2017615 WhatarethedifferencesamongOldEnglish,MiddleEnglish,EarlyModernEnglishandModernEnglish?

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3Answers HowwasOldEnglishdiscovered?

Whitney Lane, I'm a teacher. HowfarcouldIgobackintimebeforeIwouldnotbe

Answered13Oct2015 abletounderstandan"Englishspeaker"?

There are many samples of these online. Here is one: HowoldisEnglish?

IwanttolearnOldEnglish,howdoIgoaboutit?

#1 is Old English or Anglo-Saxon (circa 450-1066 CE).

#2 is Middle English (circa 1066-1450 AD).
#3 is Modern English from about the time of Shakespeare.
#4 is another sample of Modern English, but it is more recent than #3.
(Old, Middle, and Modern English )

More information can be found on Wikipedia:

Old English
is the language of the Anglo-Saxons (up to about 1150), a highly inected language with a
largely Germanic vocabulary, very dierent from modern English.

Middle English
refers to the dialects of the English language spoken in parts of the British Isles after the
Norman conquest (1066) until the late 15th century.

Early Modern English

is the stage of the English language used from the beginning of the Tudor period until the
English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle English in the
late 15th century to the transition to Modern English during the mid- to late 17th century.

Modern English
is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which
began in the late 15th century and was completed in roughly 1550.

Other samples of the various stages of English can be found at the links below:
History of the English language fajardoacosta.com
English Language Samples, Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English
Sample Texts: History of English

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Rajib Ghosal, English, as a language, is easiest tool for expression!

Updated31Jan2016

My Dear,
If you are really interested to know the dierence of OLD English and modern English
explore through this article. The stages of English language has been described in an
elaborated way. Follow:

The history of a language is constituted up of some internal and external factors. The
external factors like economic, political, social, as well as geographical aect the speakers of a
language internally, i.e. their life style, food, habitats and their style of speech which include
vocabulary, accent, and even the structure of the language.
The external history of English language is comprised of the events like the early migration of
the Celts, the Roman rule over Celts, the invasion and settlement of certain Germanic tribes in
the island, the arrival of St. Augustines and the Christianization of English race, repeated
invasions of the Scandinavians, the Norman conquest, the Renaissance, the
Industrialization, and at the modern period of the history, the spread of the English race
through migration (as in America, Canada, and Australia), and Colonization (as in Asia and
Africa). The concomitant internal history would subsume the changes in sound, changes of
some alphabetical shape, the structural change (from synthetic to analytic), and huge
borrowing of foreign words against the loss of early English words.

The English language of today was initially spoken by the Germanic tribes, who began to
come to Britannia in the midst of the 5th century. According to Bedes Ecclesiastical History
of the English People and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in 449 A.D, the Jutes arrived rst in
Britannia having been invited by the Celtic leader, Vortigern, as they had failed to face Picts
and Scots of the north right after the ocial withdrawal of the Roman rule from England in
410 A.D. Following the Jutes, in 477 A.D., the Saxons arrived there, and nearly a century
after, in 547 A.D. the Angels, all from their continental homes in Denmark and Low Countries.

The name of the language, English, is actually the speech of the Anglii, the Angels, though at
a letter period (at about 1000 A.D.) it began to refer as the speech of all three tribes. The
dialects spoken by those tribes belonged to a variety of Low Germanic language group, which
is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Thus, English as a language is a
member of Indo-European family of languages, hence it was a synthetic language, resembles
to Latin and Sanskrit and contemporary German.

The historians have divided the long period of the evolution of English of over 1500 years into
three considerably brief periods: The Old English period (450-1150), The Middle English
period (1150-1500), and The Modern period (1500- the present). It is impossible to cover
enormous features of evolution of the language within this huge stretch of time in such a
short span of space and time; a trial is taken however.

