continued
strongly well after the Norman Conquest brought a large influx of Norman
French to the language.
It is part of the cultural history of English speakers that they have always
adopted loanwords from the languages of whatever cultures they have come in
contact with. There have been few periods when borrowing became
unfashionable, and there has never been a national academy in Britain, the U.S.,

127
or other English-speaking countries to attempt to restrict new loanwords, as
there has been in many continental European countries.
The following list is a small sampling of the loanwords that came into English in
different periods and from different languages.

I. Germanic period or Pre-Old English

Latin
The forms given in this section are the Old English ones. The original Latin
source word is given in parentheses where significantly different. Some Latin
words were themselves originally borrowed from Greek.
It can be deduced that these borrowings date from the time before the Angles
and Saxons left the continent for England, because of very similar forms found
in the other old Germanic languages (Old High German, Old Saxon, etc.). The
source words are generally attested in Latin texts, in the large body of Latin
writings that were preserved through the ages.
ancor 'anchor'
butere 'butter' (L < Gr. butyros)
cealc 'chalk'
ceas 'cheese' (caseum)
cetel 'kettle'
cycene 'kitchen'
cirice 'church' (ecclesia < Gr. ecclesia)
disc 'dish' (discus)
mil 'mile' (milia [passuum] 'a thousand paces')
piper 'pepper'
pund 'pound' (pondo 'a weight')
sacc 'sack' (saccus)
sicol 'sickle'
straet 'street' ([via] strata 'straight way' or stone-paved road)
weall 'wall' (vallum)
win 'wine' (vinum < Gr. oinos)

II. Old English Period (600-1100)

Latin
apostol 'apostle' (apostolus < Gr. apostolos)
casere 'caesar, emperor'
ceaster 'city' (castra 'camp')
cest 'chest' (cista 'box')
circul 'circle'

128
cometa 'comet' (cometa < Greek)
maegester 'master' (magister)
martir 'martyr'
paper 'paper' (papyrus, from Gr.)
tigle 'tile' (tegula)

Celtic
brocc 'badger'
cumb 'combe, valley'

(few ordinary words, but thousands of place and river names: London, Carlisle,
Devon, Dover, Cornwall, Thames, Avon...)

III. Middle English Period (1100-1500)

Scandinavian
Most of these first appeared in the written language in Middle English; but
many were no doubt borrowed earlier, during the period of the Danelaw (9th-
10th centuries).
anger, blight, by-law, cake, call, clumsy, doze, egg, fellow, gear,
get, give, hale, hit, husband, kick, kill, kilt, kindle, law, low,
lump, rag, raise, root, scathe, scorch, score, scowl, scrape, scrub,
seat, skill, skin, skirt, sky, sly, take, they, them, their, thrall,
thrust, ugly, want, window, wing

Place name suffixes:

-by, -thorpe, -gate

French
Law and government
attorney, bailiff, chancellor, chattel, country, court, crime,
defendent, evidence, government, jail, judge, jury, larceny, noble,
parliament, plaintiff, plea, prison, revenue, state, tax, verdict

Church
abbot, chaplain, chapter, clergy, friar, prayer, preach, priest,
religion, sacrament, saint, sermon

Nobility:
baron, baroness; count, countess; duke, duchess; marquis, marquess;
prince, princess; viscount, viscountess; noble, royal

(contrast native words: king, queen, earl, lord, lady, knight, kingly,
queenly)

129
Military
army, artillery, battle, captain, company, corporal,
defense,enemy,marine, navy, sergeant, soldier, volunteer

Cooking
beef, boil, broil, butcher, dine, fry, mutton, pork, poultry, roast,
salmon, stew, veal

Culture and luxury goods

art, bracelet, claret, clarinet, dance, diamond, fashion, fur, jewel,
oboe, painting, pendant, satin, ruby, sculpture

Other
adventure, change, charge, chart, courage, devout, dignity, enamor,
feign, fruit, letter, literature, magic, male, female, mirror,
pilgrimage, proud, question, regard, special

Also Middle English French loans: a huge number of words in age, -ance/-ence,
-ant/-ent, -ity, -ment, -tion, con-, de-, and pre-.
Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a given word came from French or whether
it was taken straight from Latin. Words for which this difficulty occurs are those
in which there were no special sound and/or spelling changes of the sort that
distinguished French from Latin.

IV. Early Modern English Period (1500-1650)

The effects of the Renaissance begin to be seriously felt in England. We see the
beginnings of a huge influx of Latin and Greek words, many of them learned
words imported by scholars well versed in those languages. But many are
borrowings from other languages, as words from European high culture begin
to make their presence felt and the first words come in from the earliest period
of colonial expansion.
Latin
agile, abdomen, anatomy, area, capsule, compensate, dexterity,
discus, disc/disk, excavate, expensive, fictitious, gradual, habitual,
insane, janitor, meditate, notorious, orbit, peninsula, physician,
superintendent, ultimate, vindicate

Greek

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(many of these via Latin)
anonymous, atmosphere, autograph, catastrophe, climax, comedy, critic,
data, ectasy, history, ostracize, parasite, pneumonia, skeleton,
tonic, tragedy

Greek bound morphemes: -ism, -ize

Arabic via Spanish

alcove, algebra, zenith, algorithm, almanac, azimuth, alchemy, admiral

Arabic via other Romance languages:

amber, cipher, orange, saffron, sugar, zero, coffee

V. Present-Day English (1650-present)

About 1650 was the start of major colonial expansion, industrial/technological
revolution, and significant American immigration. Words from all over the world
begin to pour in during this period. Also, the tendency for specialists to borrow
words from Latin and Greek, including creating new words out of Latin and
Greek word elements, continues from the last period and also increases with
the development of science, technology, and other fields.
Words from European languages
French
French continues to be the largest single source of new words outside of very
specialized vocabulary domains (scientific/technical vocabulary, still dominated
by classical borrowings).
High culture

ballet, bouillabaise, cabernet, cachet, chaise longue, champagne,

chic, cognac, corsage, faux pas, nom de plume, quiche, rouge, roulet,
sachet, salon, saloon, sang froid, savoir faire

War and Military

bastion, brigade, battalion, cavalry, grenade, infantry, pallisade, rebuff,
bayonet

Other
bigot, chassis, clique, denim, garage, grotesque, jean(s), niche, shock

French Canadian
chowder

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Louisiana French (Cajun)
jambalaya

Spanish
armada, adobe, alligator, alpaca, armadillo, barricade, bravado,
cannibal, canyon, coyote, desperado, embargo, enchilada, guitar,
marijuana, mesa, mosquito, mustang, ranch, taco, tornado, tortilla,
vigilante

Italian

alto, arsenal, balcony, broccoli, cameo, casino, cupola, duo, fresco,

fugue, gazette (via French), ghetto, gondola, grotto, macaroni,
madrigal, motto, piano, opera, pantaloons, prima donna, regatta,
sequin, soprano, opera, stanza, stucco, studio, tempo, torso,
umbrella, viola, violin,

More recent words from Italian American immigrants:

cappuccino, espresso, linguini, mafioso, pasta,
pizza, ravioli, spaghetti, spumante, zabaglione, zucchini

Dutch, Flemish

Shipping, naval terms

avast, boom, bow, bowsprit, buoy, commodore, cruise, dock, freight,
keel, keelhaul, leak, pump, reef, scoop, scour, skipper, sloop,
smuggle, splice, tackle, yawl, yacht

