Chapter 8: Early Modern English – Outer History

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Figure 8.1 The Darnley Portrait of Elizabeth I

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Influence on Early Modern English

The traditional starting date for Early Modern English (EMnE) is 1500. As we’ve seen, the Great Vowel Shift was taking place and it stretched from the last part of ME into EMnE. But there were a number of external events that shaped English during this period. This chapter will examine a few of the critical events that shaped EMnE.

One of the fascinating aspects about this period has been how “English speakers stand back and take a serious look at their language” (Millward and Hayes 2012, p. 219). In other words, speakers wanted to “refine” their language because many of the educated elite and even the emerging middle class wanted to “fix” their language because they deemed it as falling into some sort of decay. This desire to fix English will be a guiding theme in this chapter.

Printing Press

A major influence in the development of EMnE was the advent of the printing press, one of the world’s great technological innovations, introduced into England by William Caxton in 1476 (Johann Gutenberg had originally invented the printing press in Germany around 1450). The printing press helped moved ME to EMnE. And it also contributed to an urgency to “fix” English in its spelling and grammar.

The first book printed in the English language was Caxton's own translation, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, actually printed in Bruges in 1473 or early 1474. Up to 20,000 books were printed in the following 150 years, ranging from mythic tales and popular stories to poems, phrasebooks, devotional pieces and grammars. Caxton himself became quite rich from his printing business (among his best sellers were Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Thomas Malory’s Tales of King Arthur). As mass-produced books became cheaper and more commonly available, literacy mushroomed, and soon works in English became even more popular than books in Latin.

At the time of the introduction of printing, there were five major dialect divisions within England - Northern, West Midlands, East Midlands (a region which extended down to include London), Southern and Kentish - and even within these demarcations, there was a huge variety of different spellings. For example, the word church could be spelled in 30 different ways. The printing press necessitated a more standardized spelling. The early publishers had to decide on spelling. Previously, scribes handwrote documents and often used spelling based on their local dialect. However, as books became widely published and disseminated, an agreed upon spelling system was necessary.

The Chancery of Westminster made some efforts from the 1430s onwards to set standard spellings for official documents, specifying I instead of ich and various other common variants of the first-person pronoun, land instead of lond, and modern spellings of such, right, not, but, these, any, many, can, cannot, but, shall, should, could, ought, thorough (all of which previously appeared in many variants). Chancery Standard contributed significantly to the development of a Standard English, and the political, commercial, and cultural dominance of the "East Midlands triangle" (London-Oxford-Cambridge) was well established long before the 15th Century, but it was the printing press that was really responsible for carrying through the standardization process. With the advent of mass printing, the dialect and spelling of the East Midlands (and, more specifically, that of the national capital, London, where most publishing houses were located, became the de facto standard and, over time, spelling and grammar gradually became more and more fixed.

Some of the decisions made by the early publishers had long-lasting repercussions for the language. One such example is the use of the northern English they, their, and them in preference to the London equivalents hi, hir and hem (which were more easily confused with singular pronouns like he, her, and him). Caxton himself complained about the difficulties of finding forms which would be understood throughout the country, a difficult task even for simple words like eggs. But his own work was far from consistent (e.g., booke and boke, axed and axyd) and his use of double letters and the final "e" was haphazard at best (e.g., had/hadd/hadde, dog/dogg/dogge, well/wel, which/whiche, fellow/felow/felowe/fallow/fallowe). Many of his successors were just as inconsistent, particularly as many of them were Europeans and not native English speakers. Sometimes different spellings were used for purely practical reasons, such as adding or omitting letters merely to help the layout or justification of printed lines.

A good part of the reason for many of the vagaries and inconsistencies of English spelling has been attributed to the fact that words were fixed on the printed page before any orthographic consensus had emerged among teachers and writers. Printing also directly gave rise to another strange quirk: words that had been written for centuries as þe, using the thorn character of Old English, changed. As no runic characters were available on the European printing presses, the letter “y” was used instead (being closest to the handwritten thorn character of the period), resulting in the word ye, which should therefore technically still be pronounced as /ði/. It is only since the archaic spelling was revived for store signs (e.g., Ye Olde Pubbe) that the "modern" pronunciation of ye has been used.

