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Language Change in English |
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Before English began - up to ca. 450 AD |
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British (Celtic) tribes - language related to modern Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish (Erse) · Only real connection with Modern English is in lexis (mostly in place names). |
Origins of English - ca. 450 AD to 1066 |
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Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrive from north Germany · Language (Old English) is at first spoken · only writing is runes · Written form comes from Latin-speaking monks, who use Roman alphabet, with new letters (æ, ð and þ - spoken as "ash", "eth" and "thorn") · About half of common vocabulary of modern English comes from Old English · Word forms vary according to syntax (inflection, case endings and declension) and grammatical gender · Vikings establish Danelaw · some erosion of grammar and addition of new vocabulary. |
Middle English Period - 1066 to 1485 |
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Lexis - terms for law and politics from Norman French · General expansion of lexis, esp. abstract terms · Case-endings, declension and gender disappear · Inflection goes except in pronouns and related forms · Writers concerned about change · want to stabilize language · 1458 - Gutenberg invents printing (1475 - Caxton introduces it to England) · the press enables some standardizing. |
Tudor Period - 1485 to 1603 |
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Rise of nationalism linked to desire for more expressive language · Flowering of literature and experiments in style · idea of elevated diction · Vocabulary enlarged by new learning Renaissance) · imports from Greek and Latin · Lexis expanded by travel to New World, and ideas in maths and science · English settlers begin to found colonies in North America. In 1582 Richard Mulcaster publishes a list of 7,000 words with spelling forms, but this does not become a universal standard |
The 17th Century |
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Influences of Puritanism and Catholicism (Roundhead and Cavalier) and of science · Puritan ideas of clarity and simplicity influence writing of prose· reasonableness and less verbose language · English preferred to Dutch as official tongue of American colonies. |
The 18th Century |
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Age of reason · Ideas of order and priority · Standardizing of spelling (Johnson' s Dictionary of the English Language in 1755) and grammar (Robert Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar in 1762 and Lindley Murray's English Grammar in 1794)· Classical languages are seen as paradigms (ideal models) for English · Romantic Movement begins · interest in regional and social class varieties of English. |
The 19th Century |
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Interest in past · use of archaic words · Noan Webster publishes American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828 · British Empire causes huge lexical growth · English travels to other countries and imports many loanwords · Modern language science begins with Jakob Grimm and others · James Murray begins to compile the New English Dictionary (which later becomes the Oxford English Dictionary) in 1879 |
The 20th Century and beyond |
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Modern language science developed · descriptive not prescriptive · Non-standard varieties have raised status · Ideas of formal and informal change · Modern recording technology allows study of spoken English · Influence of overseas forms grows · US and International English dominant · English becomes global language (e.g. in computing, communications, entertainment). |
Quiz - learn about important dates
If you want to learn important events and their dates, click on the link below for a short quiz. Why do this? You may want to be confident, before taking an exam, that you know what happened when.
Inflection
German, Latin, Russian, Greek, and French are inflected languages. This means that many words undergo changes of form (spelling or pronunciation) to show changes of grammar.: Such changes (in European languages) include tense and mood of verbs, gender of nouns, case or number of nouns, agreement of adjectives, and other distinctions. Old English was a highly inflected language.
Modern English is relatively uninflected. Adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are invariable. Their form remains the same no matter how they are used. Nouns, pronouns and verbs are inflected:
- Most English nouns show plural by adding an s or an es: cow, cows; box, boxes. Some nouns have what are called mutated, or changed, plurals: man, men; woman, women; foot, feet; tooth, teeth; goose, geese; mouse, mice; louse, lice. A very few nouns - for example, ox, oxen - have plurals ending in -en. A few noun forms are unchanged in the plural: deer, sheep, moose and grouse.
- Five of the seven personal pronouns have inflected forms for subject or object use: I, me; he, him; she, her; we, us and they, them. And there are also distinctive possessives (adjectives and pronouns): my/mine, his, her/hers, our/ours, their theirs.
- Verb forms are inflected, but mostly in straightforward ways. The one English verb with the most forms is “to be” (be, am, is, are, was, were, been and being).
- Weak (regular) verbs have only four forms: talk, talks, talked and talking, for example.
- Strong, or irregular, verbs have five forms: sing, sings, sang, sung and singing. A few verbs (that end in a -t or -d) do not form the past tense with -ed, and have only three forms: cut, cuts, cutting.
- These verb inflections are in marked contrast to Old English, in which ridan, or “ride”, had 13 forms, and to Modern German, in which reiten (=“ride”) has 16.
Flexibility and conversion
Loss of inflection leads to flexibility of use. Words that were once marked as nouns or verbs by their inflections can now be used both ways. It is possible to run a race (race as noun) or race someone to the corner (race as verb). It is also possible in English to use nouns as [attributive] adjectives: dog show, village fair, ice-cream van. Pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs can also function as nouns. English adopts or adapts any word as needed to name a new object or describe a new process.
It is easy to observe this in practice. Any word is likely to change its category by the process known as conversion. Party was used more or less exclusively as a noun until the 1970s. Today it is commonly used as a verb - Tonight we're gonna party. Trial is a noun related to the verb try - but many people now say they will trial a product. Over time the meaning of trial (as verb) and try will probably diverge (move further apart).