Cloth industry

bale, cambric, duck (fabric), fuller's earth, mart, nap (of cloth),
selvage, spool, stripe

Art
easel, etching, landscape, sketch

War
beleaguer, holster, freebooter, furlough, onslaught

Food and drink

booze, brandy(wine), coleslaw, cookie, cranberry, crullers, gin, hops,

stockfish, waffle

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Other
bugger (orig. French), crap, curl, dollar, scum, split (orig. nautical
term), uproar

German
bum, dunk, feldspar, quartz, hex, lager, knackwurst, liverwurst,
loafer, noodle, poodle, dachshund, pretzel, pinochle, pumpernickel,
sauerkraut, schnitzel, zwieback, (beer)stein, lederhosen, dirndl

20th century German loanwords:

blitzkrieg, zeppelin, strafe, U-boat, delicatessen, hamburger,

frankfurter, wiener, hausfrau, kindergarten, Oktoberfest, schuss,
wunderkind, bundt (cake), spritz (cookies), (apple) strudel

Yiddish

(most are 20th century borrowings)

bagel, Chanukkah (Hanukkah), chutzpah, dreidel, kibbitzer, kosher, lox,

pastrami (orig. from Romanian), schlep, spiel, schlepp, schlemiel,
schlimazel, gefilte fish, goy, klutz, knish, matzoh, oy vey, schmuck,
schnook,

Scandinavian

fjord, maelstrom, ombudsman, ski, slalom, smorgasbord

Russian

apparatchik, borscht, czar/tsar, glasnost, icon, perestroika, vodka

Words from other parts of the world

Sanskrit

avatar, karma, mahatma, swastika, yoga

Hindi

bandanna, bangle, bungalow, chintz, cot, cummerbund, dungaree,

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juggernaut, jungle, loot, maharaja, nabob, pajamas, punch (the drink),
shampoo, thug, kedgeree, jamboree

Dravidian

curry, mango, teak, pariah

Persian (Farsi)

check, checkmate, chess

Arabic

bedouin, emir, jakir, gazelle, giraffe, harem, hashish, lute, minaret,

mosque, myrrh, salaam, sirocco, sultan, vizier, bazaar, caravan

African languages

banana (via Portuguese), banjo, boogie-woogie, chigger, goober,

gorilla, gumbo, jazz, jitterbug, jitters, juke(box), voodoo, yam,
zebra, zombie

American Indian languages

avocado, cacao, cannibal, canoe, chipmunk, chocolate, chili, hammock,
hominy, hurricane, maize, moccasin, moose, papoose, pecan, possum,
potato, skunk, squaw, succotash, squash, tamale (via Spanish), teepee,
terrapin, tobacco, toboggan, tomahawk, tomato, wigwam, woodchuck
(plus thousands of place names, including Ottawa, Toronto, Saskatchewan and the names of
more than half the states of the U.S., including Michigan, Texas, Nebraska, Illinois)

Chinese
chop suey, chow mein, dim sum, tea, ginseng, kowtow, litchee

Malay
ketchup, amok
Japanese
geisha, hara kiri, judo, jujitsu, kamikaze, karaoke, kimono, samurai,
soy, sumo, sushi, tsunami

Pacific Islands
bamboo, gingham, rattan, taboo, tattoo, ukulele, boondocks

Australia
boomerang, budgerigar, didgeridoo, kangaroo (and many more in
Australian English)

134
 SESSION 17
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AND
SPELLING

In the late-fifteenth century printers began printing books written in the form
of London English which had already become a kind of standard in manuscript
documents. Between 1475 and about 1630 English spelling gradually became
regularized. There are noticeable differences in the look of printed English
before the mid-seventeenth century, but after that date it is largely the same as
modern English, the major difference being the use of the long s (∫) in all
positions except finally.

Pronunciation change and the Great Vowel Shift

By the sixteenth century English spelling was becoming increasingly out of step
with pronunciation owing mainly to the fact that printing was fixing it in its late
Middle English form just when various sound changes were having a far-
reaching effect on pronunciation.

Chief among these was the so-called ‘Great Vowel Shift’, which can be
illustrated (with much simplification) from the three vowel sounds in mite,
meet, and mate. In Middle English these were three long vowels with values
similar to their Latin or continental counterparts [i:], [e:], and [a:] (roughly the
vowel sounds of thief, fete, and palm); the spelling was therefore ‘phonetic’.

After the shift:

 long i became a diphthong (probably in the sixteenth century pronounced
[əi] with a first element like the [ə] of the first syllable in ago)
 long e took its place with the value [i:]
 long a became a front vowel, more like that of air to begin with, but later
[e:].

135
 A parallel change affected the back vowels of mouth and moot. Hence the
mismatch of the long vowel sounds of English with their counterparts in other
European languages.
Additionally, during the period a number of sets of vowel sounds that had
formerly been distinct became identical, while their spelling distinction was
largely maintained, resulting in a further mismatch of spelling and
pronunciation.
Important examples are:
 the long vowel a in mane and the diphthong ay or ai in may, main
 the long mid vowel o in sloe, so and the diphthong ow or ou in slow, sow (=
cast seed)
 the diphthong represented by u in due and the diphthong ew, eu in dew,
neuter.
Numerous conditioned changes (i.e. changes in the sound of a vowel or
consonant when in the vicinity of another sound) also contributed to the
mismatch. When long vowels were shortened in certain positions a given
spelling could show either on the one hand a long vowel or diphthong or on the
other a short vowel that would normally be spelt another way.
For example:
 ou in double, trouble and oo in blood, flood and good, hook became identical
with short u (either as in bud or as in put).
 similarly originally long ea in bread, lead (the metal) became identical with e in
bred, led.
 in southern (standard) English the short vowel u became an unrounded central
vowel in most words (bud, cut) but remained a close rounded vowel in certain
environments (full, put); the latter vowel subsequently merged with the
originally long vowel spelt oo which had become short in certain environments
(good, hook).
 a after the sound of w became a back rounded vowel, identical with short o
(e.g. wad, wash, squat as against mad, mash, mat).
Changes in the pronunciation of consonant sounds during the early modern
English period contributed significantly to the incongruity between spelling and
pronunciation. Accordingly consonant sounds ceased to be pronounced in
many contexts.

136
 For example:
 initial k- and g- ceased to be pronounced before n (as in knight, gnaw) as did
initial w- before r (as in write).
 final -b and -g ceased to be pronounced after nasal consonants (lamb, hang) as
did medial -t- in such words as thistle and listen.
 in late Middle English l became a vowel after back vowels or diphthongs in
certain positions (as in talk, folk), but the spelling remained.
 in certain dialects of Middle English the velar fricative [x] (like ch in loch),
written gh, either disappeared (as in night, bought) or became [f] (as in rough);
in standard English the old pronunciation of gh continued until about 1600, but
was then replaced by the present pronunciation. Because gh was now mainly
silent it was introduced into several words where it did not etymologically
belong (delight, inveigh, sprightly).

Spelling: general principles

At the start of the sixteenth century the main systematic differences in spelling
from present-day English were as follows. (Examples are taken from the
Ordynarye of crystyanyte or of crysten men, printed by Wynkyn de Worde,
1502.)

i). u and v were graphic variants of a single letter. The form v was used at the
beginning of a word and u in all other positions, irrespective of whether the
sound was a vowel or a consonant.

And we defende the that thou be not so hardy for euer to do vyolence vnto the
holy token of the crosse the whiche we put in his forhede.
ii). Similarly, j was only an extended form of i. i was generally used for both the
vowel and for the consonant sound (as in jam) in most positions in a word: its
capital form, which resembles J, was beginning to be used in initial position for
the consonant sound.