As the EMnE period progressed, there was an increased use of double vowels (e.g., soon) or a silent final "e" (e.g., name) to mark long vowels, and doubled consonants to mark a preceding short vowel (e.g., sitting), although there was much less consensus about consonants at the end of words (e.g., bed, glad, well, glasse). The letters "u" and "v", which had been more or less interchangeable in ME, gradually became established as a vowel and a consonant respectively, as did "i" and "j". Also during the 16^th century, the virgule (an oblique stroke /), which had been a very common mark of punctuation in ME, was largely replaced by the comma; the period was restricted to the end of sentences; semicolons began to be used in addition to colons (although the rules for their use were still unclear); quotation marks were used to mark direct speech; and capital letters were used at the start of sentences and for proper names and important nouns.

But as Millward and Hayes (2012) note, EMnE was undergoing massive sound changes and these changes continued well past the standardization of spelling, and “hence, in the twentieth century we are still spelling a language that has not been spoken since the fifteenth century” (p. 220).

Figure 8.2 William Caxton Showing Printing Press to

King Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth

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The printing press made books widely available even to individuals from lower socioeconomic classes who did not know Latin or French. These people wanted books in English. Classical works from Greek, Latin, and French were translated into English and this introduced thousands of new loan words into English as well as secure English’s position as the de facto language of the land. And since the first printing presses were established in London, the books were printed using the London dialect, and as books were distributed throughout the country, the London dialect spread.

The English Renaissance

Another important influence on EMnE was the English Renaissance. The English Renaissance roughly covers the 16^th and early 17^th century (the European Renaissance had begun in Italy as early as the 14^th century), and it is often referred to as the “Elizabethan Era” or the “Age of Shakespeare” after the most important monarch and most famous writer of the period. The additions to English vocabulary during this period were deliberate borrowings, and not the result of any invasion or influx of new nationalities or any top-down decrees. With the Renaissance was a revival in classical learning and an interest in authors such as Caesar, Plato, Virgil, and Homer. Before the Renaissance, these authors had to be read in Latin; however, their works were increasingly being translated into English. This gave English a slew of new classical loanwords. A huge number of classical works were being translated into English during the 16th Century, and many new terms were introduced where a satisfactory English equivalent did not exist.

The translation of these works resulted in a renewed status to the English language. And English writers at this time benefited by incorporating features of classical rhetoric into English. At the same time, many writers started comparing English to Latin and concluded that English was a “poor” language in comparison to Latin. Thus, the English language needed improvement in their eyes.

Words from Latin or Greek (often via Latin) were imported wholesale during this period, either intact (e.g., genius, species, militia, radius, specimen, criterion, squalor, apparatus, focus, tedium, lens, antenna, paralysis, nausea) or, more commonly, slightly altered (e.g., horrid, pathetic, pungent, frugal, anonymous, dislocate, explain, excavate, meditate, adapt, enthusiasm, absurdity, area, complex, concept, invention, technique, temperature, capsule). A whole category of words ending with the Greek-based suffixes “-ize” and “-ism” were also introduced around this time.

Some scholars adopted Latin terms so excessively and awkwardly at this time that the derogatory term “inkhorn word” was coined to describe pedantic writers who borrowed the classics to create obscure and opulent terms, many of which have not survived. Inkhorn was the term used because critics claimed these Latin borrowings required too much ink from the inkhorn to write out. Examples of inkhorn terms include revoluting, ingent, devulgate, attemptate, obtestate, fatigate, deruncinate, subsecive, nidulate. However, it is interesting to note that some words initially branded as inkhorn terms have stayed in the language and now remain in common use (e.g., dismiss, disagree, celebrate, encyclopedia, commit, industrial, affability, dexterity).

Figure 8.3 An Inkwell Made of a Horn

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The so-called Inkhorn Controversy was the first of several such ongoing arguments over language use which began to erupt in the salons of England (and, later, America). An indication of the arbitrariness of this process is that impede survived while its opposite, expede, did not; commit and transmit were allowed to continue, while demit was not; and disabuse and disagree survived, while disaccustom and disacquaint, which were coined around the same time, did not.

Whichever side of the debate one favors, however, it is fair to say that, by the end of the 16^th century, English had finally become widely accepted as a language of learning, equal if not superior to the classical languages. Vernacular language, once scorned as suitable for popular literature and little else - and still criticized throughout much of Europe as crude, limited and immature - had become recognized for its inherent qualities

Protestant Reformation

Beginning with Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses, the Protestant Reformation had a profound influence on Europe. When Henry VIII decided to break from the Catholic Church during the 16^th century, the effect on the English language would be enormous. The most obvious effect was emergence of translations of the Bible into English so that more people could read it.