This year (2001) I have noted the use of fragrance (hitherto a noun) as a transitive verb. An advertisement for a plug-in air-freshener claims that it will “fragrance” your room for so many weeks. I am not aware of any single established word which has this sense - the closest would be some such phrase as “cause to smell pleasant”, so perhaps this conversion will become permanent. But only if people have a reason to speak or write about fragrancing things.
It is easy to find examples of this - look at this extract from a press release of the Evangelical Alliance, as quoted in the Guardian (Face to Faith, p. 18) of August 6, 2001:
“How can the church disciple Generation X into charitable giving? ”
A disciple - from Latin disco (=“to learn) ” - is a follower of a leader or of a teacher. It is related to discipline, a form which is used both as abstract noun and transitive verb. In the context above “disciple” is used as a transitive verb with the sense of “influence” or “persuade”, but with an implication that the subject of this verb is a disciple or member of the Christian church.
Sometimes the conversion happens in a metaphorical sense. Mothball as noun refers to balls of naphta used to protect clothes from being eaten by some species of moth - but modern homes and the use of synthetic fibres in clothes has made the use of mothballs less common. But mothball is now in wide use as a verb, meaning to put something into storage, or to stop using it, while safeguarding it for use at a later time. Some journalists use the verb in reference to military equipment, so we read that the navy has mothballed its destroyers or submarines, for example. (While noting that literal mothballs are unlikely to feature in any process for preserving warships.)
In explaining real examples of language structures, you should categorize lexemes by how they operate in a real phrase, clause or sentence, rather than by a dictionary or reference categorization. Rick (Humphrey Bogart's character in the 1940 film Casablanca) says to the heroine at one point, “Cigarette me” (he is driving a car at the time, so he is concerned about safe driving, rather than the danger of smoking). In saying this, Rick uses cigarette as a transitive verb. It is especially common in modern English for nouns to be used as (attributive) adjectives, as in health education, Design Council and drinks dispenser.
Word formation
Coalescences | Telescoped forms | Acronyms
Adding a prefix or suffix, combining or blending words all create new forms. A prefix is attached to the front of a word: immoral, overdone, subway, underpants. Sometimes a foreign prefix is added such as the Greek macro or micro: macroeconomics, microbiology.
One of the most common suffixes is -er (also -or and -eur), which usually means someone who engages in the act that the verb suggests: singer, player, seeker, writer, actor, sailor, connoisseur, saboteur. Other suffixes also denote activity, including -ant and -ist: applicant, combatant, merchant; opportunist, scientist.
Combining words to form new ones is common: gentleman, graveyard and lighthouse. Some words in combination alter their meanings slightly: already is not quite the same as all ready, and a gentleman is not quite the same as a gentle man (in this case the compound preserves an older sense of gentle, meaning "noble" or "virtuous").A blackbird is a bird of a single species (Turdus merula), of which the female is in fact brown, but black bird suggests a bird of a particular colour. And a greenhouse has green contents but is not a green house.
Blends of words fall into two categories - a coalescence or a telescoped word.
Coalescences
Lewis Carroll calls these "portmanteau words" - chortle (chuckle and snort) is his invention in Through the Looking-Glass. One of the most commonly used coalescent forms is smog, a blend of the words smoke and fog. In the mid 20th Century this process was used for new terms in politics, such as Nazi (from Nazional Sozialismus) and agitprop (agitator and propaganda). In the late 20th Century this process became less common, as acronyms came to be widely used - although UK government regulatory groups like OfSTED (Office for Standards in Education) OfTEL (Office for telecommunications?) and OfWAT (Office for Water regulation?) have names which are coalescences.
Telescoped forms
These are popular today. The rule is to take all or part of one word and all or part of another and compound them. So motorcade is made by combining motor with a remnant of cavalcade. In the same way a travel monologue becomes a travelogue, and an informative commercial (=advertisement) is an infomercial.
Acronyms
These are words formed from sets of initials, like NATO, RAF and UN. Most early acronyms used capital letters for all elements. Nowadays, you will often see lower case letters used. At first these were introduced to represent grammatical words (such as of or for), which might be helpful in creating an acronym which could be spoken easily. But it has become common for groups to choose names which spell out striking or memorable words. It is also quite common to find acronyms in mixed case for reasons of design or style. Here are some examples with comments.
- BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation. Sometimes known as the "Beeb". It is spoken as the names of the letters. The absence of vowels deters attempts to speak it as a word.
- BECTa British Educational Communications and Technology agency. This is spoken as if it is a normally formed word. There is no obvious reason for the terminal a to be lower case, except to suggest that the agency is less important than the things of or for which it is the agent.
- IT and ICT - Information (and Communication) Technology. This is spoken as the names of the letters.
- WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get. This is spoken as if it is a normally formed word ("wizzeewig"). The spoken form is easier to learn and recall (I think) than the written variant.
The Lexicon
Classical languages | Germanic and French lexis | Other languages | Reasons for change | Take a quiz on the lexicon
There about 750,000 words in the English language. This number grows steadily, and is probably already out of date. (There is some room for discussion about terms which are in common use but which have not been listed in dictionaries yet.) Nearly half of these are of Germanic (or Teutonic) origin, and nearly half from the Romance languages (languages of Latin origin - such as French, Spanish, and Italian - or Latin itself). There also have been generous borrowings from other languages, including Greek, Dutch, Modern German, and Arabic. You should use a good etymological dictionary to learn about the origins of English words.
Most borrowings from other languages occur in a given historical period. For example, the close relationship between India and Britain within the British Empire adds to the lexicon in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. Musical terms (from Italian) enter the language from the late 17th century and the 18th.