137
>by the whiche they ben Justely adiuged
iii). The final ‘silent’ -e was much more commonly found, not only as a marker
of a ‘long’ vowel in the preceding syllable (as in take), but with no phonetic
function, and sometimes after an unnecessarily doubled final consonant.

Also it is to be noted that this crosse made & gyuen vnto the newe crysten man
is the seuenth crosse & the laste that is sette on his body.
iv). The letter y was commonly used for the vowel i, especially in the vicinity of
ranging or ‘minim’ letters such as m, n, and u.

And man ought to byleue that the fayth of this artycle is deed that bereth not
here the fruyte of this werke.
v). Double e (ee) or e..e was used for two different long front vowels: the ‘close’
vowel of meet and the formerly ‘mid’ vowel of meat, mete (the significance of
this is now obscured since in most words the two sounds have become
identical). The spelling e..e was gradually restricted to the latter while
additionally ea was beginning to be introduced as an alternative spelling.

By the the fruyte that procedeth of the tree menynge the boode or the floure
and the leef.
vi). Similarly o (oo) or o..e were often used for two different long back vowels:
the ‘close’ vowel of moot and the ‘mid’ vowel of moat, mote. o..e was gradually
restricted to the latter and, during the 16th century, oa was introduced on the
analogy of ea.

>bytwene the more goodnes and the lesse goodnes / and bytwene the more
ylle and the lesse or the moost lytell.
vii). Instead of t in the ending now usually spelt -tion the letter c was frequently
used.

He is very lorde by creacyon by redempcyon & for ye resurreccyon.

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 Numerous abbreviations used in manuscript were carried over into print. A
short line above a vowel was often used to replace m or n. The forms yt and ye
were used to abbreviate that and the.

Spelling: particular words

Variation in the spelling of particular words is due to two main factors.

During the early modern period numerous words were respelt according to
their true or (occasionally) false Latin etymologies; this tendency began in late
Middle English but gathered strength in our period. In some of these words the
pronunciation has been adjusted to conform to the spelling, while others have
not (hence the existence of ‘silent’ consonants). Examples:

Examples include:
 anchor (Middle English, anker)
 author (Middle English, autour; Latin, auctor)
 doubt (Middle English, doute)
 fault (Middle English, faute)
 nephew (Middle English, neuew)
During the period also, forms derived from different dialects or varieties of
speech gradually ousted those originally used.

 friend only became common after 1530

 frend disappeared after 1630 (but the pronunciation remained)
 during the overlap, frind was also found
 before 1500 the word height was usually found with –th as the final
consonant (in various forms such as heyth, highth)
 After 1550 the northern form h(e)ight became predominant (though Milton
favoured highth)
 before 1500, sword(e) was rare and swerd(e) common
 between 1500 and 1550 they were about equally common

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 after 1550, sword(e) was much commoner than swerd(e)

The stabilization of spelling

By the mid-seventeenth century printers followed general principles of spelling

much like the present ones. Notably the modern distinctions between I and J
and U and V were established by about 1630. The spelling of nearly all
individual words was also identical with present-day forms in printed books. In
ordinary handwritten documents, however, even those of well-educated people,
spelling continued to vary noticeably until well into the eighteenth century.

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 SESSION 18
LATE MODERN ENGLISH (C. 1800 - PRESENT)

THE INDUSTRIAL AND SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION.

The dates may be rather arbitrary, but the main distinction between Early
Modern and Late Modern English (or just Modern English as it is sometimes
referred to) lies in its vocabulary - pronunciation, grammar and spelling
remained largely unchanged. Late Modern English accumulated many more
words as a result of two main historical factors: the Industrial Revolution, which
necessitated new words for things and ideas that had not previously existed;
and the rise of the British Empire, during which time English adopted many
foreign words and made them its own. No single one of the socio-cultural
developments of the 19th Century could have established English as a world
language, but together they did just that.

Most of the innovations of the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early
19th Century were of British origin, including the harnessing of steam to drive
heavy machinery, the development of new materials, techniques and equipment
in a range of manufacturing industries, and the emergence of new means of
transportation (e.g. steamships, railways). At least half of the influential
scientific and technological output between 1750 and 1900 was written in
English. Another English speaking country, the USA, continued the English
language dominance of new technology and innovation with inventions like
electricity, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the sewing machine,
the computer, etc.

The industrial and scientific advances of the Industrial Revolution created a

need for neologisms to describe the new creations and discoveries. To a large
extent, this relied on the classical languages, Latin and Greek, in which scholars
and scientists of the period were usually well versed. Although words like
oxygen, protein, nuclear and vaccine did not exist in the classical languages,
they could be (and were) created from Latin and Greek roots. Lens, refraction,
electron, chromosome, chloroform, caffeine, centigrade, bacteria, chronometer
and claustrophobia are just a few of the other science-based words that were

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created during this period of scientific innovation, along with a whole host of “-
ologies” and “-onomies”, like biology, petrology, morphology, histology,
palaeontology, ethnology, entomology, taxonomy, etc.

Many more new words were coined for the new products, machines and
processes that were developed at this time (e.g. train, engine, reservoir, pulley,
combustion, piston, hydraulic, condenser, electricity, telephone, telegraph,
lithograph, camera, etc). In some cases, old words were given entirely new
meanings and connotation (e.g. vacuum, cylinder, apparatus, pump, syphon,
locomotive, factory, etc), and new words created by amalgamating and fusing
existing English words into a descriptive combination were particularly popular
(e.g. railway, horsepower, typewriter, cityscape, airplane, etc).

COLONIALISM AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

British colonialism had begun as early as the 16th Century, but gathered speed
and momentum between the 18th and 20th Century. At the end of the 16th
Century, mother-tongue English speakers numbered just 5-7 million, almost all
of them in the British Isles; over the next 350 years, this increased almost 50-
fold, 80% of them living outside of Britain. At the height of the British Empire (in
the late 19th and early 20th Century), Britain ruled almost one quarter of the
earth’s surface, from Canada to Australia to India to the Caribbean to Egypt to
South Africa to Singapore.

Although the English language had barely penetrated into Wales, Ireland and
the Scottish Highlands by the time of Shakespeare, just two hundred years later,
in 1780, John Adams was confident enough to be able to claim (with a certain
amount of foresight, but quite reasonably) that English was “destined to be in
the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world
than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age”. In 1852, the German
linguist, Jacob Grimm, called English "the language of the world", and predicted
it was "destined to reign in future with still more extensive sway over all parts
of the globe".

It was taken very much for granted by the British colonial mentality of the time
that extending the English language and culture to the undeveloped and

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backward countries of Africa and Asia was a desirable thing. The profit motive
may have been foremost, but there was a certain amount of altruistic
motivation as well, and many saw it as a way of bringing order and political
unity to these chaotic and internecine regions (as well as binding them ever
more strongly to the Empire). To some extent, it is true that the colonies were
happy to learn the language in order to profit from British industrial and
technological advances.

But colonialism was a two-way phenomenon, and Britain’s dealings with these
exotic countries, as well as the increase in world trade in general during this
time, led to the introduction of many foreign loanwords into English. For
instance, Australia gave us a set of words (not particularly useful outside the
context of Australia itself) like boomerang, kangaroo, budgerigar, etc. But India
gave us such everyday words as pyjamas, thug, bungalow, cot, jungle, loot,
bangle, shampoo, candy, tank and many others.

