language change across history

what was the beginning of the english language

when the romans left england and the angles, saxons and jutes invaded → they brought words for many simple and everyday things such as house, bread and some days of the week (many of their words were monosyllabic)

what did the norman invasion (1066) do for the english language

• introduced lots of french words (around 10,000) which were used for official business in the country → these were borrowings

• war caused french to leave so english was popularised again

what did Caxton (1476) do

• he created the printing press which was an important step towards standardisation

• he chose to use the spellings being used by the courts in london at the time (english had many different spellings at the time due to regional pronunciations)

• none of this was formally enshrined in language law so variation still occurred

what did Shakespeare do

• about 2000 new words and phrases were invented by Shakespeare (coinage)

• these words were neologism’s that were very creative

• he introduced many new metaphors

• he proved that english could be a beautiful and rich language through his works

what was the inkhorn controversy

• inkhorn terms- borrowings from foreign languages into english which were considered unnecessary and pretentious

• in the 16th/17th century, there was a growing pride in the mother tongue due to national pride

• renaissance writers began to expand vocabs by coining new words or borrowing from classical and romantic languages (Latin/Greek and French/Italian/Spanish)

• at the time, these terms were considered pretentious and artificial → many people felt they would corrupt the language HOWEVER many of them spread through writing and took hold so well that they remain today

what did the King James bible (1611) do

• new translation of the bible was written in english in order to make it more accessible

• it allowed our written language to be available to anyone which helped educate common man → it introduced many new words and metaphors that we use today

how else did english borrow words

• invasion and colonisation meant the english took language from the places they went and took them home with us

• India- yoga, bungalo

• Africa- voodoo, zombie

• Australia- boomerang, nugget

• this caused english to develop new varieties around the globe

what did Samuel Johnson (1755) do

• he felt the english language needed fixing → he particularly didn’t like nonstandrardised spellings, word trends or neologisms

• this led to him writing a dictionary which was the largest to his date (it had over 40,000 words and took him 9 years)

• this caused him to struggle and realise that language was constantly changing and could never be fixed in place

what did Robert Lowth say (1700s)

• he was a prescriptivist (believes language should not change) → the idea of prescriptivism became very popular in the 1700s

• he wrote a book of rules (many of which came from latin or ancient greek as these languages were dead and therefore could not decay further)

• some rules have become archaic over time BUT some are still in existence today which shows their power e.g. spelling rules

what is occuring in modern society

• the influence of technology has been huge which created many neologisms

• many words have also underwent semantic change/broadening

• many abbreviations have been created too