Classical languages
Greek and Latin are unusual in that they contribute to the lexicon both directly and indirectly (through other European languages) and at different times - most actively when they are no longer living vernaculars. Classical Greek was a dead language long before English existed. Latin was not a living vernacular (that is spoken by people in a given region) after the early Middle Ages, having developed into Italian. But it survived into the 19th century as the international language of learning, especially science. In some areas of science, such as. biological classification (taxonomy) and astrophysics it is still used.
More borrowings from classical languages occur in Modern English than in Old or Middle English. The meaning and use of a given lexeme may indicate when it entered the language - thus the Greek noun bishop (from episcopos = overseer) and the Latin noun grammar are found in Old English, while Greek cosmonaut, Latin television and the Greek-Latin compound astrophysics belong to the modern era. (The Oxford English Dictionary recorded television in the 19th Century - but not in the modern sense!)
Many borrowings from Latin are compounds:
- circumference, conjunction, compassion, contemporary, malnutrition, multilingual, submarine, substantial, suburb, supernatural, transfer and hundreds more.
To understand these you should study the different elements of which they are formed.
Borrowings from Greek are heavy in the sciences and technology. In addition to macro- and micro-, often-used prefixes include poly- and tele-. Among the well-known English words from Greek are alphabet, biology, geometry, geology, logic, logistics, metamorphosis, pathology, photography, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, sympathy, telephone and zoology.
It is a common mistake to suppose that lexemes of classical origin are complex polysyllables like philoprogenitive or disestablishmentarian. A sample of twenty-five lexemes (from the Oxford History of the Classical World, ed. Boardman, Grifffin and Murray, p. 13, Oxford, 1986) shows that many basic and morphologically simple words come from classical Greek or Latin. Among these are:
- act, art, beauty, colour, crime, fact, fate, fork, hour, human, idea, justice, language, law, matter, music, nature, number, place, reason, school, sense, sex, space, time
Germanic and French lexis
The lexicon of Old English is almost wholly Germanic - the exceptions are classical borrowings for the beliefs, organization and personnel of the church. Old English gives us such nouns as father, mother, brother, man, wife, ground, house, land, tree, grass, summer and winter, as well as abstractions like friendship. Old English verbs include
- bring, come, get, hear, meet, see, sit, stand and think.
Most of our everyday essentials (articles, prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns) are found in Old English.
French adds greatly to the lexicon in the Middle English period, under the Norman and Plantagenet royal houses. It gives us political terms:
- constitution, president, parliament, congress and representative.
Also borrowed from French are:
- city, place, village, court, palace, manor, mansion, residence, domicile, cuisine, diner, cafe, liberty, veracity, carpenter, draper, haberdasher, mason, painter, plumber and tailor
In modern times many terms relating to cooking, fashion, drama, winemaking, literature, art, diplomacy, and ballet also come from France.
Other languages
English has acquired many words from Spanish. Some of these came directly into English, especially in the age of sea travel and conquest:
- cigar, armada, guerrilla, matador, mosquito, tornado
Others have come to Spanish from one of the Indian languages of the Americas: potato and tomato, for example. Many Spanish words have entered American English from Latin America:
- canyon, lasso, mustang, pueblo, rodeo.
Italian contributes to the English lexicon in many ways. The technical lexicon of classical music is almost wholly Italian:
- Allegro, brio, forte, piano, pizzicato, sotto voce and so on.
In more recent times Italian has contributed to the English lexicon by giving us the names of many foods and foodstuffs:
- Ciabatta, chianti, lasagna, macaroni, pasta, spaghetti
And the popularity or notoriety of organized crime, both in real life and in fiction, has given us another set of additions to the lexicon:
- Capo, cosa nostra, mafia, omerta and vendetta
Arabic words have usually come into English by way of another European language, especially Spanish. Arabic was spoken in Spain during the period of the Muslim domination, in the early Middle Ages. Among the common English words that have come from Arabic are:
- alcohol, alchemy, algebra, alkali, almanac, arsenal, assassin, cipher, elixir, mosque, naphtha, sugar, syrup, zenith, zero
Common words borrowed from other languages are:
- hammock, hurricane, maize, tobacco (Caribbean)
- gull (Cornish)
- howitzer, robot (Czech)
- brogue, blarney, clan, plaid, shamrock (Gaelic and Irish)
- ukulele (Hawaiian)
- bungalow, dungarees, jodhpurs, jungle, loot, polo, pyjamas, shampoo, thug (Hindi)
- paprika (Hungarian)
- bonsai, sumo, origami (Japanese)
- bamboo, ketchup, orang-utan (Malay)
- paradise, lilac, bazaar, caravan, chess, shawl, khaki (Persian)
- taboo, tattoo (Polynesian)
- flamingo, marmalade, veranda (Portuguese)
- mammoth, soviet, vodka (Russian)
- coffee (Turkish)
- flannel (Welsh)
What is generally known as "lifestyle" contributes hugely to English - read, listen to or watch any gardening, cookery or fashion article or broadcast feature and you will find abundant examples of words which are entering or have entered the language from abroad, as well as home-grown compounds which use English and foreign elements, such as the notorious Chicken tikka masala.