The rise of so-called “New Englishes” (modern variants or dialects of the

language, such as Australian English, South African English, Caribbean English,
South Asian English, etc) raised, for some, the spectre of the possible
fragmentation of the English language into mutually unintelligible languages,
much as occurred when Latin gave rise to the various Romance languages
(French, Spanish, Italian, etc) centuries ago. As early as 1789, for example,
Noah Webster had predicted “a language in North America as different from the
future language of England as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from
the German or from one another”. However, in retrospect, this does not seem to
have happened and, in the age of instantaneous global communication, it now
seems ever less likely to occur in the future.

THE NEW WORLD.

It was largely during the Late Modern period that the United States, newly
independent from Britain as of 1783, established its pervasive influence on the
world. The English colonization of North America had begun as early as 1600.
Jamestown, Virginia was founded in 1607, and the Pilgrim Fathers settled in
Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. The first settlers were, then, contemporaries
of Shakespeare (1564-1616), Bacon (1561-1626) and Donne (1572-1631), and

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would have spoken a similar dialect. The new land was described by one settler
as “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men”, and
half of the settlers were dead within weeks of their arrival, unaccustomed to the
harsh winter. In fact, the colony would probably have gone the way of the
earlier ill-fated Roanoke Island settlement attempt of 1584 were it not for the
help of an American native called Squanto, who had learned English from
English sailors.

Parts of the New World had already been long colonized by the French, Spanish
and Dutch, but English settlers like the Pilgrim Fathers (and those who soon
followed them) went there to stay, not just to search for riches or trading
opportunities. They wanted to establish themselves permanently, to work the
land, and to preserve their culture, religion and language, and this was a crucial
factor in the survival and development of English in North America. The German
“Iron Chancellor” Otto van Bismarck would later ruefully remark that “the most
significant event of the 20th Century will be the fact that the North Americans
speak English”.

Interestingly, some English pronunciations and usages “froze” when they

arrived in America while they continued to evolve in Britain itself (sometimes
referred to as “colonial lag”), so that, in some respects, American English is
closer to the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Perhaps the
best-known example is the American use of gotten which has long since faded
from use in Britain (even though forgotten has survived). But the American use
of words like fall for the British autumn, trash for rubbish, hog for pig, sick for
ill, guess for think, and loan for lend are all examples of this kind of
anachronistic British word usage. America kept several words (such as burly,
greenhorn, talented and scant) that had been largely dropped in Britain
(although some have since been recovered), and words like lumber and lot soon
acquired their specific American meanings. Something approaching
Shakespearean speech can sometimes be encountered in isolated valleys in the
Appalachian or Ozarks, where words like afeard, yourn, sassy and consarn, and
old pronunciations like “jine” for join, can still sometimes be heard.

The settlement of America served as the route of introduction for many Native
American words into the English language. Most of the early settlers were

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austere Puritans and they were quite conservative in their adoption of native
words, which were largely restricted to terms for native animals and foods (e.g.
raccoon, opossum, moose, chipmunk, skunk, tomato, squash, hickory, etc). In
many cases, the original indigenous words were very difficult to render in
English, and have often been mangled almost beyond recognition (e.g. squash
is from the native quonterquash or asquutasquash, depending on the region;
racoon is from raugraughcun or rahaugcum; hickory is from pawcohiccora; etc).
Some words needed to describe the Native American lifestyle were also
accepted (e.g. canoe, squaw, papoose, wigwam, moccasin, tomahawk),
although many other supposedly Native-derived words and phrases (such as
brave, peace-pipe, pale-face, war-path, etc) were actually spurious and a
product of the fertile imaginations of 19th Century American romantic
novelists. New words were also needed for some geographical features which
had no obvious English parallel in the limited experience of the settlers (e.g.
foothill, notch, bluff, gap, divide, watershed, clearing, etc).

Immigration into America was not limited to English speakers, though. In the
second half of the 19th Century, in particular, over 30 million poured into the
country from all parts of the world. At the peak of immigration, from 1901 to
1905, America absorbed a million Italians, a million Austro-Hungarians, half a
million Russians and tens of thousands each from many other countries. Many
nationalities established their own centres: the Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch
(actually Germans, as in Deutsch) tended to stay in their isolated communities,
and developed a distinctive English with a strong German accent and an
idiosyncratic syntax; many Germans also settled in Wisconsin and Indiana;
Norwegians settled in Minnesota and the Dakotas; Swedes in Nebraska; etc.

Often foreigners were despised or laughed at, and the newcomers found it in
their best interests to integrate well and to observe as much uniformity of
speech and language as possible. This, as well as the improvements in
transportation and communication, led to fewer, and less distinct, dialects than
in the much smaller area of Britain, although there are some noticeable (and
apparently quite arbitrary) regional differences, even within some states. A few
isolated communities, like the so-called “Tidewater” communities around
Chesapeake Bay in Virginia (who were mainly descended from settlers from
Somerset and Gloucestershire in the West Country of England, unlike the

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Massachusetts settlers who were largely from the eastern counties of England),
have managed to retain the distinctive burring West Country accent of their
forebears. But, by the 19th Century, a standard variety of American English had
developed in most of the country, based on the dialect of the Mid-Atlantic
states with its characteristic flat “a” and strong final “r”. Today, Standard
American English, also known as General American, is based on a generalized
Midwestern accent, and is familiar to us from American films, radio and
newscasters.

American language zealots like John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Noah
Webster revelled in the prospect of a plain English, free of the regional dialects
and class distinctions of Britain. Long before the Declaration of Independence,
British visitors to America often remarked that the average American spoke
much better English than the average Englishman. After the American War of
Independence of 1775 - 1783, there was some discussion about whether
English should remain the national language, but it was never really in any
doubt, and was not even mentioned in the new Constitution (even today, the
USA does not have an “official language”, as indeed neither does Australia or
Britain itself).

The colonization of Canada proceeded quite separately from that of America.

There had been British, French and Portuguese expeditions to the east coast of
Canada even before the end of the 15th Century, but the first permanent
European settlement was by France in 1608. British interests in Canada did not
coalesce until the early 18th Century but, after the Treaty of Paris of 1763,
Britain wrested control of most of eastern Canada from the French, and it
became an important British colony. It was the War of 1812 against the
Americans, as much as Confederation and independence from Britain in 1867,
that definitively cemented the separate identity of English Canada.

English in Canada has also been influenced by successive waves of immigration,

from the influx of Loyalists from the south fleeing the American Revolution, to
the British and Irish who were encouraged to settle the land in the early 19th
Century to the huge immigration from all over the world during the 20th
Century. But, more than anything, the speech of the Loyalists arriving in
southern Ontario from states like Pennsylvania and New York, formed the basis

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of Canadian speech and its accent (including the distinctive pronunciation of
the “ou” in words like house and out, and the “i” in words like light). Modern
Canadian English tends to show very little regional diversity in pronunciation,
even compared to the United States, the Irish-tinged dialect of Newfoundland
being far and away the most distinctive dialect.

Canadian English today contains elements of British English and American

English in its vocabulary (it also uses a kind of hybrid of American and British
spelling), as well several distinctive “Canadianisms” (like hoser, hydro,
chesterfield, etc, and the ubiquitous eh? at the end of many sentences). Its
vocabulary has been influenced by loanwords from the native peoples of the
north (e.g. igloo, anorak, toboggan, canoe, kayak, parka, muskeg, caribou,
moose, etc), as well as the French influence (e.g. serviette, tuque) from Lower
Canada/Quebec.

