Early Modern English from 1500-1700

The Printing Press

1500

Moved the printing press to fleet street in london from court to city and began a new era in printing.

The Great vowel Shift

1500

The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth and has had long-term implications for orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English.

Tyndale's New Testament

1526

Was revised in 1534 and was the first vernacular text in English to be printed (in Cologne), and the basis for most later versions that we will see later.

The Great Bible

1539

Named for its physical size, was the first of many official versions for use in Protestant England. Because Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote a preface for it, the work became known as the "Cranmer's Bible."

The first Book of Common Prayer in English

1549

Under the supervision of Thomas Cranmer (revised 1552 and 1662), 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

Discussion

1551

The various vices and corruptions that use maintains in our writing. Services is superfluous: the use of more letters than the pronunciation requires of the voices. Accept that an extra letter is sometimes helpful (like marking a long vowel).

The Geneva Bible

1560

This translation was made by English Protestants exiled during the reign of Queen Mary. It was the first English Bible in Roman type.

The Bishops' Bible

1568

This revised version of the Greater Bible became the official version of the Church in 1571 and was used by scholars working on the Authorized Version.

Radical reform in phonetic lines

1569

Hart's Orthographie presented one such system, as did William Bullokar's Bookê at Large, for the English Spelling Amendment
(1580) and Bullokar uses a 37-letter alphabet, in which he traditionally forms the shapes that are complemented by various diacritical marks.

Witcraft

1573

For the study of logic, They include Latin equivalents such as endsay ("conclusio"), ifsay ('propositio condition-alis), naysay (' negatio '), saywhat (' defini- tio '), shewsay (' propositio ') and yeasay (' affirmamatio Although most of Lever's coinage had no future, some of its forms arose independently in regional usage (especially denial (er) and yeasay (er).

Alphabet proposed by Bullokar

1580

From a short introduction or guide to printing, writing and reading English speech. There are eight vowels, four "half vowels" (I, r, m, n) (compare semivowels) and 25 consonants (written distinction between voiced and voiceless th, and a separate th).

The first English grammar

1586

The Grammar Pamphlet of William Bullokar to teach the language so that everyone can better understand how to write, reflecting their concern for spelling and even making it easier for English to learn other languages (rules or not rules for grammar) and providing a useful text to foreigners who they want to learn english.

Shakespeare's influence

Period: 1590 to 1612

Early Modern English as a literary medium was unfixed in structure and vocabulary in comparison to Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and was in a constant state of flux. When William began writing his plays, the English language was rapidly absorbing words from other languages due to wars, exploration, diplomacy and colonization. William and others writers expressed new ideas and distinctions by inventing, borrowing or adopting a word or a phrase from another language, known as neologising.

Love's Labor's

1598

Shakespeare comments on the additional consonants that are put into words like debt and calf to bring the spelling closer to Latin. This process is called etymological change and first appeared in a quarter version.

The first dictionary of synonms

1604

The organization of the English lexicon (Robert Cawdrey) of hard words. An Alphabeticall table contained glosses for 3,000 'harsh vsual English words, such as abbettors, glossed as "counséllors", and abbreviated, glossed as "shorten, or makeshort".

Virginia

1607

The first successful permanent English colony in the New World, Jamestown. Early vocabulary specific to American English comes from indigenous languages (such as moose, racoon).

The Douai-Rheims Bible

1609

This translation was published by Roman Catholic priests in exile in Europe. The Reims New Testament first appeared in 1582, and the remaining text was produced from Douai in 1609. Based on the Latin Vulgate.

The King James Bible

1611

Also known as the Authorized Version of the Bible and exerted an enormous influence on the development of language

The first folio of Shakespeare

1623

Shakespeare introduce about 600 new words into the English language and expressions.
Ex: There is method in his madness without rhyme or reason

The most notable variations in medieval English

1630

The use of ua and v. These symbols were initially interchangeable and later followed continental practice and adopted fixed phonetic values, with v representing a consonant and u a vowel.

Grammar

1633

Charles Butler published a list of homophones (different words with the same pronunciation) and Richard Hodges provided more in 1643

Renaissance, and Reformation

1650

The discoveries of Copernicus, and the European exploration of Africa and America. The focus of interest was the vocabulary most of the words that entered the language at that time were taken from Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, as the period of world exploration progressed, words of more came to English than 50 languages.

John Wallis's account of [n] in his Treatise on Speech

1653

There is a difference between the sound of the letter n in words the pronunciation of n always involves the tip of the tongue hitting the front of the palate, near the roots of the upper teeth; whereas in the latter the tip of the tongue normally moves towards the roots of the lower teeth and the back of the tongue rises towards the back of the palate, blocking sound at this point.

lexical growth

1660

Showed the fastest lexical growth in the history of the language. Almost half of the new words were borrowings from the many cultures with which English was coming into contact; the rest were different types of word formation using native resources and there were also a lot of semantic changes.

Essay on projects

1697

Daniel Defoe calls for the creation of a 36-gentleman Academy to dictate the use of English.

New additions of words

1700

Many new words are created by the addition of prefixes (uncomfortable, forename, underground); suffixes (delightfulness, laughable, investment); and by cobbling together compounds (heaven-sent, commander-in-chief).

The direction in which the language was moving

1700

At the end of the 17th century, many critics felt that English was changing too quickly and randomly, one particular area of ​​concern was inconsistency in spelling or punctuation: at one extreme, there were people who spelled while speaking other there were those who strove to reflect classical etymology in their spelling (for example, adding an s to the island or a c to the scissors) and there was the fear that foreign words and neologisms would enter the language out of control.