Reasons for change
The lexicon does not change simply by growing. No single speaker is able to use all 750,000 words (most adult English speakers will use between 10,000 and 40,000). There is a difference between those words we are likely to use in any context and those we understand, but are only likely to use where the context requires it, for example igloo, porpoise or glockenspiel. You probably understand all these words, but are unlikely to have spoken or written them recently.
Over time one lexeme may replace another. The adverbial down to you (down to me, him, Fred etc.) effectively replaced up to you between the 1970s and the Millennium. Many English speakers today substitute for a single adverb, an adverb phrase of the form on a X basis, where X is usually a noun, used as attributive adjective. For example, I go there on a regular basis rather than I go there regularly.
And some words disappear from use. Hardly anyone wears breeches or pantaloons anymore. People rarely say verily or Lo! (except in badly-written historical novels). And lamplighters and organ grinders, gramophones and slide rules are things of the past. To confuse things further, some lexemes return to fashion, so boffin (= clever person) and rag (= to tease) which were current in the 1950s, but rarely heard for several decades following, became current in the speech of English teenagers in the late 1990s.
Quiz - learn about the lexicon
If you want to learn about the English lexicon, click on the link below for a short quiz. Why do this? You may want to be confident, before taking an exam, that you know examples of lexis which have entered English from different languages.
Language change and standardization
Early English | The Middle English period | The Tudor period | The 17th Century | The 18th Century | The 19th Century | The 20th century
In order to study this area of language change reflects you should have a theoretical understanding of standard and non-standard (n/s) forms. This is an important are of sociolinguistics. Those who urge standard forms on the public may be more or less aware of this academic theory.
You should note the difference between a linguist like Randolph Quirk who advocates teaching standard forms in schools as a form of social empowerment and a politician like Norman Tebbitt (1985; quoted by Professor Jean Aitchison in The Language Web and the 1996 BBC Reith Lectures) who argues that n/s forms are linked to crime (although this is plausible - the incidence of reading difficulty for the UK prison population is higher than that for the whole UK population). Professor Quirk does not prescribe the use of standard forms for their own sake, but because society expects them in some contexts.
You should also be aware of non-expert commentators, like Prince Charles, who endorse a model which reflects a mistaken belief that English is modelled on (or, even worse, "descended from") classical languages, or, like Gillian Shephard, former Secretary of State for Education, who favours a "standard" partly defined negatively as not being so-called "Estuary English". Since her comments (1995) this alleged variety has not become established. Confusingly "Estuary English" has been described as a new (demotic or popular) standard form! (See Coggle, P; 1993; Do you speak Estuary? The new standard English).
Aitchison's first 1996 Reith lecture: A Web of Worries (Chapter 1 of The Language Web) gives much of the historical background anddisposes of many myths, which she groups under three metaphorical headings: the "damp teaspoon syndrome", the "crumbling castle view" and the "infectious disease assumption". Try to find out what these are.
Classical literary Greek and Latin do not change. The reasons for this are obvious - grammars to explain them were written after the languages were no longer in use. This is the source of the illusory standard advocated throughout the history of English but especially loudly in Chaucer's time, in the classical revival of the 17th and 18th centuries, and in our own day. The advocates of this myth seem to believe, mistakenly,
- that classical languages did not change (wrong - none is alive today),
- that Greek and Latin are in some way ideal or perfect languages, and
- that English is “derived” from these dead languages.
All these are contentions which modern language science contradicts.
About this we can say two things with confidence: many people, learned or ignorant, with many motives have sought to impose standard forms on other people; none has succeeded. But we can qualify this by noting that over shorter periods standard forms for particular purposes (e.g. writing a business letter or pleading in the High Court) have been accepted.
Invented standards may be prescribed but will be observed only if speakers or writers are coerced - which is a problem for English-speaking countries which guarantee (some measure of) freedom of speech. On the other hand, some standards may be accepted out of respect for the authority from which they are derived, or for powerful pragmatic reasons - such as the use of agreed conventions for air-traffic control.
In discussing influences on standardization you should note how and in what way they are accepted (e.g. the OED, Webster or Microsoft indicate standard spelling forms but few writers use these with complete consistency).
You may wish to organize these influences chronologically or by category - although in some cases influences in a given period may more or less correspond to language category. Below is a selection of events in the history of English that have influenced language change or standardization, and comment on these.
Early English
English is at first a dialectal variant of a contemporary Germanic language. Grammar is not enforced by a standard, but conventional and stable forms have been described and reconstructed from old texts by modern scholars (e.g. H. Sweet, C.L. Wrenn and Bruce Mitchell) . Written English is rare, and comes from Latin-speaking monks, who used the Roman alphabet, with new letters - Æ/æ (ash), ð/Ð (eth) and Þ/þ (thorn). They did so usually to record texts for others to read aloud or in public (mostly the scriptures). The arrival of the Vikings and establishment of the Danelaw bring about change - some erosion of grammar and addition of new vocabulary.
The Middle English Period - 1066 to 1485
After the Norman Conquest the language of government is mediaeval French, but in 1362 (under Edward III) English becomes the official language. Writers express concern about change - Chaucer describes this change, while Ranulph Higden bemoans the strange sounds of English in a way that anticipates Gillian Shephard's 1995 outburst against "Estuary English": the English, says Higden, practise "strange wlaffyng, chytering, harryng and garryng grisbittyng" (stammering, chattering, snarling and grating tooth-gnashing).
