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HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Course Code: 9052 Units: 1-9

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
(FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES)
ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY, ISLAMABAD

i
(All Rights are Reserved with the Publisher)

Publisher .......................................... Allama Iqbal Open University

Printer .............................................. AIOU Printing Press, H-8, Islamabad

Quantity ........................................... 3000

Price ................................................. Rs.

ii
COURSE TEAM

Chairman Course Team: Dr. Malik Ajmal Gulzar

Course Development Coordinator: Dr. Lubna Umar

Writers: Dr. Lubna Umar

Ms. Saira Imran
Dr. Shazia Ayaz

Reviews: Dr. Malik Ajmal Gulzar

Dr. Saira Maqbool
Dr. Muhammad Kamal Khan
Dr. Rashida Imran

Editor: Fazal Karim

Layout: Asrar ul Haque Malik

iii
FOREWORD
The BS English programme is being offered by the Department of English of
Allama Iqbal Open University for the students who are interested in the fields of
linguistics and literature. This programme is exclusive in the sense that it will
provide study guides for all the courses written especially for the students of
AIOU to introduce the concepts in an effective and simple manner. Furthermore,
it will be effective from the viewpoint of students and researchers in
implementing their knowledge in the classroom setting and/or research setting.

The BS English study guides aim to include all possible queries that students may
have and gently stimulate their intellect to probe into further questions. The
courses intend at professional development of the students in various disciplines
of linguistics and literature using versatile methods adopted by course writers
while writing the units. The topics and ideas presented in each unit are clear and
relevant. Owing to the same reason, the text is comprehensive and accessible to
students having no prior knowledge of linguistics and literature.

The BS English study guides are a powerful tool even for BS English tutors
teaching in various regions, focusing upon a uniform scheme of studies for all the
courses. Also, these courses will help tutors by providing adequate teaching
material for independent teaching. All study guides strictly follow the
standardized nine-unit sub-division of the course content for optimum
understanding. The short introduction at the beginning provides an overview of
the units followed by achievable learning objectives. The study guides also define
difficult terms in the text and guide the students for accessible learning. The units
are finally summed up in summary points and the assessment questions not only
guide students but help to revise the content developed upon previously formed
concepts. Moreover, they provide links and a list of the suggested readings for
further inquiry.

In the end, I am happy to extend my gratitude to the course team chairman, course
development coordinator, unit-writers, reviewers, and editors for the development
of the course. Any suggestions for the improvement in the programme/courses
will be fondly welcomed by the Department of English.

Prof. Dr. Zia-ul-Qayyum

Vice-Chancellor

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CONTENTS

Unit 1: Background of the English Language ................................................ 1

Unit 2: The Indo-European Family of Languages ......................................... 13

Unit 3: Old English ........................................................................................ 27

Unit 4: Old English Influenced by Foreign Forces ........................................ 41

Unit 5: Suppression of the English Language after the Norman Conquest ... 53

Unit 6: The Revival of the English Language ................................................ 67

Unit 7: Middle English ................................................................................... 79

Unit 8: The Renaissance................................................................................. 93

Unit 9: The Late Modern English ..................................................................107

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UNIT-1

BACKGROUND OF THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Written By: Dr. Lubna Umar

Reviewed By: Dr. Malik Ajmal Gulzar

1
CONTENTS

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3

Objectives ......................................................................................................................... 3

1.1 Factors Leading to Change in the English Language ............................................ 4

1.2 Growth and Decay of English ................................................................................ 4

1.3 The Importance of a Language .............................................................................. 5

1.4 English Language Speakers ................................................................................... 5

1.5 English as an International Language .................................................................... 5

1.6 English as the Official Language ........................................................................... 6

1.7 English in the Information Technology World ...................................................... 6

1.8 Vocabulary ............................................................................................................. 7

1.9 Inflections in English ............................................................................................. 7

1.10 Gender in English .................................................................................................. 8

1.11 Difficulty in English Language Acquisition .......................................................... 8

1.12 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 11

1.13 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 11

1. Provide an overview of the history of the English language.

2. Explain what factors influence a language to change.
3. Understand from where the English language draws its vocabulary.
4. Understand the position of the English language on a global level.
5. Understand the development of the English language through different phases in
history.

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1.1 Factors Leading to Change in the English Language
Many factors led to the change in the English language. A series of historical events in
political and social domains led to a considerable impact on the national life of the
English people and consequently on their language. Firstly, England came in contact with
the Latin civilization that resulted in a significant addition of Latin words to the English
vocabulary. Then, the Scandinavian invasion led to the mixing up of the English and
Scandinavian languages. After the Norman conquest, for a long time, English remained
the language of the lower classes while the upper classes mostly used French. Gradually,
English gained supremacy as a language and started being used by all segments of the
English society. However, by that time it had changed considerably in both form and
vocabulary.

Moreover, the English language changed as the English society saw the rise of the middle
class, initiation of the Renaissance period, rise of the British Empire, industrial boom,
growth of art and literature and so forth. Research shows that the history of English
language encompasses works in English from across the globe. The history of English,
therefore, is an international history of disparate societies and cultures that served to
enrich the language and to study the change it undergoes. It can be said that the modern
version of the English language is a result of many centuries of growth and change.

1.2 Growth and Decay of English

English has been subject to a continued process of growth and decay just like living
beings. Languages are like living things as they also die when there is no change in them.
For instance, Classical Latin could not go through the process of change and is
considered as a dead language. The changes that describe a living language are mostly
seen in the vocabulary (both written and spoken forms). Old words either die away or are
replaced by new ones, new words are also added and new meanings are attached to the
existing words. Most of the vocabulary of Old English, we will discuss in the proceeding
units, has been lost and replaced by new vocabulary to meet the changing needs of
people. This process of adopting new words helped English to survive till the modern
times. For instance, a change in vocabulary can be seen from the word nice that meant
foolish in the days of Shakespeare, whereas the term rheumatism was interpreted as a
cold in the head.

Apart from the meanings, the pronunciation also changed with the passage of time. The
gradual change in the vowel sound has been an important aspect of English throughout its
history. For example, the Old English word stān has become our stone. This gradual
phonetic (sound) modification resulted in change in the grammatical form. The sound
modification maintains uniformity of use and function for instance, using the phrase I
knowed maintains the uniformity in use of past tense of the verb according to
grammatical patterns. In the proceeding units, we shall discuss the transformation of the
English language over a period of a thousand years.

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1.3 The Importance of a Language
Language gains importance because of the status of the country in which it is spoken.
Languages of countries that enjoy economic, military and technological power become
important. This high status of a language spoken in powerful countries is also seen in the art
and literature produced in it. Therefore, the more powerful the country is, the more important
will be the language and the culture of that country. Another reason why languages gain
importance is their ability to acquire ideas from other languages. For example, languages
have internal gaps in their vocabulary that can be addressed according to the requirements of
the speakers. The vocabulary gaps are filled by various means including the process of
borrowing from other languages. Thus, provided a favorable environment, any language
among the 4000 languages spoken globally could have acquired an important position such as
the status acquired by English, French, German, and Spanish. These aforementioned
languages are prestige languages because of the influence their speakers have had historically
and in modern times. In some cases, the cultural value of a language ranks it higher than
others and makes it important for a long time. For instance, the classical form of the Greek
language is still being studied because of the history of a rich civilization preserved in its
literature, but the modern form of Greek is not a widely used language.

1.4 English Language Speakers

English is spoken by a large number of people all across the globe. A total of 38 million
people speak English in the United States, Britain and the former British dominated countries
alone. The number of speakers of a language show how important it is. Although the
population of the native English speaking nations may be reduced, due to which it was feared
that English language would lose its significance. However, the non-native speaker
population across the globe is on the rise which indicates that the English language will face
no such problem of decline in the near future. It is estimated that there is a total of one and a
half billion native and non-native English speakers in the world. And this number is
increasing such as in countries like Pakistan and India the population is steadily increasing.
Although English speakers have increased all over the world but the most used varieties of
English nowadays are pidgin (a variety of English language that is used when both speakers
do not share a language but use the lexicon and structure of their own language to
communicate) and creole English (the variety of English that started as a pidgin but is being
used by an entire community). Therefore, it can be concluded that the English language
speakers are on a continuous rise all around the world.

1.5 English as an International Language

English is an international language and is used for international communication. The world
has always felt the need for having an international language for international
communication. And in order to form an international language, language experts made 53
artificial languages between 1880 and 1907. Some of these artificial languages were accepted
by people, but ultimately all these artificial languages gradually faded away. Apparently, the
need for having an international language was not fulfilled by laboratory inventions. These
artificial languages fulfilled needs in terms of business and travel but many aspects such as

5
politics, science and literature were not a part of it. Most nations do not support languages
other than their own because language is a sensitive issue for most nations as it symbolizes
identity and nationalism. For example, there are many countries in the United Nations, yet it
doesn’t give the status of official language to any one language, but has many official
languages. No one would be willing to let their language be subordinated by others.
Two centuries back French enjoyed supremacy, but there was a decline in its popularity
during the nineteenth century. Later on German became a competitor due to its scope in
all fields of scientific and scholarly activity. Whereas, now most of the scientific research
is published in the English language than any other along with its utility in business and
commerce. It is seen that a revolution in communication has led to the spread of the
English language due to the dominance of the media industry. Both economic and
cultural factors greatly influence to determine the world language of the future.

1.6 English as the Official Language

After World War II, English was the official language of one fourth of the globe,
however the speakers were very few in the British colonies. Even after the colonies
gained independence, English was the official language alongside the vernaculars.
English was to be used as a transitional language until 1965, yet it is still being used and
is in a position of power. It is seen that English has been able to fulfil the needs of being
an international language. This is partially because it is politically and economically
strong, but mainly because it has the capacity to borrow new words and concepts. It can
have multiple varieties to be used creatively for literary purposes across cultures.

1.7 English in the Information Technology World

In 2000, the English language took over the IT world and dominated the internet. More
than fifty percent of the internet hosts were located in the United States and another one
thirds in other English speaking nations. This led to the development of the basic codes
for the English alphabet. Technology not only made English essential, but also became a
means of facilitating teaching of English online across the globe. There is a rapid change
in the information industry that it is difficult to predict the future of English or any other
language. For example, most online shopping through the internet is done in native
languages of most countries. English, therefore, is not the only language of the internet
due to which the US has lost market to local sites in other countries.

1.8 Vocabulary
Vocabulary is the body of words used in a language. The size of the vocabulary is a
significant feature of the present day English. English falls under the category of Germanic
languages. It shares parentage with Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian that are
all Germanic languages. The vocabulary and syntax of all these aforementioned languages is
similar as they have the same origin. A large vocabulary chunk in English has been derived
from Latin. Apart from this, a great deal of direct borrowing by the English language has
been done from French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. English shows a flexibility of

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borrowing from other languages. Over the past few centuries, English has borrowed many
foreign words and concepts. For instance, the animal names chipmunk, moose, raccoon and
skunk do not feel foreign to us despite being borrowed from the Native American language.
The table given below shows the vocabulary borrowed from other languages.

Dutch landscape measles uproar

Italian balcony duet granite piano umbrella volcano
Spanish alligator cargo cork hammock
mosquito stampede tornado vanilla
Greek, acme acrobat anthology barometer catastrophe
chronology elastic magic tactics tantalize
Russian steppe ruble troika
Persian caravan dervish divan khaki mogul shawl sherbet jasmine paradise
check chess lemon lilac turban borax spinach
Table 1: Vocabulary Borrowed from other languages
1.9 Inflections in English
Inflection is a process of word formation in which a word is modified (especially the
endings) to express different grammatical categories such as tense, mood, case, number,
gender etc. English is part of the Indo-European language family (see unit 2). Sanskrit,
Greek and Latin are termed as the oldest, classical Indo-European languages. These
languages have structures that are not found in modern languages such as they have
inflected nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs. The English language, on the other hand
possesses inflectional simplicity. In modern English, the inflection of nouns is found as
plural form –s and in possessive case –‘s. Simplicity in inflectional endings in English
adjectives has also occurred where it can be seen in the comparative and superlative
degrees such as –er and –est in case of the word big given bellow:
 big, bigger, biggest
In case of the verb, a complete simplification has been seen in terms of personal endings
(a detail of which will be given in the proceeding units). Moreover, the complication of
inflectional endings are absent from the English grammar. Instead of terming these
developments as a decay of grammar, they are considered as a move towards simplicity
and efficiency. The English language learners are more than happy without this
complication of the English language inflections.

1.10 Gender in English

English is different from other European languages as it is not a grammatically gendered
language. But it has natural gender, that is, it is based on the biological distinction of male and
female. Grammatically gendered languages have nouns that show masculine and feminine
traits as is the case of Urdu. English differs from all other major European languages in the
sense that it adopted a natural gender (based on sex as a biological distinction between male
and female) rather than having grammatical one (based on the type of noun, such as
masculine or feminine or neuter, and is not tied to sex). In other European languages learners

7
need to learn the meanings of both noun and their gender. Romance languages (Romance
languages include French, Italian and Romanian and were spoken by the western Roman
Empire), for instance, include only two genders and what may be neuter in English will be
either masculine or feminine. Germanic languages (ancestors of English language) normally
have three genders. For instance, in German sonne (sun) is feminine, mond (moon) is
masculine, however, kind (child), madchen (maiden) and weib (wife) are considered neuter.
The use of grammatical genders not only impacts reference of pronouns but also the form of
inflections and agreement of adjectives of a language. English let go of gender complication
during the Middle English period. The only gender remaining is in names of living creatures
and the rest is all neuter.

1.11 Difficulty in English Language Acquisition

English language acquisition is easy in some aspect such as the simplicity in inflections
and gender discussed earlier. It has evolved in such a way that features have been
simplified. However, there are aspects, as discussed below, in which it poses some
difficulty for foreign learners.
1.11.1 Idiomatic Phrases
One is the oversimplification of the inflections that leads to a lot of complication in the
use of idiomatic phrases. Since idioms are peculiar to one language, therefore, learners
with different native languages have a problem in understanding and learning them. For
instance, German use the phrase fur ein mann (what for a man) which in English can be
spoken as what kind of a man. Moreover, in French it is said il fait froid (it makes cold)
and in English it is said it is cold. Another example is the use of fast in go fast. This poses
a great problem for foreign students to understand the concepts built up according to a
cultural difference of the native speakers.
1.11.2 Spelling and Pronunciation
The lack of correspondence between the spelling and pronunciation of the words in the
English language raises problems for English language speakers and learners. For
instance, words such as catch and knowledge etc. have many silent alphabets in them.
Words like aspirin and chocolate have a silent vowel, whereas, in business the vowel u is
pronounced as i and s as z. Since writing is used for recording speech, the most suitable
means is one that is simple and consistent. English spellings lack in both. In an ideal
writing system, the same sound would be represented by the same characters every time.
No European language reaches up to this highly idealized state. However Italian and
German languages follow a much simpler pattern than the English language does.
1.11.3 Vowels
In case of English it can be seen that the vowel sound in the following words are
represented by different spellings.
 Believe
 Receive
 Leave
 Machine
 Be

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 See

The symbol a in the following words are pronounced differently.

 Father
 Hate
 Hat
1.11.4 Consonants
The situation is even more confusing in the manner in which the English language treats
its consonants. For example, there are many spellings for the sound sh. This can be seen
in the following words:
 Shoe
 Sugar
 Issue
 Nation
 Suspicion
 Ocean
 Nauseous
 Conscious
 Chaperon
 Schist
 Fuchsia
 Pshaw
This extreme case of the sound sh shows how far removed the English language is from
simplicity and consistency in terms of spellings and pronunciation. The reason behind such
diversity and inconsistency will be dealt with in the prodeeding units. This highlights the fact
that students of English language waste unnecessarily long hours to learn these spellings.
Although some argue that the pronunciation helps trace the etymology (origin) of the words
and thus makes it easy for the foreign learners to understand.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a movement to bring a degree of simplification
in the English language was launched by Theodore Roosevelt and some other people.
Suggestions were made that since has and had are written without an e at the end then
both have and are can be written as hav and ar. But since the eye and the senses are so
used to adding that unnecessary -e this may be an option for the future, but most of the
English speakers are far from ready for such simplification at this point in time.

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1.12 Summary Points
 The English language of today is a result of many centuries of growth and change.
 Historical events in political and social domains have had a considerable impact on
the English language.
 English has been subject to a continued process of decay just like living beings.
 Language gains significance because of events defining balance of power among
nations such as political, economic, technological or military.
 English is one of the most widely used languages of the world because of the
number of speakers English has an estimate of one to one and a half billion
speakers globally.
 Most of the scientific research are published in the English language.
 In 2000 English took over the IT world and became the dominant language of the
internet.
 English has been able to fulfil the needs of being an international language.
 The English language possesses inflectional simplicity.
 English differs from all other major European languages as it adopts a natural
gender rather than having grammatical one.
 The lack of correspondence between the spelling and pronunciation of the words in
the English language raises problems for English language speakers and learners.

1.13 Self-Assessment Questions

1. Why do we study the history of a language?
2. What does the history of the English language reveal in terms of growth and
development?
3. Why do languages face decay and death?
4. What are artificial languages and why did all efforts to unify the globe over a single
language fail?
5. How did the English language end up with a diverse vocabulary base?
6. What are the main features of the English language that make it one of the easiest
languages to learn?
7. What are the problems that learners of the English language face while learning it?

Suggested Readings
English as a Global Language [Book] / auth. Crystal David. - Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language [Book] / auth. Crystal David. -
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language [Book] / auth. McArthur Tom. -
London : OUP, 1992.

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UNIT-2

THE INDO-EUROPEAN
FAMILY OF LANGUAGES

Written By: Dr. Lubna Umar

Reviewed By: Dr. Malik Ajmal Gulzar

13
CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 15

Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 15

2.1 The Gradual Change in Speech............................................................................ 16

2.2 Change in Dialects ............................................................................................... 17

2.3 Importance of Sanskrit ......................................................................................... 18

2.4 Tracing the Indo-European Family ...................................................................... 18

2.5 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 25

2.6 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 25

Good nature and good sense must even join;

To err is human, to forgive, divine…

Here he pronounces tea as tay:

Here thou, great Anna! Whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take – and sometimes tea.

At yet another instance, he uses the rhyming scheme given below:

full rule
give believe
reserve starve
glass place
ear repair
lost boast
thought fault
obliged besieged

Table 1: Pope’s Rhyming Scheme

The pronunciation of at least one word from each rhyming pair has undergone some
change now. Therefore, these rhyming schemes are not valid anymore. King Alfred (871-
899), in his writings uses the words bān (bone), hū (how), hēah (high). It is seen that all
the long vowels have altered and that the pronunciation is not the same anymore.

