Early Modern English

Early Modern English
Shakespeare's English, King James English
English
William Shakespeare's Sonnet 132 in the 1609 Quarto
Region	England, Wales, Scottish Lowlands, Ireland and English overseas possessions
Era	developed into Modern English in the late 17th century
Language family	Indo-European Proto-Indo-European Proto-Germanic Old English Middle English
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	emen
Glottolog	None
IETF	en-emodeng
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModE,^[1] or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle English, in the late 15th century, to the transition to Modern English, in the mid-to-late 17th century.^[2]

Before and after the accession of James I to the English throne in 1603, the emerging English standard began to influence the spoken and written Middle Scots of Scotland.

The grammatical and orthographical conventions of literary English in the late 16th century and the 17th century are still very influential on modern

Texts from the earlier phase of Early Modern English, such as the late-15th-century Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) and the mid-16th-century Gorboduc (1561), may present more difficulties but are still closer to Modern English grammar, lexicon and phonology than are 14th-century Middle English texts, such as the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.

History

English Renaissance

Transition from Middle English

The change from Middle English to Early Modern English was not just a matter of changes of vocabulary or pronunciation; a new era in the history of English was beginning.^[1]

An era of linguistic change in a language with large variations in dialect was replaced by a new era of a more standardised language, with a richer lexicon and an established (and lasting) literature.

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

Tudor period (1485–1603)

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

Henry VIII

• c. 1509 – Pynson became 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 was largely from the work of Tyndale. It was read to congregations regularly in churches, which familiarised much of the population of England with a standard form of the language.
• 1549 – Publication of the
  King James Bible (1611) did.^[3]
• 1557 – Publication of Tottel's Miscellany.

Elizabethan English

Elizabethan era (1558–1603)

• 1560 – The
  King James Bible
  to counter it.
• 1582 – The
  Rheims, France, in 1582. It was the first complete English translation of the Bible that was officially sponsored and carried out by the Catholic Church
  (earlier translations into English, especially of the Psalms and Gospels existed as far back as the 9th century, but it was the first Catholic English translation of the full Bible). Though the Old Testament was already complete, it was not published until 1609–1610, when it was released in two volumes. While it did not make a large impact on the English language at large, it certainly played a role in the development of English, especially in heavily Catholic English-speaking areas.
• Christopher Marlowe, fl. 1586–1593
• 1592 – The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
• c. 1590 – c. 1612 – Shakespeare's plays written
  See also: Chronology of Shakespeare's plays and Shakespeare's influence

17th century

Jacobean and Caroline eras

Jacobean era (1603–1625)

• 1609 – Shakespeare's sonnets published
• Other playwrights:
  • Ben Jonson
  • Thomas Dekker
  • Beaumont and Fletcher (Francis Beaumont and John 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 (such as moose, racoon).
• 1611 – The King James Version was published, largely based on Tyndale's translation. It remained the standard Bible in the Church of England into the latter half of the twentieth century.
• 1623 – Shakespeare's First Folio published

Caroline era and English Civil War (1625–1649)

• 1630–1651 – William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony, wrote 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

The English Civil War and the Interregnum were times of social and political upheaval and instability. The dates for Restoration literature are a matter of convention and differ markedly from genre to genre. In drama, the "Restoration" may last until 1700, but in poetry, it may last only until 1666, the annus mirabilis (year of wonders), and in prose lasts until 1688. With the increasing tensions over succession and the corresponding rise in journalism and periodicals, or until possibly 1700, when those periodicals grew more stabilised.

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

Development to Modern English

The 17th-century

Modern English can be taken to have emerged fully by the beginning of the Georgian era in 1714, but English orthography remained somewhat fluid until the publication of Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, in 1755.

The towering importance of

The orthography of Early Modern English was fairly similar to that of today, but spelling was unstable. Early Modern English, as well as Modern English, inherited orthographical conventions predating the Great Vowel Shift.

Early Modern English spelling was similar to

Early Modern English orthography had a number of features of spelling that have not been retained:

