The formation of the English national language

The Modern English Period

LECTURE 11

1. The linguistic situation in England after the Norman conquest.

2. The formation of the English national language. The expansion of the London dialect in the 15^th century.

3. The English vocabulary during the Renaissance.

4. Phonetic changes.

At the period after the Norman conquest the linguistic situation in England was the following: the government, the court and the noblemen spoke French while the common people of England spoke English. Besides there was a large group of people who spoke both French and English; for nearly two centuries the English language fought for its existence and it was only by the 15^th century that English won the final victory. At that period in England there were many local dialects and there was no standard which could be understood in all parts of England.

The national language as well as a nation is regarded to be a historical category. But it should be mentioned that the vocabulary and the grammatical system of a national language slightly differs from the language of a nation:

-difference in their circulation and function. The language of a nation is considered as a colloquial form of communication. As for a national language it has both the written and colloquial forms;

-difference in their word- stock. When the period of feudalism came to an end many nations and phenomena connected with that period disappeared. While capitalism gave rise to new words and expressions;

difference in the position of a national language and different dialects. In the period of existence of a national language many dialects faded away or merged with a national language.

As for the English national language it developed on the basis of the London dialect- the dialect of the economical, political and cultural centre of the country.

In 1439 teaching in French was substituted by teaching in English. It was of great significance for the circulation of the London dialect. In the 14-15^th centuries there appeared writers and poets who used the national language in their literary works (J. Chaucer, F. Gauer).

The formation of a national language was greatly fostered by two events of the late 15^th century. The most significant event of the period was the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) which marked the decay of feudalism and the birth of a new social order. They came to an end in the battle of Bosworth, when Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor, who became king of England. The result of this prolonged struggle was the rise of an absolute monarchy. This meant a high degree of political centralization and thus contributed to centralization in language as well, that is, to a predominance of the national language over local dialects.

Another great event was the introduction of printing. Printing was invented in Mayence (Germany) by Joahnnes Gutenberg in 1438. The Englishman William Caxton (1422-1491) became acquainted with this art. He published the first English printed book, “The Recuyeil of the Histories of Troye”, in Bruges. Returning to England, he founded the first English printing office in London in 1476 and in 1477 appeared the first book “The Dictes and Sayinge of the Philosophers”. The spread of printed books was bound to fosten the normalization of spelling and also of grammatical form.

The language of the 16^th and early 17^th century was bound to appear wild and clummy. Publications of Shakespeare’s works appearing in the 18^th century are full of arbitary changes designed to make Shakespeare’s text conform to the “correctness” of the 18^th century. The greatest poet of the time, Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who edited Shakespeare’s works in 1725, entirely failed to understand the forms in Shakespeare’s texts.

In the 17^th and 18^th century a great number of grammarians and orthoepists appeared, who set as their task the establishing of correct language forms.

In 1621 Alexander Gill’s book, “Logonomia Anglica” (English Word-law) was published. Gill stuck to conservative views in the sphere of pronunciation and condemned new tendencies in this field.

Next came Charles Bulter, author of English Grammar, which appeared in 1634. He proposed a modernized and rationalized spelling system.

The most serious of the orthoepists was Christopher Cooper, author of “Grammatica Anglicana”, published in 1685. Cooper was fully aware of the difference between sounds and letters and gave a list of homonyms resulting from phonetic change. He testifies that the following were pronounced alike: heart- hart; a notion-an ocean; are- airere, heir etc.

The idea of a strict norm in the language was expressed by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

The 15^th century is marked in Europe by a great cultural movement named Renaissance. Its homeland was Italy. It meant liberation of cultural life from the pressure of medieval scholastics and rise of free scientific research. This movement was closely connected with the young bourgeois culture in the epoch by primary accumulation. The chief men of the Renaissance in Italy were Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch, 1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). In England we may consider Geoffrey Chaucer as a forerunner of the Renaissance.

It was not long before England became involved in this movement: Thomas More (1478-1535), author of Utopia, and the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), author of Praise of Stupidity.

At the same time, another important change was coming over the cultural thinking of the epoch. The great geographical discoveries had completely altered the outlook of the world.

All these new features of Renaissance life had a far-reaching influence on the English language.

The sphere of influence of each language is to a great extend determined by the sphere of culture in which the given nation played an important part. American Indian gave English mainly terms of music and arts; American Indian languages yieled names of animals and plants coming from America, etc.

At the same time the flourishing of classical philology, study of Greek and Roman authors, and wide use of Latin as an international scholars’ language gave English a number of words borrowed from the classical languages. These words, which at first were bookish, proved in many cases quite viable, they ceased being an attribute of leaned speech, and became part of a common word stock.

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