The Old English period: (450 1150)

Every period has some distinct characteristics in the formation of the language we use today.
Being a member of Indo-European family of languages structurally the Old English was a
language of full inection; linguistically a synthetic language. Being a synthetic language, the
word order in a sentence of the Old English was not xed. Therefore, an Old English sentence
se mann bhote pone half could have been recast as se mann pone hlaf bhote, which
meant the man bought loaf. Due to this inectional characteristic an Old English word
stan(modern equivalent stone) was inected as stan stan-es, stan-e, and stan in
four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative), so the adjective, pronoun, and the verb
were also inected according to the tense, mood, person, and number. As a member of
Germanic group, the Old English had a peculiar characteristic, i.e., grammatical gender

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determination. Alike present German, in Old English sunne (sun) was feminine, but
mona (moon)Searchforquestions,people,andtopics
was masculine. SignIn

The Old English was divided into four distinct dialectal varieties of three related tribes; its
presence in dierent regions was like this: 1) Northumbrian, 2) Mercian ( of the Angels), 3)
West Saxons ( of the Saxons) and, 4) Kentish (of the Jutes). No trace of the Old English
dialects of the Angels and the Jutes has been found other than some runic inscriptions, a few
brief fragments of verse, and some interlinear translations of the Bible. Only the West Saxon
dialect is still in existence in written form from the collection of some texts.

Some alphabetical shape was dierent, for instance t of Old English is modern days
that, and same as the word with was wi. Likewise Old English represented the sound of
sh by sc, as in scap(sheep), or scotan (shoot), and the sound of k by c, as in cynn
(kin), or nacod (naked); c was also used for the aricate now spelled ch, as in sprc
(speech). Old English vocabulary was almost Germanic, of which 85% does not exist at
present day. Much of the Old English vocabulary appropriate to literature and learning died
out and was replaced later by words borrowed from French and Latin. Latin words like
abbot, alms, alter, angel, anthem, ark, candle, canon, cleric, rule, temple, priest, nun,
hymn, and the household goods like cap, sock, silk, purple, chest, mat, sack, food items
like beet, lentil, millet, pear, radish, doe, oyster, etc. entered into the English vocabulary at
the later Old English period. Similarly continuous invasions of the Scandinavians, their
settlement in the land and assimilation with the English race enriched English vocabulary as
has been borrowed from Latin. For example, the development of the sound sk, in Old
English it was palatalized to sh (written sc) thus the words like ship, shall, sh evolved
at a later period. Many place names like Grimsby, Whitby, Derby, Rugby came from the
Scandinavians (about 1400), located mostly in Yorkshire, and Linconshire. The words like
band, bank, birth, boon, booth, fellow, egg, dirt, gait, gap, guess, loan, root, race, skin,
skirt, take, thrust etc. was borrowed from them.

The Middle English period: ( 1150 1500)

This period is generally termed as the period of levelled inection. Otherwise, this is the
period of transition, from Old to Modern English. Word inection began to be levelled due to
some certain shift in the manner of pronunciation. For instance, the dative plural form of
mouth was mum in Old English. Due to the change of pronunciation manner the
inection marker m changed into n, and very soon this n was dropped, the form like
mu(mouth) was obtained.

At the end of the Old English period, in 1066, the Norman king, William the Conqueror,
subjugated English both as a nation and as a language. French had become the language of
the aristocrats and this situation remained for almost two hundred years. French was read by
the educated, including those not read Latin. Latin and French was the language for
transacting governmental business. Though, in this situation English was the language for
more than ninety percent of ordinary population. This external element became an internal
element, as in this period Old English lost most of its original vocabulary, and borrowed a lot
from French. The character of the Nun in Chaucers Canterbury Tales exemplied
excellently French dominance over English. For instance, the French words beef, veal,
mutton, pork, bacon etc. had entered into English vocabulary, and this example is very
scanty, I must say.

In 1204, King John of England lost his French connection when the King of France, Philip,
conscated King Johns property in Normandy. The period in between 1200 to 1500 is termed
as the Reestablishment of English. As cited earlier, it is the period of transition, English had
transformed from a synthetic language to an analytical one. The word order began to be xed.
The subject.. verb syntax form of the sentences was appearing; a clear evidence is
Peterborough Chronicle, which was written in between 1070 1154. The fact was not that it
happened due to the contact of French, however. Strong verbs were becoming weak. At a
time when English was the language chiey of the lower classes and largely removed from the
inuences of education and a literary standard , it was natural that many speakers should
apply the pattern of weak verbs to some of which were historically strong; for instance, bow,
brew, climb, help, row, step, walk, weep etc.

