Talk:History of English/Archive 1

message: I find the example for Modern English a little bit too old. There are still grammatical differences in the sample and from the type of English spoken today. Does anyone else feel that we should update this as well?
:I agree that it should be updated. It also shouldn't be a government document, in my opinion, because those tend to be much more formal and use a lot of otherwise archaic language. The trouble, though, is finding a good example of modern-day English that's also public domain. -Branddobbe 08:21, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
::What's the legality of quoting books? I'm pretty sure you can take something like 5 lines (assuming you provide the source, of course) without running afoul of the law. If it isn't, maybe we can take something from one of Wikipedia's featured articles? Jonathan Grynspan 01:58, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no problem quoting short extracts from books. I'd recommend citing the reference though, but this is more academic rigour and courtesy than any real need. jguk 07:00, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I respectfully disagree with the first two posters. 1) The Declaration of Independence is, grammatically, Modern English. There are some differences of usage (diction, punctuation) between the Declaration & current language, but not of grammar. 2) Whoever is reading this article has access to hundreds of thousands of examples of current English, i.e. en.Wikipedia itself. But not everyone is hip to the similarities between 18th and 21st century English. 3) Copyright (in the U.S.), until very recently, lasted 75 years. So Hawthorne, Melville, and Fitzgerald are now fair game. --Adamgarrigus 22:31, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Modern English?

message: Does anyone have a good knowledge of early examples of written English?  I am aware of a medallion dated c 480 AD but this used runes for the inscription.  Are the legal codes of Ine and Alfred the earliest known examples of written English using the Roman alphabet?  Can anyone help??
I've heard that Beowulf is the first written English.  I know it's written with the Latin alphabet, but it's probably more similar to Icelandic than English.Cameron Nedland 22:06, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Written English 

message: This passage is somewhat confusing or misleading, since the Renaissance began at different times throughout Europe: "By about the time of the Renaissance, the language had evolved into what is known as Middle English, which Modern English speakers can understand with a little difficulty. From the late 1400s, the language changed further into what is described as Modern English, and as a result of the Great Vowel Shift." While the Renaissance may have begun in Italy around the time of Middle English, it didn't reach Northern Europe for a couple centuries. This is confusing for people who study English history, because to them the "time of the Renaissance" is the late 1400s.
:In fact, in Germany and the U.S., I learned that the (northern) Ren. started in 1500/1492. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.225.34.187 (talk) 11:47, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Middle English in the Renaissance? 

message: Did final mb as in lamb really not lose the /b/ until the early 18th century? I would have thought it was much earlier. And what evidence is there for the date? --Angr/ 08:07, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the OED, the first spelling of lamb as lam was in the middle of the 15th century, so I suppose that's a terminus ante quem for the sound change. Sword, on the other hand, seems always to have been speleld with sw-. --Angr/ 05:57, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Aha, but archaic soot "sweet" from Old English swóte was first spelled sote in 1374 (by Chaucer in fact, though the OED quote is from Troylus, not Canterbury Tales), so there's a date for that. --Angr/ 06:03, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, however pronunciation very often is very slow to change. You must also remember that until the 18th century (with the beginning of the dictionary movement, people chose their letters to match their pronunciation very often, and it doesn't take long in Britain to find a different pronunciation. There are villages in Staffordshire where a native can tell which village a person is from nearly instantly (they're all within 5 miles!). Baugh and Cable track many of the pronunciation changes... often these concurred with historical events. Chaucer's langauge was very heavily influenced in comparison to earlier writings by Norman French, which would have changed his pronunciation. Old Norse influence (especially within the Danelaw) may well have affected a slight change which can still be heard in the dialects around there. 'Records' of pronunciation are very difficult to trace. I have heard that sword kept its pronunciation far longer than is suggested here by some speakers, but that does not mean that the pronunciation of sw in swote was necessarily preserved. Certain 16th century (yes, contemporary with Shakespeare) pronunciations have remained in the Appalachain mountains in West Virginia. If one is fortunate enough to have elderly family from those regions, one can hear some interesting pronunciations which have survived (especially an ar sound in many words like varmint and marchant (merchant). This is first-hand knowledge on my part (my Nanny is in her 90's) which is corroborated by some reading including Bryson, B :Made in America. Be careful trying to track pronunciations to a nicety, they change often and not necessarily uniformly! (I'd suggest Baugh and Cable: A History of the English Language which has many of these changes documented well) Sorry this is so long-winded, Zach Beauvais 10:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  mb -> m 