• The letter ⟨S⟩ had two distinct
  lowercase forms: ⟨s⟩ (short s), as is still used today, and ⟨ſ⟩ (long s). 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 ⟨ſſ⟩, ⟨ſs⟩ or ⟨ß⟩ (the last ligature is still used in German ß).^[5] That is similar to the alternation between medial (σ) and final lowercase sigma
  (ς) in Greek.
• ⟨u⟩ and ⟨v⟩ were not considered two distinct letters then but as still different forms of the same letter. Typographically, ⟨v⟩ was frequent at the start of a word and ⟨u⟩ elsewhere:^[6] hence vnmoued (for modern unmoved) and loue (for love). The modern convention of using ⟨u⟩ for the vowel sounds and ⟨v⟩ for the consonant appears to have been introduced in the 1630s.^[7] Also, ⟨w⟩ was frequently represented by ⟨vv⟩.
• 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 ⟨i⟩ as a vowel and ⟨j⟩ as a consonant began in the 1630s.^[7]
• The letter ⟨þ⟩ (thorn) was still in use during the Early Modern English period but was increasingly limited to handwritten texts. In Early Modern English printing, ⟨þ⟩ was represented by the Latin ⟨Y⟩ (see Ye olde), which appeared similar to thorn in blackletter typeface ⟨𝖞⟩. Thorn had become nearly totally disused by the late Early Modern English period, the last vestiges of the letter being its ligatures, y^e (thee), y^t (that), y^u (thou), which were still seen occasionally in the 1611 King James Version and in Shakespeare's Folios.^[8]
• A silent ⟨e⟩ was often appended to words, as in ſpeake and cowarde. The last consonant was sometimes doubled when the ⟨e⟩ was added: hence manne (for man) and runne (for run).
• The sound /ʌ/ was often written ⟨o⟩ (as in son): hence ſommer, plombe (for modern summer, plumb).^[9]
• 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.^[10]
• ⟨y⟩ was often used instead of ⟨i⟩.^[11]
• The vowels represented by ⟨ee⟩ and ⟨e_e⟩ (for example in meet and mete) changed, and ⟨ea⟩ became an alternative.^[11]

Many spellings had still not been standardised, however. For example, he was spelled as both he and hee in the same sentence in Shakespeare's plays and elsewhere.

Phonology

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Consonants

Most consonant sounds of Early Modern English have survived into present-day English; however, there are still a few notable differences in pronunciation:

• 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 possibly by Shakespeare, though they were fully reduced by the early 17th century.^[12]
• The digraph ⟨gh⟩, in words like night, thought and daughter, originally pronounced [x] in much older English, was probably reduced to nothing (as it is today) or at least heavily reduced in sound to something like [ht], [ç], [h], or [f]. It seems likely that much variation existed for many of these words. Upon its disappearance, it lengthened the previous vowel.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^[13]
  The l in could, however, first appearing in the early 16th century, was presumably never pronounced.
• The modern phoneme /ʒ/ was not documented as occurring until the second half of the 17th century. Likely, that phoneme in a word like vision was pronounced as /zj/ and in measure as /z/.
• Most words with the spelling ⟨wh⟩, such as what, where and whale, were still pronounced [
  still pronounced differently, unlike in most varieties of English today.^[14]
• Early Modern English was rhotic. In other words, the r was always pronounced,^[14] but the precise nature of the typical rhotic consonant remains unclear. ^{[citation needed]} It was, however, certainly one of the following:
  • The "R" of most varieties of English today: [
    ɹ] ^ⓘ
  • The "trilled or rolled R": [
    r] ^ⓘ, perhaps with one contact [ɾ] ^ⓘ, as in modern Scouse
    and Scottish English
  • The "retroflex R": [ɻ] ^ⓘ.
• In Early Modern English, the precise nature of the light and dark
  ɫ] ^ⓘ
  , remains unclear.
• Word-final ⟨ng⟩, as in sing, was still pronounced [ŋɡ] until the late 16th century, when it began to
  Brummie, Mancunian
  and Scouse.
• 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 and a few common nouns like thyme.^[citation needed]

Vowels

The following information primarily comes from studies of the Great Vowel Shift;^[15][16] see the related chart.

• The modern English phoneme /aɪ/ ^ⓘ, as in glide, rhyme and eye, was [əi], and was reduced word-finally. Early Modern rhymes indicate that [əi] was similar to the vowel that was used at the end of words like happy, melody and busy.
• /aʊ/ ^ⓘ, as in now, out and ploughed, was [əu] ^ⓘ.
• /ɛ/ ^ⓘ, as in fed, elm and hen, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today, sometimes approaching [ɪ] ^ⓘ (which is still in the word pretty).^[14]
• pane–pain merger
  ).
• merged with the phoneme represented by the spellings ⟨ea⟩ or ⟨ei⟩ (and perhaps ⟨ie⟩, particularly with fiend, field and friend), as in east, meal and feat, which were pronounced with [eː] ^ⓘ or [ɛ̝ː].^[18][17] However, words like breath, dead and head may have already split off towards /ɛ/ ^ⓘ
  ).
• /ɪ/ ^ⓘ, as in bib, pin and thick, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today.
• complete merger. The old pronunciation remains in some dialects, such as in Yorkshire, East Anglia, and Scotland
  .
• /ɒ/ ^ⓘ, as in rod, top and pot, was [ɒ] or [ɔ] ^ⓘ, much like the corresponding RP sound.
• /ɔː/ ^ⓘ, as in taut, taught and law was more open than in contemporary RP, being [ɔː] or [ɑː] ^ⓘ (and thus being closer to Welsh and General American /ɔː/)
• line–loin merger
  since /aɪ/ had not yet fully developed in English).
• split and so were both pronounced in the vicinity of [ɤ] ^ⓘ
  .
• foot–strut split and is called "early shortening" by John C. Wells.^[20] The ⟨oo⟩ words that were pronounced as something like [ɤ] ^ⓘ seem to have included blood, brood, doom, good and noon.^[21]
• /ɪw/ or /iw/
  yod-coalescence (such as Australian English
  and younger RP), in which dew and due /dʒuː/ (homophonous with jew) are distinguished from do /duː/ purely by the initial consonant, without any vowel distinction.