AMERICAN DIALECT.

In 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter: "The new circumstances under

which we are placed call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old
words to new objects. An American dialect will therefore be formed". As the
settlers (including a good proportion of Irish and Scots, with their own
distinctive accents and usages of English) pushed westward, new terms were
indeed introduced, and these pioneers were much less reticent to adopt native
words or, indeed, to make up their own. The journals of Lewis and Clark,
written as they explored routes to the west coast in 1804-6, contain over 500
native words (mainly animals, plants and food). The wild “outlands” west of the
Mississippi River gave us the word outlandish to describe its idiosyncratic
characters.

John Adams’ much-vaunted “plain English” took a back seat in the hands of
colourful characters like Davy Crockett (who was himself of Scots-Irish decent)
and others, who saw western expansion as an excuse to expand the language
with new words and quirky Americanisms like skedaddle, bamboozle, shebang,
riff-raff, hunky-dory, lickety-split, rambunctious, ripsnorter, humdinger,
doozy, shenanigan, discombobulate, splendiferous, etc, not to mention
evocative phrases like fly off the handle, a chip on the shoulder, no axe to

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grind, sitting on the fence, dodge the issue, knuckle down, make the fur fly, go
the whole hog, kick the bucket, face the music, bite the dust, barking up the
wrong tree, pass the buck, stack the deck, poker face, in cahoots, pull up
stakes, horse sense, two cents’ worth, stake a claim, strike it rich, the real
McCoy and even the phrase stiff upper lip (in regard to their more hidebound
British cousins). From the deliberately misspelled and dialectical works of
Artemus Ward and Josh Billings to popular novels like Harriet Beecher Stowe's
“Uncle Tom's Cabin” (1852) and Mark Twain's “Huckleberry Finn” (1884), this
American vernacular spread rapidly, and became in the process more publicly
acceptable both in everyday speech and in literature.

Many Spanish words also made their way into American English during the
expansion and settlement of the Spanish-influenced American West, including
words like armadillo, alligator, canyon, cannibal, guitar, mosquito, mustang,
ranch, rodeo, stampede, tobacco, tornado and vigilante (some of which were
also originally derived from native languages). To a lesser extent, French words,
from the French presence in the Louisiana area and in Canada, contributed
loanwords like gopher, prairie, depot, cache, cent and dime, as well as French-
derived place names like Detroit, Illinois, Des Moines, etc.

The number of American coinings later exported back to the mother country
should not be underestimated. They include commonly used word like
commuter, bedrock, sag, snag, soggy, belittle, lengthy, striptease, gimmick,
jeans, teenager, hangover, teetotal, fudge, publicity, joyride, blizzard,
showdown, uplift, movie, obligate, stunt, notify, redneck, businessman,
cocktail, skyscraper, bootleg, highfalutin, guesstimate, raincoat, cloudburst,
nearby, worthwhile, smooch, genocide, hindsight and graveyard among many
others. Even the word roundabout originally came from America, even though
traffic circles hardly exist there. Perhaps the quintessential Americanism is OK
(okay), which has become one of the best known and most widespread terms
throughout the whole world. Its origins are somewhat obscure and still hotly
debated, but it seems to have come into common usage in America during the
1830s. Many of these Americanisms were met with a certain amount of
snobbery in Britain, and many words thought to be American in origin were
vilified as uncouth and inferior by the British intelligentsia (even though many

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of those denigrated actually turned out to be of older English provenance in the
first place).

Today, some 4,000 words are used differently in the USA and Britain
(lift/elevator, tap/faucet, bath/tub, curtains/drapes, biscuit/cookie and
boot/trunk are just some of the better known ones) and, increasingly, American
usage is driving out traditional words and phrases back in Britain (e.g. truck for
lorry, airplane for aeroplane, etc). American spelling is also becoming more
commonplace in Britain (e.g. jail for gaol, wagon for waggon, reflection for
reflexion, etc), although some Americanized spelling changes actually go back
centuries (e.g. words like horror, terror, superior, emperor and governor were
originally spelled as horrour, terrour, superiour, emperour and governour in
Britain according to Johnson's 1755 "Dictionary", even if other words like
colour, humour and honour had resisted such changes).

BLACK ENGLISH.

The practice of transporting cheap black labour from western Africa to the New
World was begun by the Spaniards in the 16th Century, and it had been also
used by the Portuguese, Dutch and French, but it was adopted in earnest by the
British in the early 17th Century. The British had established numerous
outposts in the Caribbean (dubbed the “West Indies” by Columbus out of the
conviction that he had reached the spice islands of the Indies, or Asia, by a
western route), and had developed a whole trading empire to take advantage of
the tropical climate of the region. The labour-intensive work on tobacco, cocoa,
cotton and particularly sugar plantations required large numbers of cheap
workers, and the Atlantic slave trade triangle (Britain - West Africa - Americas)
was developed to supply it, although soon a demand also grew for household
servants.

The numbers of African slaves in the America alone grew from just twenty in
1619 to over 4 million at the time of the American abolition of slavery after the
Civil War in 1865 (the British had abolished the slave trade earlier, in 1807). The
slaves transported by the British to work in the plantations of the American
south and the islands of the West Indies were mainly from a region of West
Africa rich in hundreds of different languages, and most were superb natural

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linguists, often speaking anywhere between three and six African languages
fluently. Due to the deliberate practice of shipping slaves of different language
backgrounds together (in an attempt to avoid plots and rebellions), the captives
developed their own English-based pidgin language, which they used to
communicate with the largely English-speaking sailors and landowners, and
also between themselves.

A pidgin is a reduced language that results from extended contact between

people with no language in common. Verb forms in particular are simplified
(e.g. “me go run school”, “him done go”, etc), but adjectives are also often used
instead of adverbs, verbs instead of prepositions, pronouns are no inflected,
etc. The resulting stripped-down language may be crude but it is usually
serviceable and efficient.

Once established in the Americas, these pidgins developed into stable creoles,
forms of simplified English combined with many words from a variety of African
languages. Most of the African slaves made landfall at Sullivan Island, near
Charleston, South Carolina, and even today Gullah can be heard in many of the
Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia. Gullah is an English-
African patois (the name is possibly derived from the word Angola), thought to
be remarkably unchanged from that spoken by African slaves two or three
centuries ago. Gullah and similar “plantation creoles” provided the basis of
much of modern Black American English, street slang and hip-hop, but
interestingly it also significantly influenced the language and accent of the
aristocratic white owners, and the modern English of the southern states.

The popular Uncle Remus stories of the late 19th Century (many of them based
around the trickster character of Brer Rabbit and others like Brer Fox, Brer Wolf,
etc) are probably based on this kind of creole, mixed with native Cherokee
origins (although they were actually collections made by white Americans like
Joel Chandler Harris). The following passage is from Charles Colcock Jones Jr.’s
1888 story “Brer Lion an Brer Goat”:

Brer Lion bin a hunt, an eh spy Brer Goat duh leddown topper er big rock duh wuk eh
mout an der chaw. Eh creep up fuh ketch um. Wen eh git close ter um eh notus um
good. Brer Goat keep on chaw. Brer Lion try fuh fine out wuh Brer Goat duh eat. Eh

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 yent see nuttne nigh um ceptin de nekked rock wuh eh duh leddown on. Brer Lion
stonish. Eh wait topper Brer Goat. Brer Goat keep on chaw, an chaw, an chaw. Brer
Lion cant mek de ting out, an eh come close, an eh say: "Hay! Brer Goat, wuh you duh
eat ?" Brer Goat skade wen Brer Lion rise up befo um, but eh keep er bole harte, an eh
mek ansur: "Me duh chaw dis rock, an ef you dont leff, wen me done long um me
guine eat you." Dis big wud sabe Brer Goat. Bole man git outer diffikelty way coward
man lose eh life.

