The History of English: Modern English - the last link in the chain

Hello, and thanks for reading the last entry in my History of English series. If you haven't read the last six articles already, I strongly recommend you do so before reading this one.

In my last article, I showed that, by the year 1500, written English was fairly similar to today's English. There have been some subsequent changes in the pronunciation and spelling of some words, as well as a number of grammatical changes. But on the whole, Elizabethan English certainly looks much more like present-day English than Old English did.

In the last five centuries, a standardised variety of English has emerged, the likes of which have never been seen before. Yet, on the other hand, English has split into an array of new dialects across the globe, as the British (and their descendents) began to colonise parts of every continent. Apart from Antarctica, of course.

Cor blimey, it's nippy out here.

Even fairly recently, the spelling of certain words was not as fixed as it is now. The notion of 'correctness' in language is a relatively new idea. The publication of the first dictionaries helped to cement the standardisation of spelling.

Dictionaries, and the development of American English

Several rudimentary spelling lists of 'difficult words' were written, but it was not until Samuel Johnson completed his Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 that the lexicon of English received its first thorough treatment. Over a nine-year period, Johnson wrote the definitions of about 40,000 words, including etymologies and quotations showing the word in context.

The book, according to his biographer Boswell, 'conferred stability' on the language, at least with respect to spelling (Crystal, 2003.) Most of Johnson's spelling choices have stuck, though more so in British English than in American English.

Some of his spelling choices were, alas, misguided. He preferred the spelling ache over the more etymological ake, because he thought it came from Greek achos, whereas in fact it was a native English word. He also retained the (long silent) Latin 'p' in the spelling of receipt, but not, for some reason, in deceit. He spelt instill with two l's but distil with one 'l' for no apparent reason. Thanks Samuel!

However, if you consider that Samuel Johnson was the first person to write a fully comprehensive English dictionary, as a completely solo project, you cannot be anything but impressed.

Samuel Johnson was English, and his dictionary completely ignored American English words or meanings. Even in 1755, the year that his dictionary was published, the nascent American English had begun to diverge from its British ancestor. Although Johnson's dictionary was well received in America, it didn't cater towards the differences that were beginning to be noticed on both sides of the Atlantic.

Noah Webster (1758-1843) was an American teacher, clerk and lawyer who had served briefly in the American War of Independence. He felt that there were few written texts in America which reflected a distinctively American style. In 1800, he began to work on a dictionary for American English. He finally completed his dictionary in 1825, and it appeared three years later, when he was 70. 

His dictionary contained 70,000 words, over a sixth of which had never appeared in a published dictionary before. He added American words such as 'skunk' and 'squash' (the vegetable) that did not appear in contemporary British dictionaries. 

Also, as a spelling reformer, Webster introduced some new spellings of certain words. He replaced many words ending in -our with -or, such as 'color' for 'colour,' and 'rigor' for 'rigour', believing the extra letter to be unnecessary. 

It should be noted that the spellings with -or were once used in Britain, so Webster was in fact bringing back an older spelling instead of creating a new one. Back in 1529, Thomas Cromwell writes 'mysdemeanor' for what would now be spelt as 'misdemeanour' in the UK (Leithead, 2009.) 

Noah Webster did make some spelling innovations, though. He replaced 'waggon' with 'wagon' and 'centre' with 'center.' 

All of these spellings are now standard in American English, and some have even jumped across the Atlantic; 'wagon' has now replaced 'waggon' in British English, as has 'magic' for the older spelling 'magick.'

 

Noah Webster. He didn't believe in 'magick'

Webster's dictionary paved the way for a Standard American English that was distinct from British English. By the time he published his dictionary, American English and British English had already diverged noticeably, due to the fact that they had been isolated from each other by a fairly big pond for nearly 300 years. 

Also, the first colonists came across animals, plants and customs that were new and unfamiliar. As early as the 17^th century, Americans had borrowed moccasin, papoose, wigwam and tomahawk from Native American languages. 