16
2.2 Change in Dialects
As we have already discussed in the previous section, differences in the speech of
individuals in a community get combined to form a general speech of that community
and agreement prevails amongst them. But if one speech community separates from
another for a long time, the difference between them becomes great. However, if the
separation between them is slight then the difference is also slight which gives rise to
local dialects. In case the separation is more pronounced, the difference is so pronounced
that language in one district becomes incomprehensible for speakers of another district. It
is in this manner that entirely new languages develop. This similarity and difference can
be noted if the two divergent languages are observed closely. Viewed closely, the relation
between English and German indicates a common birth. Similarity between English and
German words is given below:

German English
Brot Bread
Milch Milk
Fleisch Flesh
Wasser Water

Table 2: Similarity in German and English Vocabulary

The relationship between Latin and English can be observed by the following words:

Latin English
Pater Father
Frater Brother

Table 3: Relationship between Latin and English Vocabulary

This relationship is not as simple as the one between German and English as the initial
consonant obscures the relationship. In order to get a clear picture, we must study the
following tables:

English Father
Dutch Vader
Gothic Fader
Old Norse Faðir
German Vater
Greek Pater
Sanskrit Pitar
Old Irish Athir

Table 4: The Word Father Across the Language Family

17
English Brother
Dutch Broeder
Old Slavic Bratu
German Bruder
Greek Phrater
Sanskrit Bhratar
Old Irish Brathair
Table 5: The Word Brother Across the Language Family

2.3 Importance of Sanskrit

One of the most important discovery was the role Sanskrit played in the Indo-European
family of languages. Sanskrit – a language spoken in Ancient India – was suggested to be
the oldest language in the first half of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, it
was confirmed that Sanskrit was the oldest language. It is seen to preserve features of a
common language much older than Greek, Latin or even German. The resemblance
between the English word brother and Sanskrit word bhratar is clear. Some features of
the Sanskrit grammar indicate that the Sanskrit language may have the same origin as the
other Indo-European languages. Look at the following examples of the verb to be in Old
English, Gothic, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit:

Old English Gothic Latin Sanskrit Greek

eom (am) im sum asmi eimi
eart (art) is es asi ei
is (is) ist est asti esti
sindon (are) sijum sumus smas esmen
sindon (are) sijup estis stha este
sindon (are) sind sunt santi eisi

Table 6: The Verb TO BE Across the Family of Languages

The Sanskrit form shows us that the verb had similar endings (mi, si, ti, mas, tha, nti) at
one time. Thus, the similarity of Sanskrit with other languages proved to be of great
significance in the history of the Indo-European languages.

2.4 Tracing the Indo-European Family

The languages that have the same parent are called family of languages. Many names
have been used to label the Indo-European family of languages so far. A century ago, the
name Aryan was used for the Indo-European family of languages, but it is not in use
anymore. Another term is Indo-Germanic, but it gives undue significance to the

18
Germanic language. The term Indo-European is popular and widely used as it is based on
the geographical location of the family of languages.

The parent language from which the Indo-European family of languages grows was
divided before it was written. The speakers have no knowledge of the original language.
The only way of tracing the origin is the comparison between the languages of the
descendants. These descendant languages that are still surviving have similarities among
each other. The descendant languages of the Indo-European family can be divided into
eleven groups, namely, Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Hellenic, Albanian, Italic, Balto-
Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Hittite and Tocharian. The proceeding discussion provides us
with a background for these languages, the geographical locations in which they were
spoken and the work produced in them. The family tree below shows the descendants of
the Indo-European Family of languages.

Figure 1: The Indo-European Family of Languages

2.4.1 Indian
Indian group of languages is spoken in the Asian subcontinent that is the present-day
India and Pakistan. Sanskrit is the oldest of them all. The Vedas and other sacred books
are so far the oldest literary texts that have been found in any Indo-European languages.
These sacred literary texts are divided into four categories:
 Rig-veda: is the earliest, which is a collection of thousands of hymns.
 Sama-veda: is the second, which is the scripture about art and singing.
 Yajur-veda: is the third, which is the text of sacrificial knowledge.
 Athar-veda: is the last, which is a book of current religious practices.

19
Combined together, these sacred literary texts form the basis of the Hindu Brahman
Philosophy that had been preserved in the form of orally transmitted tales for a long time
by priests before being preserved in written form. It is believed that these texts written in
Vedic Sanskrit (an older version of Sanskrit) can be traced back to 1500 BC. Moreover,
presence of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced in the writing of directions for rules for many
aspects of private and religious life.

It was much later in the fourth century BC that Sanskrit was given a fixed form and came
to be used in domains of daily use by Sanskrit philologists and grammarians among
which Panini is the most famous. Having a fixed form led to the birth of Classical
Sanskrit that became a medium in which a huge amount of Indian literature was
produced. This literature includes the two famous national epics, namely, Mahabharata
and Ramayana. Classical Sanskrit had once held a high status in India and is still present
as a learned language but is not spoken anymore.

Apart from Sanskrit, a number of other local dialects exist that have eventually attained
literary form. One of these languages is Pāli that became the language spoken by
Buddhists in the middle of the sixth century. Various other dialects originated from Pāli
that became the languages of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and are spoken by at least
600 million people. A few among these are Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Marathi.
Both Urdu and Hindi closely resemble each other in both structure and vocabulary as
they have been derived from Hindustani. Hindustani was used for four centuries
throughout northern India. Urdu is different from Hindi as it is written in the Perso-
Arabic script instead of Sanskrit characters and contains a mixture of Persian and Arabic.

2.4.2 Iranian
The Iranian group of languages are spoken in the Iranian plateau towards the Northwest
of India. It is thought that the Indo-European population that came to settle in this region
had travelled alongside members of the Indian branch of languages. And because of the
interaction between them, the two languages have many linguistic features in common.
Some people migrated to the present-day Iran while the rest migrated to India. It is the
result of such migrations that languages are carried to different places. For example,
Iranian languages travelled towards South of Russia and Central China.

For a long time, this region was under the Semitic influence and most of the older texts
are written in a Semitic script. The Semitic languages are a family of closely related
languages spoken in some parts of Middle East, North Africa Europe and North America
and are considered the oldest written languages. Being written in a Semitic script makes
it difficult to comprehend.

The later texts of Iranian language are written in what is now known as Middle Iranian or
Pahlavi. Middle Iranian was the official language of Iran from 226 to 652 AD and the
ancestor of Modern Persian. The Persian language is also known as Farsi and has been
used as a medium for literature and culture since the ninth century. One of the famous
literary work in this language is the Persian epic the Shahnamah. Persian contains an

20
admixture of the Arabic language that gives it a resemblance to Arabic as well as Iranian.
Alongside Persian, many other languages resembling it are found in the region that
include Afghan or Pushto and Baluchi. These languages are spoken in the eastern side of
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kurdistan.

2.4.3 Armenian
The Armenian group is spoken in a region towards the East of the Black Sea and South of
the Caucasus Mountain. The Armenians settled in this area between the eighth and the
sixth centuries BC. The Armenians took over the area where the native population had an
influence on the language of Armenians in terms of accent. Armenian experienced a
shifting of certain consonants due to a contact between the languages of the newcomers
and the natives. Armenian does not have grammatical gender just like the languages of
the South Caucasus.

Armenian came to be known in the fifth century after the discovery of the Bible in the
Armenian language and most of the Armenian literature found is historical and religious.
Armenian was once classed as an Iranian language since the Armenians were dominated
by the Persians for hundreds of years, the Armenian vocabulary was strongly influenced
by Iranian. Moreover, the vocabulary has been enriched with a contact with Semitic,
Greek, and Turkish languages.

2.4.4 Hellenic
The Aegean Island had been occupied by a number of different people belonging to
different races and languages from the Greeks. The Greeks who were also known as
Hellenes entered the Aegean Island and gradually started using different dialects of the
same language. They settled in the mainland of Greece, mixing up with the local
population.

Many popular Greek literary works originated around the eighteenth century BC that
include the following two famous Homeric poems:
 Iliad
 Odyssey

From among the five main dialects of the Greek language only Attic – the dialect of
Athens – has been studied the most. The dialect attained supremacy in the fifth century
with the political and commercial position of Athens as a result of which a great
civilization emerged. The great writers of Greece were mostly placed in Athens. These
included:
 Dramatists: Aechylus and Euripides.
 Comedy and Tragedy Writers: Aristophanes and Sophocles.
 Historians: Thucydides and Herodotus.
 Orators: Demosthenes.
 Philosophers: Plato and Aristotle.

21
Owing to the political and cultural significance of Athens, Attic replaced other languages
and became a language for international communication in the Eastern Mediterranean
region and was being used widely in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor after the
conquest of Alexander (336–323 BC). Currently two different varieties of Greek are
spoken in Greece. They are:
 Demotic Greek
 Pontic Greek

2.4.5 Albanian
The Albanian group of languages is found to exist in the region towards the East Coast of
the Adriatic Sea. Albanian is believed to be the modern variant of Illyrian (a language
spoken in ancient times), however, the lack of knowledge of this language makes it
difficult for us to be certain about it.

Mostly, knowledge of Albanian can be traced to the fifteenth century. Due to a series of
conquests, it has become mixed up with Latin, Greek and Turkish elements that the
original language is difficult to study. This also posed problems while classing it in the
Indo-European family of languages. Now an independent member of the family it was
once grouped with the Hellenic languages.

2.4.6 Italic
The Italic branch of languages had roots in Italy that is part of Rome. Latin was the main
language spoken in Rome. Along with Latin, there were other languages spoken there at
the time. The conducive climatic conditions and geographical position of Rome became
the reason why people from various regions came and settled there.

In the Northwest of Rome some offshoots of Illyrian, namely, Venetic and Messapian
were believed to be spoken. Greek was the predominant language of Greek colonies in
the Southern part of Italy and Sicily.

Figure 2: The Italic Branch of Languages Family Tree

22
The Italic family tree given above shows how various languages originate from Italic.
Latin, it is seen, was the main language in the Italic branch. It was the language of Latium
and its main city, Rome. Umbrian and Oscan languages originated from the Italic
language resembled Latin to a large extent. Umbrian was only spoken in Northwestern
regions of Latium. Oscan was the language of the Samnites and was spoken by the
Samnites in the Southern peninsula. Due to the significance of Latin, these other
languages faded away. Latin became the main language spoken in Gaul, Northern Africa,
Mediterranean Islands, Western region of the Black sea and Britain after being colonized
by the Romans. The modern form of Latin is still spoken in these regions.

All the languages that show the survival of Latin in many areas of the Roman Empire are
termed as the Romance languages. Some have been extended to other areas. The most
widely used Romance languages are French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Both
Spanish and Portuguese still resemble each other in sounds and vocabulary items. Italian,
however, still exists in Rome, its place of origin, and is important as part of the language
of the famous writers Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Also, it was the language in which
Renaissance first found expression.

2.4.7 Balto-Slavic
The Balto-Slavic branch of languages has roots in Eastern Europe and is divided into the
Baltic and the Slavic groups due to many shared features. The Baltic group is further
divided into Prussian, Lithuanian and Latvian. Prussian has become extinct as German
took over in the seventeenth century. Lithuanian, however, is spoken in the Baltic state of
Lithuania by around three million people. Lithuanian is an important Indo-European
language as it shows similarity with Sanskrit in the form that it preserves certain old
features. Moreover, a similarity among all Slavic languages indicates that they must have
been the same language around the seventh or eighth centuries.

2.4.8 Germanic
The languages of the Germanic branch come from the Proto-Germanic languages. It can
be understood from the family tree given below. Germanic language goes way before
written records of it could be found. Languages born from Germanic can further be
divided into three categories:

 East Germanic
 North Germanic
 West
 Germanic

23
Figure 3: The Germanic Languages

Gothic is the main language of the East Germanic branch spoken by the Goths that had
spread towards the Black sea in the third century. Ulfilas (311-383), was a Christian
missionary who translated the Bible into Gothic that serves to provide knowledge about
the language. North Germanic group includes the Scandinavian languages. West
Germanic is further sub-divided into Anglo-Frisian and Netherlandic-German tongues.
Of the Anglo-Frisian group, English is the main language along with Old Fresian. Old
English was closely related to Old Frisian.

2.4.9 Celtic
The Celtic language had once been the largest language group in the Indo-European
family. Celts had covered the most part of Western Europe and were settled in Spain,
Gaul, west Germany, Northern Italy and Great Britain at the onset of the Christian period.
The Celtic languages are now only found in some parts of France and the British Isles.
But despite being spoken so widely at one time, it has left very little impact on the
modern languages. Gallic was the Celtic language of Gaul which was later replaced by
Latin. The remains of Gallic are a few inscriptions, some place names, an odd text and a
small vocabulary traced in Modern French.

2.4.10 Hittite
Hittite is one of the oldest recorded Indo-European languages. It is believed that Hittite
made its way into Anatolia before two thousand BC. Strong evidence shows that most of
this language branch was contained in Southern Russia and the Ukraine in the third and
fourth millennia. Most of the text found in Hittite is religious in nature.

2.4.11 Tocharian
The Tocharian branch of languages were once spoken in Northern China, but have gone
extinct. The Tocharian group is divided into the following parts:
 Tocharian A
 Tocharian B

24
Tocharian A and Tocharian B are considered two separate languages and not two dialects
of the same language. Most of the documents found in Tocharian date to a time between
sixth and eighth centuries AD. The texts are translated versions of Buddhist religious
philosophy that was once popular in Asia.

2.5 Summary Points

 A language is a product of centuries of growth. Most languages are in a continued
state of change with some elements being added and some being lost.
 The speech of a community differs from the speech of another and so does the
speech of individuals inside a community.
 Difference in the speech of individuals in a community over a long time gives rise
to different dialects.
 Separation of the speakers of the same community over a long time gives rise to
different languages.
 The languages that have the same parents are called family of languages.
 English is a part of the Indo-European family of languages contained in the Indo-
European geographical context.
 One of the most important discovery was the role Sanskrit played in the Indo-
European family of languages.
 The descendant languages of the Indo-European family can be divided into eleven
groups:
 Indian
 Iranian
 Armenian
 Hellenic
 Albanian
 Italic
 Balto-Slavic
 Germanic
 Celtic
 Hittite
 Tocharian
 A brief introduction of the members of the Indo-European language family given
above provides a background for understanding the history of the English
language.

2.6 Self-Assessment Questions

1. Define what is a family of languages?
2. What is the significance of the Indo-European family of languages?
3. Why do we need to study the Indo-European family of languages in the English
language context?

25
4. Write a poem using the rhyming scheme used by Pope and discuss the difference in
pronunciation.
5. What are other terms used for the Indo-European Family? Why aren’t they used
anymore?
6. Language changes occur over a course of centuries. Explain the process through
which it goes for change to be noticeable.
7. Every individual speaks differently and people of one area differ in their speech
from those in other areas. Explain with the help of examples.
8. What factors contribute towards the creation of new languages?
9. Explain how German is similar to English with the help of examples.
10. It is believed that Sanskrit may be the starting point from where the Indo-European
family of languages took birth. Explain with the help of examples.
11. Which is believed to be the oldest literary texts preserved in any Indo-European
language? What is the relationship between Indian language and Classical
Sanskrit?
12. What is the relationship between Sanskrit and Urdu? Explain.
13. Name the scripts found in Old Persian dialect. Also, explain how Armenian is
related to Persian and what are the factors contributing to the vocabulary building
of Armenian?
14. Why did the Attic dialect in Greece enjoy supremacy in the eighteenth century?
15. In which geographical region are the Celtic languages spoken these days?

Suggested Readings
An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages [Book] / auth. Baldi Philip. - NY :
Southern Illinois University, 1999.

The Indo European Languages [Book] / auth. Kapovik Mate. - London : Routledge,
2017.

The Indo-European Family of Languages [Book] / auth. Ramat Anna Giacalone and
Ramat Paolo. - London : Routledge, 1998.

26
UNIT-3

OLD ENGLISH

Written By: Dr. Lubna Umar

Reviewed By: Dr. Saira Maqbool

27
CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 29

Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 29

3.1 The Old English Period – 450-1100 AD.............................................................. 30

3.2 Old English and the Latin Alphabets ................................................................... 32

3.3 Influence of the Viking Invasion on Old English Vocabulary ............................. 32

3.4 Characteristics of Old English ............................................................................. 33

3.5 The Old English Vocabulary ............................................................................... 35

3.6 Grammar .............................................................................................................. 37

3.7 Old English Syntax .............................................................................................. 39

3.8 Grammatical Gender ............................................................................................ 39

3.9 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 39

3.10 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 40

Figure 1: Angles, Saxons and the Jutes in the British Isles

The England of the Old English period comprised many kingdoms that competed with
each other for supremacy. These kingdoms had different languages based on the
grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation of the original Germanic languages.

The people of Britain originally spoke a Celtic language that was replaced after the entry of
invaders. The Germanic tribes that settled in Britain had languages that were much similar but
brought many different dialects to Britain from where German, Dutch and Frisian originated.
From all these languages developed what we now term as Old English (OE).

Although, half of the OE vocabulary is being used in Modern English, but the present day
native speakers of English may have difficulty understanding OE. This difference can be
seen in the following examples of vocabulary where the Germanic base is evident:

Old English Germanic Modern English

heorte herz heart
cuman kommen come
eald alto old
Table 1: Old English Vocabulary with Germanic Base

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Many grammatical features of English were seen in Old English period. For example, the
irregular verbs given below:
 OE: drincan – dranc – drunken
 German: trinken – trank – getrunken

Many OE pronunciations are also preserved in modern spellings such as knight in which
k was pronounced. OE was also known as Anglo-Saxon, and was not particularly
influenced by the Celtic language that the people of the British Isles spoke at that time.
However, the only Celtic words that were borrowed by English were words pertaining to
local wildlife geography including place names and river names. Over the centuries, four
English dialects were developed, they are:
 Northumbrian
 Mercian
 West Saxon
 Kentish

The map given below shows the Old English and the above mentioned dialects. The
language and dialect boundaries are clearly given.

Figure 2: Old English Dialects

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3.2 Old English and the Latin Alphabets
With the arrival of Saint Augustine on British soil Latin was revived. Through
Augustine’s efforts, Latin, previously brought by the Roman, was reinforced after the
Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity in the seventh century. Its impact was seen on the
vocabulary that words such as mass, master, school etc. entered the English word stock.
The impact of Christianity in terms of writing was also observed as it became the basis
for the writing system. OE was mostly written using the Latin alphabet with some
Germanic Runic letters to represent sounds that were not part of the Latin alphabets for
example the alphabet þ, which was used for the sound th in words such as thin or this.

