FROM OLD ENGLISH TO STANDARD ENGLISH Studies in E.nglish Language series A Course Book in English Grammar, 2nd Edition - Dennis Freeborn From Old English to Standard English, 2nd Edition - Dennis Freeborn Style: Text Analysis and Linguistic Criticism - Dennis Freeborn Varieties of English, 2nd Edition - Dennis Freeborn with Peter French and David Langford Analysing Talk - David Langford English Language Project Work- Christine McDonald FROM OLD ENGLISH TO STANDARD ENGLISH A COURSE BOOK IN LANGUAGE VARIATION ACROSS TIME Second Edition Dennis Freeborn © Dennis Freeborn 1992, 1998 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-69155-7 ISBN 978-1-349-26665-4 (eBook) DOl I 0.1007/978-1-349-26665-4 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 Typeset in Great Britain by Aarontype Limited Easton, Bristol Contents Preface to the second edition x Acknowledgements xiv Symbols xv Texts and facsimiles xvi INTRODUCTION I 1.1 English today I 1.2 Studying variety across time in language 2 1.3 How has the English language changedr 2 1.4 How can we learn about Old English and later changes in the languager 3 1.5 Changes of meaning - the semantic level 4 2 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS BROUGHT TO BRITAIN 9 2.1 Roman Britain 9 2.2 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 9 2.3 How the English language came to Britain 12 3 OLD ENGLISH (I) 21 3.1 Written Old English 21 3.2 Dialects and political boundaries 35 3.3 Danish and Norwegian Vikings 37 3.4 Effects of Viking settlement on the English language 46 3.5 The Norman Conquest 51 4 OLD ENGLISH (II) 55 4.1 The language of Old English poetry 55 4.2 OE prose 60 4.3 OE grammar 65 v Contents 4.4 Latin loan-words in OE 71 4.5 ON loan-words in OE 73 4.6 Early French loan-words 74 5 FROM OLD ENGLISH TO MIDDLE ENGLISH 76 5.1 The evidence for linguistic change 76 5.2 The Norman Conquest and the English language 77 5.3 The earliest 12th-century Middle English text 82 5.4 The book called Ormulum 86 5.5 12th-century loan-words 96 6 EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH - 12th CENTURY 98 6.1 Evidence of language change from late OE to early ME in La3amon's Brut 98 6.2 The Owl & the Nightingale 123 7 EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH - 13th CENTURY 126 7.1 The Fox and the Wolf 126 7.2 The South English Legendary 127 7.3 A guide for anchoresses 132 7.4 Lyric poems 135 7.5 The Bestiary 137 7.6 The Lay of Havelok the Dane 143 7.7 Early 13th-century loan-words 1200-1249 145 8 NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN TEXTS COMPARED 149 8.1 Cursor Mundi - a history of the world 149 8.2 Later 13th-century loan-words 1250-1299 161 9 THE 14th CENTURY - SOUTHERN AND KENTISH DIALECTS 163 9.1 The dialect areas of Middle English 163 9.2 How to describe dialect differences 169 9.3 A South Eastern or Kentish dialect 170 9.4 An early South West dialect 177 9.5 A later 14th-century South West dialect 179 9.6 Loan-words 1300-1319 184 10 THE 14th CENTURY - NORTHERN DIALECTS 187 10.1 A 14th-century Scots English dialect 187 10.2 Another Northern dialect -York 191 10.3 The York Plays 195 10.4 Northern and Midland dialects compared 202 10.5 Chaucer and the Northern dialect 203 10.6 Loan-words 1320-1339 205 vi Contents II THE 14th CENTURY - WEST MIDLANDS DIALECTS 207 11.1 A North-West Midlands dialect - Sir Gawayn and jJe Grene Kn3t 207 11.2 A South-West Midlands dialect - Piers Plowman 215 11.3 Loan-words 1340-1359 223 12 THE 14th CENTURY - EAST MIDLANDS AND LONDON DIALECTS 224 12.1 The origins of present-day Standard English 224 12.2 A South-East Midlands dialect - Mandeville's Travels 225 12.3 The London dialect - Thomas Usk 227 12.4 Loan-words 1360-1379 229 13 THE LONDON DIALECT- CHAUCER, LATE 14th CENTURY 231 13.1 Chaucer's prose writing 231 13.2 Chaucer's verse 236 13.3 Editing a text 239 13.4 Loan-words 1380-1399 243 14 EARLY MODERN ENGLISH I -THE 15th CENTURY 247 14.1 The beginnings of a standard language 247 14.2 Early 15th-century East Midlands dialect - The Boke of