Many of the words may look strange at first, but the meanings become quite
clear when spoken aloud, and the spellings give a good approximation of a
black/Caribbean accent (e.g. notus for notice, bole for bold, ansur for answer,
skade for scared, etc). Dis/dem/dey are used for this/them/they in order to
avoid the difficult English “th” sound, and many other usages are familiar from
modern Caribbean accents (e.g. mout for mouth, ting for thing, gwine for
going, etc). For simplicity, adjectives often stand in for adverbs (e.g. coward
man) and verbs may be simplified (e.g. Brer Lion bin a hunt) or left out
completely (e.g. Brer Lion stonish). Double adjectives (e.g. big big) are often
used as intensifiers, although not in this particular passage.

Jamaican creole (known locally as “Patwa”, for patois) was one of the deepest in
the Caribbean, partly because of the sheer numbers transported there, and the
accent there is still so thick as to be almost undecipherable. Variations of
English creoles gradually mixed with other creole forms based on French,
Spanish and Portuguese, leading to a diverse range of English varieties
throughout the Caribbean islands, as well as adjacent areas of Central and
South America. Familiar words like buddy for brother, palaver for trouble, and
pikni for child, arose out of these creoles, and words like barbecue, savvy,
nitty-gritty, hammock, hurricane, savannah, canoe, cannibal, potato, tobacco
and maize were also early introductions into English from the Caribbean, often
via Spanish or Portuguese.

BRITAIN’S OTHER COLONIES.

But North America was not the only “New World”. In 1788, less than twenty
years after James Cook’s initial landing, Britain established its first penal colony
in Sydney, Australia (once labelled merely as Terra Australis Incognita, the
Unknown Southern Land). About 130,000 prisoners were transported there over

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the next 50 years, followed by other “free” settlers. Most of the settlers were
from London and Ireland, resulting in a very distinctive and egalitarian accent
and a basic English vocabulary supplemented by some Aboriginal words and
expressions (e.g. boomerang, kangaroo, koala, wallaby, budgerigar, etc). The
Australian Aborigines were nomadic and reclusive, and their numbers relatively
small (perhaps 200,000, speaking over 200 separate languages), so the
loanwords they contributed to English were few and mainly limited to local
plant and animal names.

Over time, the convicts who had served out their time became citizens of the
emerging country, and became euphemistically known as “government men”,
“legitimates”, “exiles” or “empire builders”. Some British slang words, especially
Cockney terms and words from the underground “Flash” language of the
criminal classes, became more commonly used in Australia than in Britain (e.g.
chum, swag, bash, cadge, grub, dollop, lark, crack, etc), and some distinctively
Australian terms were originally old English words which largely died out
outside of Australia (e.g. cobber, digger, pom, dinkum, walkabout, tucker,
dunny).

New Zealand began to be settled by European whalers and missionaries in the

1790s, although an official colony was not established there until 1840. New
Zealand was keen to emphasize its national identity (and particularly its
differences from neighbouring Australia), and this influenced its own version of
English, as did the incorporation of native Maori words into the language.

British settlement in South Africa began in earnest in 1820, and nearly half a
million English-speaking immigrants moved there during the last quarter of the
19th Century, eager to take advantage of the discoveries of gold and diamonds.
The Dutch had been in South Africa since the 1650s, but the wave of British
settlers soon began to anglicize the Afrikaans (Dutch) and black population.
English was made the official language in 1822 and, as in Australia, a
distinctive homogeneous accent developed over time, drawing from the various
different groups of settlers. Although English was always - and remains - a
minority language, spoken by less than 10% of South Africans, Afrikaans was
seen by the 80% black majority as the language of authority and repression (the
word apartheid, in addition to trek, remains South Africa's best known

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contribution to the English lexicon), and English represented for them a means
of achieving an international voice. In 1961, South Africa became the only
country ever to set up an official Academy to promote the English language.
The 1993 South African constitution named no less than eleven official
languages, of which English and Afrikaans are but two, but English is
increasingly recognized as the lingua franca.

In West Africa, the English trading influence began as early as the end of the
15th Century. In this language-rich and highly multilingual region, several
English-based pidgins and creoles arose, many of which (like Krio, the de facto
national language of Sierra Leone) still exist today. Sierra Leone, Ghana,
Gambia, Nigeria and Cameroon were all run as British Crown Colonies in the
19th Century, and the influence of the English language remains of prime
importance in the region. Liberia, founded in 1822 as a homeland for former
American slaves (similar to the way in which Sierra Leone had been established
by the British in the 1780s), is the only African country with an American
influence.

In East Africa, British trade began around the end of the 16th Century, although
systematic interest only started in the 1850s. Six modern East African states
with a history of 19th Century British imperial rule (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda,
Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe), gave English official language status on
achieving independence in the 1960s. English is widely used in government,
civil service, courts, schools, media, road signs, stores and business
correspondence in these countries, and, because more British emigrants settled
there than in the more difficult climate of West Africa, a more educated and
standard English-speaking population grew up there, and there was less need
for the development of pidgin languages.

The British East India Company established its first trading station in India in
1612, and it expanded rapidly. At first, the British traders had to learn the
various languages of India in order to do business (Hindi, Bengali, Gujurati and
others). But soon, schools and Christian missions were set up, and British
officials began to impose English on the local populace. During the period of
British sovereignty in India (the “Raj”), from 1765 until partition and
independence in 1947, English became the medium of administration and

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education throughout the Indian sub-continent, particularly following Thomas
Macaulay's famous (or infamous) "Minutes" of 1835. This was welcomed by
some (particularly in the Dravidian speaking areas of southern India, who
preferred English as a lingua franca to the Hindi alternative), but opposed and
derided by others. A particularly florid and ornate version of English,
incorporating an extreme formality and politeness, sometimes referred to as
Babu English, grew up among Indian administrators, clerks and lawyers.

Although now just a “subsidiary official language” (one of 15 official languages

in a country which boasts 1,652 languages and dialects), and much less
important than Hindi, English continues to be used as the lingua franca in the
legal system, government administration, the army, business, media and
tourism. In addition to Britain’s contribution to the Indian language, though,
India’s many languages (particularly Hindi) gave back many words such as
pyjamas, bandanna, pundit, bungalow, veranda, dinghy, cot, divan, ghoul,
jungle, loot, cash, toddy, curry, candy, chit, thug, punch (the drink), cushy,
yoga, bangle, shampoo, khaki, turban, tank, juggernaut, etc.

English also became the language of power and elite education in South-East
Asia, initially though its trading territories in Penang, Singapore, Malacca and
Hong Kong. Papua New Guinea developed differently, developing a pervasive
English-based pidgin language known as Tok Pisin ("Talk Pidgin") which is now
its official language. The Philippines was an American colony for the first half of
the 20th Century and the influence of American English remains strong there.

LANGUAGE REFORM.

