The industrial and scientific advances of the Industrial Revolution created a need for neologisms to describe the new creations and discoveries. When the Merriam brothers bought the rights to Webster’s dictionaries and produced the first Merriam-Webster dictionary in 1847, they actually expunged most of Webster’s more radical spelling and pronunciation ideas, and the work (and its subsequent versions) became an instant success. We saw various word order structures were used in it. Australian speech and usage). The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. However, did you think about how much a language changes over a couple of years? It comprises French, Latin, German, Norse, and a few lesser known tongues. In Orwell's dystopic novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", words like doublethink, thoughtcrime, newspeak and blackwhite give a nightmarish vision of where he saw the language going. The invention of printing also meant that there was now a common language in print. Although the English language had barely penetrated into Wales, Ireland and the Scottish Highlands by the time of Shakespeare, just two hundred years later, in 1780, John Adams was confident enough to be able to claim (with a certain amount of foresight, but quite reasonably) that English was “destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age”. Brer Lion bin a hunt) or left out completely (e.g. We also have historical landmarks such, professional athlete. the word verbify is itself a prime example; others include to thumb, to parrot, to email, to text, to google, to medal, to critique, to leverage, to sequence, to interface, to tase, to speechify, to incentivize, etc), although some modern-sounding verbs have surprisingly been in the language for centuries (e.g. Other pronunciations, although not standard, are often heard in the public domain. foothill, notch, bluff, gap, divide, watershed, clearing, etc). During this time, there began to be a standardization of printed language due to the arrival of the printing press in England in 1475. Compound or portmanteau words are an increasingly common source of new vocabulary (e.g. "History of Modern India" topic as a part of History is a very important section as far as the Syllabus of any competitive examination is possible, especially Civil Services exams. Although supplements were issued in 1933 and 1972-6, it was not revised or added to until 1989, when the current (second) edition was published, listing over 615,000 words in 20 huge volumes, officially the world’s largest dictionary. The numbers of African slaves in the America alone grew from just twenty in 1619 to over 4 million at the time of the American abolition of slavery after the Civil War in 1865 (the British had abolished the slave trade earlier, in 1807). to author, to impact, to message, to parent, to channel, to monetize, to mentor, etc). Most human languages last for a few hundred to a thousand or so years before it evolves into something unrecognizable. steamships, railways). SOUND CLIP raccoon, opossum, moose, chipmunk, skunk, tomato, squash, hickory, etc). In fact, many of the changes he put forward in his dictionaries were already underway in America (e.g. Double adjectives (e.g. In recent years, there has been an increasing trend towards using an existing words as a different part of speech, especially the “verbification” of nouns (e.g. Noah Webster is often credited with single-handedly changing American spelling, particularly through his dictionaries: “The American Spelling Book” (first published in 1788, although it ran to at least 300 editions over the period between 1788 and 1829, and became probably the best selling book in American history after “The Bible”), “The Compendious Dictionary of the English Language” (1806), and “The American Dictionary of the English Language” (1828). To some extent, it is true that the colonies were happy to learn the language in order to profit from British industrial and technological advances. Due to the deliberate practice of shipping slaves of different language backgrounds together (in an attempt to avoid plots and rebellions), the captives developed their own English-based pidgin language, which they used to communicate with the largely English-speaking sailors and landowners, and also between themselves. Old English grammar is similar to Modern Germanic but Modern English is different from what it was before. Something approaching Shakespearean speech can sometimes be encountered in isolated valleys in the Appalachian or Ozarks, where words like afeard, yourn, sassy and consarn, and old pronunciations like “jine” for join, can still sometimes be heard. For instance, to the disgust of many, alternate is now almost universally accepted in North America as a replacement for alternative; momentarily has come to mean "very soon" and not (or as well as) "for a very short period of time"; and the use of the modifier literally to mean its exact opposite has recently