In 1458 Gutenberg invents printing (in 1475 Caxton introduces it to England) - this enables some standardizing. But note that there is no widespread standard form of spelling nor of punctuation. Some publishers may attempt in-house consistency. Also, for some time after the invention of printing, more books than previously are produced by hand - printing is at first reserved to books likely to justify the time taken to set up type. The press provides the technical means to guarantee standardizing of spelling, but this will wait for some 300 years.
The Tudor Period - 1485 to 1603
This period sees experiments in style and debates about composition and diction. We catch hints of these in Shakespeare's plays - Falstaff's speaking in "Cambyses' vein" (Henry IV, Part i, Act 2, scene 4) or Pyramus and Thisbe (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, scene 1). Trade and discovery bring about rapid change, especially in the lexicon, and while some settling down of spelling may appear, it is far from being standardized.
Like a modern teenager, Shakespeare spells his name in many different ways. Modern school editions of the text of his plays may mislead you, as the spelling in these is in 20th century standard forms mostly. On the other hand, modern editions of Elizabethan poetry may retain archaic spelling variants - as (in John Donne's poetry, say) of personal pronouns ending in -ee - mee, hee or shee (like thee). Richard Mulcaster writes that it would be "verie praiseworthie...if som one well learned and as laborious a man, wold gather all the words which we use in our English tung…into one dictionarie".
The 17th Century
It is in this period that the debate about standard forms becomes most strident. Lexicographers attempt to create dictionaries. In 1604 Robert Cawdrey produces the first English dictionary which uses synonyms to describe or define the 3,000 entries. Daniel Defoe proposes the creation of an Academy (as in France) to supervise and regulate the language. Far more influential in establishing a mature model of English prose and verse is the publication in 1611 of the "Authorized Version"(never authorized, in fact) of the Bible. This translation was intended to produce a Bible for public reading aloud.
The 18th Century
In 1712 Jonathan Swift writes to the Lord Treasurer, urging the formation of an English Academy to regulate usage as "many gross improprieties" could be found in the language of "even the best authors". Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the preface to his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, notes that "tongues…have a natural tendency to degeneration" but mocks the lexicographer who imagines that his dictionary "can embalm his language", as "to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride". In the act of giving us the most enduring of our authorities for standard forms, Johnson sees its limitations.
In 1721 Nathan Bailey produces the first substantial dictionary, the Universal Etymological English Dictionary which, by the 1736 revision contains 60,000 words. His definitions lack illustrative support and he is vague about usage. This is remedied dramatically by Johnson in his Dictionary of the English Language. It has some 40,000 words (fewer than Bailey has) but has extensive quotations to support descriptions or definitions of words. Johnson had earlier sought to regulate and control the language - now, having considered its history more thoroughly, he recognizes this as folly. Nevertheless, his dictionary does establish models for spelling most of which are still accepted today.
In 1762, Robert Lowth publishes A Short Introduction to English Grammar - here are found many of the invented “rules” that Jean Aitchison dismisses in the first of her 1996 Reith Lectures (A Web of Worries). Lowth establishes the prescriptive tradition, mistakenly prescribing Latin-derived models. Lowth's ideas still enjoy support today.
The 19th Century
In this century, Noah Webster establishes American standard spelling in his 1828 dictionary. Differences from Johnson's are relatively few but mostly notorious. Most familiar are variants on the affixes -our and -re (Webster has -or and -er: e.g., color, labor; theater, center). In the UK Sir James Murray begins work on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in 1879 - he takes five years to reach ant. The researches of the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm lay the foundations for modern language science, and show that English is not "descended" from Latin but from a Germanic original. So attempts to explain it by the categories of Latin, or to make speakers or writers conform to classical models are historically mistaken. Yet such "Flat Earth" views persist.
The 20th Century
Modern language science develops and the idea of prescription becomes less persuasive. Attempts at spelling reform and artificial international languages provoke interest but no long-term standardization. The invented languages (such as Esperanto) are less widely spoken today than Klingon (invented by a fan of Star Trek). But English has become the global language - which may help establish an International standard.
Modern recording technology and mass broadcasting give currency to the idea of standard spoken forms. Finally, computer technology provides a powerful means for encouragement of standard written forms with spell-checking and grammar-checking. Interestingly, these allow the user to choose which standard to follow: US English, UK English, Australian or NZ English or International standard forms.
Studying standardization and change by language category
Grammar | Lexis and semantics | Spelling | Punctuation | Phonology
Although a chronological model gives us a sense of succession and of history as narrative, it can make it hard to see the theory or outline of a question or contemporary opinion. It can also lead us to see historical divisions (the end of a century) as having more importance than is really the case. In what follows aspects of change and standardization are considered in terms of language categories. Some of these will affect spoken or written English only (e.g. phonology or spelling, respectively) while others (lexis, semantics, syntax) are common to both or (like style) affect both but possibly in different ways.
Grammar
Models or examples that we imitate may become real or de facto standards. Texts with a large audience may thus create patterns to which we conform. Prescriptive rules are compiled because the writer presumably wishes to "correct" some real language tendency - these invented rules (akin to matters of etiquette or table manners) are likely to fail, but may in the meantime promote social attitudes about "correct" or "incorrect" English that are confused with genuine rules.
Some "rules", like those drawn up by Lowth in 1762, have acquired currency: for example, that one should not put a preposition at the end of a sentence, use double or multiple negatives, split the infinitive, or use they as a gender-neutral pronoun. Professor R.W. Zandvoort describes how English usage ignores these pseudo-rules, while Jean Aitchison in her lecture A Web of Worries gives historical and modern examples to show what Zandvoort describes.