Since then, American English has absorbed words from Spanish (bronco, corral, lasso), German (delicatessen, kindergarten, spiel), Italian (spaghetti, tutti-frutti) and numerous other languages (Crystal, 2003.)

Innovations in British English

However, it is not just Americans who have innovated. They have preserved some words, pronunciations and grammatical constructions which the British have either lost or changed.

The word gotten became extinct in British English, except in the stock phrase 'ill gotten,' some time after the first colonists came over from England. Americans, on the other hand, have preserved the distinction between got and gotten. When used as a part participle meaning 'become' or 'received', they would use gotten. As a main verb meaning 'to acquire' or 'to have', they use got. Compare the sentences below:

I've got a brand new car (i.e. I have a brand new car)

This blog has gotten boring. (i.e. this blog has become boring)

This is the distinction that Americans make between got and gotten. They are not interchangeable. You can't say 'I've gotten a brand new car.' (Americans reading this blog: please correct me if I am wrong about this!) In Britain, got is used as the main verb and the past participle, to the exclusion of gotten, although gotten might make a comeback as a result of American influence.

Other ways in which British English has innovated includes the loss of the /r/ sound in the spoken language, except before a vowel. In words such as car, spore and garden, American, Canadian, Irish and Scottish people preserve the /r/ sound, whereas speakers of most English and Welsh dialects have lost it. The loss of /r/ is known as non-rhoticity. In parts of Eastern New England and some New York dialects, non-rhoticity is also found, although it is receding.

Another way in which British English has innovated is the development of the long /ɑ:/ in bath and mast, though only in Southern England. Originally, trap and bath had the same short /a/ vowel in all English dialects. In London, people began to lengthen /a/ before <f>, <s>, <th>, <ns> and <mpl> so that staff, mast and bath began to contrast with sap, map and bap.  

The lengthening of the bath vowel began in the 17th century, but it was regarded as a Cockneyism well into the 19th century (Kortmann & Schneider, 2004.) Of course, the split occurred after the British began to settle in America and Canada, so these varieties of English do not have the distinction. This sound change never took root in the North of England, Scotland or Ireland either. Hence, in these places, trap and bath still have the short /a/ vowel, but in Southern England, bath now has a long /ɑ:/ sound.

The so-called trap-bath split does occur in Australian, New Zealand and South African English, however. This is because the British were the first people to introduce English to these countries. Most of the original settlers (and prisoners, in the case of Australia) came from Southern England, hence they introduced the trap-bath split to the Southern Hemisphere.

Two-way traffic

Sometimes, both British English and American English have innovated, but in different directions. Most American and Canadian speakers of English pronounce unstressed /t/ and /d/ between vowels as a kind of flapped r-sound, similar to the <r> in Spanish 'pero'. As a result, 'writer' and 'rider' are often pronounced the same in the US and Canada.

In the same environment, many British speakers have replaced the /t/ with a glottal stop, although the /d/ is unchanged. Think of the typical Cockney pronunciation of 'water' for an idea of what the glottal stop sounds like. But it's not just Cockneys who use glottal stops.

T-glottalisation (the replacement of /t/ with a glottal stop in certain positions) has spread rapidly across Britain, and is now common in many urban areas in England and Scotland, especially in the younger generation. 

Don't let anyone tell you that it's just the youngsters who glottalise their /t/'s. In most English dialects, /t/ often becomes a glottal stop before a nasal consonant ('m' or 'n'), in words such as 'button', 'witness' and 'atmosphere.' Also, even people who consider themselves to speak RP tend to replace /t/ with a glottal stop at the end of a word after a vowel or nasal consonant, e.g. 'don't be late.'

T-glottalisation is not a purely British phenomenon either. Even Americans would probably replace the /t/ with a glottal stop in 'button' and 'witness,' but t-glottaling is certainly more common in the UK than in any other English-speaking country.