3.3 Influence of the Viking Invasion on Old English Vocabulary

The descendants of previous German invader-settlers were themselves subjected to
harassment from other north European intruders called the Vikings. The Norse invasions
(more details in unit 4) that began around 850 saw many North Germanic words entering the
English language. For example, the word dream, that had initially meant joy until it borrowed
its current meaning from the Scandinavian cognate draumr. The word skirt still exists along
with its native English cognate shirt. Given below are a few more such words:

Them Their They Die Call Raise Take Give Get Ugly Odd Flat
Anger Skill Fellow Husband Widow Leg Skin Cake Egg Sky

In the seventh and eighth centuries, the culture and language of Northumbria was
dominant in Britain. The Vikings invaded Britain in the ninth century and brought the
Northumbrian domination to an end. The West Saxon dialect started gaining significance
and by the tenth century it became the official language of Britain. This period marks the
beginning of Written Old English. Old English started being written in the Runic alphabet
(instead of predominantly Latin) that was borrowed from Scandinavian languages. At this
time, the OE vocabulary had an Anglo-Saxon base with words borrowed from the
Scandinavian languages, especially Danish and Norse and to some extent Latin. Latin
brought to the English language words such as:

Martyr Bishop Kitchen Cup Candle Street Kettle Cheese

Angel

The presence of Celtic words was seen mainly in names of places and river such as:

Thames
Avon
Trent
Dover
Devon
Severn

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Pairs of Norse and English words were used as synonyms such as:

English Norse
Shift Skip
No Nay
Bathe Bask
Rear Rise
Hide Skin
Craft Skill

Table 2: Norse and English Word Pairs

In many parts of the British Isles where the Viking settlements were found substantial
borrowing of words took place. This mixing of languages made English complicated and
complex rather than crude, and thus, capable of use in great scholarship.

3.4 Characteristics of Old English

The English language has changed considerably over time that OE cannot be understood
without being studied. In fact, looking at a written piece of OE will look as strange as a
page of Italian or French because of the strange characters used in OE that are not used in
present form. The main difference between OE and Modern English that we see are the
differences in spelling and pronunciation, the vocabulary, and the grammar. So, let’s take
a look at the pronunciation and spellings of Old English.

3.4.1 Pronunciation and Spelling

The OE pronunciation is to a great extent different from that of the Modern English.
Especially, the long vowels have changed to a great extent. The long vowels have been
altered considerably over time. This can be seen from the OE word stān is the Modern
English word stone, but the vowel is different. A similar trend can be seen in the
following instances.

 hālig – holy
 gān – go
 bān – bone
 rāp – rope
 half – loaf
 bāt – boat

The resemblance with their modern day variant is much less. However, some other
vowels have undergone changes but have still been able to maintain resemblance with
their ancestors. These include:

 fōt – foot

33
 cēne – keen
 metan – meet
 right – right
 hū – how
 hlūd - loud

Some long vowel words have become contracted in the modern descendants such as the
words:

 hēafod – head
 fæger – fair
 sāwol – soul

The sounds th: þ and ð, as used in thorn and eth, are represented in Old English using
two characters. This can be seen in the words:

 wiþ (with)
 ðā (then)

These are no longer used in modern English. Sounds of a such as in the word hat were
represented by a digraph œ (ash). Considering its frequent occurrence, the entire OE
script had a strange look to it. Some other sounds in OE vocabulary and their representing
symbols are given below:

Sound Representing Symbol Words

sh sc scēap (sheep) or scēotan (shoot)
k c cynn (kin) or nacod (naked)

Table 3: OE vocabulary and Symbols

Some words were pronounced as they are now but are represented differently. For
example, look at the words below:

 ecg (edge)
 scip (ship)
 benc (bench
 bæc (back)
 þorn (thorn)
 þæt (that)

It can be seen that a detailed study reveals the similarities between OE and the modern
sounds and spellings.

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3.4.2 Vowels
Old English has six vowels spelled as a, æ, i, o ,u and y and another spelled as ie. It also
has two diphthongs ea and eo that are sounds of a combination of two vowels produced
in a single syllable. The sounds they produced were different from the other. Long
vowels are marked with macrons (a small line above the alphabet) such as ā in this unit,
however in Old English manuscripts they were never marked with a macron. The vowel
length is important as the meaning is changed with it. For instance, take a look at the
table below:

words meanings
is is
īs ice
ac but
āc oak
ġe and
ġē you
mǣġ kinsman
mæġ may

Table 4: OE Vowel Sounds

3.4.3 Stress
OE words having more than one syllable were regularly stressed on their first syllables.
The OE stress system was relatively simple. Since a large number of OE words had
Germanic origins, these words have retained their form and meaning, for instance hand
and land. However, some have changed meaning such as the word dream that had meant
joy in OE. In the word bridegroom, groom comes from the OE word guma meaning man.

Old English followed the Indo-European system by which every noun was either
masculine, feminine, or neuter. This was an arbitrary distribution and not one based on
sex of the noun. Grammatical gender maintained its position till the Middle English. Old
English followed a complex system of inflection for nouns, adjectives, and verbs and
words that went closely together had to agree in certain respects, as shown by their
inflectional endings. Thus, adjectives that modified singular nouns had to be singular too.
Similarly, adjectives modifying masculine nouns had to be masculine too. Old English
used more grammatical endings on words and was thus far more inflective.

3.5 The Old English Vocabulary

Old English is unique that it has very few Latin derived words and almost none derived
from French. Nowadays, however, a large chunk of English words has a Latin and French
origin. That is why while reading scripts of OE, the language falls short in a lot of
concepts. The vocabulary of Old English is mostly Germanic and most of it has
disappeared from the language. It was after the Norman Conquest (you shall read about it

35
in unit 5) that vocabulary pertaining to literature and learning died while words from
French and Latin origin saw their way into the English vocabulary. More than eighty five
percent of the OE vocabulary is not in use now. However, the words that have survived
have done so because they have been used on a regular basis that it would be impossible
to stop using them. These words are those expressing fundamental concepts and are the
pronouns, prepositions auxiliary verbs and conjunctions etc. Given below are a few:

 wīf (wife, woman)

 mann (man)
 cild (child)
 weall (wall)
 mete (meat, food)
 hūs (house)

It is seen that most part of the OE vocabulary is not familiar for the modern reader/speaker of
English. It might appear that a language that had once lacked a huge chunk of vocabulary, as
in the case of Old English, the language would fall short of concepts and that it would be
inadequate to express the affairs of everyday life. But this is not the case. One of the
significant characteristics of Old English has been its resourcefulness with which it had filled
the gaps. This was done by its flexibility in blending old and new words. By using suffixes
and prefixes, a single root could yield a number of derivative words. For instance, the word
mōd, meaning mood (mental state), had meant heart, mind, spirit, boldness, courage, pride,
and haughtiness. From it, were derived the following words:

 mōdig adjective (spirited, bold, arrogant)

 mōdiglic adjective (magnanimous
 mōdiglīce adverb (bold)
 mōdignes noun (magnanimity)
 mōdigian verb (to bear oneself proudly)
 gemōdod (disposed)
 mōdfull (haughty)
 mōdlēas (spiritless)

Moreover, the meaning of the word intensifies after the root is combined with other
words having meaning pertaining to mind or thought. For example, from a single word
we get multiple words (and concepts) such as:

 mōdsefa
 mōdgeþanc
 mōdgeþoht
 mōdgehygd
 mōdgemynd
 mōdhord (hord=treasure)
 mōdcræft (intelligence)
 mōdcræftig (intelligent)

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The same root combining with words related to mental states gave forth the following
combinations:

 glœdmōdnes (kindness)
 mōdlufu (affection) (lufu=love)
 unmōd (despondency)
 mōdcaru (sorrow) (caru=care)
 mōdlēast (want of courage)
 mādmōd (folly)
 ofermōdigung (pride)
 ofermōdig (proud)
 hēahmōd (proud, noble)
 mōdhete (hate) (hete=hate)
 micelmōd (magnanimous)
 swīþmōd (great of soul) (swīþ=strong)
 stīþmōd (resolute, obstinate) (stīþ=stiff, strong)
 gūþmōd (warlike) (gūþ=war, battle)
 torhtmōd (glorious) (torht=bright)
 mōdlēof (beloved) (lēof-dear)

It is evident how multiple words are formed using the same root. This shows the capacity
of the English language towards word formation, derivation and the flexibility of
expression. Although, OE was a purely Germanic language, it had some influence on its
vocabulary from other languages.

3.6 Grammar
The grammatical features distinguish OE from the present day English language. OE
resembles modern German in terms of grammar that the noun and adjectives, it can be
noted, are inflected for four cases in the singular and four cases in the plural. In the OE
verb inflection, there are distinct endings for person, number, tense and mood.
Inflectional languages can either be synthetic or analytic. In a synthetic language, the
relation between words in a sentence are due to inflections. In an analytic language,
however, relationships depend on extensive use of prepositions, auxiliary verbs and word
order. OE is a synthetic language and Modern English an analytic one.

OE like Latin has genitive, dative, nominative and accusative cases, and any word order
may yield the same meaning. The nominative case is used for the subject of the sentence
where the subject is the person who performs the action. The accusative case is used for
direct objects where the object is the person or thing receiving the action. The dative case
is used for indirect objects where the indirect object is the person or thing that gets the
direct object such as ‘the cat’ in ‘the boy threw the ball to the cat’. The genitive case is
used to show possession. In English possession is shown by -‘s.

37
3.6.1 The Noun
Inflection of noun is a process in which the noun is modified to express different
grammatical categories such as tense, mood, case, voice, person, number etc. The OE
noun inflection indicates distinction of number, that is, singular and plural along with the
case (as mentioned above). The case system is much simpler than that of Latin and other
European languages. The OE noun has four categories and their endings fall into the
broad category of declensions. Declension is the variation in the form of the noun or
other categories of words (pronoun, adjectives etc.) that represents the number, case or
gender of the word by inflection. There is a vowel declension that is also called strong
declension and a consonant declension termed as weak declension. This differentiation of
declensions is based on whether the stem ended in a vowel or a consonant. The difference
between strong and weak declension in Old English can be seen from the words:

stān (stone) - a masculine a-stem (strong)

giefu (gift) – a feminine ō-stem (strong)
hunta (hunter) – a masculine consonant stem (weak)

Singular N. stān gief-u hunt-a

G. stān-es gief-e hunt-an

D. stān-e gief-e hunt-an

A. stān gief-e hunt-an

Plural N. stān-as gief-a hunt-an

G. stān-a gief-a hunt-ena

D. stān-um gief-um hunt-um

A. stān-as gief-a hunt-an

Table 5: OE Noun Declensions

This shows that the inflection of the OE noun was much more complex than it is today.
These examples show the synthetic character of Old English language.

3.6.2 Verbs
Old English infinitive verb forms usually ended with the –an suffix for example faran (to
travel). Verbs are inflected in terms of tense, person, number and mood. Like nouns, the

38
OE verbs were either strong or weak verbs based on the inflection of vowels or
consonants. For example:

 Strong Verb: changing stressed vowel for past tense (e.g. sing, sang)
 Weak Verb: adding -d or -t to form past tense (e.g. talk, talked)

Most of the modern English words come from foreign sources and not from OE roots.
Half of the OE words are still used in the modern English but have undergone many
changes. Most commonly used words such as water and strong etc. have roots in OE. The
best OE example is the surviving poem Beowulf that lasted up to around 1100.

3.7 Old English Syntax

An important feature of syntactic style in a language is the degree to which the
grammatical and semantic relations are expressed by subordinate clauses. The types of
sentences OE syntax gave are of great importance. A great number of long sentences with
subordination, as in the work of John Milton is seen. These long sentences are known as
Hypotactic style. Whereas, the shorter sentences having more principle clauses is classed
as the Paratactic style such that cab be seen in the work of Ernest Hemingway. An
example of Parataxis is given below in the work of S. Andrew:

Then I asked him; then he replied…

They came to a place on the road; there stood a temple.
There lived in the convent a certain monk; he was called Martin:
He said…

3.8 Grammatical Gender

Old English is a grammatically gendered language where the nouns can be classified
based on gender. The gender of the OE nouns is not influenced by the biological sex as is
the case in modern English. Although the nouns ascribed to males are usually masculine
and those ascribed to females are usually feminine. But those ascribed as neuter objects
are not necessarily neuter. For example, Stān (stone) is masculine, mōna (moon) is
masculine, but sunne (sun) is feminine. This OE gender designation is illogical to the
modern reader. Words like mœgden (girl), wīf (wife), bearn (child, son) and cild (child)
which should be masculine or feminine are all neuter while the word wīfmann (woman) is
masculine since the second part of the compound word is masculine.

3.9 Summary Points

 The Old English period can be regarded as starting around 450 AD, with the arrival
of warriors into Britain.
 By the 10th century, the West Saxon dialect became the official language of
Britain.

39
 Old English is mainly written using Latin and Runic alphabets.
 Old English vocabulary had an Anglo Saxon base with borrowed words from the
Scandinavian languages (Danish and Norse) and Latin.
 The main difference between the Old and Modern English are the differences in
spelling and pronunciation, the lexicon, and the grammar.
 Old English had six simple vowels, spelled a, æ, i, o, u and y.
 Old English followed the Indo-European system by which every noun was either
masculine, feminine, or neuter.
 Old English has very few Latin derived words and almost none derived from
French.
 OE resembles modern German in terms of grammar that the noun and adjectives
are inflected for four cases in the singular and four in the plural.
 The gender of Old English nouns is not dependent upon considerations of sex.

3.10 Self-Assessment Questions

1. Trace roots of Old English (OE) discussing major influences on its development.
2. What are the basic characteristics features of Old English which draw a
conventional division of English into this period?
3. What are different dialects of Old English? Provide a historical background of
them.
4. Identify differences of vocabulary between old English and Modern English and
discuss the reasons of change in lexicon.
5. What role do inflections play in Old English grammar? Discuss with examples.
6. How do vowels bring difference in pronunciation of Old English?
7. Old English is said to be a grammatically gendered language. Explain with
examples.

Suggested Readings
Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. Routledge,
2002.

Hogg, Richard., and David Denison, (eds). A History of the English Language.
Cambridge, 2008

Joseph and Elizabeth M. Wright, An Elementary Middle English Grammar.

40
UNIT-4

OLD ENGLISH INFLUENCED

BY FOREIGN FORCES

Written By: Dr. Lubna Umar

Reviewed By: Dr. Saira Maqbool

41
CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 43

Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 43

4.1 The Celtic Influence on Old English ................................................................... 44

4.2 Latin Influence on Old English ............................................................................ 44

4.3 The Scandinavian Influence on Old English ....................................................... 48

4.4 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 51

4.5 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 51

4.1.1 Celtic Place-Names and Loanwords

Not much evidence apart from place names can be found in terms of the Celic influence
upon the English language. For example, the kingdom of Kent is derived from the Celtic
words Canti or Cantion, the meaning of which is unknown. Moreover, the two ancient
Northumbrian kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia derive their designations from Celtic
tribal names. Devonshire carries the first part of the tribal name Dumnonii, Cornwall
means the Columbian Welsh, and the former County Cumberland (now part of Cumbria)
is the land of the Cymry or Britons. Moreover, names of many important centers in the
Roman era have Celtic names such as:
 London
 Winchester
 Exeter
 Litchfield

It is seen that most of the Celtic names survived in the names of rivers and Hills and
places in proximity to these natural features such as:
 Thames
 Avon
 Dover
 Wye

4.2 Latin Influence on Old English

The Celtic influence upon English was slight. But the influence of Latin was much
greater. Unlike the Celtic language, Latin was the language of a great civilization and
held a high position. The Anglo-Saxons had much to learn from the Romans. The contact
between the two civilizations was first on commercial and military level. Later on it
extended to religious and intellectual aspects. This mixing up went on all though the Old
English period. For hundreds of years, the Germanic tribes acquired a huge number of
Latin vocabulary even before settling in England. After the arrival of the Germanic tribes
in England, the process of borrowing continued. After around one and a half century,
with the arrival of Roman missionaries, a whole new range of vocabulary was introduced
as Christianity was reintroduced in England. Thus, the borrowing occurred on many
levels before the end of the Old English period. This included:
 Continental Borrowing
 Latin through Celtic Transmission
 Effects of Christianity on English Civilization

44
 Native Words for New Concepts
 Foreign Influence

Let us now discuss in detail the above mentioned levels of Latin borrowing by Old
English.

4.2.1 Continental Borrowing by OE

Several hundred Latin words found their way in the various Germanic dialects at an early
date. This shows the extensive contact between the two peoples. This contact became the
means of carrying words from one language to the other. Further, the transference of
Latin words between different tribes was made through intercommunication between the
tribes that existed in the region. As a result, sixty words from Latin entered Old English.
This continental borrowing can be seen in domains such as agriculture and war as those
were the main occupations of the Germanic people. This is reflected in the following
words:
 camp (battle)
 segn (banner)
 pīl (pointed stick, javelin)
 weall (wall)
 pytt (pit, road, street)
 mīl (mile)
 miltestre (courtesan)

In the Old English period the people traded amber, furs and probably certain raw
materials for the products of Roman handicrafts articles of utility, luxury and adornment.
Therefore, words related to trade were numerous in number. Given below are a few:
 cēap (bargain)
 mangian (to trade)
 pund (pound)
 seam (loan)
 mynet (coin)
 mynetere (money-changer)

4.2.2 Latin Borrowing through Celtic Transmission

Latin as a spoken language did not survive till the end of the Roman rule in Britain. And
due to this reason, not much of Latin words were retained in the English vocabulary after
the Old English. Most of the Latin words came in contact with English through Celtic.
Since the Celts had adopted considerable vocabulary from Latin, it then found its way
into English. However, the words borrowed from Latin through the Celtic language were
very few in number. Among the few Latin words that the Anglo Saxons seemed likely to
have acquired is ceaster. This word which represents the Latin castra (camp) is a
common designation in Old English for a town or enclosed community.