Lexis and semantics
This is less problematic or, rather, the problems are readily grasped. Some lexical items with some meanings are certainly standard features of English at a given time - the OED is full of them. Equally, some other items are obviously not standard or have n/s meanings. And many items are in the process of becoming or ceasing to be standard. Thus, in spite of continual language change, we can create a standard lexicon at any time. We can take this further and show how a given lexical item with a given meaning may be standard in a given context or within a variety but be n/s as regards the mainstream.
For example Hoover began life as a brand name, a proper-noun equivalent to generic vacuum cleaner. Nowadays, in spoken UK English Hoover or arguably hoover is acceptable as a generic name or common noun. At the turn of the century supplements to the OED recorded various forms of Kodak (small portable camera) including kodaker (photographer) and kodakry photography. These are no longer standard although Polaroid is acceptable to denote the instant photographs produced in such cameras.
Both lexis and semantics (especially semantic change or drift) may be culturally determined. They may depend on some other thing (a process or object) which ceases to be familiar, and so the word disappears or the meaning shifts. This has happened to words like wireless, telegram or terms from imperial measurement and pre-decimal currency (foot, inch, gallon, bushel, halfpenny [do you know the standard pronunciation of this?], and shilling.
Spelling
Discussion of spelling is bedevilled by strong social attitudes. Even teachers, who should know better, characterize n/s spelling by epithets such as "bad", "poor", "awful" or "appalling" - as if the writer wilfully ignored the standard form. The National Curriculum draws attention to many other features of written performance as well as spelling, but the social attitudes persist. Yet Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton (necessarily) wrote without regard to a standard, so standard spelling can hardly be a measure of merit. The allegation that n/s spelling confuses the reader is often false (as with n/s omission or adding of a second consonant or n/s e before -ing in verbs). Non-standard spellings used in marketing (Kwik Fit, Kwik Save, Toys R Us) rarely appear unintentionally in children's writing, as any teacher knows. On the other hand, the commonest "errors" such as alot for (standard) a lot, grammer for (standard) grammar or belive for standard believe all make clear what the writer intends.
Johnson's dictionary establishes a standard because it is not prescriptive but descriptive. It records what is in Johnson's (very wide) reading the most common form, making allowance for consistency of like elements, and showing etymology, for those who know other languages. Thus cede (verb=give, from Latin) and seed (noun) are differently spelt though homophones (having more or less the same sound value). Johnson also disarms critics by quoting usage, not merely laying down a preferred form.
The modern reader sees Noah Webster's variants as distinctly American (ax, color, plow, theater, waggon) but often Webster has recorded an older English form than Dr. Johnson.
Punctuation
Punctuation, which may be more critical to communicating meaning than spelling, provokes much less strong social attitudes - perhaps because n/s forms are less obvious, perhaps because punctuation has no defining moment like the publication of Johnson's dictionary, but has evolved gradually and has standard forms but is open to change.
From the 18th century onwards one sees most punctuation marks which are considered standard today. Some have changed their use - in general, late 20th century texts, especially non-literary texts, have less frequent use of marks which are deemed optional. In modern German, a comma to separate clauses is obligatory, but not in English. Businesses use so-called “open punctuation” of addresses (no comma after each element). In many cases ignorance or confusion about conventions may cause writers to avoid some marks: the semi-colon and colon are problematic, while the great difference of function between hyphen and dash may be confused by lack of difference in appearance: on a typewriter the same key served for both (some typists would repeat the stroke for a dash). Some modern computer software restores the difference, where the grammar checking can detect that the context calls for the (longer) dash. (HTML character sets seem not to distinguish between the hyphen and dash, so I can't show you the difference in appearance here.)
Some writers may have caused punctuation marks to lose impact by over-use. Teachers will be familiar with multiple exclamation marks, or with exclamation marks in contexts where only mild emphasis is intended.
Phonology
Before the advent of modern recording and broadcasting technology debate about sounds was reliant on written transcripts, which could at best approximate to real phonology. Much is made of inference from, for example, rhyming words in poetry - did the poet use imperfect rhyme or have sounds changed in, for example, John Donne's "And find/What wind/Serves to advance an honest mind". Does US (rhymes with lurk) or UK (rhymes with dark) pronunciation of clerk preserve the older English form - or have two rival sounds fared differently in separate locations? And what of lieutenant? US loo-ten-unt (with stress on first or second syllable) is closer to the French original than UK lef-ten-unt (stress on second syllable).
The various phonetic alphabets give a symbolic representation of sounds that are described in terms of physical performance (for example the position of tongue relative to teeth). Modern recording technology can be used to give a far more precise and objective description of a sound produced, as a waveform or a measure of frequency and so on.
As sound recording is now more than a century old, we can observe change and standardizing tendencies in spoken English. Received Pronunciation (RP) is a notional standard form of pronunciation. RP is associated with prestige and formal public spoken discourse, such as the law, parliament, education or broadcasting. In some of these it may be in tension with regional variations. RP currently is a modified form of the accent heard in independent and grammar schools or spoken by newsreaders; the accent is largely neutral as regards region, but long/soft vowels are preferred to hard/short vowel sounds. Listening to a recording of a broadcast from an earlier period (a Pathé newsreel or Alvar Liddell [an early BBC radio broadcaster] reading the news for the BBC) will show how far RP has changed over time - the earlier RP survives in part in the accent of Queen Elizabeth II, who speaks with much less clearly differentiated (or less open) vowels than the modern RP speaker (the stiff upper lip is literal as well as a metaphor). Our notion of RP in earlier times may also derive from the accents heard in UK feature films (think of Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter). We have no easy way of knowing how far this corresponded to the prestige accent of the time.