William Tyndale printed his New Testament, which he had translated directly from the original Greek and Hebrew into English. Tyndale printed his Bible in secrecy in Germany, and smuggled them into his homeland, for which he was hounded down, found guilty of heresy, and executed in 1536. By the time of his death, he had only completed part of the Old Testament, but others carried on his labors. Ironically, a scant few years after Tyndale’s execution, Henry VIII’s split with Roman Catholicism completely changed official attitudes to an English Bible, and by 1539 the idea was being wholeheartedly encouraged, and several new English language Bibles were published (including the Coverdale Bible, the Matthew Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Bishops Bible). This culminated in the King James Bible in 1611.

The King James Bible was compiled by a committee of 54 scholars and clerics, and published in 1611, in an attempt to standardize the plethora of new Bibles that had sprung up over the preceding 70 years. It appears to be deliberately conservative, even backward-looking, both in its vocabulary and its grammar, and presents many forms which had already largely fallen out of use, or were at least in the process of dying out (e.g., digged for dug, gat and gotten for got, spake for spoke, holpen for helped), and several archaic forms such as brethren, kine and twain. The "-eth" ending is used throughout for third person singular verbs, even though "-es" was becoming much more common by the early 17^th century, and ye is used for the second person plural pronoun, rather than the more common you. Nonetheless, the language in the King James Bible had enormous influence on the English language; its style was praised and recommended for emulation ever since its publication in 1611” (Millward and Hayes, 2012, p. 231).

Figure 8.4 Henry the VIII

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In addition to Bible translations in English, the Reformation also led to a decrease in the use of Latin as the language of instruction in education. Before the Reformation, most educators were Catholic clergy who relied on Latin to instruct students. During the Reformation, educators were laypersons who relied on English. This gave English even more status as a language. And since English was now being used in religious contexts, this added to the feeling that English needed “repair” to increase its inherent qualities.

Nationalism, Economy, Colonialism, and Dictionaries

During the 15^th and 16^th centuries, national states began to emerge in Europe. England

was no exception. It is somewhat disputed when this nationalism emerged. Some historians claim it began as early as the 8^th century. However, it gained momentum during the EMnE period. Below are some key events that increased a sense of nationalism in England:

• Henry VIII (ruled from 1509 – 1547) is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disagreement with Pope Clement VII about such an annulment led Henry to initiate the English Reformation, separating the Church of England from papal authority.
• Elizabeth I had a long (1558 – 1603) and popular reign. This long reign and Elizabeth’s excommunication by Pope Pius V in 1570 increased a desire for a strong sense of nationalism in English.
• During the 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th centuries, writers such as Ben Johnson, William Shakespeare, and John Milton gave England a unique literature.

In addition to a growing nationalism, changes to the economy would also affect English. As the economy in the late 15^th century shifted, more and more workers moved to cities. This affected the English language in several ways. One way was the distinct dialects from around England began to meld together. In addition, there was a burgeoning middle class, and they viewed “correct and refined” English as a way to rise in social and economic standing. Latin and French were no longer the markers of high social standing. The breaking from the Catholic Church and the rise of English literature gave assurance to the people that English was indeed a “real” language. This desire for clear-cut answers to grammatical questions and issues led to a rise in linguistic prescriptivism as well a new market for grammar books and dictionaries. While it is true that Latin was still held in high regard in much of Europe, English was gaining traction. And producers of grammar books and other scholars began to supplement English’s “deficiencies” by borrowing words and some structures from Latin. Again, it must be noted that part of what fueled this desire for English and its improvement was economic in nature since the economy was shifting to urban centers.

Another shift towards the end of the EMnE period was the Industrial Revolution. This increased wealth and capital for many in England. However, it also decreased literacy because many children were working in factories instead of attending school. The Industrial Revolution along with the American Revolution and colonialism would increase the varieties of English within England and around the world. English colonies in Bermuda, Jamaica, Canada, India, Gambia, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Kenya, and many other countries would add to growing numbers of dialects and grammatical systems in English. It would also increase the desire to have authoritative control over English.

While there was some call for an American English Academy (like the French Academy) to regulate the language. This movement eventually died in part because the French Academy had not be too successful. There was also the notion that such an academy would work counter to the English idea of liberty. Ultimately, scholars looked to dictionaries to mark what should and should not be in the language.