45
4.2.3 Effects of Christianity on English Civilization
Latin, the language of the services and of religious learning was once more heard in
England with efforts to activate the church. Alongside churches, schools were established
and produced some of the greatest teachers. These teachers then trained men who went
out to set up other schools at other centers. This movement began around 669. A number
of works were written on grammar and prosody, science and chronology, numerous
commentaries on religious texts etc. One such work is the Ecclesiastical History of the
English People (731). With the publication of the Ecclesiastical History of the English
People, England gained intellectual leadership of Europe, and English literature and the
arts received a new energy. This influence is seen on the Old English vocabulary.

4.2.4 The Earlier Influence of Christianity on the OE Vocabulary

It becomes obvious that most of the words introduced by the new religion would have to
do with that religion. Words are usually adopted by languages to fill certain gaps. The
adopted words express ideas that are new or because they are so intimately associated
with an object or a concept that acceptance of the thing involves acceptance of the word
too. Words such as church and bishop were borrowed earlier. The words came into Old
English pertaining to Church, its services, its physical fabric and its ministers and
remained in it in an altered form in Modern English also. These are given in the table
below:

abbot alms altar angel anthem

Arian ark candle canon chalice
cleric cowl deacon disciple epistle
hymn litany manna martyr mass
minster noon nun offer organ
palm pall pope priest provost
psalm psalter relic rule shrift
shrine shrive stole temple tunic

Table 1: Old English Words Pertaining to Church Borrowed from Latin

The Church also exercised a great influence on the domestic life of the people. This is
seen in the adoption of many words such as the names of articles of clothing and
household use. These include:

cap sock silk

purple chest mat
sack

Table 2: Old English Words Pertaining to Daily Life Borrowed from Latin

46
Words pertaining to food include:

beet Caul (cabbage) Lent (lentil)

mil (millet) pear radish
doe Oster (oyster) fennel
lily mallow Sæþrige (savory)

Table 3: Old English Words Pertaining to Food Borrowed from Latin

4.2.5 Native Words for New Concepts in OE

English did not always adopt a foreign word to express a new concept. Often existing
words were used to refer to new things, for example the Anglo Saxons didn't borrow the
Latin word for God, that is, Deus because the word God was enough to express the
concept. Similarly, the English words heaven and hell did not exist for the Anglo-Saxons.
Other words are Patriarch taken from hēahfœder (high father), prophet by wītega (wise
one), martyr often by the native word þrōwere (one who suffers pain), and saint by hālga
(holy one). Titles such as pope, bishop, and priest, or monk and abbot represented
individuals for which the English had no equivalent and therefore, borrowed the Latin
terms.

4.2.6 Christianizing of Britain and OE Borrowing

The extent of a foreign influence is mostly observed through the bulk of the words
borrowed. With the Christianizing of Britain, around 450 words were borrowed from
Latin before the end of Old English period. However, this does not include derivatives
which are many. From this 100 were in such a form that they couldn’t be termed as part
of the English vocabulary. From the rest of the 350, some did not remain in general use,
but entered the vocabulary much later. A huge chunk, however, was fully accepted and
used widely. Many Latin words found their way into the English vocabulary such as the
noun plant that later turned into a verb by the addition of the infinitive ending -ian
(plantain) confirming that it has been fully assimilated. Other examples include:
 gemartyrian (to martyr)
 sealmian (to play on the harp)
 culpian (to humiliate oneself)
 fersian (to versify)
 glēsan (to gloss)
 crispian (to curl)

The process of assimilation isn't complete without the use of native formative suffixes
such as -dōm, -hād, -ung to make a concrete noun into an abstract (martyrdōm,
martyrhād, martyrung). The Latin influence was extensive and is the start of the English
trait of incorporating foreign elements into its vocabulary.

47
4.3 The Scandinavian Influence on Old English
English language underwent a third foreign influence at the end of the Old English period.
English came in contact with the Scandinavian language. The Germanic inhabitants of the
Scandinavian Peninsula and Denmark had at one time been neighbors of the Anglo-Saxons
and closely related to them in language and blood. In the eighth century, the Scandinavians
usually referred to as the Vikings, conquered England and resultantly, the period between the
eighth and eleventh century was termed as the Viking age. The Vikings attacked, conquered
and settled in England and thus influenced the Old English language.

4.3.1 Test for Borrowed Words

A great similarity between Old English and the Scandinavian language is seen. It is
difficult to decide if a given word in modern English is a native or a borrowed word. Both
languages have many identical words. Although there exists a criterion for finding out if
a word is borrowed or not.

One way of finding out if the word has a Scandinavian origin, is by looking at its sound
(especially the sound sk). In Old English this changed to sh written as sc except in the
combination scr whereas, in the Scandinavian countries it retained its hard sk sound. As a
result, native words like ship, shall, fish have sh in Modern English, but words borrowed
from Scandinavian are pronounced with sk in the Scandinavian language, for example:
 Skin
 Whisk
 Sky
 Skill
 Scrape
 Scrub
 Bask

The OE word scyrte has become shirt, while the corresponding old Norse form skirt
gives us skirt. Similarly, the presence of k and g in words such as get, give, egg and killed
show a Scandinavian origin.

4.3.2 Scandinavian Place Names in OE

The main evidence of the Scandinavian settlement in England is the large number of
places that have Scandinavian names. More than 600 places with names ending with -by
can be seen in Old English. The word by means farm or town for example:
 Grimsby
 Derby
 Rugby

Some 300 names have the Scandinavian word thorp (village) in it. Such as:
 Althorp
 Bishopsthorpe

48
 Gawthorpe
 Linthorpe

A high percentage of Scandinavian personal names are also in use. Names ending in -son
show Scandinavian custom. For instances:
 Stevenson
 Johnson

4.3.3 The Earliest Borrowing in OE

There are a number of Scandinavian words that appear in Old English. Although they are
small in number, but most are associated with sea roving and predatory people. This
includes words like:
 barda (beaked ship)
 cnearr (small warship)
 scegþ (vessel)
 liþ (fleet)
 scegþmann (pirate)
 dreng (warrior)
 hā (oarlock)
 hā-sǣtɑ (rower in a warship)
 bātswegen (boatman)

4.3.4 Simple Character of Scandinavian Loanwords

After the Danish people settled peacefully in Britain, Scandinavian words began to enter
into the English language. A large number of Scandinavian words that entered the
English language revolved around everyday life issues. Among the loans that entered the
English language a few are given below:

axle-tree band bank birth boon booth brink bull calf

crook dirt down egg fellow freckle gait gap girth guess
hap kill kid leg link loan mire reef race reindeer rift root
scab scale score scrap Feet sister skin skirt sky slaughter
sneer stack steak swain drift tidings trust want window

Table 4: Old English Words Pertaining to Daily Life Borrowed from Scandinavian

The long list of Scandinavian words show that the borrowing of nouns is varied and
shows that the words are used in everyday language. A large number of verbs also found
way into the English language. Given below is the list of verbs.

bait bask batten call cast clip cow crave crawl die flit
gape gasp get give glitter kindle lift nag raise rid rive
scare scowl screech snub sprint take thrive thrust

Table 5: Old English Nouns Borrowed from Scandinavian

49
Moreover, the adjectives of Scandinavian origin entering OE are simple in character. A
few examples of these adjectives are:
awkward flat ill loose low
meek muggy odd rotten
rugged scant tattered seemly
sly tight weak

Table 6: Old English Adjectives Borrowed from Scandinavian

4.3.5 Scandinavian Form Words in OE

Apart from nouns, verbs and adjectives, there were other words that entered English and
those were prepositions and verbs and even a part of the verb to be. Normally such words
are not transferred from one language to another but due to their simple character
pronouns such as they, their and them were adopted from Scandinavian by the English
speakers. The OE had used hīe, hiera, him instead and in a late OE text, hanum and him
have been used. Moreover, the words both and same have been taken from the
Scandinavian language. Some more of the very simple and familiar vocabulary includes:
 till (a preposition used in the sense of to)
 fro (used formerly as the equivalent of from, as in to and fro)
 though (a conjunction and the equivalent of OE þēah)
 aloft, athwart, aye (ever), seemly (adverbs)
 are (the present plural of to be)

The Scandinavian words borrowed by the English language shows how much the
language of the invaders impacted English. However, the extent of the influence shows
that English would not be the English we know had it not been influenced in this manner.

4.3.6 Scandinavian Influence on OE Literature

The Scandinavian language not only influenced the English speech, but also had
influence outside of it. The older literature is full of words that are not now in ordinary
use. The OE ballads are an example of this influence. For instance, the ballad, Geste of
Robin Hood begins with the following lines:

“Lythe and listin, gentilmen”

……………………………..
Say me no we, wight yonge man,
What is nowe thy name?”
Here, lythe is an Old Norse synonym for listen and the word wight is from the Old Norse
vigt meaning strong. In the verse given below, the Virgin Mary is addressed where may is
a Scandinavian word meaning maid.

“Ah, deere Lady! Sayd Tobin Hoode

Thou art both mother and may!” (Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne)
50
The preceding discussion indicates that Old English was influenced by mixing up of three
other languages of the Celts, the Romans, and the Scandinavians. Hundreds of years of
influence of these languages upon the English language resulted in the Old English.

4.4 Summary Points

 The basis of the Old English grammar was formed in the seven hundred years of
influence of Celtic, Latin and Scandinavian languages upon it.
 The conquest of the Celtic population of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons resulted in
the mixing of the languages of the people.
 The OE vocabulary is full of words pertaining to Celtic place-names and some
other loanwords
 Latin was the language of a great civilization and held a high position and so it had
a huge influence upon the English language.
 Several hundred Latin words found their way in OE at an early date
 A huge number of Latin vocabulary entered the English language with the
reactivation of the church.
 Around 450 words were borrowed from Latin before the end of Old English period.
 Old English often used existing words to refer to new things.
 Scandinavian language changed the English language in terms of morphology and
syntax in ways that other languages have not.
 The most notable evidences of the Scandinavian settlement in England is the large
number of places that bear Scandinavian names.

4.5 Self-Assessment Questions

1. How was the Scandinavian influence on Old English different from Latin
influence? Explain with reasons.
2. What role does Christianity play in changing Old English? What are different
words introduced during this time in OE?
3. How did Latin words enter Old English? Discuss with reference to its different
periods.
4. What were different kinds of additions made in Old English? Discuss different
categories with the help of examples.
5. Why is Celtic influence important in Old English period? Elaborate.

51
Suggested Readings
Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. Routledge,
2002.

Hogg, Richard., and David Denison, (eds). A History of the English Language.
Cambridge, 2008

Joseph and Elizabeth M. Wright, An Elementary Middle English Grammar. Milford,

Oxford University Press, 1923.

52
UNIT-5

SUPPRESSION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

AFTER THE NORMAN CONQUEST

Written By: Ms. Saira Imran & Dr. Lubna Umar

Reviewed By: Dr. Muhammad Kamal Khan

53
CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 55

Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 55

5.1 Historical Events Influencing the English Language ........................................... 56

5.2 English Language and the Norman Conquest ...................................................... 57

5.3 Establishment of a Central Language .................................................................. 58

5.4 Effects of Norman Settlement on Language ........................................................ 58

5.5 The Manipulation of Vernacular in Domesday Book .......................................... 59

5.6 Difficulty in Comprehending New Terms ........................................................... 60

5.7 Mixing of French and English Languages ........................................................... 60

5.8 Direct Borrowing ................................................................................................. 60

5.9 Indirect Borrowing and Grammatical Mergers .................................................... 61

5.10 Etymological Doublets ........................................................................................ 61

5.11 Derivational Morphology..................................................................................... 62

5.12 Influence of French on English Syntax ................................................................ 62

5.13 French Influence of Use of English Language..................................................... 63

5.14 Tri-Lingualism in Medieval England................................................................... 64

5.15 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 64

5.16 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 65

Figure 1: Norman Conquest of England

5.1.1 Normans and their Settlement in Normandy

Normans were originally Vikings from Scandinavia. In the ninth and the tenth centuries,
they settled in the northern region of France known as Normandy. In 911 AD, the French
ruler allowed them to settle in Normandy as part of a treaty, in which the Norsemen were
expected to provide protection along the coast, in exchange of land. The Viking chief
accepted the French king as his overlord and became the first duke of the Normans. From
the map given below you can see the geographical position of Normandy and the extent
of the Norman Empire.

56
Figure 2: Norman England

5.1.2 Assimilation of Normans in the Indigenous French Culture

The Normans quickly adopted the French customs and culture. Besides, they also added a
fresh vigor into what they borrowed. The Normans married French women and became
Frenchmen culturally and linguistically. They gave up their own language and learned
French. At the time of the Norman conquest in 1066, the civilization of Normandy was
mostly French and the Normans were the most progressive people of Europe. The
relations between England and Normandy had been fairly close long before the C and
remained so for a while even after the conquest.

5.2 English Language and the Norman Conquest

The Norman conquest is normally classified as a significant moment in the development
of the English language. The conquest of England and the effects it had on the English
society are major reason behind the evolution of English as a language. In order to
understand the status of the English language after the conquest, it is important that the
historical background before the conquest also be known.

57
5.3 Establishment of a Central Language
The British spoke various dialects that reflected their different backgrounds. This
indicated that there was probably no tradition of a unified standard language before the
late tenth or early eleventh century. But some traces of the presence of a central language
were found during the reign of King AEthelred around 1000 AD. During this time
writings in both Latin and Old English (OE) surfaced. These writings included the
English law codes in the English language. Scholars were also ordered by the king to
record works of contemporary and classic poetry such as Beowulf in Old English (OE).
The writing of law codes served as the first recordings in the history of the English
language and was the first step towards centralization of language. Given below is an OE
written account of Beowulf.

Figure 3: OE Account of Beowulf

5.4 Effects of Norman Settlement on Language

The French entered this linguistic backdrop in 1066 as a result of the invasion of England
by William, the duke of Normandy. William was a cousin of King Edward of England
and had a claim to the English throne. In January 1066, William immediately declared

58
himself the heir to the English throne after the death of king Edward. After becoming
king, William started legitimizing his kingship through a widespread campaign.

5.5 The Manipulation of Vernacular in Domesday Book

In his widespread campaign to legitimize himself, William commissioned a countrywide
census in 1086 in the form of Doomsday Book. The Doomsday Book was written by
Williams Calais, a French lawyer.

Figure 4: The Doomsday Book

It had a detailed account of how the English population served to dominate the political
and legal aspects of the conquest. Calais used vocabulary to establish William’s
ownership of land. The land awarded to noblemen by Harold (another conqueror) was
retracted by William and in order to bestow the land to his own subjects. The vernacular
was manipulated in such a way that the words used carried different meanings than their
traditional use.

The Domesday Book was written in Norman Latin which made it easier to manipulate.
For instance, the term antecessor, a word commonly used in Old English law to indicate
someone who held any ecclesiastical office before the current clergy. It was widely used
in law codes, but in the Domesday Book it was used to denote law ownership. The term
antecessor was used for a person who owned land at the time of King Edward's death.

59
This automatically made William the rightful heir of the English throne, thus legitimizing
his power to give land to anyone he pleased. Since no translation of the Domesday Book
ever came out, an explanation was never given of the terms used in it as most of the
words were alien to England before 1066. From the figure given above, you can see that
the Doomsday Book is completely unintelligible for the Modern English readers.

5.6 Difficulty in Comprehending New Terms

England turned into a trilingual society after King William officially made Anglo-French and
Latin the languages of the court. Many law codes written in the days of William contained
French loanwords due to which the Englishman could not understand many of these law
codes. Given below is an example of the French word used in writing law codes:

 Portirefan (French) meaning mayor

The mere concept of a mayor was taken from French as it never existed in the
English language. So, not only words, but legal positions were also borrowed.
Although the law codes were written in Old English, lots of French phrases were
added by writers to change the meanings altogether. For instance, the following
Norman phrase was added to explain trial-by-combat:
 him lahlicne spalan
The following phrase was used to release Normans from repeating English oaths:
 mid unforedan aoe

5.7 Mixing of French and English Languages

The Domesday Book and law codes allowed mixing French into English legal practice
and general speech. However, the French class had more social impact on speech and less
on literary works. A French-speaking aristocracy was formed by the king who brought
French nobles to England and gave them land. These nobles influenced the vocabulary to
some extent as literacy rates were much lower in England at that time. Since the official
language of the state was French, loanwords from French started infiltrating into the
English vocabulary after the conquest. For example, the French word trône entered
English from which the English word throne is derived. Similarly, the Latin word saint
was brought to English from French. Approximately 200 years post conquest, French
gained popularity and was established in England. Having a trickle-down effect on
speech, it was widely used by the common people.

5.8 Direct Borrowing

Soon after the Norman conquest, the English vocabulary derived from French was
approximately nine percent. This vocabulary increased to around twenty one percent.
This vocabulary borrowed by English was termed as exotic as it was used in special
circles related to matters of law, the church, and the running of country. Also, the

60
vocabulary of government and administration, fashion, food, ways of social life, art,
learning and medicine underwent changes that can be seen in the table below:

1 Government and administration counseil, estat, government

2 Feudal system duke, madam, maner, sir
3 Ecclesiastical words clergie, frere, religioun, preyere
4 Law court/cort, crime, juge, justice
5 Army and arms army, maille, regiment, sege
6 Military ranks general, sergeaunt
7 Architecture paleis, piler, temple
8 Arts art, culour, ornament
9 Education lessoun, pupille
10 Fashion and social life chaire, joye, feste, leyser(e)
11 Occupations bocher, peintre, tailloler
12 Trade feire, market, moneye

Table 1: English Vocabulary Borrowed from French

5.8.1 Synonymic Pairs

With the merging of vocabulary of two languages, synonymic pairs were formed. For
example, in the words used for animals given below.
 Animal names of Germanic origin: calf, cow, ox, sheep, swine, etc.
 Norman words for animal products: bacon, beef, mutton, pork, veal, etc.

5.9 Indirect Borrowing and Grammatical Mergers

Some words entering the English vocabulary indirectly came from languages that influenced
the Norman French such as Proto-Germanic, Germanic and Romance languages. For
instance, the noun baron, originated from the word bar that belonged to Old High German
(meaning: man, husband, porter), in Low Latin it was written as baro (meaning: vassal,
servant), changed into barun after being borrowed by Old English and finally became baron.

5.10 Etymological Doublets

Etymology is the study of origin of words and the change in their meanings over the
course of time. The Norman French influenced the English phonology due to which new
words were formed. The words having same origin were used as synonyms or doublets.
The table given below shows how the two words are derived from the same root and
found a place in English as etymological doublets.