Invented rules
You may understand this subject better by looking at some invented rules. These are not descriptions of general usage but inventions of Robert Lowth and others. Some of them have so influenced past generations that they are accepted as normative. Here are examples of some of the more commonly-encountered pseudo-rules.
Singular “they” and “them” | split infinitives | double negatives | “different from” | preposition at end of sentence
They and them are not to be used as singular pronouns.
Example: If anyone calls, tell them I'm in a meeting.
Comment: Such use may be inelegant style but does not break any real rule of grammar. Professor R.W. Zandvoort (The Fundamentals of English Grammar - Arnold's Card Guides; London, 1963) says, "Where sex is unknown he or they may be used of an adult, he or it of children". Jean Aitchison (The Language Web, p. 8) quotes examples from the 18th century to the present day of writers who disregard this "rule", including William Thackeray, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw.
The infinitive should not be split (separated from to by a qualifier)
Example: The mission was to boldly go where no man had ever gone before.
Comment: There is no justification at all for this supposed rule.
Double negatives are really affirmatives.
Example: I don't know nothing about that.
Comment: This derives from Robert Lowth ("Two negatives… are equivalent to an affirmative") but is deeply entrenched in popular attitudes to language. It arises from confusing vernacular languages with logic or theory of number. Now the double negative is often used to signal an affirmative, but indirectly, as in that's not unreasonable. Aitchison finds a multiple (fourfold) negative for emphatic negation in Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Of the knight, we are told
he never yet no vileynye ne sayde
In al his lyf unto no maner wight
(He never even no wicked thing not said in all his life to no kind of person).
Different should be immediately followed by “from” (not “than” or “to”)
Comment: Aitchison finds examples of different to and H.W. Fowler's Modern English Usage labels the preference for different from a "superstition". But different to and different than may have other distinct uses. Consider these examples:
- After the room was painted it looked different to me.
- After the room was painted it looked different from how it did before.
- A dog is different from a wolf. A slug is different from a wolf. But a slug is more different than a dog from a wolf.
Most prepositions function in ways that are not coherent or logical. Many languages do not have them. Since their use is a matter of convention, the idea of style or fitness (as with the double negative) may now argue against different to.
Prepositions should not come at the end of a sentence.
Example: This is the man who/that I spoke to.
(Preferred form given as This is the man to whom I spoke.)
Comment: The suggestion that the preposition should come before the verb phrase has no justification. The second example above may be more elegant, but rigid enforcing of the "rule" can have the opposite effect, as in the notorious: This is English, up with which I will not put.
Quizzes
Dates and events
If you want to learn important events and their dates, click on the link below for a short quiz. Why do this? You may want to be confident, before taking an exam, that you know what happened when.
Learn about the lexicon
If you want to learn about the English lexicon, click on the link below for a short quiz. Why do this? You may want to be confident, before taking an exam, that you know examples of lexis which have entered English from different languages.
Take a general language change quiz
Click on the link below for a general quiz on language change - some questions are not yet covered by this guide: you may need to look elsewhere to find out more. Many thanks to Terry of South Downs and the English Language List for sharing this quiz.
More on Scandinavian place names
Below you will find some replies e-mailed to me by Dr. Barrie M. Rhodes , UK coordinator of the Viking Network, in response to some of my questions and comments. I have edited the correspondence slightly to keep continuity. Sections marked AM are my comments, while those marked BR are Dr. Rhodes's answers.
AM: There's a roadsign near Skirlaugh (in the East Riding, north-east of Beverley) for the village of Swine, which may amuse visitors. Might this be a corruption of Sweyn (a Viking ruler, also called Sweno - he is mentioned at the start of Macbeth)? Perhaps it once had an ending that has dropped off. There is also (near Goole) a Swinefleet which could perhaps be “Sweyn's fleot” (as in estuary).
BR: Swine does indeed look as though it might refer to a Sweyne/Sven and the suffix (perhaps -by) has become “lost”. Swinefleet I'm less sure of in terms of a Scandinavian connection. The -fleot element is, of course, Anglo-Saxon and if the place name refers to some Scandinavian person it will be a hybrid place name. However, the majority of -fleot place names in this region appear to be purely Anglo-Saxon, greatly pre-dating any Scandinavian influence, and not hybridised at all. If such is the case, then this particular place is likely to get it name from the fairly straightforward “creek of the pigs”.
AM: A thought about -fleet - which is more common in the south: there are quite a few -fleets in the Humberside, East Riding and North Lincolnshire region. In Lincolnshire there is a small town of Saltfleet, and a few miles down the coast a village called Saltfleetby. I presume Saltfleetby to be later. The pronunciation of name is unusual in that the stress falls on the last syllable - not, as one might expect Salt-FLEET-by but Salfleet-BY. Some Lincolnshire dialect speakers, however, render it SOL-ler-by, with stress on the initial syllable.