The declensions of the nouns were determined on case, i.e. dierent four forms of singular
and plural. (Nominative: N; Genitive: G; Dative: D ; Accusative : A)
Singular Plural
N stn stn-as
G stn-es stn-a
D stn-e stn-um
A stn stn-as

Such forms were gradually terminated and -s and -es became the plural in most cases ands
with an apostrophe mark was becoming possessive marker. For pronouns, hit became it,
but hem became them.

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The dialectical varieties extended from four to ve: 1) Northern, 2) East Midland,3) West
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Midland, 4) Southern, 5) Kentish. However, the dierence between them was becoming less; SignIn
as a letter period the central dialectical variety i.e., East Midland and West Midland appeared
as the Standard English.

The Modern English period: ( 1500 the present)

In their book, A History of the English Language, Thomas Cable and A.C.Baugh have
bifurcated the modern period into three distinct divisions: a) The Renaissance ( 1500- 1650) ,
b) The Appeal to Authority ( 1650 1800) , c) The Nineteenth Century and after ( 1800 the
present day). They have done it because all these three period played a distinct role to
standardize English.

The Renaissance is the period of the revival of learning after the dark age of Europe. With the
introduction of printing press in England in 1476 by William Caxton the learning process had
gained a new dimension. Printed books become available in place of hand-written books.
Books on classical literature and philosophy of ancient Greek and Latin civilization had been
translated into English. A band of English writers came with their full energy and talent like
Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spencer, and Bacon enriched English literature, as well as language.

The Appeal to Authority is age of standardization of the language. Sir Thomas Elyot, Richard
Mulcuster must be remembered for ever for their eort in standardization process. The most
signicant of all is Dr. Samuel Johnson; his Dictionary is the rst standard book of its kind in
English language (published in 15 April 1755).
The last period, the nineteenth century and after, is the age of splitting of English throughout
the world. This is colonization. This political event is the cause behind the emergence of
English as an international variety from a regional one.

Good luck!

10.5kViews8Upvotes

Nandan Choksi, Words, like crystals, have many facets.

Answered8Jun2015

This is a very complex question to which there is no simple answer. There are literally
hundreds of thousands of books over hundreds of years that attempt to answer this question.

I will give you a brief answer. Others may disagree with it and/or build on it. Basically, English
is a mixture of languages and has no single point of origin. The development of English,
therefore is far more dependent on the development of other languages than any language
that has a single point of origin. French, for instance, originated in France (more or less). So
the development of France and the development of French go hand in hand. What happened
to Italy and to Latin or to Germany and German does not aect the development of French
much. French vocabulary, grammar, culture, etc. remained pretty much intact. The same is
true for any other language with a single point of origin.

English, however, developed as a kind of hybrid spoken language, over the millenia. Celtic,
Latin, Sanskrit, German, French, Arabic, and Greek were among the primary (but far from
only) languages that helped to create what we now call English. That early period was from
some time when the Celts occupied parts of the UK until about 1060 ( a few thousand years,
but probably less than 10,000).

After 1060, the language began to settle down, and become the primary language of the UK.
Chaucer, in the 1300s, put English on the world map, as an ocial language. It was OK to
write in English. You could still be considered an educated person, after the 1300s, if English
was your only or primary language. Shakespeare, in the 1600s, made English respectable as a
literary language. It was not simply respectable. It was admired. Many writers were translated
from English into other languages -- something pretty much unheard of until the 1700s.
Queen Vic (1800s) expanded the borders of the British empire, launching a worldwide series
of genocides aimed at destroying all other languages than English anywhere that the British
ruled.

The US became a nancial power in the 1900s, compelling the rest of the world to learn
English, to do business with the US. As a result, English became primarily a commercial
language. However, because of prior literary developments, writers in countries other than
the US and the UK wrote in English, creating a wide diaspora of written and spoken English.

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