The first English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall, was published by English schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey in 1604 (8 years before the first Italian dictionary, and 35 years before the first French dictionary, although admittedly some 800 years after the first Arabic dictionary and nearly 1,000 after the first Sanskrit dictionary). Cawdrey’s little book contained 2,543 of what he called “hard words”, especially those borrowed from Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French, although it was not actually a very reliable resource (even the word words was spelled in two different ways on the title page alone, as wordes and words).

Several other dictionaries, as well as grammar, pronunciation, and spelling guides, followed during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The first attempt to list all the words in the English language was An Universall Etymological English Dictionary, compiled by Nathaniel Bailey in 1721 (the 1736 edition contained about 60,000 entries). But the first dictionary considered anything like reliable was Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755.

Figure 8.5 Portrait of Samuel Johnson

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An impressive academic achievement in its own right, Johnson’s 43,000-word dictionary remained the pre-eminent English dictionary until the much more comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary 150 more years later, although it was actually riddled with inconsistencies in both spelling and definitions. Johnson’s dictionary included many flagrant examples of inkhorn terms which have not survived, including digladation, cubiculary, incompossibility, clancular, denominable, opiniatry, ariolation, assation, ataraxy, deuteroscopy, disubitary, esurine, estuation, indignate and others. Johnson also deliberately omitted from his dictionary several words he disliked or considered vulgar (including bang, budge, fuss, gambler, shabby and touchy), but these useful words have clearly survived intact regardless of his opinions. Several of his definitions appear deliberately jokey or politically motivated.

In the wake of Johnson’s dictionary, a plethora of other dictionaries appeared, peaking in the period between 1840 and 1860, as well as many specialized dictionaries and glossaries. In addition to dictionaries, many English grammars started to appear in the 18th Century, the best-known and most influential of which were Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) and Lindley Murray's English Grammar (1794). In fact, some 200 works on grammar and rhetoric were published between 1750 and 1800, and no less than 800 during the 19th Century. Most of these works, Lowth’s in particular, were extremely prescriptive, stating in no uncertain terms the “correct” way of using English. Lowth was the main source of such "correct" grammar rules as a double negative always yields a positive, never end a sentence with a preposition and never split an infinitive. A refreshing exception to such prescriptivism was the “Rudiments of English Grammar” by the scientist and polymath Joseph Priestley, which was unusual in expressing the view that grammar is defined by common usage and not prescribed by self-styled grammarians.

Since the 16^th century, there had been calls for the regulation and reform of what was increasingly seen as an unwieldy English language, including John Cheke's 1569 proposal for the removal of all silent letters, and William Bullokar's 1580 recommendation of a new 37-letter alphabet (including 8 vowels, 4 "half-vowels" and 25 consonants) in order to aid and simplify spelling. There were even attempts (similarly unsuccessful) to ban certain words or phrases that were considered in some way undesirable, words such as fib, banter, bigot, fop, flippant, flimsy, workmanship, selfsame, despoil, nowadays, furthermore and wherewithal, and phrases such as subject matter, drive a bargain, handle a subject and bolster an argument.

Conclusion

The emergence of English nationalism, the Protestant Reformation, the rise of linguistic prescriptivism by both scholars and the middle class assured that English would take its place as the language in England. Colonialism spread English around the globe and today English has numerous dialects which emerge from the events of the EMnE period.

Key Concepts from Chapter 8:

• The traditional starting date for Early Modern English is 1500.
• The EMnE period was marked by an interest in refining and perfecting English.
• William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476. The press had an enormous influence on the spread and renewed interest in the English language.
• The London dialect became established as the standard.
• The English Renaissance provided the English language with a new source of vocabulary.
• The Protestant Reformation influenced the development of English. In particular, Latin was not longer considered as the only language for education. English was used for religious and education purposes.
• A rise in nationalism in England solidified the place of the English language in all areas of society.
• Dictionaries and not a language academy became the means to “regulate” the English language.

Key Terms from Chapter 8:

• William Caxton
• standardization
• English Renaissance
• Inkhorn Controversy
• Protestant Reformation
• Martin Luther
• Henry the VIII
• William Tyndale
• King James Bible
• Elizabeth I
• William Shakespeare
• John Milton
• English nationalism
• Industrial Revolution
• Samuel Johnson
• Robert Lowth

Materials for Chapter 8 adapted from the following:

Mastin, Luke. The History of English. (Material was used and adapted with permission.)

Works Cited for Chapter 7:

Milllward, C. & Hayes, M. (2012). A Biography of the English language. Wadsworth.