Latin Central French Norman French Middle English

Canalis Chanel Canal Channel, Canal

Table 2: Derivation of Etymological Doublets

61
Some other such pairs are:
 catch vs chase
 warrant vs guarantee
 convey vs convoy

The phonetic difference is explained by the variation of sounds. The first set of sounds
given below represents the Anglo-Norman form and the second represents the Central
French one:
 /k/ vs / tʃ /
 /w/ vs /g/
 /e, ei/ vs /oi/

5.11 Derivational Morphology

Derivational morphology refers to the process of creating new word forms by either
changing syntactic category (noun, verb, preposition etc.) or by adding new meaning to
an existing morpheme (the smallest grammatical unit that cannot be further divided). The
consistent presence of French sounds and words in routine conversations led to the
acceptance of alien morphemes and expressions in the English language. With the
popularity of French, the French words that were included in speech also increased
considerably. New words were formed by the combination of French and English words.
This phenomenon is termed as derivational morphology brought about a change in
English vocabulary and syntax. After 1250, the number of French loanwords increased to
include words such as:
 Coronation
 Princess
 Royal
 Inspiration
 University
 Representatives

5.12 Influence of French on English Syntax

Although French syntax shaped English sentence structure, but only of official titles.
These were influenced by Old French patterns where adjective always followed the noun
for example, Prince Royal was seen as a deviation of Standard English style of noun
following adjective. This change was due to the multilingual traditions followed by
writers in those days. Impact of French on English word order is minimal, however, the
construction of new words with French roots or affixes was common. For instance, the
Old English word hinder in combination with the French suffix –ance resulted in the
word hindrance. Given below are a few such combinations:

 English word + French suffix: hinder + ance =hindrance

 French word + French suffix: cover + age = coverage

62
 Latin verb + French suffix: involve + ment = involvement
 Latin word (French loanword) + English suffix: covet + ed = coveted

Each of these morpheme combinations show the French influence upon the English
vocabulary after the Norman conquest. English has undergone a long process of changes
by being subjected to influences from foreigners such as Romans, Angles, Saxons, and
finally Normans, but the influence exerted by the Normans is distinct and thus, worthy of
mention.

5.12.1The Simplification of Stems

A large number of borrowing caused lack of clarity in the morphological structure of the
English language. This resulted in the simplification of stems as some elements failed to
be considered as separate morphemes. Affixes and roots merged to form unbreakable
structures. For instance, the word lieutenant formed by the combination of the root lieu
and the affix –tenent and the word nightingale from the root night and affix –gale.

5.13 Suppression of English Language

Before the Norman invasion, the English and Old Norse (spoken by Scandinavian
people) speakers could understand each other because both languages have the same fruit
words. While on the other hand, the Norman French was a foreign romance language
which is completely different from English. After setting in England the Normans kept on
using their mother tongue French. The Normans had no interest in learning the culture,
literature and the language of the conquered people. Therefore, French was used for the
ordinary interaction between people and was also adopted for the entire range of written
registers such as official and private correspondence, legal proceedings, commerce and
literature.

5.13.1 Decline in the Social Prestige of English

Initially, only those people who had Norman origins used French for formal and informal
correspondence. But soon through intermarriages and to associate with the ruling class
many Englishmen found it advantageous to learn the new language. As a result, French
became the language of power and prestige. For around 300 years after the conquest,
English stopped being used as the official language of England. The distinction between
French-speakers and English-speakers was not ethnic but largely social. English became
the language of a socially inferior class.

5.13.2 Indifference of the Ruling Class towards English

During the Norman settlement in England, the king and the upper class became
indifferent towards the English language. They took no measures to cultivate English
because most of their activities did not include the use of English. The constant concern
with continental affairs made French much more useful for them instead of English.

63
5.14 Tri-lingualism in Medieval England
England turned into a trilingual society after the Norman conquest. The presence of three
languages, namely, Latin, French and English turned the situation into a complex one.
Latin was the language of religion culture and power all over Europe. Latin was also used
for written or administrative purposes. It was also spoken by a little minority and was
used only in the highest religious circles. French was used in the king's court and English
was thrown out of the prestigious circle but it was not completely wiped out. Although
English was brought to a low status and was reduced to an informal vernacular, but it was
still used to a great extent by the lower classes. The period of trilingual activity developed
much of the modern English synonyms for example English has three words which mean
‘of or relating to a king’:

 Kingly from old English

 Royal from French
 Regal from Latin

The Normans were few in number, but their language had a massive impact upon society
as they were in the position of power. Thousands of French words entered English during
the Norman rule. These words came from every sphere of art, literature, law and
government. Modern English has retained most of these words which are now part of
English with their pronunciation, spelling and structure.

5.15 Summary Points

 The historical events contributing towards shaping up the English language
between 1066 and 1200 were primarily conquests and takeovers.
 The Norman conquest is a significant moment in the development of the English
language.
 The French entered as a result of the invasion of England by William, the duke of
Normandy.
 The British had no tradition of a unified standard language before the late tenth or
early eleventh century.
 Domesday Book was the first documented account using phrases and words of
English with different sense.
 The Englishmen were unable to understand the terms in Domesday Book.
 Thousands of French words poured into English during the Norman rule.
 The Norman invasion also brought tri-lingualism in the British Isles.
 Soon after the Norman conquest, the English vocabulary derived from French that
was approximately nine percent, increased to around twenty one percent.
 During the Norman settlement in England, the attitude of the king toward the
English language was of sheer indifference.

64
5.16 Self-Assessment Questions
1. How was England conquered linguistically after the Norman conquest?
2. How can a language come to show its user’s social class?
3. Explain how the English society became trilingual after the Norman conquest?
4. How was the English language suppressed by the Normans?
5. What impact did the Norman French have on the English grammar?
6. Look at the Doomsday Book page and try to make sense of some words keeping in
mind the language features you have studied.
7. What are etymological doublets? Can you think of any other such doublets that you
have ever come across?
8. What is tri-lingualism? What advantages does it have for the speakers?

65
Suggested Readings
A History of English Language [Book] / auth. Baugh Albert C. and Cable Thomas. -
[s.l.] : Routledge, 2002.

The Origins and Development of the English Language [Book] / auth. Pyles Thomas and
Algeo John . - [s.l.] : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993.

The Penguin Guide to Literature in English [Book] / auth. Carter Ronald. - London :
Longman, 2004.

The Story of English [Book] / auth. Robert Mcrum William Cram & Robert Macneil. The
Story of English. (Faber & Faber, 1986). - London : Faber & Faber, 1986.

66
UNIT-6

THE REVIVAL OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Written By: Ms. Saira Imran & Dr. Lubna Umar

Reviewed By: Dr. Muhammad Kamal Khan

67
CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 69

Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 69

6.1 The Loss of Normandy ........................................................................................ 70

6.2 England for the English Only .............................................................................. 70

6.3 Rise in the Social Status of English Language in the Thirteenth Century ........... 71

6.4 Spread of the English Language in the Thirteenth Century ................................. 71

6.5 Fourteenth Century and the Status of English ..................................................... 72

6.6 Complete Revival of English in the Fifteenth Century ........................................ 73

6.7 Middle English/Medieval Literature .................................................................... 75

6.8 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 77

6.9 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 77

6.2 England for the English Only

The French infiltration of England always faced some form of resistance from the English
population. A nationalistic policy of ‘England for the English’ was put forth which resulted in
the writing of Provisions of Oxford (1258). The Provisions of Oxford was the first government
document, since the Norman conquest, to be published in the Middle English. By the end of the
thirteenth century peace was already restored. The government officials were mostly English
and English language came to be regarded as a proper mark of an Englishman.

Interestingly the attitude of the Englishmen got changed regarding the use of English. It
was felt that they should know and use it in a proper manner. In an encyclopaedic poem
(given below) written around 1300 documented in A Brief History of the Development of
the English Language: Old, Middle & Modern Periods, we can feel this nationalistic
spirit being kindled.
Pis ilk bok es translate
Into Inglis tong to rede
For the love of Inglis lede (people),
Inglis lede of Ingland,
For the comun at(to) understand
Comunlik in ilka sted (each place)
Mast (most) es it wroght for Frankis man,
Quat (what) is for him na Frankis can?
In Ingland the nacion,
En Inglis man þar in comun;
Pe speche þat man wit mast may spede;
Mast þarwit to speke war need.
Seldon was for ani chance
Praised Inglis tong in France;
Give we ilkan (each other) þare language,
Me think we do þam non outrage.
To laud (lay, ignorant0 and Inglis man spell
Pat understands þat I tell…
Table 1: An Excerpt from ‘A Brief History of the Development of the English
Language: Old, Middle & Modern Periods’
70
6.3 Rise in the Social Status of English Language in the
Thirteenth Century
After the Norman conquest, English was given a subsidiary status. It took English
centuries to revive its original prestige and usage in England. The beginning of this
revival could evidently be seen in the thirteenth century, when English made steady
progress to re-establish itself in the upper sections of society. Although, French was still
considered important and was supported by social customs, business and administrative
conventions, but English started coming into general use among the upper classes at the
same time.

The English language was being used by the bishops in their preaching, by monks and
sometimes even in the English court. During this time, many French words entered the
English vocabulary. This transference of words occurred when the habitual French users
tried to express themselves in English. The literature made for polite circles of the society
was being written in English instead of French. By the end of the century some children
of the French nobility used English as their mother tongue and had to be taught French
through manuals.

Given below are versions of the same text of the English language used before and after the
Norman conquest. You can see that the text of 1000 cannot be understood by the modern
reader, but the text of 1384 is understood to a great extent. Let’s try to read them both:

English (1000)
Fæder ure þuþe eart on heofonum
si þin nama gehalgod tobecume þin rice gewurþe þin willa on eorðan swa swa
onheofonum
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice.

English (1384)
Oure fadir þat art in heuenes halwid be þi name;
þi reume or kyngdom come to be. Be þi wille don in herþe as it is dounin heuene.
yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.
And foryeue to us oure dettis þat is oure synnys as we foryeuen to oure dettouris þat is
tomen þat han synned in us.
And lede us not into temptacion but delyuere us from euyl.

6.4 Spread of the English Language in the Thirteenth Century

In the thirteenth century, English not only made steady progress to improve its prestige in
the upper sections of the society, but many social and economic changes in England
hastened its widespread usage. Two major factors involved are as follows:

71
6.4.1 The Black Death
The Black Death was the most devastating epidemic which swept across the whole
Europe from 1347 to 1351. It resulted in the loss of millions of people, particularly the
poor section of the society. This led to a serious shortage of labor. This shortage
increased the economic importance of the labor class and a rise of the English language
which they spoke.

6.4.2 Rise of the Merchant Class

During this time, another English-speaking section of the society rose to prominence.
These were the merchant class and the craftsmen that were neither rural peasant nor
hereditary aristocrats. These social and economic changes greatly benefitted the spread
of English in the thirteenth century.

6.5 Fourteenth Century and the Status of English

The spread of the English language in the fourteenth century can be seen in use by the
upper class. Richard II (1367-1400), the fourteenth-century king of England was very
fluent in English. The English alphabets in use in the fourteenth century can be seen in
the figure below. The use of English continued from this time onwards. In fact, the orders
of King Richard’s overthrow were announced in English and even the speeches that the
new king delivered after claiming the throne, were in English. Thus, it served to be the
official language.

Figure 1: Fourteenth Century English Alphabets

6.5.1 Use of English in Law Courts

In the previous centuries, all the legal proceedings were always made in French. But in
1356, the courts of London and Middlesex issued an order to use English for the legal
proceedings. In 1362, the parliament was opened with a speech in English for the very
72
first time and bill was passed. According to this bill, all legal works would be conducted
in English as French was much unknown in the legal matters. The bill was not fully
observed at once, but it contributed to the official recognition of English in law courts.

6.5.2 Use of English in Schools

Until the fourteenth century, the medium of instruction in English schools was mostly
French. However, after the Black Death, two Oxford teachers, John Cornwall and
Pencrich, introduced English as a medium of instruction in their schools. This was done
because of the lack of competent teachers in French. Making English the medium of
teaching proved to be a great innovation in the English education 1385, the use of English
in schools became regular.

6.6 Complete Revival of English in the Fifteenth Century

The last milestone in the steady rise of the English language was achieved by its formal
adoption for all official and non-official written correspondence. Latin had always been
used for the written records in the prior centuries. Later on, French broke this monopoly.
But In the fifteenth century the English succeeded in replacing both Latin and French.
The manner in which English replaced the previous languages is given below:

6.6.1 The Chancery English (1413-1422)

After the Norman conquest, King Henry was the first king who used English for his
written instructions. Henry used the vernacular language by devising a special version of
the English language called the ‘Chancery English’ or ‘Chancery standard’. He made
great effort to promote the use of Chancery English in writing. Especially by the clerks of
Chancery in London who prepared the king’s documents. The image below shows a
Chancery document.

Figure 2: Chancery English Writing Style

Before the 1430’s, most of the documents were in French or Latin. Henry’s victories over
the French gave the English a sense of pride in being English. By the time his reign came
to an end, the English language began to be generally adopted in writing and became the

73
basis of the written language that was later developed for the press at Westminster in the
late fifteenth century. A few examples of the words used in the Chancery English are:
 Hopeth (hopes)
 Gaf (gave)
 Theyre (their)

6.6.2 Use of English in Private and Semi-Official Correspondence

In 1350, French was used as a language of both private and semi-official correspondence.
The earliest letters written in English appeared at the end of the fourteenth century after
1450. By then English started becoming the primary medium of correspondence. The
situation was similar with the writing of wills. The writing of wills in English before
1400 was very rare. In 1397, the earl of Kent wrote his will in English. Later the wills of
Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI were all written in English. Given below is a scanned
document of the second Earl of Kent (Thomas Holland) written in the English language.

Figure 3: English Document from the Fifteenth Century

6.6.3 Records of Towns and Trade

For the records of towns and trade, English was adopted. Around 1430, the ordinances
and books of customs of some towns were also translated into English. After 1450,
English became a part of general use in their transactions. Similarly, for trade, English
was used along with French in their ordinances.

6.6.4 The Records of Parliament

Until 1423, French was used for the petitions on which laws were based. These petitions
were translated in French even if they had been originally presented in English. The laws
were generally in Latin until about 1300, then in French until the reign of Henry VII. It
was in 1485 that both English and French languages were used until the French language
entirely disappeared in 1489 in law documents.

74
6.7 Middle English/Medieval Literature
The revival of English language in the Middle English period is reflected in the English
literature produced during this time. This included the:

 Period of Religious Record

 Oral English Literature
 The Romances
 Translations and Adaptations
 Period of Great Individual Writers
 Imitative/Transition Period

6.7.1 Period of Religious Record (1150 – 1250)

The period from 1150 to 1250 is known as the period of religious record. The literature
produced in this period was almost exclusively religious in nature, for example
interpretations of Gospel passages and stories of Saints’ lives could be found. Some non-
religious works were also written e.g. The Owl and the Nightingale (An hule and one
niȝtingale), written around the year 1195, is an example of a popular debate genre. Given
below is an image from The Owl and the Nightingale:

Figure 4: Thirteenth Century Text from The Owl and the Nightingale

6.7.2 Oral English Literature

A body of popular oral literature, in addition to written literature, also circulated orally
among the masses. Examples of this are the English popular ballads that were recited by
the people. But such literature could not be preserved and left only slight traces on the
English language.

75
6.7.3 The Romances
After the loss of Normandy, the English language spread in the next hundred years. This
is seen in the English literature produced during that time. Polite literature that had been
written only in French now appeared in English. The most popular type of literature was
the romance. Only one English romance existed before 1250. But from this time onwards
translations and adaptations from the French were done, In the course of the fourteenth
century their number increased considerably.

6.7.4 Translations and Adaptations

A large number of books were translated and adapted from French into the English
language in the fourteenth century. One of the best translations into English were done by
Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century. Chaucer found an English poetic tradition
based on translations and adaptations of literary works in Latin and French. Both Latin
and French were more established than English at that time. The best religious translation
was the Wycliff ‘s Bible (1382-84), named after John Wycliff, an English scholar who
translated the Bible in English.

6.7.5 Period of Great Individual Writers (1350 – 1400)

The English language reached a high point during the Middle Ages. This high time was
also referred to as the ‘period of great individual writers’. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)
was the chief poet during this time. He wrote minor poems and composed long narrative
poems for example Troilus and Criseyde. His most famous work is the Canterbury Tales.
Other prominent writers include William Langland, John Wycliff and others who made
the fourteenth century a very fruitful period in Middle English literature. Given below is
an excerpt from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer:

A Knight a worthy man there was, that since the time

when first he rode out, loved chivalry, truth and honour, courtesy
and liberality. Full valiant he was in battle for his lord, and
eke had ridden, no man farther, in Christendom and heathenesse;
and ever was honoured for his valour. He was at Alexandria
when it was won. Full many a time in Prussia he had sat first
at board above all the nations. In Lithuania he had warred and
in Russia, no Christian of his degree so oft. In Granada eke
he had been at the siege of Algezir and ridden into Belmarye.

Table 2: An Excerpt from The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

6.7.6 Imitative/Transition Period

The fifteenth century came to be known as the imitative period because most of the
poetry written in this time was an imitation of Chaucer’s poems. The fifteenth century is
also called the transition period because most of it is the time between the age of Chaucer
and Shakespeare. Lydgate, Skelton, Hoccleve and Hawes were the prominent writers of
this time. Malory and Caxton produced famous works of prose. The tradition of English

76
language as a literary medium started during medieval times, which was perfected in later
age. English literature produced during the Middle English period sheds light on the
status of the English language.

6.8 Summary Points

 French might have remained permanently in use if the English had permanently
retained control over the two-thirds of France.
 The revival of English language mainly owes to the fall of Normandy.
 After the loss of Normandy, the ties that had bound the Anglo-French nobility
began to dissolve and it raised the question of whether the nobility owed their
allegiance to England or to France.
 It took English centuries to revive its original prestige and usage in England that it
enjoyed before the Norman conquest.
 The spread of the English language in the fourteenth century can be seen in the use
of English language by the upper class, in courts and education.
 The last milestone in the steady rise of the English language was achieved by its
formal adoption for all official and non-official written correspondence in the
fifteenth century.
 The revival of English language in the Middle English period is reflected in the
literature produced during this time. This includes:
 religious texts
 circulation of oral literature
 written literature
 writing of romances
 translations from French to English
 writings by great individual writers

6.9 Self-Assessment Questions

1. How did the loss of Normandy have a far-reaching impact on the English
language?
2. What factors contributed to the revival of English language in the Middle English
period?
3. What significant developments were seen in the growth of the English language in
the fourteenth century?
4. Explain what is meant by the imitative period in the development of the English
language?
5. Carefully read the excerpt given in this unit from the Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer and try to re-write it in simple modern English.

