Early Modern English

History

English Renaissance

Transition from Middle English

• 1476 – William Caxton starts printing in Westminster; however, the language that he uses reflects the variety of styles and dialects used by the authors who originally wrote the material.

  Tudor period (1485–1603)

• 1485 – Caxton publishes Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the first print bestseller in English. Malory's language, while archaic in some respects, is clearly Early Modern and is possibly a Yorkshire or Midlands dialect.
• 1491 or 1492 – Richard Pynson starts printing in London; his style tends to prefer Chancery Standard, the form of English used by the government.

  Henry VIII

• – Pynson becomes 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 is largely from the work of Tyndale. It is read to congregations regularly in churches, which familiarises much of the population of England with a standard form of the language.
• 1549 – Publication of the first Book of Common Prayer in English, under the supervision of Thomas Cranmer, which standardises 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 did.
• 1557 – Publication of Tottel's Miscellany.

  Elizabethan English

• 1582 – The Rheims and Douai Bible is completed, and the New Testament is released in Rheims, France, in 1582. It is the first complete English translation of the Bible that is officially sponsored and carried out by the Catholic Church. Though the Old Testament is ready complete, it is not published until 1609–1610, when it is released in two volumes. It does not make a large impact on the English language at large, it certainly plays a role in the development of English, especially in the world's heavily-Catholic English-speaking areas.
• Christopher Marlowe,
• 1592 – The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
• c. 1590 to c. 1612 – 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
• *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.
• 1611 – The King James Version is published, largely based on Tyndale's translation. It remains the standard Bible in the Church of England for many years.
• 1623 – Shakespeare's First Folio published

  Caroline era and English Civil War (1625–1649)

• 1630–1651 – William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony, writes in 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

• 1651 – Publication of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.
• 1660–1669 – Samuel Pepys writes in 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, which long remains a standard work in English.
• 1667 – Publication of Paradise Lost by John Milton and of Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden.

  Development to Modern English

Orthography

• The letter had two distinct lowercase forms: , as is still used today, and . 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 . That is similar to the alternation between medial and final lower case sigma in Greek.
• U| and V| 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 vnmoued and loue. The modern convention of using for the vowel sound and for the consonant appears to have been introduced in the 1630s. Also, was frequently represented by.
• Similarly, I| and J| were also still considered not as two distinct letters, but as different forms of the same letter: hence ioy for joy and iust for just. Again, the custom of using as a vowel and as a consonant began in the 1630s.
• The letter 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 , 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, y^e, y^t, y^u, 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 ſpeake and cowarde. The last consonant was sometimes doubled when the was added: hence manne and runne.
• The sound was often written : hence ſommer, plombe.
• 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.
• was often used instead of.
• The vowels represented by and changed, and became an alternative.

Phonology

Consonants

• Today's "silent" consonants found in the consonant clusters of such words as knot, gnat, sword were still fully pronounced up until the mid-to-late 16th century and thus presumably by Shakespeare, though they were fully reduced by the early 17th century. The digraph , in words like night, thought, and daughter, originally pronounced in much older English, was probably reduced to simply or at least heavily reduced in sound to something like,, or. It seems likely that much variation existed for many of these words.
• The now-silent l of would and should may have persisted in being pronounced as late as 1700 in Britain and perhaps several decades longer in the British American colonies. The l in could, however, first appearing in the early 16th century, was presumably never pronounced.
• The modern phoneme was not documented as occurring until the second half of the 17th century. Likely, that phoneme in a word like vision was pronounced as and in measure as.
• Most words with the spelling, such as what, where, and whale, were still pronounced, rather than. That means, for example, that wine and whine were still pronounced differently, unlike in most varieties of English today.
• Early Modern English was rhotic. In other words, the r was always pronounced, but the precise nature of the typical rhotic consonant remains unclear. It was, however, certainly one of the following:
• *The "R" of most varieties of English today:
• *The "trilled or rolled R":
• *The "retroflex R":.
• In Early Modern English, the precise nature of the light and dark variants of the l consonant, respectively and, remains unclear.
• Word-final, as in sing, was still pronounced until the late 16th century, when it began to coalesce into the usual modern pronunciation,.
• H-dropping at the start of words was common, as it still is in informal English throughout most of England. In loanwords taken from Latin, Greek, or any Romance language, a written h was usually mute well into modern English times, e.g. in heritage, history, hermit, hostage, and still today in heir, honor, hour etc.
• With words originating from or passed through ancient Greek, th was commonly pronounced as t, e.g. theme, theater, cathedral, anthem; this is still retained in some proper names as Thomas, Anthony and a few common nouns like thyme.

