Language constantly changes and evolves. It doesn’t get commercial releases every three years. What are the presumably arbitrary dividing lines between Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English? Is it based on some epochal events, or on some objective qualities of the language that show a big change at one time?
Bonus round: What will call the next version of English in the future when today’s Modern English sounds quaint or barely recognizable?
Late English
" The earliest forms of English, a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century, are collectively called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England; this was a period in which English was influenced by Old French, in particular through its Old Norman dialect.[10][11] Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London, the printing of the King James Bible and the start of the Great Vowel Shift.[12]
Modern English has been spreading around the world since the 17th century by the worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States."
Epochal events that had a major impact on the language provide a starting point for the transitions between Old English and Middle English (that transition began at the Norman Conquest) and between Middle and Modern English (the printing press was a big factor, since people had to decide which variant of English was worth printing - and that nailed down which dialect would become the Modern English that was spread around the world. Figuring out when the transitions were reasonably complete takes study and some arbitrariness.
A relevant quote from a favorite story:
I . . . I don’t understand what you’re saying," Ellie faltered. [snip]
“Dawn Era, Amerlingo,” the clipboard said. “Exact period uncertain. Answer these questions. Gas–for lights or for cars?”
“For cars, mostly. Although there are still a few–”
“Apples–for eating or computing?”
“Eating,” Ellie said, while simultaneously Nadine said, “Both.”
“Scopes–for dreaming or for resurrecting?”
Neither woman said anything.
The clipboard chirped in a satisfied way. “Early Atomic Age, pre- and post-Hiroshima, one each. You will experience a moment’s discomfort. Do not be alarmed. It is for your own good.”
Sounds interesting, but Googling the text isn’t helping me find where it’s from. I would love more (non-spoilery) info.
Legions In Time by Michael Swanwick
Not sure if this is complete, but there are 7 “chapters” here:
https://unotices.com/book.php?id=37512&page=1
I suppose, too, that the other unique shift in English is modern media - we can now record and play it back - so in general, we have somewhat frozen the language as she is spake to middle 20th century, plus or minus some slang expressions and context. If anything, world-wide media transmission is also slowly strangling regional dialects. It’s possible that in a generation or two, Australian will no longer be a separate language. I wonder, too, if we will see it slowly subsume other languages; for many regions, English is the de facto second language and more and more of the educated people have a smattering of it. With the world-wide distribution of dominant Hollywood media, this will only become more pronounced.
I recall a discussion of classical latin that said that even by the time of the Emperors, latin as we read and write it was a domain of the elite and actual vulgar latin had morphed into an almost unrecognizable parallel language, well on its way to Italian, Spanish and French, etc. I wonder if that too is a destination for modern English, much as you find in places like Australia - the people speak a barely comprehensible lingo, but most can switch to “real English” when necessary with assorted degrees of difficulty. (OK, I’m done insulting Australia now, other than to note National Lampoon’s assertion they have 100 different words for drunken vomiting.)
But the levelling influence of media distribution is what makes places like France defensive about their language and culture, with good reason.
Also recall a discussion of Chinese language, which discussed the different areas of China. It said that while the government would like to pretend that much of the country is one homogenous ethnic group, in fact there are regions of the country where the local ethnicity was subsumed by the central empire. one example quoted of this, was that in some areas a few trace words, and particularly different grammatical constructs, show different original speaking patterns. They adopted the words, but the total language has not taken over (which, again, may change with the prevalence of electronic media).
This would be sort of like the way the Amish sometimes speak accented English with german grammar constructs. (Or was it Yoda?)
A hundred seems about right …
I see two big shifts in the past century that are likely to continue:
[1] The take-up of English as the default international language, not just as the most spoken in commerce, science etc but also in things like SeaSpeak, aviation communications, computer terminology and so on.
[2] Becoming a post-colonial lingua franca in multi-language societies. English was always the language of India when they were rulers and imposed a very rigid Indian English = British English character to it, but since then its become an internally evolving Indian English, and has become its own thing. I’m told that is also the case in post-colonial Anglophone Africa as well.
The acronym EAGLE (English as Global Language) seems to hover around the same idea.
But I add to that the branches of EAGLE will fold back into the mainstream (often described as the “mid-Atlantic” accent) due to the prevalence of media in the dominant version of the language. More and more, even the person watching Netflix or You-Tube in Tanzania or Jaipur will see and begin to imitate Anglo-American English, rather than their own vernacular version. The ability to receive global media on ubiquitous smartphones will only accelerate this trend. Sure, there will be local versions (language or accent) of some media, but the dominant will win out.
I believe it was the novel “ReAmDe” where Neal Stephenson has some character from Hungary marveling at a magazine stand that there is a critical mass people with similar interests world-wide speaking English that it is possible to print a 64-page glossy print magazine on a topic as obscure as model railroading, let alone multiple titles. The number of subscribers to a Hungarian magazine probably could not sustain the publication costs.
True, there will be opportunities to use live translations and subtitling to supplement media distribution, but the opportunities come first to those who know the common language. Context and nuance are often lost in translation.
If you want examples from each time frame:
Beowulf and Caedmon’s Hymn from Old English
The Canterbury Tales and the Wycliffe Bible from Middle English
Shakespeare and the King James Bible from Early Modern English
And then there’s the change to the non-rhotic ‘r’ in Great Britain starting in the 18th century. It’s thought that American English accents evolved away from the British accent, but at least in the sense of getting away from the hard ‘r’ it’s the British accent that changed. In America, cities that kept up trade with GB also changed to go non-rhotic, such as Boston (pahk the cah in Havahd yahd).
Linear XZQ
It seems that there was one more shift, some time between Shakespeare and the current time period. Shakespeare seems antiquated to me in a way that the works of the American founders like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams don’t. So it seems sometime between Shakespeare’s time and the American Revolution there was some kind of a shift, though I’m not sure exactly when it occurred.
To some extent those are opposing effects - recordings may slow the rate of change of the language, but large numbers of people learning English as a second language increases the rate of change (if there are tricky rules that are hard to learn as an adult, having a large number of adults speaking a simplified version of English can make that simplified version dominate the older version).
Currently evolving new accents include the Northern City vowel shift Inland Northern American English - Wikipedia
Changes in usage that I’ve noticed over my life include use of “pleaded” instead of “pled”
And here’s an interesting discussion of how pronunciation of phrases like “Chinese food” have changed since the 1970s Language Log: Chinese takeout and Watergate: Discuss
P.S. When I was a kid, people still said “hamburger sandwich” at least sometimes - nowadays, that would be a very odd usage.
I don’t know how old you are. They are both old but “pleaded” has always been considered preferred by usage authorities as long as I can remember.
Usually English is divided into Old English (Anglo-Saxon era), Middle English (after the Norman Conquest), and Modern English (after the great vowel shift). If you want to break down the Modern era, most would draw a line at the Restoration (1660) or pick a round number like 1700 and before that is Early Modern.
Parts of the Bible were translated into Old English, so it can be interesting to compare Genesis, say, in Old English, Middle English, Early Modern, and “Modern” to see how the language has changed.
Yeah, apparently I’m wrong. “Pled guilty” sounds better to me, but I can’t find any evidence that it was every dominant (except in my head).