found it way into the Oxford English Dictionary (where one of its meanings is shown as "used for emphasis rather than being actually true"). But such reforms were fiercely criticized in Britain, and even in America a so-called "Dictionary War" ensued between supporters of Webster's Americanism and the more conservative British-influenced approach of Joseph Worcester and others. President Theodore Roosevelt agreed to use these spellings for all federal publications and they quickly caught on, although there was still stiff resistance to such recommended changes as tuf, def, troble, yu, filosofy, etc. In addition to Britain’s contribution to the Indian language, though, India’s many languages (particularly Hindi) gave back many words such as pyjamas, bandanna, pundit, bungalow, veranda, dinghy, cot, divan, ghoul, jungle, loot, cash, toddy, curry, candy, chit, thug, punch (the drink), cushy, yoga, bangle, shampoo, khaki, turban, tank, juggernaut, etc. compliment usually meant merely polite or conventional praise; inmate connoted an inhabitant of any sort rather than a prisoner; genius was a general word for intelligence, and did not suggest exceptional prowess; regard encompassed a feeling of genuine affection; irritation did not carry its modern negative connotation, merely excitement; grateful could also mean gratifying; to lounge meant to stroll rather than to sit or slouch; to essay mean to attempt something; etc). English is the official language of many countries all over the world and is spoken more and more every day("How English Evolved Into a Modern Language."). Last week, we told how the English language developed as … Perhaps in reaction to the perceived appropriation or co-option of English by the United States, a certain amount of language snobbery continued to grow in England. A History of Modern Morocco (English Edition) eBook: Miller, Susan Gilson: Amazon.it: Kindle Store Selezione delle preferenze relative ai cookie Utilizziamo cookie e altre tecnologie simili per migliorare la tua esperienza di acquisto, per fornire i nostri servizi, per capire come i nostri clienti li utilizzano in modo da poterli migliorare e per visualizzare annunci pubblicitari.      The English Language is Rich in its history. The “Plain English” movement, which emphased clarity, brevity and the avoidance of technical language, was bolstered by Sir Ernest Gowers’ “The Complete Plain Words”, published in the early 1950s, and the trend towards plainer language, appropriate to the target audience, continued in official and legal communications, and was followed by a similar movement in the United Sates during the 1970s. These Germanic tribes were known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who originated from parts of present-day Denmark and Germany. The following passage is from Charles Colcock Jones Jr.’s 1888 story “Brer Lion an Brer Goat”: Many of the words may look strange at first, but the meanings become quite clear when spoken aloud, and the spellings give a good approximation of a black/Caribbean accent (e.g. Context • The industrial revolution influenced the English language as new ideas and contraptions were being invented, along with a range of new fields people could work in • English started to become an international language at this point. Had this not been the case, people would be faced with the task of relearning their native language almost every twenty years. British interests in Canada did not coalesce until the early 18th Century but, after the Treaty of Paris of 1763, Britain wrested control of most of eastern Canada from the French, and it became an important British colony. At least half of the influential scientific and technological output between 1750 and 1900 was written in English. This lesson will cover the major events in the development of the English language we know today. At the beginning of the 20th century, attention shifted to the fact that not only language change, but language structure as well, is systematic and governed by regular rules and principles. A. Resources like the Urban Dictionary exist for the rest of us to keep track of such fleeting phenomena. In 1852, the German linguist, Jacob Grimm, called English "the language of the world", and predicted it was "destined to reign in future with still more extensive sway over all parts of the globe". A language changes when cultural, economic and people’s habit gradually change with time. English in Canada has also been influenced by successive waves of immigration, from the influx of Loyalists from the south fleeing the American Revolution, to the British and Irish who were encouraged to settle the land in the early 19th Century to the huge immigration from all over the world during the 20th Century. For instance, Australia gave us a set of words (not particularly useful outside the context of Australia itself) like boomerang, kangaroo, budgerigar, etc. Early Modern English We refer to the years 1500-1700 as the Early Modern English period (EModE). At the same time, regional accents were further denigrated and marginalized. As early as 1789, for example, Noah Webster had predicted “a language in North America as different from the future language of England as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German or from one another”. The Indo-European family started, Languages are an ever-changing phenomenon. vacuum, cylinder, apparatus, pump, syphon, locomotive, factory, etc), and new words created by amalgamating and fusing existing English words into a descriptive combination were particularly popular (e.g. But the American use of words like fall for the British autumn, trash for rubbish, hog for pig, sick for ill, guess for think, and loan for lend are all examples of this kind of anachronistic British word usage. railway, horsepower, typewriter, cityscape, airplane, etc). The 20th Century was, among other things, a century of world wars, technological transformation, and globalization, and each has provided a source of new additions to the lexicon. Papua New Guinea developed differently, developing a pervasive English-based pidgin language known as Tok Pisin ("Talk Pidgin") which is now its official language. But there has also been a certain amount of positive re-branding and reclamation (also known as reappropriation) of many pejorative words, such as gay, queer, queen, dyke, bitch, nigger, etc, by those very same marginalized segments of society. Later, the Internet it gave rise to (the word Internet itself is derived form Latin, as are audio, video, quantum, etc) generated its own set of neologisms (e.g. English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The profit motive may have been foremost, but there was a certain amount of altruistic motivation as well, and many saw it as a way of bringing order and political unity to these chaotic and internecine regions (as well as binding them ever more strongly to the Empire). Six modern East African states with a history of 19th Century British imperial rule (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe), gave English official language status on achieving independence in the 1960s. igloo, anorak, toboggan, canoe, kayak, parka, muskeg, caribou, moose, etc), as well as the French influence (e.g. Familiar words like buddy for brother, palaver for trouble, and pikni for child, arose out of these creoles, and words like barbecue, savvy, nitty-gritty, hammock, hurricane, savannah, canoe, cannibal, potato, tobacco and maize were also early introductions into English from the Caribbean, often via Spanish or Portuguese. (from Mr. Diaz American History Class) It was largely during the Late Modern period that the United States, newly independent from Britain as of 1783, established its pervasive influence on the world. In addition, a whole body of acronyms, contractions and shorthands for use in email, social networking and cellphone texting has grown up, particularly among the young, including the relatively well-known lol, ttfn, btw, omg, wtf, plz, thx, ur, l8ter, etc. In 1961, South Africa became the only country ever to set up an official Academy to promote the English language. As an interesting aside, in 1941, when Sir Winston Churchill wanted to plumb the depths of the English soul at a particularly crucial and difficult time in the Second World War, almost all of the words in the main part of his famous speech ("we shall fight on the beaches... we shall never surrender") were of Anglo-Saxon origin, with the significant exception of surrender (a French loanword). The other pioneer of modern Fantasy was English poet William Morris, who is most famous for the book The Well at the World’s End. He worked on this project for 36 years from 1879 until his death in 1915, and his results were completed by others and published in 1928 as the “Oxford English Dictionary”. byte, cyberspace, software, hacker, laptop, hard-drive, database, online, hi-tech, microchip, etc) was just one element driving the dramatic increase in new English terms, particularly due to the dominance of the USA in the development of computer technology, from IBM to Apple to Microsoft. b. Emphasis is on the expansion of English … Distinctions are commonly drawn between the Early Modern Period (roughly 1450-1800) and Late Modern English (1800 to the present). Middle English began after the Norman Conquest in England. Verb forms in particular are simplified (e.g. SPEDIZIONE GRATUITA su ordini idonei Compra A History of Modern England Volume 2. modern - WordReference English dictionary, questions, discussion and forums. As a continuous process, the development of the English language began in England around the year 449 with the arrival of several Germanic tribes including: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes (1, p, A HISTORY OF OUR LANGUAGE Learn more. , barrage, boondocks, roadblock, snafu, boffin, brainwashing, spearhead, etc, are all military terms which have made their way into standard English during the World Wars. Click here for transcript Immigration into America was not limited to English speakers, though. A pidgin is a reduced language that results from extended contact between people with no language in common. a. Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. Examples might be bae, on fleek, YOLO (you only live once), fanute, etc. For many Americans, like Webster, taking ownership of the language and developing what would become known as American Standard English was seen as a matter of honour (honor) for the newly independent nation. Their language, now called Old English, originated … coward man) and verbs may be simplified (e.g. Old English is also known as Anglo- Saxon. English It was also in this city that, between 1992 and 1996, during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the longest siege that a capital city has endured in the history of modern … In the second half of the 19th Century, in particular, over 30 million poured into the country from all parts of the world. It was the War of 1812 against the Americans, as much as Confederation and independence from Britain in 1867, that definitively cemented the separate identity of English Canada. "correct" according to the dictates of Robert Lowth's "Grammar") were important social markers, and the use of non-standard vocabulary or grammar would have been seen as a mark of vulgarity to be avoided at all costs. Germanic language had SOV structure and OLD English also followed that. an ask, a build, a solve, a fail, etc). “deef” for deaf, “booty” for beauty, “nater” for nature, etc), although he was responsible for the current American pronunciations of words like schedule and lieutenant. But India gave us such everyday words as pyjamas, thug, bungalow, cot, jungle, loot, bangle, shampoo, candy, tank and many others. Beside this every language is associated with any specific region, country, religion, culture or its speakers that actually develops or with the passage of time change or revolutionaries the language. modern definition: 1. designed and made using the most recent ideas and methods: 2. of the present or recent times…. To a lesser extent, French words, from the French presence in the Louisiana area and in Canada, contributed loanwords like gopher, prairie, depot, cache, cent and dime, as well as French-derived place names like Detroit, Illinois, Des Moines, etc. The English language can be split roughly into the following date boundaries: Old English: c. 450 -1100 (For example, the epic poem Beowulf) Middle English: c. 1100 -1500 (For example, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales) Early Modern c. 1500 -1800 (For example, Shakespeare’s plays and poems) Late Modern c. 1800 – present day Although words like oxygen, protein, nuclear and vaccine did not exist in the classical languages, they could be (and were) created from Latin and Greek roots. online, noob, flamer, spam, phishing, larping, whitelist, download, blog, vblog, blogosphere, emoticon, podcast, warez, trolling, hashtag, wifi, bitcoin, selfie, etc). They wanted to establish themselves permanently, to work the land, and to preserve their culture, religion and language, and this was a crucial factor in the survival and development of English in North America. Dal 1973 Modern English Study Centre è la Scuola di Lingue a Bologna, per imparare l'inglese, corsi per principianti e avanzati, business english, organizzazione soggiorni e vacanze studio all'estero. However, in retrospect, this does not seem to have happened and, in the age of instantaneous global communication, it now seems ever less likely to occur in the future. Nearly all knowledge of the English language before the seventh century is hypothetical. The most recent stage in the evolution of the language is commonly called Present-Day English (PDE). Its vocabulary has been influenced by loanwords from the native peoples of the north (e.g. A single sentence from “Finnegan’s Wake” (1939) may suffice to give a taste of the extent of Joyce’s neologistic rampage: In the late 19th Century, the Scottish lexicographer James Murray was given the job of compiling a “New English Dictionary on Historical Principles”. They were not allowed to write freely.Post-Modernism (1940-21st Century) – In post-modernism, basically the history of English Literature of 5 geo-locations are being studied. One result of the Norman Conquest of 1066 was to place all four Old English dialects more or less on a level. This often happens at different speeds and with differing results. Variations of English creoles gradually mixed with other creole forms based on French, Spanish and Portuguese, leading to a diverse range of English varieties throughout the Caribbean islands, as well as adjacent areas of Central and South America. mankind, chairman, mailman, etc) and some have even gone to the lengths of positing herstory as an alternative to history. Over time, the convicts who had served out their time became citizens of the emerging country, and