  Pure vowels and diphthongs

• The modern English phoneme, as in glide, rhyme and eye, was and later. Early Modern rhymes indicate that was also the vowel that was used at the end of words like happy, melody and busy.
• , as in now, out and ploughed, was.
• , as in cab, trap and sad, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today.
• , as in fed, elm and hen, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today or perhaps a slightly higher, sometimes approaching .
• , as in name, case and sake, was a long monophthong, approximating, perhaps at first more open, such as , and later less open, such as. The phoneme was just beginning or already in the process of merging with the phoneme as in day, pay, and say. Depending upon the exact moment or dialect of Early Modern English, met was a potential homophone with mate; the same was true for even mat and mate. Such an open pronunciation remains in some dialects, notably in Scotland, Northern England, and perhaps Ireland.
• as in see, bee and meet, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today, but it had not yet merged with the phoneme represented by the spellings or .
• , as in bib, pin and thick, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today.
• , as in stone, bode and yolk, was or. The phoneme was probably just beginning the process of merging with the phoneme, as in grow, know and mow, without yet achieving today's complete merger. The old pronunciation remains in some dialects, such as in Yorkshire and Scotland.
• , as in rod, top and pot, was or.
• , as in taut, taught and law, was or.
• , as in boy, choice and toy, is even less clear than other vowels. By the late-16th century, the similar but distinct phonemes all existed. By the late-17th century, only remained. Because those phonemes were in such a state of flux during the whole Early Modern period, scholars often assume only the most neutral possibility for the pronunciation of as well as its similar phonemes in Early Modern English: .
• and had not yet split and so were both pronounced in the vicinity of.
• was about the same as the phoneme represents today but occurred in not only words like food, moon and stool but also all other words spelled with like blood, cook and foot. The nature of the vowel sound in the latter group of words, however, is further complicated by the fact that the vowel for some of those words was shortened: either beginning or already in the process of approximating the Early Modern English and later. For instance, at certain stages of the Early Modern period or in certain dialects, doom and come rhymed; this is certainly true in Shakespeare's writing. That phonological split among the words was a catalyst for the later foot–strut split and is called "early shortening" by John C. Wells. The words that were pronounced as something like seem to have included blood, brood, doom, good and noon.
• or occurred in words spelled with ew or ue such as due and dew. In most dialects of Modern English, it became and by yod-dropping and so do, dew and due are now perfect homophones in most American pronunciations, but a distinction between the two phonemes remains in other versions of English.

  Rhotic vowels

Particular words

Grammar

Pronouns

Verbs

Tense and number

• The third-person singular present lost its alternate inflections: -th became obsolete, and -s survived.
• The plural present form became uninflected. Present plurals had been marked with -en and singulars with -th or -s. Marked present plurals were rare throughout the Early Modern period and -en was probably used only as a stylistic affectation to indicate rural or old-fashioned speech.
• The second-person singular indicative was marked in both the present and past tenses with -st or -est. Since the indicative past was not and still is not otherwise marked for person or number, the loss of thou made the past subjunctive indistinguishable from the indicative past for all verbs except to be.

  Modal auxiliaries

Perfect and progressive forms

Vocabulary