The fact that unstressed /t/ has become an r-like alveolar flap in American and Canadian English and a glottal stop in British English shows that both types of English have diverged independently from an ancestral variety. American English isn't a corrupted and debased version of British English. Instead, modern American and British English both come from an ancestral 16^th century version of English that happened to be spoken in Britain.

World Englishes

While it is true that language enthusiasts tend to note the obvious differences between British and American English, there are many more varieties of English that are spoken across the globe.

At the turn of the 19th century, Britain began to colonise Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Today, the English spoken in each of these countries is noticeably different from British English, from which they arose. 

These three countries generally use British spellings, although American influence is beginning to make itself felt in Australia. Southern Hemisphere English varieties also tend to be non-rhotic (that is, the <r> is not pronounced in car), although rhoticity is found in some parts of Southern New Zealand such as Dunedin, which show influence from Scottish English. 

Nope, no Hobbits here!

Australian, New Zealand and South African English have been influenced to some degree by the indigenous languages of the country, though mainly in vocabulary. It should be noted, however, that South African English has a number of different dialects, which tend to vary according to the speaker's ethnic group. 

Today, English is also spoken in various countries that were once colonised by Britain or the US.  In most of these regions, English is not the native tongue, but serves as a useful lingua franca (common language) between ethnic and language groups. This circle includes India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kenya, non-Anglophone South Africa, the Philippines (colonised by the US) and others. The total number of English speakers belonging to this group is estimated to range from 150 million to 300 million.

Finally, there is an increasing number of countries where English plays no historical or governmental role, but where it is nevertheless widely used as a medium of international communication. In fact, English is now the international language. It might have fewer native speakers than Mandarin Chinese and Spanish, but it is more widespread than either of those languages.

In every country with a robust English-speaking population, new varieties of English are emerging or have already emerged. The local varieties tend to be heavily influenced by the speakers' native language(s), which influence in pronunciation, intonation, grammatical constructions and vocabulary. 

We can still say that there is one English language, because most varieties of English today are generally intelligible with each other. But English doesn't belong to any one group of people. It belongs to anyone who speaks it.

English today and beyond

The English language is continuing to change today, much to the chagrin of language guardians and Daily Mail readers. Neologisms (newly-coined words) are continuing to enter the language. Blog, photoshop, Facebook, Google (the noun and the verb), the new meaning of tweet,  etc are all neologisms which have recently entered English. But these are all superficial changes; small additions to the vocabulary are not significant. 

However, there are some ongoing changes in the pronunciation of certain words, which are somewhat more significant. Some changes are happening in some English dialects but not in others. 

For example, T-glottalisation and l-vocalisation (the replacement of /l/ with a w-like sound in words like 'milk' and 'still') are spreading rapidly in British English, but not so much in other varieties. In certain cities in the US, including Chicago and Detroit, there is an ongoing vowel shift known as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Time does not permit me to go into the details, but most of the short vowels have been affected by this vowel shift.

Perhaps at some point in the future, as English develops differently in each country in which it is spoken, all native English speakers will learn two dialects; their local dialect which they would speak in the home, and a (hypothetical) Standard World English, which will be different enough from everyone's local dialect to necessitate being learnt as a separate dialect/language. 

It is true that, because of the Internet, TV and easy travel across the world, speakers of one English dialect are exposed to others. American English is especially prominent in films and TV, but simply being familiar with other English varieties isn't enough to halt language change. 

We cannot predict the future, but we can be sure that the differences in local varieties of English will continue to accumulate (language change is constant). At the moment, the main varietes of English are still similar enough that mutual communication is, for the most part, easy. But who's to know what things will be like in even 500 years' time?

References:

Crystal, D. (2003) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 

Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Mesthrie, Rajend; & Upton, Clive (Eds.). (2004). A handbook of varieties of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Leithead, Howard (2009). "Cromwell, Thomas, Earl of Essex (b. in or before 1485, d. 1540)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.