77
Suggested Readings
A History of English Language [Book] / auth. Baugh Albert C. and Cable Thomas. -
[s.l.] : Routledge, 2002.

The Loss of Normandy, 1189–1204 [Book] / auth. Powicke Frederick Maurice. -

Manchester : [s.n.], 1913.

The Penguin Guide to Literature in English [Book] / auth. Carter Ronald. - [s.l.] :
Longman, 2004.

78
UNIT-7

MIDDLE ENGLISH

Written By: Dr. Lubna Umar

Reviewed By: Dr. Malik Ajmal Gulzar

79
CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 81

Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 81

7.1 Middle English and the Loss of Inflectional Endings .......................................... 82

7.2 The Middle English Noun.................................................................................... 83

7.3 The Middle English Pronoun ............................................................................... 84

7.4 The Middle English Adjectives ........................................................................... 84

7.5 The Middle English Verb..................................................................................... 85

7.6 The Order of Words in Middle English ............................................................... 86

7.7 Phonetic Changes in Middle English ................................................................... 87

7.8 French Influence on the Middle English Vocabulary .......................................... 88

7.9 The Middle English Dialects ............................................................................... 89

7.10 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 90

7.11 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 90

7.1.1 Dropping m’s and n’s

The first change in the loss of inflectional endings was the change of final -m to -n in
every occurrence. This can be seen in the examples given below where the original noun
and adjective end with an -m, changes to end with an -n. Finally, the -n was also dropped.
You can see that mūðum became mūðun and finally mūðu_.

Mūðum (of the mouth) mūðun mūðu

Gōdum (God) gōdun gōdu

Table 1: Droping m's and n's in Middle English

Moreover, the vowels a, o, u, e found in inflectional endings were later on changed to an

intermediate vowel normally written as -e. The use of -e in endings resulted in change in
distinct endings such as -a, -u, -e, -an and -um to take the uniform ending -e as given in
the table below.

OE Noun Inflections Early Late ME

ME
Ø ø ø
-u -e
-a
-e
-an -en -en
-um
-as -es -es
-es

Table 2: Loss of Noun Inflections in Middle English

These above mentioned changes in inflectional endings have been discovered in texts
found in Old English from around the tenth century. In the written texts, however, the
loss of unstressed vowels – also known as leveling – is not very clear due to the process

82
of retention of traditional spellings by scribes and writers. Therefore, in some cases the
final -n is still retained, especially in the plural form, for example in oxen.

7.2 The Middle English Noun

In case of nouns in the ME, when the end changed, the root word remained the same.
Both speaker and hearer concentrated on the root. For example, the word meaning son
was -sunu in Old English (OE) and -sunr in Scandinavian. The root sun was understood
easily by speakers of both languages. Both -u and -r were hindrances in this regard that
were shed off.

7.2.1 Noun Declensions

Noun declension is the process in which noun changes form to indicate number,
grammatical case or gender. It manifests differently in every language. But the function it
has is similar in all languages. In most languages declension indicating number means
showing if something is singular or plural. For example, the singular form of the noun
dog is different from the plural form dogs. English in the modern form only retains noun
declensions indicating number, however the OE and ME had used different noun forms
for gender, case as well as number.

Before moving on, let’s take a quick recap of the explanation of the case that we already
discussed in unit 3. OE like Latin has genitive, dative, nominative and accusative cases,
and any word order may yield the same meaning. These cases can be explained as:
 The nominative case is used for the subject of the sentence where the subject is the
person who performs the action.
 The accusative case is used for direct objects where the object is the person or thing
receiving the action.
 The dative case is used for indirect objects where the indirect object is the person
or thing that gets the direct object such as ‘the cat’ in ‘the boy threw the ball to the
cat’.
 The genitive case is used to show possession. In English possession is shown
by -‘s.

Old English expressed number and case simultaneously while in ME -es expresses
numbers alone and not connected with any notion of case. The number of cases in noun
was reduced from 4 to 2 in ME. The genitive case was not used in ME as an object, it
only functioned as an attribute, for example the use of -s in shires:

And specially, from every shires ende,

Of Englaland to Caunterbury they wende. (Chaucer)

A change in the strong masculine declension was seen. As already discussed above, in
most languages declension for number is just indicating if a word is singular or plural.
However, in some languages, nouns are assigned genders and declension changes word

83
forms to agree with the gender. In the strong masculine declension of the London English
dialect (see Chancery English in unit 6), the forms such as mūð, mūðes, mūðe, mūð in the
singular and mūðas, mūða and mūðum, mūðas are being reduced in the plural form in
mūð, mūðes, and mūðe.

In such words the -e was mapped on to the nominative and accusative singular as a result
of which forms such as mūðe appeared. Here the only difference is the deletion of the -s
in the possessive singular and of the nominative and accusative plural. Because these two
cases of the plural were used most frequently, -s came to be considered the sign of the
plural and was extended to all plural forms.

7.3 The Middle English Pronoun

In ME the personal pronoun was greatly simplified. The OE feminine pronoun of the
third person singular heo (modern English he) was replaced by ME sho or she. The
pronoun heo in OE was changed into ME hir. The third person plural they came out of
OE hie. Also, in case of personal pronouns, the genitive case was changed by a
possessive. In ME in genitive case the function of the object was lost, however, it only
retained its attributive function. Therefore, they were altogether removed from the
category of the personal pronoun. It is seen that the ME my, mine, thy, thyne, his and her
no longer agree with the noun they stem from.

Some other changes in terms of personal pronouns are:

Old English Middle

English
Hwa who
whom
Hwæt what

Table 3: Changes in Personal Pronouns in Middle English

7.4 The Middle English Adjectives

As we have already discussed in the previous section of this unit, many sounds of words
changed in the ME. And due to the sound changes, adjective also experienced drastic
simplifications. The endings in ME adjectives reduced, gender was lost as nouns were not
gendered anymore. The only endings that remained were the plural form having an -e and
some weak (preceded by an article) declensions -e shown in the following:
 young knihit/ the younge kniht
 younge knihtes/ the younge knihtes

84
However, due to leveling of vowels some of the adjectives had an -e ending so that
adjectives such as -grene were unchangeable. The suffixes of the comparative degree
were also reduced to -er and -est such as:
 glad – gladder – gladdes
 greet – gretter – grettest

In case of adjective, change in vowel sounds were preserved from OE such as in:
 old – elder – eldest
 long – lenger longest
 strong – strenger - strengest

Some preserved previous superlative degrees where the degree of comparison can be seen
as under:
 good – better – best
 evil – werse – werst
 muchel – more – most/mest

Some adjectives, mostly of foreign origin, were already present but came into active
usage much later e.g. adjectives stemming from the adverb moore/most.

7.5 The Middle English Verb

Apart from reduction of inflectional endings, the main changes in the verb during the
Middle English period were the serious losses suffered by the strong conjugation.
Conjugation is the change that a verb undergoes to express tense, mood, person etc.
(Tenses are verbs that indicate time, for example, the present, past and future tenses.
Person is the finite verb indicating who is accomplishing the action identified by the verb,
for example, I am writing this book. Whereas, the mood of the verb indicates how the
speaker regards the utterance, for example, a question asked by the speaker indicates an
interrogative mood). The loss in conjugation included some of the most important verbs
in the language. But mostly there was a steady growth of weak verbs. There are a small
number of verbs that developed a strong past tense or past participle, similar to that of
strong verbs, but most new verbs formed were conjugated as weak.

7.5.1 Middle English Strong verbs

Strong verbs are also called irregular verbs because they seem to form the past tense from
their own resources. The term strong comes from OE grammar. OE had seven classes of
strong verbs as discussed in previous units. In the ME period however, the number of
classes remained the same, but they underwent some changes. Most of the forms of the
verbs belonging to different classes became very much alike. Thus, the endings of the
past indefinite plural and of the past participle forms which were different in OE became
alike such as -n (-en) in ME.

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Old English Middle English
writan wrãt writon writen wrīten wrõt writen writen
drincan dranc druncon druncen drinken drank drõnken dronken

Table 4: Changes in Middle English Strong Verbs

Moreover, the verbs belonging to the fourth and to fifth classes were so similar that they
could pass from one class into another. Many of the verbs of the fifth class in OE moved
to the fourth class, changing the letter -e in the past participle form into -o which can be
seen in the change from spëken to spoken.

7.5.2 Middle English Weak Verbs

In ME only three classes of weak verbs remained, but they underwent many changes. For
instance, the verbs of the first class changed the suffix of the infinitive -ian > an > en. The verbs
of the second class changed the suffix of the past indefinite -ode > ede > od > ed such as:
 OE macian > macode > macod;
 ME maken > makede > maked.

Verb forms of the first and the second classes became identical and allowed the second
class of verbs to merge into the first class. The main feature of the third class of verbs in
OE was the doubling of the root consonants in the infinitive. In ME the verbs of the third
class lost this feature and became very much alike with the first class of verbs such as:
 habban > haven
 libban > liven

In the fourteenth century, in some weak verbs with a stem ending in -l, -n, -f, -v, the past -
d has changed to -t as shown in the examples below:
 OE dælan - dælde - dæled ‘divide’ / ME delen - delte - delt;
 OE læfan - læfde - læfed ‚leave’ / ME lëven - lefte (lafte) - left (laft).

Verbs having stem with -rd, -nd and -ld made past tenses with -rte, -nte and -lte and
second particle with -rt, -nt and -lt. The examples of -nd words are given below:
 OE rendan - rende - rend ‘rend’ ME renden - rente - rent;
 OE sendan - sende - send ‘send’ ME senden - sente - sent.

7.6 The Order of Words in Middle English

The order of words in ME became more fixed in comparison to OE. It is also marked
with the development of analytic features due to which English started its journey from
being a synthetic language to an analytic language. An analytic language is any language
in which conjunctions, prepositions and word order help in the formation of syntactic
relations. In most cases in ME, the order of words was direct. The indirect order was
found only in interrogative sentences. However, in affirmative sentences the inverted
order of words was rather rare, it could be found in separate sentences especially in those

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beginning with an adverb. In some cases, sometimes the auxiliary verb was positioned
before the subject for example, So hadde I spoken with him.

After the loss of inflections, word position in a sentence became important. Provided
below is an example from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprille with his schoures sote
The droughte of Marche hath perced to the rote
And bathed every veyne in swieh licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour……

(When April with its sweet showers

Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every vein in such liquid,
from whose power the flower is engendred….)

In this extract, the subject Aprille and the direct objects, that is, the droughte and every
veyne are provided by their position in the sentence rather than inflections. In ME, the
position of the verb is more fixed than it was in the OE, but not as much as that of
Modern English. It is observed that the first direct object, the droughte, comes before the
predicate. The predicate here is given with a verb in passive voice, it is clear, but in
Modern English, this order may not be followed.

7.7 Phonetic Changes in Middle English

The phonetic changes in this period were significant. The most significant being the
‘Great Vowel Shift’ in which the entire system of long vowels were simplified. The
consonant clusters were simplified by loss of consonants. The loss of unstressed -e and
the long vowels can be seen from the discussion given below:

7.7.1 Loss of Unstressed -e

The neutral sound 9 marked by letter -e totally disappeared due to loss of endings. It was
retained in some cases in terms of spellings only. For instance, no vowels are seen at the
endings in the following words:
 Kept, crossed, played, pens, stones, etc.

But the following words preserve the sounds:

 Stresses, parted, watches, wicked, crooked etc.

Moreover, it was observed that the e sound coming before r changed into a: which was
seen in many spellings. These changes in sound can be seen from the examples given
below:
 sterre – star
 sterven – starve
 herte – heart
 bern – barn

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7.7.2 Long Vowels
All long vowels of the ME changed their quality at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
They changed in terms of the entire use of vowels. As a result, all long vowels narrowed
and the narrowest of the vowels changed into diphthongs. Diphthongs are long vowel
sounds that can be pronounced according to the letter, for instance, the long u sound is
pronounced as yoo in words such as tube. The ME shift in long vowels from OE can be
seen in the following words:

OE ME
i: ai time, like, rise, side
e: i: meet, see, keen, deep
a: ei take, make, name, grave
o: (open) ou stone, bone, home, oak
o: (closed) u: tool, stool, root, room
u: au house, mouse, out, noun, how

Table 5: The ME Shift in Long Vowels

The changes in sound system were gradual, and in the times of Shakespeare, the vowels
were halfway changed. This explains the reason why some sonnets have a slightly
different rhyming scheme. The Great vowel Shift affected all long vowels of borrowed as
well as native vocabulary. Borrowed words such as table and chamber, doubt and fine
developed according to the English sound system.

7.8 French Influence on the Middle English Vocabulary

The simplification of English grammar was indirectly due to the use of French in
England. However, the influence of French upon the English vocabulary is much more
direct and observable (see unit 5 & 6). In cases where two languages exist together for a
long period and where speakers are closely related, transfer of words from one language
to the other is inevitable. A huge number of words were taken from French into the
English language. Since the English culture was inferior, it borrowed a large number of
words, however this happened slowly and gradually. This borrowing of words from
French to English that started right after the Norman conquest took place in two stages.
The second stage borrowing were much more in number than the first stage.
Approximately 900 words were borrowed before 1250 and were mostly words that the
lower classes used while dealing with French nobility. For example:
 Noble
 Dame
 Baron
 Messenger
 Servant
 Minstrel
 Feast

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The largest number of words taken from French were associated with the church for
transference of beliefs of the clergy to the people. After 1250, the upper class French
speakers were turning towards the use of English language. They borrowed much of the
French vocabulary into English for addressing deficiency in the English vocabulary or
due to familiarity with the French words they’d been accustomed to. In this changeover
in languages, they transferred much of their vocabulary related to governmental,
administrative, religious, legal and military terminologies and also terms related to food,
fashion, art, literature, social life etc.

7.9 The Middle English Dialects

The English language in the middle period had many different dialects as it differed
slightly from county to county. Although the difference was slight, but it was noticeable.
Consequently, it was difficult to mark boundaries based on difference in the dialects.
However, ME is divided into the following four main dialects:
 Northern
 East Midland
 West Midland
 Southern

Figure 1: Dialects of Middle English (from Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable 2002)

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7.10 Summary Points
 The Middle English (ME) experienced great changes in the English language in
terms of vocabulary, grammar, phonology and syntax that had never been seen
before.
 The changes in ME grammar involve the simplification of inflectional endings by
reduction.
 The loss of inflectional endings was seen in the change of final -m to -n in every
occurrence.
 Moreover, the vowels a, o, u, e found in inflectional endings were later on changed
to an intermediate vowel normally written as -e.
 In ME the noun and personal pronoun were much simplified. There was a stress
upon the root in nouns due to loss of inflectional endings.
 All OE grammatical categories were lost in ME due to the sound changes.
 The ME adjective were leveled, endings were reduced and gender was lost.
 The ME verb suffered loss by the strong conjugation.
 The order of words in ME became more fixed in comparison to OE.
 ME developed analytic features due to which it started transforming from a
synthetic language to an analytic language.
 ME experienced phonetic changes in the form of the ‘Great Vowel Shift’ in which
the entire system of long vowels was simplified, and the consonant clusters were
simplified by loss of consonants.
 ME was divided into four main dialects, namely:
 Northern
 East Midland
 West Midland
 Southern

7.11 Self-Assessment Questions

1 How did the decay of inflectional endings impact the pronunciation of words in
Middle English?
2 A drastic change was seen in the grammatical categories. Explain the gradual
change in their features with examples.
3 Describe the classes of both weak and strong verbs while explaining the movement
from Old English to Middle English.
4 Describe the long vowels and how were they effected in the Middle English
period?
5 The order of words was more fixed in Middle English. Explain the statement with
appropriate examples.
6 Describe the influence of French on Middle English vocabulary and the change it
underwent as a result.

90
Suggested Readings
An Introduction to Middle English [Book] / auth. Horobin Simon. - NY : OUP, 2002.

An Introduction to Middle English: Grammar and Texts [Book] / auth. Fulk R. D.. - NY :
Broadway Press, 2012.

Handbook of the Middle English Grammar: Phonology [Book] / auth. Jordan Richard. -
London : Walter de Gruyter, 2019.

The History of English: An Introduction [Book] / auth. Gramley Stephan. - London :

Routledge, 2012.

91
92
UNIT-8

THE RENAISSANCE

Written By: Dr. Shazia Ayaz

Reviewed By: Dr. Rashida Imran

93
CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 95

Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 95

8.1 The Renaissance Period ....................................................................................... 96

8.2 Changing Conditions in the Country ................................................................... 96

8.3 Social Consciousness ........................................................................................... 98

8.4 Problem of Vernaculars ....................................................................................... 98

8.5 Early Modern Vocabulary.................................................................................... 99

8.6 Early Modern Grammar ..................................................................................... 100

8.7 Early Modern Morphology ................................................................................ 101

8.8 Early Modern Syntax ......................................................................................... 101

8.9 Early Modern English ........................................................................................ 102

8.10 Shakespeare and the Early Modern English ...................................................... 102

8.11 The Great Vowel Shift ....................................................................................... 103

8.12 Summary Points ................................................................................................. 104

8.13 Self-Assessment Questions ................................................................................ 104

8.2 Changing Conditions in the Country

By the end of the fifteenth century and start of the sixteenth century, various instrumental
factors led to the emergence of the Early Modern English. Therefore, the sixteenth
century is considered the time for the emergence of the Early Modern English. These
factors include:

8.2.1 Printing Press

In 1476, William Caxton established the printing press in England. Around 20,000 books
were published in English in the duration of 150 years due to the establishment of the
printing press. Printing was made easy because of which there was a significant decrease
in the prices of the books. Resultantly, the books became more commonly available to
people. In addition, a number of people started writing books in the English language
which also facilitated the literacy rate. Books written in English replaced books written in
Latin (Latin was the dominant language at that time). Such popularity and extensive
publication and readership of books led to the promotion of a uniform and standard
language throughout the region. The map given below shows the area of influence of the
printing press.

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Figure 1: Fifteenth Century England Influenced by the Printing Press

8.2.2 Education
In the later Middle ages, a great deal of attention was given to education and resultantly,
the progress in education speeded up. This helped people become literate in a short span
of time. In this period, most of the middle class was able to read and write. At the time of
Shakespeare, it was believed that more than four percent of the people were able to read
texts in London alone. Later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a better
financial situation made it possible for more people to receive education.