Margery Kempe 251 14.3 Later 15th-century East Midlands dialect - the Paston letters 255 14.4 Late 15th-century London English - William Caxton 257 14.5 The medieval tales of King Arthur 263 14.6 Late 15th-century London dialect - the Cely letters 266 14.7 15th-century loan-words 271 IS EARLY MODERN ENGLISH II -THE 16th CENTURY (i) 273 IS. I The Lisle Letters 273 15.2 Formal prose in the 1530s 280 15.3 A different view on new words 287 15.4 John Hart's An Orthographie 289 15.5 The Great Vowel Shift 293 15.6 Punctuation in 16th-century texts 302 15.7 Loan-words 1500-1549 302 16 EARLY MODERN ENGLISH Ill -THE 16th CENTURY (ii) 305 16.1 The development of the standard language 305 16.2 Evidence for some 16th-century varieties of English 308 16.3 English at the end of the 16th century 316 16.4 Loan-words 1550-1599 319 vii Contents 17 EARLY MODERN ENGLISH IV -THE 17th CENTURY (i) 322 17.1 Evidence for changes in pronunciation 322 17.2 SirThomas Browne 326 17.3 George Fox's journal 331 17.4 John Milton 337 17.5 John Evelyn's Diary 340 17.6 The Royal Society and prose style 342 17.7 Loan-words 1600-1649 346 18 EARLY MODERN ENGLISH V -THE 17th CENTURY (ii) 352 18.1 John Bunyan 352 18.2 Spelling and pronunciation at the end of the 17th century 355 18.3 John Dryden 366 18.4 North Riding Yorkshire dialect in the 1680s 371 18.5 Loan-words 1650-1699 372 19 MODERN ENGLISH -THE 18th CENTURY 376 19.1 Correcting, improving and ascertaining the language 376 19.2 Dr Johnson's Dictionary ofthe English Language 381 19.3 The perfection of the language 383 19.4 'The Genius of the Language' 384 19.5 Bishop Lowth's Grammar 386 19.6 'The depraved language of the common People' 388 19.7 'Propriety & perspicuity of language' 389 19.8 Language and social class 395 19.9 William Cobbett and the politics of language 398 19.10 18th-century loan-words 403 20 FROM OLD ENGLISH TO MODERN ENGLISH - COMPARING HISTORICAL TEXTS 407 20.1 Commentary on Text 173 407 20.2 'Your accent gives you away!' 410 21 POSTSCRIPT I - TO THE PRESENT DAY 418 21.1 Some developments in the standard language since the 18th century 418 21.2 The continuity of prescriptive judgements on language use 420 21.3 The grammar of spoken English today 422 21.4 19th- and 20th-century loan-words 424 22 POSTSCRIPT II - ENGLISH SPELLING TODAY: A SUMMARY 431 22.1 The Roman alphabet and English spelling 431 22.2 The contrastive sounds of English 431 22.3 The spelling of vowels in English 433 22.4 The spelling of consonants in English 439 viii Contents 23 POSTSCRIPT Ill -THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH SPELLING: A SUMMARY 442 23.1 Old English 442 23.2 After 1066 - Middle English 445 23.3 Early Modern English 450 23.4 Correct spelling today 456 Bibliography 458 Index 460 ix Preface to the second edition The text of the first edition has been completely revised and enlarged to include nearly two hundred historical texts, of which more than half are reproduced in facsimile. The facsimiles are primary sources of our knowledge of the language, illustrating the development of handwriting, printing, punctuation and spelling in a way which is not possible using modern printed versions of old texts. The practice of modernising the spelling of modern printed texts of earlier English like, for example, the 15th-century Paston Letters and Shakespeare's late 16th- and early 17th-century plays has obscured important and interesting changes that have taken place. Literary texts are generally printed with modern spelling and punctuation, and though editions of Old and Middle English retain much of the original spelling, they usually add present-day punctuation. The texts The core of the book is the series of texts exemplifying the changes in the language from Old English to the establishment of Standard English. The texts have been selected for a number of reasons. The Old English texts are almost all from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and so provide something of the historical context of the language a thousand years ago.