History UsefulNotes / HistoryOfEnglish

->That hadden prys[[note]]were commonly used[[/note]], now wonder[[note]]wonderfully, in the sense that you wondered at it[[/note]] nyce[[note]]meant "unusual" at this point; by Creator/WilliamShakespeare's day would mean "trivial"[[/note]] and straunge[[note]]''chaunge'' and ''straunge'' both pronounced with the A-vowel in American English "palm"[[/note]]

Since Old English and Old Norse were both Germanic languages, they shared a lot of vocabulary, especially if you learned to mentally adjust for sound changes (like how the Anglo-Saxons said "sh" where the Norse had "sk"). However, the languages had very different inflectional endings that made it really hard to follow each other's grammar. After a while, though, the "English" and "Danes" figured out that if they just dropped (most of) the inflections and used word order to indicate parts of speech, they could understand each other pretty well.[[note]]If you are curious what such a BilingualConversation between Old English and Old Norse speakers in or around the Danelaw ''might'' have sounded like the Youtubers Jackson Crawford (who holds a [=PhD=] in Old Norse studies) and Simon Roper (who dabbles in English linguistics) have tried to recreate one [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTqI6P6iwbE here]].[[/note]] The dearth of inflections and reliance on word order is a hallmark of modern English grammar, and was almost certainly a feature of the Danelaw dialects of Old English at the time of the Conquest. Besides this grammatical development, Danelaw dialects of Old English absorbed tons of Old Norse vocabulary, including many basic words like pronouns (e.g. "they").

It's important to note that the Old English period lasted some 500-600 years and the language was neither static over time nor uniform across space. The "standard" Old English used in most texts from the period was really just a snapshot of the language in one place (Wessex) and one era (the Old English literary Golden Age of the 10th century). This standard was consciously promoted by the government and the English Church, particularly by King Edgar and his chief minister, the sainted Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury.[[note]]This same Dunstan of Canterbury also wrote the programme for the [[AwesomeMomentOfCrowning crowning of the British monarch]] for King Edgar, which (with many modifications) remains in use today.[[/note]] This literary Old English is actually probably not the variety ancestral to the modern standard English, which owes more to the largely unwritten contemporaneous Mercian dialect of London.

Like many west Indo-European languages, English used to have both ''singular'' and ''plural'' modes of address -- the exact equivalents of "I/we" in first person and "he-she-it-they/they" in third: English "thou", like French "tu", Spanish "tú", and German "du" were all used when speaking to one person; while English "you", French "vous", Spanish "vosotros", [[note]]Spanish has evolved, too; "usted", a contraction of "vuestra merced", "Your Mercy" (or less literally "Your Grace"), eventually became its second person formal singular pronoun, though it is grammatically third person. "Vosotros" underwent industrial retraining and found a new career as the familiar second person plural pronoun. Today, only Spain uses ''vosotros'', with the rest of the Spanish-speaking world using "ustedes" as the plural second-person form in familiar as well as the polite form. (Using ''vosotros'' in Latin America is a bit like addressing/referring to a man as "bloke" or "chap" instead of "dude" or "guy" in North America--you'll immediately get tagged as being from across the Pond.) This business means that, in (Latin American) Spanish, there's no way (except context) to distinguish "y'all" from "they", but now we're getting ahead of ourselves.[[/note]], and German "ihr" were used when speaking to more than one person. Unlike most of those, English has lost its singular mode ("thou") and now uses the plural mode ("you, ye") exclusively (except in a small number of regional dialects. See below for more information).

->That hadden prys[[note]]were commonly used[[/note]], now wonder[[note]]wonderfully, in the sense that you wondered at it[[/note]] nyce[[note]]meant "unusual" at this point; by Creator/WilliamShakespeare's day would mean "trivial"[[/note]] and straunge[[note]]''chaunge'' and ''straunge'' are both pronounced with the A-vowel in American English "palm"[[/note]]

->Ye knowe eek[[note]]also, cognate to German "auch"[[/note]], that in forme of speche is chaunge[[note]]pronounced [+''chon-j''+][[/note]]