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8.2.3 Other Factors
Some other factors contributing towards the development of the English language are
enhancement in communication and development of specialized knowledge. The
development of the English language increased by the exchange of ideas through an
increased communication, especially through books. Along with the enhancement of
communication, the development of specialized knowledge created in the English
language (through translations) also contributed to the development of the English
language. For the purpose of developing and sharing new knowledge, the English
language borrowed many new vocabulary items.

8.3 Social Consciousness

In the Renaissance period, people were class-conscious and associated themselves with a
particular economic or social group and so, they used the language of the class they
belonged to. Resultantly, they felt privileged while using the vocabulary or grammatical
structures of the language spoken by their social class. In addition, they believed that
their language and linguistic norms reflected the social or economic class they belonged
to, thereby forming their social identity.

8.4 Problem of Vernaculars

In the sixteenth century, the English language faced the following three major problems
that will be discussed in the proceeding section:
 The Struggle for Recognition
 The Problem of Spelling System
 The Enrichment of the English Vocabulary

8.4.1 The Struggle for Recognition

There had been a strong trend of preferring Latin over English while writing for most
fields of knowledge. The revival of Greek knowledge further strengthened this tendency.
However, there was a need to transfer the Greek knowledge to the common man who was
unaware of the foreign languages i.e. Latin and Greek. The Latin language was known
but to the educated and literary class of the society only. The situation forced people to
translate Renaissance knowledge in the English language. Translated works were
produced and published during this time.

8.4.2 The Problem of Spelling System

Coordination between the sound of the language and its spelling was considered to be
very important in the sixteenth century. Latin and other European languages had
standardized spelling system and they flourished. The English language did not have any
standard of writing which the writers could follow. The inconsistency of the English
spelling was to a great extent responsible for its instability which made the scholars and
other people move towards Latin in the sixteenth century. Latin was dominant and
considered to be a prestigious language. The English language spelling variation

98
influenced the pronunciation which was constantly changing. In the seventeenth century,
Dr. Johnson’s dictionary brought uniformity of spelling of the English language.

8.4.3 The Enrichment of English Vocabulary

In the Renaissance period, the English vocabulary was enriched after a number of Greek
and Latin books were translated into English. The translations exposed the conceptual
deficiencies of the English language. The writers had no other option than to borrow
Greek and Latin words wherever they needed to express certain ideas and concepts. In
this way many foreign words entered into the English language. The words borrowed by
the English language were mainly technical terms from particular fields. Consequently,
thousands of words made their way into the English language. Among them the majority
of words came from Latin and Greek and some from other European languages.

8.5 Early Modern Vocabulary

As discussed in the previous section, many words were borrowed from various sources in
the Renaissance periods. Greek language, however, became the main source of
borrowing. The borrowed words were also called loans or loanwords. Some of the
sources of early modern vocabulary are listed below:

8.5.1 Loanwords from Latin

An excessive number of loanwords entered into the English language during the
Renaissance era. In the 1580s and 1660s, a great number of borrowings were recorded.
This huge borrowing occurred in the following three stages:

 In the first stage, the incorporation of loanwords was encouraged and appreciated
in translations made from Latin. When English gained importance in the areas like
rhetoric, logic, geometry, classical history, warfare and other aspects in the field of
discourse, the pioneering works were based on the translations of the standard
Latin.
 With the passage of time the second stage of English works owed much to the
original works from Latin.
 In the third stage, English works were original and to a greater extent independent
in nature. In this progression of the English language, the writers were able to coin,
develop and invent technical terms in English by utilizing the Latin originals.

8.5.2 Loanwords from other Languages

Along with Latin some other languages also contributed to the enhancement of the
vocabulary of the Early Modern English. A large number of words were taken out from
French which was the language that enriched English. Many French words from military,
life science and other fields were incorporated in this era. A few examples of French
loanwords are:
 bayonet
 feint

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 anatomy
 muscle
 docility
 entrance
 invite

A small number of words were borrowed from Classical Greek, however, most of them
were transferred through Latin and French. Some instances of direct borrowing from
Greek language included:
 cosmos
 larynx
 anathema
 pathos

There are also cases in which words were taken from Italian and Spanish languages. The
Italian loans comprised words about warfare, commerce and arts such as:
 fuse
 salvo
 squadron
 argosy
 artichoke
 felucca
 cupola
 fresco
 madrigal
 opera

The Spaniards and the Portuguese visited England frequently, so a majority of the words
entered the English language through Spanish or Portuguese. Words borrowed from
Spanish were often related to commerce or warfare such as:
 anchovy
 armada
 cargo
 sherry

8.6 Early Modern grammar

In the early modern grammar, the third-person singular -es ending was introduced but –
eth ending was also present. Chaucer used –eth to show the third person singular, but
during the sixteenth century, –eth form was gradually replaced by -es in the standard
language. The -eth forms kept on appearing but only in writing.

Early Modern English noun-plurals ended with -es morpheme such as in flashes and
markes. The -es plural had been the normal usage in Shakespeare’s time. Later the form
had developed into three allomorphs /-s/, /-z/ and /-ɪz/ as in cats, dogs, horses.

100
Before the Early Modern period, the possessive form of it was his and it remained in use
until the end of the sixteenth century. Later, in the Early Modern period the pronoun
determiner its replaced his and is still in use.

The practice to make perfect tense was with the use of to have, as in the given structure:
 ‘if he haue robd these men’.

Another example of the perfect form was with be verb is:

 ‘they are come to search the house’.

However, there was a difference in the sense of both the types, that is, perfect structures
with have communicated the sense of continuing process while the perfect forms with be
was used to show the situation arising as a result of the action performed and expressed
through the verb.

8.7 Early Modern Morphology

Early Modern English reflected the development of the morphology. The morphological
changes are consequences of the loss of inflections in the language (as discussed in
previous units). As an inflectional language, Old English was dependent on inflectional
endings to show the relationships among the words of the sentences on the basis of case,
number and gender. However, after losing the inflectional endings, this gap was filled by
the development and enrichment of the grammatical categories, i.e. auxiliary verbs and
prepositions. These grammatical factors contributed in making the English language
more analytical in nature. The significant number of loss in the inflections was disturbed
by the prescriptive grammarians who were concerned with refining and fixing the
languages. People like editors and school teachers followed the prescribed version of the
grammar in the later centuries which made inflections survive.

8.8 Early Modern Syntax

Another aspect of Early Modern English grammar is the syntactic variation that also
played a vital role in developing the English language into an analytic language.
Syntactic variation deals with the different ways in which sentences are structured and
constructed across dialects. The syntactic changes in the Early Modern period helped the
process of setting the word order of the language which was gradual but traceable. In
term of syntax, the introduction of new grammatical words, order and sequence of the
word at sentence level were the factors that played an important role.

The journey from the Middle to Early modern English in this context is reflected in the
use of grammatical words. In the Middle English times, prepositions and determiners
increased in number and use while in the Early Modern English period, mostly auxiliaries
were incorporated. The tendency towards the use of more embedded sentences of Middle
English was also carried on in Early Modern English.

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8.9 Early Modern English
Renaissance period is flooded with so many words and terms that were least important in
the Old and Middle English. The Greek and Latin vocabulary was adopted at times when
English words were not present while at other times the purpose was not clear. Some
studies recorded that from the time period of 1500 to 1660 about 27,000 words were
borrowed by the English language.

Coining is a word formation process which refers to the creation of new words. In the
Early Modern times, writers like Cheke and Spenser formed new words from old ones.
Some of the coined words of that time are mooned, foresayer, belt, elfin, dapper, glee,
grovel, gloomy, and witless.

Most of the new words formed were nouns and at the same time verbs and adjectives
were also being coined. Some propositions like plus, via and per from Latin, came into
use for the first time in different periods of history i.e. according to the Oxford English
Dictionary, the use of plus as a coordinator started in 1968.

It is also important to note that Latin is a synthetic language with a great number of
inflections. Latin noun has five classes or declensions with five to six cases for number
(singular, plural) (see unit 7). Therefore, Latin words always have inflectional endings in
singular forms like visum, datum, forum, medium have plural counterparts visa, data,
fora, and media. The English people were not familiar with the Latin grammatical system
and rules of inflections so whenever they borrowed words from Latin, instead of applying
the Latin grammatical rules they applied the grammatical system of English. Therefore,
Latin noun endings were ignored or mixed. Consequently, many of the Latin verbs are
used as nouns in English e.g. audio, video, recipe and audit. Therefore, it is considered
that Latin does not have any influence on English grammar but influenced the English
vocabulary only. The change in the English language and the freedom given by the
Renaissance movement is reflected in the writings of the Renaissance writers and poets,
for instance in the work produced by Shakespeare.

8.10 Shakespeare and the Early Modern English

Shakespeare was a leading figure in the Renaissance period. He was famous for the huge
effect he had on the development of the Early Modern English language. English
speakers use many words and phrases from Shakespeare’s writings in their everyday
speech. He transformed the English language by using it the way he wanted. In the
Renaissance period, English was being set free to go where the writers wanted to take it
in their writings. For example, in Julius Caesar, Shakespeare writes:

“The wild disguise has almost anticked us all.”

102
An antic is a fool which is used as a noun. Shakespeare turns it into a verb meaning to
make a fool off.

Shakespeare used the vocabulary borrowed by the English language to form new words
for example in Love's Labor Lost, he implies multiple meanings of one word to create the
following sentence:

“Light seeking light, doth light of light beguile.”

8.11 The Great Vowel Shift

In the Early Modern period, Middle English vowels went through a great shift that came
to be known as ‘The Great Vowel Shift’. Most changes occurred in the long vowels. The
variation is reflected in the change of the position of the mouth while pronouncing the
vowel sounds. In the Early modern times, the pronunciation of the long vowels shifted
from the open to the close position of the mouth and rounding of the lips. The long
vowels which could not be changed towards rounding and closing were converted into
diphthongs. For example /ē/ sound of Middle English sound changed into /i/ sound of
Modern English as in the word sweet which was swete before and shifted to a more close
position.

In terms of phonology, Middle English high vowels were first changed into diphthongs
i.e. Middle English sounds /i:/ and /u:/, and then they were lowered as well as centralized.
The lowering process was executed at two levels
 First, they were converted to /ǝi/ and /ǝu/
 Finally shifted to /aɪ/ and /aʊ/

The mid-vowels of the Middle English were raised entirely i.e. higher mid sound /e:/ and
/o:/ were changed to close /i/ and /u/ and lower mid sounds /ɛ:/ and /ɔ:/ were shifted to
/e/ and /o/ after raising from their previous position. The low vowel /a:/ was fronted and
transformed into the shape /æ:/ first, which later raised to /ɛ:/ and then further raised to
/e/. In the Early Modern English period, the sign of length was shown with the vowels
/æ:/ and /ɛ:/ only to differentiate them from short vowels.

There are some other changes at an intermediate level like the long vowel of the Middle
English ī, the sound in the word rīden, transformed to /ǝi/, a diphthong, as in the word
ride. This pronunciation was followed in some types of speech. Later in the course of the
seventeenth century, the pronunciation went through further change i.e. it turned into /aɪ/.

Similarly, Middle English long vowel /ū/, became /ǝu/ as in the word house which is still
present in some varieties of US and Canadian English but in Received Pronunciation
(which is a standard accent of the British English) it further shifted to /aʊ/ in the
seventeenth century. Another example is the shift of Middle English /o:/ to the Early
Modern /u/. This sound also went through laxing (a shortened vowel pronounced with a
wide mouth) that changed the pronunciation of the words like foot, wood, good, look and

103
took with the sound /ʊ/. Apart from laxing this sound also got unrounded in wood like
blood and flood with /ʌ/ sound. The /ɔ:/ sound of Middle English developed to /o/ of
Modern English but in a few instances, it was laxed well before the Great Vowel Shift.
Later the shift in the vowel sounds also influenced and transformed it into Modern
English /ɑ/ as in hot.

Some other sounds of Middle English which were influenced by the Great Vowel Shift
are /ā/ and /ai/ of Middle English. Both the sounds were leveled and turned into /a:/ in the
early fifteenth century. Similarly, the Middle English sound /e: /changed into /i/ of the
Modern English e.g. in the words three and knee. The transformation of the Middle
English sound /ɛ: / (the word heath and other words of this type) is ambiguous. The Early
Modern English developed at two levels: Firstly, with the initial shift in the late Middle
English and secondly, the change due to the influence of the Great Vowel Shift.

8.12 Summary Points

 The English language underwent massive development in the Renaissance period.
 The renaissance was an intellectual, artistic, literary and cultural movement that
began in Italy and expanded to England.
 The invention of the printing press, the growing literacy rate and rapid means of
communication made a vital contribution in shaping the Early Modern English.
 English scholars incorporated various Greek and Latin words into their writings.
 The changes in early Modern English can clearly be illustrated through the works
of Shakespeare.
 In the fifteenth century, the Great Vowel Shift had a strong influence on English
pronunciation.
 The Great Vowel Shift saw a change in the English language sound system that
changed the vowel symbols in the spellings as well.

8.13 Self-Assessment Questions

1. What do you understand by the term Renaissance?
2. In which ways did the Renaissance movement influence Early Modern English?
3. What is the Great Vowel Shift? How did it contribute to the sound change in Early
Modern English?
4. Elaborate on the role of Shakespeare in the development of Early Modern English.
5. Discuss some features of Early Modern English vocabulary.
6. What syntactic and morphological changes occurred in Early Modern English?
7. Compare the grammatical features of Middle and Early Modern English.

104
Suggested Readings
A Grammar of the English Tongue [Book] / auth. Coar Thomas. - London : James
Phillips, 1796.

A History of English [Book] / auth. Fennell Barbara. - Oxford : Blackwell, 2001.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language [Book] / auth. Crystal David. -
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language [Book] / auth. McArthur Tom. -
London : OUP, 1992.

The Sound Pattern of English [Book] / auth. Chomsky Noam and Halle Morris. -
Cambridge : MIT Press, 1968.

105
106
UNIT-9

THE LATE MODERN ENGLISH

Written By: Dr. Shazia Ayaz

Reviewed By: Dr. Rashida Imran

107
CONTENTS

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 109

Objectives ..................................................................................................................... 109

9.1 The Enlightenment ............................................................................................. 110

9.2 The Late Modern English Spelling and Sounds................................................. 111

9.3 The Late Modern English Morphology ............................................................. 112

9.4 The Late Modern English Syntax ...................................................................... 113

9.5 The Late Modern English Lexicon .................................................................... 114

9.6 Regional Varieties.............................................................................................. 114

9.7 English Language in America ............................................................................ 115

9.8 Summary Points ................................................................................................. 119

9.9 Self-Assessment Questions ................................................................................ 120

However, Romanticism – a nineteenth century movement – with an emphasis on nations

and peoples, may also have stimulated those changes. As of texts, a multitude of them
became available after 1700 due to which Modern English varies more from the Old
English.

9.1.1 Colonialism
Colonialism is the phenomenon of acquiring full political and economic control of other
countries. The English language spread to many countries as a result of the British
colonization of American, African, Australian and Asian continents. The English
language was being spoken in all of the colonized countries. However, the English
language differed in terms of accents and dialects based on the geographical location and
the mixing of accent from the local languages. For example, the accent of the British
English is different from the Australian and American varieties.

9.1.2 Industrial Revolution

In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution transformed the English society into
an industrial one which was previously (mainly) an agricultural society. The revolution
had started in limited ways after 1700. It was characterized by an upsurge in the use of
machines and factories along with urbanization in the world. English Imperialism was at
its height during the reign of Victoria (1819–1901). The revolution in industry gave rise
to industrialism that was responsible for many linguistic changes in the English language.

9.1.3 The Twentieth Century

The twentieth century has witnessed many drastic changes in the form of WW-I and
WW-II, revolutions in Arts, progress in the field of medicine and technology, and shifts
in the political and social order across the globe. With such big changes, the need for new
signs and symbols arise to represent them. Therefore, new words are introduced with the
help of linguistic processes such as:
 Coinage: is the word formation process in which a new word is created. For
example, aspirin and nylon.
 Clipping: is the word formation process in which a part of an existing word is cut
to form another word. For example, omnibus becomes bus.
 Blending: is the process of joining the beginning of one word with the end of
another word to form a new word. For example, situation comedy becomes sitcom.

110
 Prefixes: is an affix placed before the stem of a word to form a new word. For
example, conscious becomes unconscious.
 Suffixes: is an affix placed after the stem of a word to form a new word. For
example, conscious becomes consciously.

9.2 The Late Modern English Spelling and Sounds

In the seventeenth century, the English language became more familiar for speakers of
Modern English. The spelling became comparatively stable and the variations occurred
under the influence of GVS (The Great Vowel Shift) were in common use within
different varieties of English.

9.2.1 Spelling Variation

Variation in the spelling still exists in the formal writing of the English language which is
most of the time due to the difference in American and British varieties. The publication
of American spelling books and dictionaries in the 1800s were responsible for the
variations which focused on the American variety of spelling. In the middle of nineteenth
century, spellings were standardized in both countries. However, spelling reforms were
still attempted. Presently, there are no serious attempts at spelling reforms. In fact,
spelling may be getting more codified due to spell checkers on computers.

9.2.2 Correct pronunciation

Correct pronunciation also turns out to be a chief concern of the people in the Modern
English period. The difference in the pronunciation of the people due to regional
differences is used to point out the identity of the speakers i.e. where a speaker of English
belongs to, and these regional variants are almost always denounced if uttered outside the
‘right’ context.

In addition to regional varieties, there are other issues related to pronunciation that
intrigued prescriptive grammarians. After World War II, the prescriptive rules concerning
pronunciation became less rigid. Many of the regional variants lost some of their
distinctive features. The changes in the pronunciation which first appeared in the regional
varieties, later spread throughout the country but gradually became stigmatized due to
their distance from the standard. Some of these instances can be seen in the dental
fricatives (these are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel such as
in [f]) which are pronounced as stops i.e. as in African American English and some other
varieties where the words three and tree have same pronunciation. Similarly, the use of
glottal stops (consonantal sound produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal track as in
the word it) started in the North of England and in Scotland where a [t] is replaced with a
glottal stop between two vowels. It quickly spread in the nineteenth century and later lost
prestige.

111
9.3 The Late Modern English Morphology
The development of the Late Modern English morphology reflects its trend towards a
more analytic language which is reflected in the loss of case and agreement.