became euphemistically known as “government men”, “legitimates”, “exiles” or “empire builders”. Settlement of the English Colonies. Richard Nordquist. The slaves transported by the British to work in the plantations of the American south and the islands of the West Indies were mainly from a region of West Africa rich in hundreds of different languages, and most were superb natural linguists, often speaking anywhere between three and six African languages fluently. But colonialism was a two-way phenomenon, and Britain’s dealings with these exotic countries, as well as the increase in world trade in general during this time, led to the introduction of many foreign loanwords into English. For example, words like blockbuster, nose-dive, shell-shocked, camouflage, radar Over the centuries, the English language has been influenced by a number of other languages. The explosion in electronic and computer terminology in the latter part of the 20th Century (e.g. However, since the Second World War, a greater permissiveness towards regional English varieties has taken hold in England, both in education and in the media. “The English language belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages,” according to M Boyanova. From the deliberately misspelled and dialectical works of Artemus Ward and Josh Billings to popular novels like Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom's Cabin” (1852) and Mark Twain's “Huckleberry Finn” (1884), this American vernacular spread rapidly, and became in the process more publicly acceptable both in everyday speech and in literature. cobber, digger, pom, dinkum, walkabout, tucker, dunny). English also became the language of power and elite education in South-East Asia, initially though its trading territories in Penang, Singapore, Malacca and Hong Kong. He contributed large sums of money towards the Simplified Spelling Board, which resulted in the American adoption of the simpler spellings of words such as ax, judgment, catalog, program, etc. But some truly revolutionary works were just around the corner in the early 20th Century, from Virginia Woolf to T.S. Early Modern English The changes in the English language during this period occurred from the 15th to mid-17th Century, and signified not only a change in pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar itself but also the start of the English Renaissance. In some walks of life, bad, sick, dope and wicked are all now different varieties of good. The history of the English language has traditionally been divided into three main periods: Old English (450-1100 AD), Middle English (1100-circa 1500 AD) and Modern English (since 1500). Canadian English today contains elements of British English and American English in its vocabulary (it also uses a kind of hybrid of American and British spelling), as well several distinctive “Canadianisms” (like hoser, hydro, chesterfield, etc, and the ubiquitous eh? Due to its extensive lineage and consistent reformation, the English language holds a highly diversified panorama of linguistic landscape. Neologisms are being added all the time, including recent inclusions such as fashionista, metrosexual, McJob, McMansion, wussy, bling, nerd, pear-shaped, unplugged, fracking, truthiness, locavore, parkour, sexting, crowdsourcing, regift, meme, selfie, earworm, meh, diss, suss, emo, twerk, schmeat, chav, ladette, punked, vaping, etc, etc. soop, groop, bred, wimmen, fether, fugitiv, tuf, thum, hed, bilt, tung, fantom, croud, ile, definit, examin, medicin, etc) were largely ignored, as were most of his suggested pronunciation suggestions (e.g. Some words needed to describe the Native American lifestyle were also accepted (e.g. It contained 415,000 entries supported by nearly 2 million citations, and ran to over 15,000 pages in 12 volumes, and was immediately accepted as the definitive guide to the English language. The push for political correctness and inclusiveness in the last third of the 20th Century, particularly by homosexuals, feminists and visible minority groups, led to a reassessment of the popular usage of many words. To Austen, and other writers of her generation, correct grammar and style (i.e. Dating back as early as 410 A.D., the fall of the Roman empire, neighboring countries and tribes vigorously fought, of the English language. Eliot to William Faulkner to Samuel Beckett and, perhaps most emphatically, the innovations of the Irishman, James Joyce, in “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake” (although, of the hundreds of new words in these works, only monomyth and quark have enjoyed any currency, and that rather limited). Historically, English is divided into three periods: Old English or Anglo-Saxon, 909 languages spoken in the world today (Anderson). Jamaican creole (known locally as “Patwa”, for patois) was one of the deepest in the Caribbean, partly because of the sheer numbers transported there, and the accent there is still so thick as to be almost undecipherable.