Early Modern English

Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE), also known as Early New English (ENE), and colloquially Shakespeare's English, Shakespearean English, or King James' English, is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle English, in the late 15th century, to the transition to Modern English, in the mid-to-late 17th century.Nevalainen, Terttu (2006). An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Before and after the accession of James I to the English throne in 1603, the emerging English standard began to influence the spoken and written Middle Scots of Scotland.

The grammatical and orthographical conventions of literary English in the late 16th century and the 17th century are still very influential on modern Standard English. Most modern readers of English can understand texts written in the late phase of early modern English, such as the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare, and they have greatly influenced Modern English.

Texts from the earlier phase of early modern English, such as the late-15th-century Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) and the mid-16th-century Gorboduc (1561), may present more difficulties but are still closer to Modern English grammar, lexicon and phonology than are 14th-century Middle English texts, such as the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.

History

English Renaissance

Transition from Middle English

The change from Middle English to early modern English affected much more than just vocabulary and pronunciation.

Middle English underwent significant change over time and contained large dialectical variations. Early Modern English, on the other hand, became more standardised and developed an established canon of literature that survives today. 1476 – William Caxton started printing in Westminster; however, the language that he used reflected the variety of styles and dialects used by the authors who originally wrote the material.

Tudor period (1485–1603) 1485 – Caxton published Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the first print bestseller in English. Malory's language is often described as late Middle English, but it also shows transitional Early Modern features, including the beginnings of the Great Vowel Shift. 1491 or 1492 – Richard Pynson started printing in London; his style tended to prefer Chancery Standard, the form of English used by the government.

Henry VIII 1509 – Pynson became the king's official printer. From 1525 – Publication of William Tyndale's Bible translation, which was initially banned. 1539 – Publication of the Great Bible, the first officially authorised Bible in English. Edited by Myles Coverdale, it was largely from the work of Tyndale. It was read to congregations regularly in churches, which familiarised much of the population of England with a standard form of the language. 1549 – Publication of the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer in English, under the supervision of Thomas Cranmer (revised in 1552, 1559, 1604, and 1662), which standardised much of the wording of church services. Some have argued that since attendance at prayer book services was required by law for many years, the repetitive use of its language helped to standardise Modern English even more than the King James Bible (1611) did.Stephen L. White, "The Book of Common Prayer and the Standardization of the English Language" The Anglican, 32:2(4-11), April 2003 1557 – Publication of Tottel's Miscellany.

Elizabethan English

Elizabethan era (1558–1603) 1560 – The Geneva Bible was published. The New Testament was completed in 1557 by English Reformed exiles on the continent during the reign of Mary, and the complete Bible three years later, after Elizabeth succeeded the throne. This version was favoured by the Puritans and Pilgrims due to its more vigorous and forceful language. Its popularity and proliferation (due in large part to its copious notes) over the following decades sparked the production of the King James Bible to counter it. 1582 – The Rheims and Douai Bible was completed, and the New Testament was released in Rheims, France, in 1582. It was the first complete English translation of the Bible that was officially sponsored and carried out by the Catholic Church (earlier translations into English, especially of the Psalms and Gospels, existed as far back as the 9th century, but it was the first Catholic English translation of the full Bible). Though the Old Testament was already complete, it was not published until 1609–1610, when it was released in two volumes. While it did not make a large impact on the English language at large, it certainly played a role in the development of English, especially in heavily Catholic English-speaking areas. Christopher Marlowe, 1592 – The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd – Shakespeare's plays written

17th century Jacobean and Caroline eras Jacobean era (1603–1625)

1609 – Shakespeare's sonnets published Other playwrights: Ben Jonson Thomas Dekker Beaumont and Fletcher (Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher) John Webster 1607 – The first successful permanent English colony in the New World, Jamestown, is established in Virginia. Early vocabulary specific to American English comes from indigenous languages (such as moose, racoon). 1611 – The King James Version of the Bible was published. It was largely based on the Bishops' Bible translation and revision of 1602. The "Authorised Version" as it is called in the U.K. remained the standard Bible in the Church of England until the 1769 Oxford edition supplanted it with updated modern English spelling and grammar. 1623 – Shakespeare's First Folio published

Caroline era and English Civil War (1625–1649)

1630–1651 – William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony, wrote his journal. It will become Of Plymouth Plantation, one of the earliest texts written in the American Colonies. 1647 – Publication of the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio

Interregnum and Restoration The English Civil War and the Interregnum were times of social and political upheaval and instability. The dates for Restoration literature are a matter of convention and differ markedly from genre to genre. In drama, the "Restoration" may last until 1700, but in poetry, it may last only until 1666, the annus mirabilis (year of wonders), and in prose lasts until 1688. With the increasing tensions over succession and the corresponding rise in journalism and periodicals, or until possibly 1700, when those periodicals grew more stabilised. 1651 – Publication of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. 1660–1669 – Samuel Pepys wrote his diary, which will become an important eyewitness account of the Restoration Era. 1662 – New edition of the Book of Common Prayer, largely based on the 1549 and subsequent editions. It long remained a standard work in English. 1667 – Publication of Paradise Lost by John Milton and of Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden.

Development to Modern English

The 17th-century port towns and their forms of speech gained influence over the old county towns. From around the 1690s onwards, England experienced a new period of internal peace and relative stability, which encouraged the arts, including literature. Modern English can be taken to have emerged fully by the beginning of the Georgian era in 1714, but English orthography remained somewhat fluid until the publication of Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, in 1755.

The Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1730 made English, instead of Law French and Latin, the obligatory language for use in the courts of England and in the court of exchequer in Scotland. It was later extended to Wales, and seven years later a similar act was passed in Ireland, the Administration of Justice (Language) Act (Ireland) 1737.

The towering importance of William Shakespeare over the other Elizabethan authors was the result of his reception during the 17th and the 18th centuries, which directly contributes to the development of Standard English. Shakespeare's plays are therefore still familiar and comprehensible 400 years after they were written,Cercignani, Fausto, Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981. but the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, which had been written only 200 years earlier, are considerably more difficult for the average modern reader.

Orthography

The orthography of early modern English is recognisably similar to that of today, but spelling was unstable. Early Modern and Modern English both retain various orthographical conventions that predate the Great Vowel Shift.

Early Modern English spelling was broadly similar to that encountered in Middle English. Some of the changes that occurred were based on etymology (as with the silent that was added to words like , and ). Many spellings had still not been standardised. For example, he was spelled as both and in the same sentence in Shakespeare's plays and elsewhere.

Certain key orthographic features of early modern English spelling have not been retained: The letter had two distinct lowercase forms: (short s), as is still used today, and (long s). The short s was always used at the end of a word and often elsewhere. The long s, if used, could appear anywhere except at the end of a word. The double lowercase S was written variously , or (the last ligature is still used in German ß). Introduction uses both and . That is similar to the alternation between medial (σ) and final lowercase sigma (ς) in Greek. and were not considered two distinct letters then but as still different forms of the same letter. Typographically, was frequent at the start of a word and elsewhere: hence (for modern unmoved) and (for love). The modern convention of using for the vowel sounds and for the consonant appears to have been introduced in the 1630s. Also, was frequently represented by . Similarly, and were also still considered not as two distinct letters, but as different forms of the same letter: hence for joy and for just. Again, the custom of using as a vowel and as a consonant began in the 1630s. The letter (thorn) was still in use during the early modern English period but was increasingly limited to handwritten texts. In Early Modern English printing, was represented by the Latin (see Ye olde), which appeared similar to thorn in blackletter typeface . Thorn had become nearly totally disused by the late early modern English period, the last vestiges of the letter being its ligatures, (thee), (that), (thou), which were still seen occasionally in the 1611 King James Version and in Shakespeare's Folios. A silent was often appended to words, as in and . The last consonant was sometimes doubled when the was added: hence (for man) and (for run). The sound that became Modern English was often written (as in son): hence , (for modern summer, plumb).W. W. Skeat, in Principles of English Etymology, claims that the substitution was encouraged by the ambiguity between u and n; if could just as easily be misread as or , it made sense to write it as . (Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series. Clarendon Press, 1891, page 99.) The final syllable of words like public was variously spelt but came to be standardised as -ick. The modern spellings with -ic did not come into use until the mid-18th century.Fischer, A., Schneider, P., "The dramatick disappearance of the spelling", in Text Types and Corpora, Gunter Narr Verlag, 2002, pp. 139ff. was often used instead of and occasionally instead of (see William Shakespeare's sonnet 19 in the Thomas Thorpe quarto; "Tyger's yawes"). The vowels represented by and (for example in meet and ) changed, and became an alternative.

Phonology

The phonology of early modern English is reconstructed from a variety of sources, including phonetic descriptions by orthoepists, spellings, and usage in poetry.

Consonants