George Bernard Shaw (or possibly Oscar Wilde or Dylan Thomas or even
Winston Churchill, the attribution is unclear) once quipped that “England and
America are two countries separated by a common language”, and part of the
reason for the differences between the two versions of English lies in the
American proclivity for reform and simplification of the language. In the 1760s,
Benjamin Franklin campaigned vigorously for the reform of spelling (he
advocated the discontinuation of the “unnecessary letters “c”, “w”, “y” and “j”
and the addition of six new letters), as later did Noah Webster and Mark Twain.
To be fair, there were also calls for reform in Britain, including from such

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literary luminaries as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Arthur Conan Doyle, George
Bernard Shaw and even Charles Darwin, although the British efforts generally
had little or no effect.

Both Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster were totally convinced that American
English would evolve into a completely separate language. Towards the end of
the 19th Century, the English linguist Henry Sweet predicted that, within a
century, “England, America and Australia will be speaking mutually
unintelligible languages, owing to their independent changes of pronunciation”
(as it has turned out, with the development of instantaneous global
communications, the different dialects seem likely to converge rather than
diverge, and American economic and cultural dominance is increasingly
apparent in both British and, particularly. Australian speech and usage).

Noah Webster is often credited with single-handedly changing American

spelling, particularly through his dictionaries: “The American Spelling Book”
(first published in 1788, although it ran to at least 300 editions over the period
between 1788 and 1829, and became probably the best selling book in
American history after “The Bible”), “The Compendious Dictionary of the English
Language” (1806), and “The American Dictionary of the English Language”
(1828). In fact, many of the changes he put forward in his dictionaries were
already underway in America (e.g. the spelling of theater and center instead of
theatre and centre) and many others may well have happened anyway. But he
was largely responsible for the revised spelling of words like color and honor
(instead of the British colour and honour), traveler and jeweler (for traveller and
jeweller), check and mask (for cheque and masque), defense and offense (for
defence and offence), plow for plough, as well as the rather illogical adoption of
aluminum instead of aluminium.

Many of Webster’s more radical spelling recommendations (e.g. soop, groop,

bred, wimmen, fether, fugitiv, tuf, thum, hed, bilt, tung, fantom, croud, ile,
definit, examin, medicin, etc) were largely ignored, as were most of his
suggested pronunciation suggestions (e.g. “deef” for deaf, “booty” for beauty,
“nater” for nature, etc), although he was responsible for the current American
pronunciations of words like schedule and lieutenant. Webster also claimed to
have invented words such as demoralize, appreciation, accompaniment,

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ascertainable and expenditure, even though these words had actually been in
use for some centuries.

For many Americans, like Webster, taking ownership of the language and
developing what would become known as American Standard English was seen
as a matter of honour (honor) for the newly independent nation. But such
reforms were fiercely criticized in Britain, and even in America a so-called
"Dictionary War" ensued between supporters of Webster's Americanism and the
more conservative British-influenced approach of Joseph Worcester and others.
When the Merriam brothers bought the rights to Webster’s dictionaries and
produced the first Merriam-Webster dictionary in 1847, they actually expunged
most of Webster’s more radical spelling and pronunciation ideas, and the work
(and its subsequent versions) became an instant success. In 1906, the American
philanthropist Andrew Carnegie tried to resurrect some of Webster’s reforms.
He contributed large sums of money towards the Simplified Spelling Board,
which resulted in the American adoption of the simpler spellings of words such
as ax, judgment, catalog, program, etc. President Theodore Roosevelt agreed to
use these spellings for all federal publications and they quickly caught on,
although there was still stiff resistance to such recommended changes as tuf,
def, troble, yu, filosofy, etc.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS.

A vast number of novels (of varying quality and literary value) were published in
the 19th Century to satisfy the apparently insatiable appetite of Victorian Britain
for romantic stories, ranging from the sublimity of Jane Austen’s works to the
florid excesses and hackneyed phrasing typified by Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s
famous opening lines “It was a dark and stormy night...” Due to the strictures of
prudish Victorian society, an inventive list of euphemisms were popularized for
body parts and other unmentionable concepts, a prudery perhaps epitomized
by Thomas Bowdler’s “bowdlerization” of the works of Shakespeare in which
offending words like strumpet, whore, devil, etc, were removed or toned down.

The early 19th century language of Jane Austen appears to all intents and
purposes to be quite modern in vocabulary, grammar and style, but it hides
some subtle distinctions in meaning which have since been lost (e.g.

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compliment usually meant merely polite or conventional praise; inmate
connoted an inhabitant of any sort rather than a prisoner; genius was a general
word for intelligence, and did not suggest exceptional prowess; regard
encompassed a feeling of genuine affection; irritation did not carry its modern
negative connotation, merely excitement; grateful could also mean gratifying;
to lounge meant to stroll rather than to sit or slouch; to essay mean to attempt
something; etc). To Austen, and other writers of her generation, correct
grammar and style (i.e. "correct" according to the dictates of Robert Lowth's
"Grammar") were important social markers, and the use of non-standard
vocabulary or grammar would have been seen as a mark of vulgarity to be
avoided at all costs.

New ideas, new concepts and new words were introduced in the early science
fiction and speculative fiction novels of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne and H.G.
Wells. Lewis Carroll began to experiment with invented words (particularly
blended or "portmanteau" words) in poems like “Jabberwocky” (1872). Chortle
and galumph are two words from the poem that made the jump to everyday
English, but the work is jam-packed with nonsense words as may be seen from
its first few lines: “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the
wabe: / All mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe”).

But some truly revolutionary works were just around the corner in the early
20th Century, from Virginia Woolf to T.S. Eliot to William Faulkner to Samuel
Beckett and, perhaps most emphatically, the innovations of the Irishman, James
Joyce, in “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake” (although, of the hundreds of new
words in these works, only monomyth and quark have enjoyed any currency,
and that rather limited). A single sentence from “Finnegan’s Wake” (1939) may
suffice to give a taste of the extent of Joyce’s neologistic rampage:

The allwhite poors guardiant, pulpably of balltossic stummung, was literally

astundished over the painful sake, how he burstteself, which he was gone to, where
he intent to did he, whether you think will, wherend the whole current of the
afternoon whats the souch of a surch hads of hits of hims, urged and staggered
thereto in his countryports at the caledosian capacity for Lieutuvisky of the caftan's
wineskin and even more so, during, looking his bigmost astonishments, it was said
him, aschu, fun the concerned outgift of the dead med dirt, how that, arrahbejibbers,

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 conspuent to the dominical order and exking noblish permish, he was namely coon
at bringer at home two gallonts, as per royal, full poultry till his murder.

Clearly, this is English taken to a whole new level, pushing the boundaries of
the language, and it is considered one of the most difficult works of fiction in
the English language. Although the basic English grammar and syntax is more
or less intact, it is written in an experimental stream-of-consciousness style,
and contains masses of literary allusions, puns and dream-like word
associations. Almost half of the vocabulary consists of neologisms (particularly
compound words like allwhite, bigmost, countryports, outgift, etc, and
portmanteau, or blended words, like guardiant, wherend, conspuent, etc), and
many of the words that are recognizable are used in an idiosyncratic and non-
standard way. Some of Joyce's word inventions (not in this sample) are 100
letters long. Initial reception of the work lurched between rabid praise and
expressions of absolute incomprehension and disdain, and even today it
remains a polarizing issue. The book continues to be more written about than
read.