message: I think this would be improved by adding a few more example words, especially in the earlier sections.  --JHJ 17:03, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sound changes section 

message: About the changes currently referred to on the Phonemic differentiation page (and I think by Wells) as the "long mid mergers": these are currently listed, together with several other diphthong changes, in the c. 1400 to 1600 section, and three different diphthongs (/eI/, /EI/, /aI/) are shown as merging with ME /a:/, at different times.  First, it would be nice to have some examples of words with each of those three diphthongs: I don't know which one pain, for example, would have had.  Also, I'm somewhat surprised that the mergers are as old as that, given that the distinctions (pain/pane, toe/tow) seem to be generally accepted features of 20th century English in Wales and East Anglia.  There's an article at  which says that the distinctions were widespread in 19th century England.  I don't feel knowledgeable enough to change this myself, but what's the source for the current description?--JHJ 20:27, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long mid mergers 

message: "Loss of /ə/ in final syllables. "
This is listed late in the 1400 to 1600 group.  In the book on the Canterbury tales I have, the pronunciation guide says it was unlikely that Chaucer himself pronounced the final schwa represented by e in Middle English.  In fact many see this as the impetus of the Great Vowel Shift that occurred in the 15th cent.  No longer were the vowels in 'name'[na:m] and 'nam' [nam] "I took" in complementary distribution.  Thus a new long vowel /a:/ came about causing the vowels above it to shift upwards to better differentiate themselves.  GVS was the result.
"American and Australian English flapping of /t/ and /d/ to [ɾ] in some circumstances."
This phonetic weakening also occurs in some British dialects, notably cockney, as a glottal stop.  It might be added that a similar allophonic distribution occurred in British English but was "stamped out" by their spelling pronunciation.  This is the reason that final stops are released in RP unlike in every other dialects (thus the /t/ and /p/ in 'tip' and 'pit' have virtually identical aspirated values in RP) and also why certain word that have histories preceding the Enlightenment are pronounced more closely to their spelling (earlier artic became arctic [a:ktIk] in British English.)  I would push the flapping back to the 1600 - 1725 category as Britain established colonies.
: Hm, if I recall the intro to Canterbury Tales that I saw correctly, it said that final -e wasn't usually pronounced when the next word began in a vowel, so when it was pronounced (for reasons of rhythm/timing etc.) it was spelt as -ë. But poetry often has funny rules, and this is going by a vague memory...
: As for flapping, the flapping in AuE and NZE is generally regarded as an example of a change of prestige dialects. The prestige dialect used to be RP, and so Cultivate Australian tends to avoid the onset at the beginning of ; nowadays, its General American, so the younger generations tend to flap their t's (for broad definitions of ‘younger’). I'm almost certain this is a borrowed sound change, not something we inherited. I think there's evidence for the same in Canadian English, but I'm not sure...
: —Felix the Cassowary () 03:46, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I doubt that's a borrowed sound change, at least from AmE (I’d be particularly reluctant to describe any changes to vowels in English dilects as borrowed—with all our innovation there, we don't have the time to! At least with consonants we tend to be pretty sedentary, so once someone has a good idea, everyone jumps on!). I imagine it's just spread from some other dialect in England: After all, in Australia we say , and have for at least a century. Given Southern American English has  (e.g. the Atlas of North American English revision 2, p. 125), but that much of the rest of the US has  or even , it probably indicates a common origin in England. I've also got an article somewhere on the possible origins of New Zealand English somewhere that also places the fronted and raised first target of NZE as originating in England (described as , but NZE  == AuE ). —Felix the Cassowary () 05:32, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think you're right: there are many accents in southern England (in fact just about every accent in southern England that I can think of that's reasonably well removed from RP) which have a starting point for that diphthong in the [æ] or [ɛ] area. --JHJ 16:27, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sound Changes Misplaced 

message: Shouldn't the foot-strut split be called the put-strut split.  The word foot didn't participate in the sound change.
: I see what you mean, but foot-strut split seems to be a reasonably well-established name.  Google on "foot-strut split" and you get a fair number of non-Wikipedia hits.  (The words foot and strut are the keywords used in Wells, Accents of English (1982) for the "lexical sets" corresponding to the RP phonemes /ʊ/ and /ʌ/ respectively, hence the use of those words.) --JHJ 16:27, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there any published evidence it's the result of dialect borrowing? --Angr/ 15:43, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