In some pronunciations, words like fair and fear, with the spellings ⟨air⟩ and ⟨ear⟩, rhymed with each other, and words with the spelling ⟨are⟩, such as prepare and compare, were sometimes pronounced with a more open vowel sound, like the verbs are and scar. See Great Vowel Shift § Later mergers for more information.

Specific words

Nature was pronounced approximately as [ˈnɛːtəɹ]^[14] and may have rhymed with letter or, early on, even latter. One may have been pronounced own, with both one and other using the era's long GOAT vowel, rather than today's STRUT vowels.^[14] Tongue derived from the sound of tong and rhymed with song.^[17]

Grammar

Pronouns

Early Modern English had two second-person personal pronouns: thou, the informal singular pronoun, and ye, the plural (both formal and informal) pronoun and the formal singular pronoun.

"Thou" and "ye" were both common in the early 16th century (they can be seen, for example, in the disputes over

Like other personal pronouns, thou and ye have different forms dependent on their grammatical case; specifically, the objective form of thou is thee, its possessive forms are thy and thine, and its reflexive or emphatic form is thyself.

The objective form of ye was you, its possessive forms are your and yours and its reflexive or emphatic forms are yourself and yourselves.

The older forms "mine" and "thine" had become "my" and "thy" before words beginning with a consonant other than h, and "mine" and "thine" were retained before words beginning with a vowel or an h, as in mine eyes or thine hand.

• The third-person singular present lost its alternate inflections: -eth and -th became obsolete, and -s survived. (Both forms can be seen together in Shakespeare: "With her, that hateth thee and hates us all".)[23]
• The plural present form became uninflected. Present plurals had been marked with -en and singulars with -th or -s (-th and -s survived the longest, especially with the singular use of is, hath and doth).^[24] 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.^[25]
• The second-person singular indicative was marked in both the present and past tenses with -st or -est (for example, in the past tense, walkedst or gav'st).^[26] Since the indicative past was not and still is not otherwise marked for person or number,^[27] the loss of thou made the past subjunctive indistinguishable from the indicative past for all verbs except to be.

Modal auxiliaries

The

Some verbs ceased to function as modals during the Early Modern period. The present form of must, mot, became obsolete. Dare also lost the syntactical characteristics of a modal auxiliary and evolved a new past form (dared), distinct from the modal durst.[29]

Perfect and progressive forms

The perfect of the verbs had not yet been standardised to use only the auxiliary verb "to have". Some took as their auxiliary verb "to be", such as this example from the King James Version: "But which of you... will say unto him... when he is come from the field, Go and sit down..." [Luke XVII:7]. The rules for the auxiliaries for different verbs were similar to those that are still observed in German and French (see unaccusative verb).

The modern syntax used for the

A number of words that are still in common use in Modern English have undergone semantic narrowing.

The use of the verb "to suffer" in the sense of "to allow" survived into Early Modern English, as in the phrase "suffer the little children" of the King James Version, but it has mostly been lost in Modern English.^[31] This use still exists in the idiom "to suffer fools gladly".

Also, this period includes one of the earliest Russian borrowings to English (which is historically a rare occasion itself^[32]); at least as early as 1600, the word "steppe" (rus. степь)^[33] first appeared in English in William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is believed that this is a possible indirect borrowing via either German or French.

The substantial borrowing of Latin and sometimes Greek words for abstract concepts, begun in Middle English, continued unabated, often terms for abstract concepts not available in English.^[34]

See also

• Early modern Britain
• English literature
• History of English
• Inkhorn term
• Elizabethan era, Jacobean era, Caroline era
• English Renaissance
• Shakespeare's influence
• Middle English, Modern English, Old English

References