In the late 19th Century, the Scottish lexicographer James Murray was given the
job of compiling a “New English Dictionary on Historical Principles”. He worked
on this project for 36 years from 1879 until his death in 1915, and his results
were completed by others and published in 1928 as the “Oxford English
Dictionary”. It contained 415,000 entries supported by nearly 2 million
citations, and ran to over 15,000 pages in 12 volumes, and was immediately
accepted as the definitive guide to the English language. Interestingly, this
version used the American “-ize” ending for words such as characterize,
itemize, etc, rather than the British practice (both then and now) of spelling
them characterise, itemise, etc. Although supplements were issued in 1933 and
1972-6, it was not revised or added to until 1989, when the current (second)
edition was published, listing over 615,000 words in 20 huge volumes, officially
the world’s largest dictionary.

20th CENTURY.

By the end of the 19th Century, the USA had overtaken the UK as the world’s
fastest growing economy, and America’s “economic imperialism” continued the

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momentum of the British Industrial Revolution into the 20th Century. The
American dominance in economic and military power, as well as its
overwhelming influence in the media and popular culture has ensured that
English has remained the single most important language in the world and the
closest thing to a global language the world has ever seen.

Perhaps in reaction to the perceived appropriation or co-option of English by

the United States, a certain amount of language snobbery continued to grow in
England. In 1917, Daniel Jones introduced the concept of Received
Pronunciation (sometimes called the Queen’s English, BBC English or Public
School English) to describe the variety of Standard English spoken by the
educated middle and upper classes, irrespective of what part of England they
may live in. The invention of radio in the 1920s, and then television in the
1930s, disseminated this archetypal English accent to the masses and further
entrenched its position, despite the fact that it was only spoken by about 1 in
50 in the general population. At the same time, regional accents were further
denigrated and marginalized. However, since the Second World War, a greater
permissiveness towards regional English varieties has taken hold in England,
both in education and in the media.

There was a mid-century reaction within Britain against what George Orwell
described as the “ugly and inaccurate” contemporary English of the time. In
Orwell's dystopic novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", words like doublethink,
thoughtcrime, newspeak and blackwhite give a nightmarish vision of where he
saw the language going. The “Plain English” movement, which emphased clarity,
brevity and the avoidance of technical language, was bolstered by Sir Ernest
Gowers’ “The Complete Plain Words”, published in the early 1950s, and the
trend towards plainer language, appropriate to the target audience, continued
in official and legal communications, and was followed by a similar movement
in the United Sates during the 1970s. Gowers himself thought that legal
language was a case apart, being more of a science than an art, and could not
be subject to Plain English rules, but in more recent years there has been a
trend toward plainer language in legal documents too.

The 20th Century was, among other things, a century of world wars,
technological transformation, and globalization, and each has provided a

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source of new additions to the lexicon. For example, words like blockbuster,
nose-dive, shell-shocked, camouflage, radar, barrage, boondocks, roadblock,
snafu, boffin, spearhead, etc, are all military terms which have made their way
into standard English during the World Wars. As an interesting aside, in 1941,
when Sir Winston Churchill wanted to plumb the depths of the English soul at a
particularly crucial and difficult time in the Second World War, almost all of the
words in the main part of his famous speech ("we shall fight on the beaches...
we shall never surrender") were of Anglo-Saxon origin, with the significant
exception of surrender (a French loanword). The speech is also a good example
of what was considered Received Pronunciation at the time.

The push for political correctness and inclusiveness in the last third of the 20th
Century, particularly by homosexuals, feminists and visible minority groups, led
to a reassessment of the popular usage of many words. Feminists called into
question the underlying sexism in language (e.g. mankind, chairman, mailman,
etc) and some have even gone to the lengths of positing herstory as an
alternative to history. For a time, stong objections were voiced at the inherent
racism underlying words like blacklist, blackguard, blackmail, even blackboard,
and at the supposedly disparaging and dismissive nature of terms like mentally
handicapped, disabled, Third World, etc. But there has also been a certain
amount of positive re-branding and reclamation (also known as
reappropriation) of many pejorative words, such as gay, queer, queen, dyke,
bitch, nigger, etc, by those very same marginalized segments of society.

The explosion in electronic and computer terminology in the latter part of the
20th Century (e.g. byte, cyberspace, software, hacker, laptop, hard-drive,
database, online, hi-tech, microchip, etc) was just one element driving that
trend, and resulted from the dominance of the USA in the development of
computer technology - its principal architecture, software and linguistic
patterns, from IBM to Apple to Microsoft - as well as the Internet it gave rise to
(the word Internet itself is derived form Latin, as are audio, video, quantum,
etc). The Internet has generated its own set of neologisms (e.g. online, noob,
flamer, spam, whitelist, download, blogosphere, emoticon, podcast, warez,
trolling, hashtag, bitcoin, etc), and a whole body of acronyms, contractions and
shorthands for use in email, social networking and cellphone texting has grown
up, particularly among the young, including the relatively well-known lol, ttfn,

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btw, omg, wtf, plz, thx, ur, l8ter, etc. The debate (db8) continues as to whether
texting is killing or enriching the English language.

The language continues to change and develop and to grow apace, expanding
to incorporate new jargons, slangs, technologies, toys, foods and gadgets. In
the current digital age, English is going though a new linguistic peak in terms
of word acquisition, as it peaked before during Shakespeare’s time, and then
again during the Industrial Revolution, and at the height of the British Empire.
According to one recent estimate, it is expanding by over 8,500 words a year
(other estimates are significantly higher), compared to an estimated annual
increase of around 1,000 words at the beginning of the 20th Century, and has
almost doubled in size in the last century.

Neologisms are being added all the time, including recent inclusions such as
fashionista, metrosexual, McJob, wussy, bling, pear-shaped, unplugged,
hyperspace, fracking, truthiness, confuzzle, locavore, parkour, bromance,
sexting, regift, meme, selfie, earworm, cyberpunk, meh, diss, suss, emo, twerk,
schmeat, chav, ladette, punked, vaping, etc, etc.

In recent years, there has been an increasing trend towards using an existing
words as a different part of speech, especially the “verbification” of nouns (e.g.
the word verbify is itself a prime example; others include to thumb, to parrot,
to email, to text, to google, to tase, to medal, to speechify, etc), although
"nounification" also occurs, particularly in business contexts (e.g. an ask, a
build, a solve, a fail, etc). Compound or portmanteau words are also
increasingly common (e.g. stagflation, flexitarian, frenemy, gastropub, chillax,
infomercial, dramedy, gaydar, etc).

The meanings of words also continue to change, part of a process that has
been going on almost as long as the language itself. For instance, to the
disgust of many, alternate is now almost universally accepted in North America
to mean alternative, and the use of the modifier literally to mean its exact
opposite has recently found it way into the Oxford English Dictionary (where it
is listed as meaning "used for emphasis rather than being actually true"). In
some walks of life, bad, sick, dope and wicked are all now different varieties of
good.

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 REFERENCES

Algeo, John (2001). “History of The English Language, Volume VI : English In

North America”. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Baugh, Albert C ; Cable, Thomas (2002). “A History Of The English

Language”_Fifth Edition. Routledge, London.

Hogg, Richard (2002). “An Introduction To Old English”. Edinburgh University

Press, Edinburgh.

Mc Mahon, April (2000). “Lexical Phonology And The History of English”.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Miller, John ; Meiklejohn, Dow (2007). “A Brief History of English Language and
Literature”_ Vol 2. D.C Heath & Co.

Momma, Haruko ; Matto, Michael (2008). “The History of The English

Language”. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, West Sussex.

Singh, Ishtla (2005). “The History of English_ A Student’s Guide”. Hodder

Education, London.

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