text: It isn't the only instance; there's also flood. If I remember my university H.E.L. class correctly, the general opinion is that the /u:/ of blood and flood shortened to /U/ so early that they participated in the foot-strut split and changed from /U/ to /V/ at the same time that words like cut and cup did. --Angr/ 08:48, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better Name and Incorporation of a New Sound Change 

message: What is the origin of this name? I have never heard of this before, and a search on Yahoo only provides two sites.  I realize there can be an early part of Modern English, but there could also be Middle Modern English and Late Modern English.  There is an article on Wikipedia, but I question much of it as most of it goes on about the T-V distinction and this information conflicts with the Oxford English Dictionary.  Is this real, or self-research? Rt66lt 21:37, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I’ve heard of Early Modern English in many contexts besides Wikipedia. Take a look for instance at The Early Modern English dictionary, or David Crystal’s Encyclopedia of the English Language. I'm not sure how you're able to find only two sites on yahoo, when I've found many on Google or Yahoo (even search for sites without 'wikipedia'). I've never seen middle nor late Modern used, though for those meanings ‘Contemporary —’ or ‘Present-Day English’ are more popular. —Felix the Cassowary () 05:25, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early Modern English 

message: *I think this is valuable information, but I'm not so sure that it belongs where it is.  And 'cheese' is not from Latin according to all sources.  It's contentious.  I think the author here should cite the source of this info.--Hraefen 03:07, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it really contentious that cheese is from caseus? I've never heard any suggestion other than that. If this information doesn't belong here, then where? Proto-Germanic language? --Angr (t·c) 06:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New submission at Proto-English

message: Might it be wise to split out Sound changes as a new article Phonological history of the English language?  Also mightn't be nice to have somewhere a list of phonemic splits and mergers in English which is ordered not by history but by geography and/or such a list grouped according to the phonemes it involves?  Jimp 19Dec05
:It seems like it might be wise to do so. 64.194.44.220 04:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wise or otherwise; seeing as there was no opposition and I still thought it a good idea I did it. Jimp 11:11, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split 

message: I think the para on Anglo-Saxon needs looking at. As far as I can see from the OED, Camden's original text was in Latin and the term Angli Saxones was already well established in Latin, so it would be Camden's translator Holland who actually introduced the term. But even then it seems to apply only to the poeple in the quotes the OED gives, and is not used of the language till the 18th century. However, I'm using the old OED - perhaps someone with access to the current version online or on CD could  look it up. --Pfold 19:53, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Anglo-Saxon''

message: It occurs to me that the dialects of Old English may want slightly more space here. It is mentioned that West Saxon became prominent, but why? I understand it to do with the rise of written language among the universities (Oxford, Cambridge and London -- the triangle of which shows the seat of the ancestor of modern English). But what of Mercian, or Bede's dialect of Northumbrian? Zach Beauvais 11:04, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Mercian, West Saxon, etc...''

message: I tried an experiment on the text of Beowulf: If you hover over a word, you will get a translation of that word. Do other people think that is useful? Others can undoubtedly improve on my translations, but I am asking here about the concept. (As a side effect it now displays in a proportional font, which I think is more attractive than the monospaced font of the <pre> tag. I also used long vowels where applicable.) --teb728 21:12, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word translations of Beowulf 

message: I love the Beowulf and Canterbury Tales samples of Old and Middle English!  But I wonder if, as poetry, they really best exemplify those languages.  Is anybody able to add a prose sample or two from each language to complement the poetry examples? Robert K S 23:52, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a prose sample of Old English I added the first few paragraphs of "The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan in Scandinavia and the Baltic." Unlike Beowulf a close translation is possible most places (except when verbs are final in subordinate clauses). --teb728 02:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for addition of prose examples

message: Except for a sample text, the section on ME ends almost when it starts.  Surely there is some-thing to write about after Shakespeare.  For example, English has become some-thing of a world language and now has sort of split into various Englishes. 211.225.34.187 11:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Modern English

message: This article says that English is not a genuine mixed language.  However, the article mixed language cites English as its first example of the phenomenon.  This should be clarified.  (I suspect the truth is that "mixed language" is not as much of a technical term as some believe; it may have a tight definition in some research papers, but it is actually a slightly woolly concept - or am I wrong?)  --Doric Loon 22:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed English from the list of mixed languages. By no stretch of the imagination does it meet the definition. —Angr 15:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Mixed language