9.3.1 The Case Loss

The loss of case in personal pronouns continues in spoken, less formal, varieties.
However, due to the reduced sense of case sometimes one case becomes inclusive of the
other i.e. presently accusative case (grammatical case marking the direct object of a
transitive verb) is not restricted to the object only but also as a subject part i.e. nineteenth
century usage Us London lawyers don’t often get an out. In the same way, Nominatives
are used as subjects but sometimes also as objects, as in This is between you and I.

There are many varieties of English in which the possessive -’s on nouns (the genitive
case) has disappeared. This ending appears on a possessor noun in front of the noun that
is possessed, as in Mary’s book, where Mary owns the book.

9.3.2 Subject-Verb Agreement

In the Modern English subject-verb agreement is totally recognizable i.e. the head of the
subject agrees in number and person of the verb it follows. There is sometimes
indeterminacy as to what the head is. For instance, consider the following phrase:

 There are other things you talked about that is not on the tape

The subject that in the relative clause that is not on the tape refers to the plural
antecedent things. There is also a trend of regularization of strong past tense forms and
irregular verbs. Verb sets such as abide, abode, abode regularized as abide, abided,
abided. In some of the varieties the irregular verb paradigms are also regularized for past
and past participle like go, went, gone becomes go, went, went (e.g. I should’ve went
there) or go, gone, gone. Sometimes, weak paradigms become strong i.e. sneak, sneaked,
sneaked becomes sneak, snuck, snuck, with the pattern of a strong verb. This could be an
example of hypercorrection.

9.3.3 Degrees of Adjective

In Modern English, uncertainty seems to be seen in the endings of the degrees of
comparative and superlative where speakers sometimes use double degree, for instance,
the most expensivest. In Middle English, the number of comparative and superlative
analytic forms increased and in Early Modern English, there was great freedom in the
choice of forms. The current Modern English system is very complex as a result of the
eighteenth century grammar rules.

112
9.4 The Late Modern English Syntax
The syntactic sequence of Modern English in verb-fronting sentences is Subject-Verb-
Object. In this type of sentences, the subject is compulsory, however sometimes the
topic-drop occurs especially in letters and emails such as:
 Would like to see you soon.

In such constructions of the questions, a first-person pronoun is deleted. The number of

grammatical categories like auxiliaries, prepositions, and determiners have increased
since the Early Modern English period and are largely used for constructing sentences.

9.4.1 Modal Verbs

Modal verbs are used in different situations i.e. for asking permission, showing ability,
possibility, and volition. The use of modals in different situations can change quite
rapidly. Many people have stopped using may for permission, as in the slightly formal,
and use can instead. Through grammaticalization, many new modal and future forms are
introduced in the Modern English period. Gonna is a colloquial form that is called vulgar
pronunciation of going to but still, it is used as a future auxiliary.

9.4.2 Progressive Form

The progressive use of be +ing was introduced in the nineteenth century before that
indefinite form was used to give the progressive sense i.e. I say now. Before 1800, be+ing
was not present separately in grammar books and dictionaries. In the progressive form
most often a preposition precedes the participle such as:
 I think my wits are a wool-gathering.

Sometimes progressives are used together with other auxiliaries where the progressive is
combined with a passive as in the sentence:
 The house is being built.

9.4.3 Relative Pronoun

Relative pronouns underwent some changes in Modern English. Speakers usually prefer
the use of that over who/whom/which. Relative pronouns show much variation
throughout the history of English. The changes they undergo are stopped in two ways by
prescriptive forces. These prescriptive forces dictate the choice of the relative and impose
a restriction on stranding prepositions. In Modern English, another form of relative
pronouns is in use i.e. restrictive relatives – that is a clause that provides essential
information about the noun to which it refers. They are formed by using that/wh-pronoun,
as in the sentence ‘The person that/who I met’. In Modern English, there is a strong
tendency to use that rather than wh-pronouns.

113
9.5 The Late Modern English Lexicon
The modern era is characterized by multiple changes in the social and political
circumstances. The British Enlightenment, however, did not introduce many new words
specific to its ideas. Interestingly, the Enlightenment originated in the Netherlands and
France and was marginal in Britain. Take a look at the following borrowed words:

 idealist
 colonist
 tarboosh
 phonography
 nucleus
 bamboozle
 nymphotomy
 civilization
 paracentric
 metallurgy
 categorize
 purist
 materialize

Words such as those given above were borrowed during the first decade of the eighteenth
century most of which have French and Latin origin. Words from the Romantic period
include hysteria, phobia, tonsillitis and conventionalist. At that time many words were
borrowed from medicine, science, psychology, communication, transportation,
linguistics, military, philosophy, art/music, politics and economics. New sources of
vocabulary were also added to the bulk of English vocabulary. They can be categorized
as loans, new compounds, new affixes, clipping, inventions, acronyms, slangs and
conversions. Many new words were introduced in this period and the meaning of some
words went through some changes. The word fun has an interesting history of reversal. It
was used as a slang form for the words cheat and trick, according to a 1700 dictionary.
By 1727, it had come to mean amusement. In modern corpora great, big, and large occur
in very different contexts. Previously big was quite rare and had a specialized meaning,
so the academic texts showed a more conservative use in this case:

 academic texts include large but rarely big

 in fiction, large is less frequent than big.

9.6 Regional Varieties

Many regional pronunciations become connected to social status and class. They are divided
into two broad categories the North and the South varieties. The dialects of the South are
further divided into those of the Southwest, with an [r] in words such as arm, and those of the
East without [r]. The two main groups in the North are Central and Northern.

114
The distinctive features between the modern dialects typically involve sounds, but there
are a few differences in morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. The reflexive pronouns (a
pronoun preceded by the antecedent in the same clause) have different forms. Speakers
create forms such as hisself on the basis of myself and ourself. Demonstratives (a pronoun
that points to something specific in a sentence) are also frequently different. There are
forms such as them people or thilk people, the latter being typical for the southwest of
England. Possessive pronouns often change from my to me, as in me book, and our books
becomes us books, especially in the North of England. These changes mentioned above
point to a regularization of the language in non-standard varieties.

The present tense endings have leveled completely in some modern varieties i.e. either
the -s ending is lost or it is added to all forms. The forms of the verbs to be leveled as
well. Some speakers use I was, you was, we was, and others I were, you were, s/he were.
There are many other such morphological and syntactic differences.

9.6.1 Register
A register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or in a particular
communicative situation. The history of English also determines some of the variations in
regional vocabulary. In some areas, Old English words such as to grave ‘to dig’ survive. In
the areas of Britain influenced by Scandinavian invaders, words such as till laik (for ‘to play’)
continue to occur. The difference of dialects in American English is based on the differences
in vocabulary (pail/bucket, sack/bag), pronunciation (no difference in pin and pen), or syntax
(the use of double modals). When it comes to varieties in register, the level of formality is
relevant. However, there are a few regional variations in the context of formal writing.

9.6.2 Slang
Slang is difficult to define; however, the term informal language can be used for both slang
and jargon as specialized vocabularies. The difference between the two is that slang is always
informal but jargon may or may not be formal. Thus, slang and jargon can be seen as varieties
different in the register. Their social affiliation is also different as they are not used by the
same social groups. The Oxford English Dictionary, in earlier editions, defines slang as a
language of a low and vulgar kind. It is perhaps easiest to define slang by providing
examples. Political slang such as snollygoster ‘a shrewd, unprincipled person, i.e. a
politician’, neverendum ‘a referendum repeated until the desired outcome is achieved’,
velcroid ‘someone who seeks the company of the powerful’, and zoo plane ‘plane carrying
journalists with a politician’ all occur in the Oxford Dictionary of Political Slang (2004).
Numerous student slang dictionaries have recently been published too.

9.7 English Language in America

As the world rapidly progresses, the powerful countries progress and expand
simultaneously. England expanded to other continents as it was the superpower of the
time. The English rulers took the English language to America and it slowly and

115
gradually became the standard language of the colony. Later on many other dialects
developed due to the different geographical locations in which it was spoken.

9.7.1 American Colonies

American colonies, also called thirteen colonies or colonial America, were the thirteen
British colonies that were established during the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries in what is now a part of the Eastern United States of America. A total of
thirteen colonies grew both geographically along the Atlantic Coast and Westward from
the time of their founding to the American Revolution (1775–81). The map of the thirteen
colonies is given below:

Figure 1: The Thirteen American Colonies

9.7.2 The Archaic Features in the American English

A change in any language is a sign of its growth. So is the case with the English
Language. New words are continuously being added, some are lost and some modified
(see unit 1). Not only words change but also its grammar has undergone some drastic

116
changes such as changing into an analytic language from being a synthetic language
(already mentioned in previous units). But at certain points, American English keeps the
old feature, unlike British English. For instance, American pronunciation is slightly
archaic fashioned as compared to British accent. Some features that were in practice in
the sixteenth and seventeenth century have been dropped by Modern British English. For
example, American accent retains the use of r while British does not use it. Similarly, the
pronunciation of the words either and neither is with the vowel /i:/ in American English
while Modern British has quit this pronunciation and adopted the pronunciation with a
diphthong /aɪ/ sound.

Additionally, the verb get has its 2nd and 3rd form got and gotten respectively which is
used in modern British English but American English has kept its old version that is
gotten instead of its got, though it was not usual in Britain in last two centuries.

Other instances of the words used in the same old fashion are:
 mad
 sick
 rare
 underdone
 platter
 fall

Americans use the word mad in its old fashion which means angry. The word sick has
kept its significance without confining it to nausea. The word rare is used in collocation
with meat as rare meat but is considered outdated in British English. The word platter is
rarely used in British, but it is a high-frequency word in American English. Again, the
word fall is used for the natural word season.

In addition, the word pattern in I guess is mocked at if used in British English, but it is
still used by the American. Since the aforementioned pattern is as old as the Chaucerian
age, it was being used in the seventeenth century. Places like New England and Kentucky
use words that are obsolete in the standard variety of American English and British
English.

9.7.3 Noah Webster’s influence on American Language

A man who has greatly served American English is Noah Webster (1758–1843) of
Hartford, Connecticut. Whiling teaching English as a subject, he found the core-books
unsatisfactory and decided to compose elementary books in the English language
covering the areas of spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. The books which were
compiled by Webster got published in 1783, 1784, and 1785. These were first ever books
published in the country about American English which earned an unexpected status and
republished with another title, The American Spelling Book. Later, with new changes and
modifications, new editions of it were published. It was so well-received that more than
eighty million copies of the books were sold which motivated the author to devote
himself to work on various projects related to language and linguistics. After these great

117
achievements, another milestone achievement was in 1789 with the publication of
Dissertations on the English Language, with Notes Historical and Critical. Finally, in
1806, he came up with a mini Dictionary and later An American Dictionary of the English
Language, was printed in 1828 in two volumes.

9.7.4 American Spellings

It is known to every English reader across the globe that the American and British use
different spellings to project their respective Englishes written in their respective
countries. In American English, the letter u is omitted in certain words such as color and
honor, while British English uses the letter for instance colour and honour. Furthermore,
the American use one consonant while the British make use of double consonants like
traveler—traveller, wagon—waggon, etc. Another difference lies in the usage of “er and
re”. Americans use er while British use re. For example, words such as fiber, center,
theater become fibre, centre, theatre in British English. The American use -s in words
such as offense and defense while the British use defence and offence. Sometimes certain
differences are ignored while others are noticed, as it might be due to its permissibly of
spellings in both countries or new innovations common to both countries. A list of
detailed difference in spelling is given in the table below:

Differences British Spellings American Spellings

Table 1: Difference between British and American Spellings

9.7.5 American Pronunciation

Earlier changes between British and American English were only limited to vocabulary
but due to the contact between inhabitants and colonizers, it resulted in the difference in
pronunciation. This pronunciation difference was due to various reasons such
geographical boundaries, social habitat and other factors. With the passage of time, one
of the varieties of English came to be used widely across England and was termed as the

118
standard language. This standard variety was the variety used in Southern England. The
same was the case with American English which came to be marked as the standard
American English. Both the abovementioned standard varieties are marked by a
difference in their respective pronunciations.
The dominant difference is the difference in vowel sounds in words like fast, dance, can’t
and path where the British English uses /ɑ:/ and the American pronounce with /æ/sound.
Standard English which is spoken in southern England went through a change from a flat
‘a’ to broad ‘a’ which can be observed in the word man and in the word father.

These changes are not adopted everywhere as some parts of the country retain the old-
fashioned sounds like fast and path, which are uttered with the vowel /æ/. Some speakers
even make use of intermediate vowels that are halfway between /æ/ and /ɑ:/ but the flat
‘a’ is considered as the typical American pronunciation.

Another clear difference between the pronunciations is the treatment of the /r/. Americans
follow rhotic pronunciation [the r sounds presented by the Greek symbol rho (R) or (r)]
i.e. /r/ is pronounced at the final position. While in the Standard English or Received
Pronunciation /r/ sound is never pronounced at the final position except before vowels.
On the other hand, the American do use /r/ sound and even in eastern England and some
in the south, such sort of pronunciation is also practiced. So, to conclude, the American
/r/ maybe the preservation of the pronunciation of the Old English pronunciation or the
influence of the northern dialects of British English.

9.8 Summary Points

 The political, socio-cultural and technological developments played a vital role in
developing the English language in the present times.
 Colonization contributed to the change of English vocabulary by borrowing new
words from all over the world.
 The Industrial Revolution transformed the agrarian English society into an
industrial one.
 Events such as WWI and WWII, Art revolutions, progress in medicine and
technology, and shift in the political and social order brought huge changes.
 England, as the superpower took their language to other regions including America.
 English spelling became stable and the variations occurred due to The Great Vowel
Shift led to different varieties of English.
 English became an analytic language as it lost the case, subject-verb agreement and
degrees of adjectives.
 Due to the spread of English language in various regions of the world, regional
varieties emerged.
 The English language was spread into America and it slowly and gradually became
the standard language of the colony.
 The British and American varieties of English differ from each other in terms of
accent, spelling and use.

119
9.9 Self-Assessment Questions
1. What historical events during the last two and a half centuries affected the nature of
the English language?
2. Discuss the influence of colonialism on the development of the Late Modern
English.
3. With big changes in the twentieth century, the need for new signs and symbols
arouse. Through which linguistic processes were news words introduced in the
English language?
4. Trace some differences in the grammar and vocabulary of British and American
English.
5. Elaborate some characteristics of regional varieties of the Late Modern English.
6. You read some features of regional varieties that are different from each other. Can
you find out some other differences from the dialogues of some English movies
you have watched?
7. Elucidate the morphological and syntactic changes in the English language of
modern times.

Suggested Readings
English as a Global Language [Book] / auth. Crystal David. - Cambridge : Cambridge
University Press, 1997.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language [Book] / auth. Crystal David. -
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

The Cambridge History of English Language [Book] / auth. Algeo John. - Cambridge :
Cambridge University Press, 2001.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language [Book] / auth. McArthur Tom. -
London : OUP, 1992.

The Structure of American English [Book] / auth. Francis Nelson. - New York : The
Ronald Press Company, 1958.

The Study of Nontandard English [Book] / auth. Labov William. - Champaign : IL, 1970.

120

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9052

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9052

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HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Course Code: 9052 Units: 1-9

Publisher .......................................... Allama Iqbal Open University

Printer .............................................. AIOU Printing Press, H-8, Islamabad

Quantity ........................................... 3000

Price ................................................. Rs.

Chairman Course Team: Dr. Malik Ajmal Gulzar

Course Development Coordinator: Dr. Lubna Umar

Writers: Dr. Lubna Umar

Reviews: Dr. Malik Ajmal Gulzar

Editor: Fazal Karim

Layout: Asrar ul Haque Malik

Prof. Dr. Zia-ul-Qayyum

Unit 1: Background of the English Language ................................................ 1

Unit 2: The Indo-European Family of Languages ......................................... 13

Unit 3: Old English ........................................................................................ 27

Unit 4: Old English Influenced by Foreign Forces ........................................ 41

Unit 6: The Revival of the English Language ................................................ 67

Unit 7: Middle English ................................................................................... 79

Unit 8: The Renaissance................................................................................. 93

Unit 9: The Late Modern English ..................................................................107

Written By: Dr. Lubna Umar

1.1 Factors Leading to Change in the English Language ............................................ 4

1.2 Growth and Decay of English ................................................................................ 4

1.3 The Importance of a Language .............................................................................. 5

1.4 English Language Speakers ................................................................................... 5

1.5 English as an International Language .................................................................... 5

1.6 English as the Official Language ........................................................................... 6

1.7 English in the Information Technology World ...................................................... 6

1.8 Vocabulary ............................................................................................................. 7

1.9 Inflections in English ............................................................................................. 7

1.10 Gender in English .................................................................................................. 8

1.11 Difficulty in English Language Acquisition .......................................................... 8

1.12 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 11

1.13 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 11

Suggested Readings .......................................................................................................... 12

1. Provide an overview of the history of the English language.

1.2 Growth and Decay of English

1.4 English Language Speakers

1.5 English as an International Language

1.6 English as the Official Language

1.7 English in the Information Technology World

Dutch landscape measles uproar

1.10 Gender in English

1.11 Difficulty in English Language Acquisition

The symbol a in the following words are pronounced differently.

1.13 Self-Assessment Questions

Written By: Dr. Lubna Umar

2.1 The Gradual Change in Speech............................................................................ 16

2.2 Change in Dialects ............................................................................................... 17

2.3 Importance of Sanskrit ......................................................................................... 18

2.4 Tracing the Indo-European Family ...................................................................... 18

2.5 Summary Points ................................................................................................... 25

2.6 Self-Assessment Questions .................................................................................. 25

Suggested Readings .......................................................................................................... 26

Good nature and good sense must even join;

Here he pronounces tea as tay:

Here thou, great Anna! Whom three realms obey,

At yet another instance, he uses the rhyming scheme given below:

Table 1: Pope’s Rhyming Scheme

Table 2: Similarity in German and English Vocabulary

Table 3: Relationship between Latin and English Vocabulary

Table 4: The Word Father Across the Language Family

2.3 Importance of Sanskrit

Old English Gothic Latin Sanskrit Greek

Table 6: The Verb TO BE Across the Family of Languages

2.4 Tracing the Indo-European Family

Figure 1: The Indo-European Family of Languages

Figure 2: The Italic Branch of Languages Family Tree

2.5 Summary Points

2.6 Self-Assessment Questions

Written By: Dr. Lubna Umar

3.1 The Old English Period – 450-1100 AD.............................................................. 30

3.2 Old English and the Latin Alphabets ................................................................... 32

3.3 Influence of the Viking Invasion on Old English Vocabulary ............................. 32

3.4 Characteristics of Old English ............................................................................. 33