BR: Saltfleetby would be a daughter settlement. A possibility is that Saltfleet came into Scandinavian possession by whatever means (the shares of Danegeld meant that disbanded Vikings could perform a transaction that had been virtually unknown before: they could BUY land, including whole villages and their estates. Sometimes the former Anglo-Saxon lord of a village/estate had been killed in battle or had been exiled and the lordship taken over by a Scandinavian.) In the latter case, when a daughter settlement became necessary because of population growth, it would be understandable that the Scandinavian owner would use Old Norse/Old Danish nomenclature for it.
AM: It's likely that not all -by names come from exclusively Viking settlements - in due course, Angles would come to use the ending, having become familiar with it. This would also happen as Danes (to the early English all Scandinavians were “Danes”) became assimilated into Angle settlements and vice versa.
BR: The demography of villages/estates in “Scandinavian” England is far from clear. Common sense suggests that some settlements remained under Anglo-Saxon lordship with a population mainly of English villagers; others would have a Viking lord yet the villagers would be mainly English; others would have mixed Anglo-Scandinavian populations and either an Anglo-Saxon or a Viking lord...and permutations therefrom. Place name evidence tells us that some villages were predominantly occupied by Scandinavians - Danby, Denby, and so on; there is also evidence of surviving Celtic occupations in names such as Welton, Walton, Bretton (though the village names themselves are clearly Anglo-Saxon applications). Some settlements were in the ownership of women (such as Whenby) but we have no indication of whether these were Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Celtic women or a mixture.
Naming practices of the Scandinavian type persisted as populations amalgamated and language became pidginised and amalgamated also. This remains true right up to the present day: for instance, the “new town” established in Lancashire in the 1960s was named Skelmersdale; a recently-built housing estate at Holme upon Spalding Moor has been named Spaldingate. and so on.
AM: It seems that after the kingdom in York came to an end, there were just as many Vikings coming and going - but it was no longer so unusual, and they behaved differently in their dealings with the established people. That is, the English would record it in the Chronicle when it was a novelty (even without the violent actions). But after a few hundred years it would not seem so newsworthy.
BR: The evidence is that post-5th century England had ALWAYS had close commercial, political and cultural contact with north-west mainland Europe in general and Scandinavia in particular (think of the geographical setting of Beowulf, for example, the origin of the Sutton Hoo helmet, Alcuin at the court of Charlemagne, English Christian missionaries in Scandinavia, etc). It is now believed that the Vikings (or, more accurately, Scandinavians, as “Viking” is an activity - “going a-viking” - not an ethnic label) had been conducting lively trade with England and Scotland long before piratical raiding started.
Think of the parallels in the history of the British Empire - we traded for a long time with places such as India before the idea of looting, conquest and assimilation into the Empire occurred. Scandinavians continued to migrate to the British Isles for many generations after the Danelaw (and the Kingdom of York, which existed a bit longer) had been recovered by the successors of Alfred the Great. Indeed, Scandinavian migration has continued right to the present day, if we want to be pedantic about it! A noticeable influx of Scandinavian settlers seems to have taken place after Canute/Knut became king of England in the 11th century. Indeed, it may be that this influx was even larger than that of Guthrum's disbanded Viking army. Obviously, Scandinavian naming practices would persist and be reinforced in such circumstances. John of Wallingford, writing in the Church Chronicles in the 12th century, records how the indigenous population of northern England and the north Midlands became quickly assimilated with Scandinavian incomers “...adopting their manners, their customs, their dress and their mode of speech...” (if I remember the quotation correctly). You probably know of such language adoption as being part of the linguistic theory of “élite dominance”.
You are right about the Anglo-Saxon perception of all Vikings being “Danes”. This is easily explained as, for much of the Viking Age, all southern Scandinavia was “Danish” anyway. In a similar way, the Celtic languages identify all English as “Saxons” (Sassenach in Gaelic, Sassnaeg in Welsh) and don't differentiate amongst Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Allemanii, Swabians and others who migrated to Britain from AD 410 onwards.
AM: It's easy for modern people to project onto the past a sense of national identity, and an awareness of who is the ruler - but I wonder if people in what is now the East Riding noticed anything much, let alone cared, when Sweyn followed Aethelraed, or when Edward followed Harthacanut.
BR: Consciousness of a national identity was fairly late arriving and the concept of a sovereign nation state emerged only slowly. “Norway”, “Sweden” and “Denmark” are historically recent concepts in the “nation state” sense. In the Viking Age Scandinavia (and elsewhere) identification with, and loyalty to, one's family/clan/local chieftain was far more potent than recognition of an overall sovereign. Indeed, many Scandinavians chose to migrate to the British Isles and Iceland to escape the tyranny of the monarchy once it emerged as part of the nation state idea. They cherished the freedom of the individual and the concept of the “freeman” above all. This was partly the rationale behind the uprisings in the north when William I started to impose the feudal system - the policy was entirely unacceptable to the psychology of the Anglo-Scandinavian population of the north. As you know, William “wasted” Yorkshire in revenge - and we've never forgiven “southerners” and the powers in Whitehall for that atrocity. They made it worse by doing away with our Viking-constructed Ridings in 1974! The north-south divide has a much longer history than the post-Industrial Revolution phenomenon!
AM: A useful practical exercise would be to give students maps from different locations in the UK, to see what they can infer from place names.
BR: This is a classic exercise which we have conducted in Historical Geography for many decades. I have done it with students from upper primary school age right up to undergraduate level (where we used the statistical device of “nearest neighbour analysis” to plot the distribution, density and succession of settlement).
© Andrew Moore, 2000; Contact me
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