->That hadden prys[[note]]were commonly used[[/note]], now wonder[[note]]wonderfully, in the sense that you wondered at it[[/note]] nyce[[note]]meant "unusual" at this point; by Creator/WilliamShakespeare's day would mean "trivial"[[/note]] and straunge[[note]]pronounced [+''stron-j''+][[/note]]

->In sondry londes[[note]]lands[[/note]], sondry been usages.[[note]]''ages'' and ''usages'' rhyme with mod. Am. Eng. "lodges"[[/note]]

As a written language, Modern English until only relatively recently (we're talking into the 1700s) did not have standardized spelling rules--the same word might be written differently within even the same sentence. This can be seen in any text of the time that has not been edited to make the spellings consistent. Many of the standards people are familiar with were not set until the first dictionaries were printed, and even a good number of those have morphed over time. This also accounts for various spelling differences between British English and some forms of American English (and, to a lesser extent, Canadian English), their orthography around different variant spellings of the same words.

A few centuries and a major vowel shift later (long story short: While the spelling of words stayed the same as they had always been, their pronunciation changed drastically.), Shakespeare and his contemporaries spoke and wrote Early Modern English: mostly understandable to modern English speakers, though with archaic features. This is the language of the King James Bible.[[labelnote:Side note]]Shakespeare and the King James Bible are probably the most modern-sounding examples of early modern English--contrast them with contemporary works like Edmund Spenser's ''Literature/TheFaerieQueene'', which is a good bit harder for modern English speakers to read. That said, Spenser's work is deliberately archaic, using many words from Chaucer-era Middle English that had fallen out of use even in his day. So the median Early Modern English text is probably more understandable than Spenser and less so than Shakespeare and the KJV.[[/labelnote]] Pseudo-Modern-English seems to be what writers of YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe are aiming for--grammar and vocabulary are modern, and some archaic features are sprinkled in for flavor, without real knowledge of what those features ''were''.

A few centuries and a major vowel shift later (long story short: While the spelling of words stayed the same as they had always been, their pronunciation changed drastically.), Shakespeare and his contemporaries spoke and wrote Early Modern English: mostly understandable to modern English speakers, though with archaic features. This is the language of the King James Bible.[[labelnote:Side note]]Shakespeare and the King James Bible are probably the most modern-sounding examples of early modern English--contrast them with contemporary works like Edmund Spenser's ''Literature/TheFaerieQueene'', which is a good bit harder for modern English speakers to read.[[/labelnote]] Pseudo-Early-Modern-English seems to be what writers of YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe are aiming for--grammar and vocabulary are modern, and some archaic features are sprinkled in for flavor, without real knowledge of what those features ''were''.

Though Old English words make up a relatively small fraction of modern English vocabulary, they do include many if not most of the most commonly used words (depending on how you count and also depending on how you analyze certain ambiguous etymologies).[[note]]Yes, ambiguous etymologies. Because of the aforementioned similarity between Old English and Old Norse, it is often hard to tell whether a word in today's English has its roots in the one or the other. On top of that, the Old French spoken by the Normans, while primarily a Romance language with a Latin-derived word inventory, had a big chunk of Germanic vocabulary from Old Frankish, a tongue more closely related to Old English even than Old Norse. (To this day, about 15% of Modern French words are of Old Frankish origin, more than any other source other than Latin; the proportion was still higher in Old French, especially in northern dialects like Norman.) To make things even weirder, the Normans were themselves descended from Danish vikings (and basically ''were'' Danish vikings culturally, except that they spoke French and fought as cavalry), and their French was thus peppered with Norse words amidst the Frankish and Latinate vocabulary. The upshot is that not only can it be hard to tell if a word came in from Old English or Old Norse, sometimes it's a tossup between Old English, Old Norse, and ''Old French'' (if the potential Old French root has an Old Frankish etymon).[[/note]] It's basically impossible to create a sentence devoid of Old English vocabulary, but quite easy to write one with hardly any words having any other roots.[[note]]Like the two halves of that sentence: the half before the "but" is mostly Latinate, but "it's", "to", "a", "old", and "English" are all from Old English, as are all the words from "but" onwards except "quite". And maybe "easy" which has one of the more complicated ambiguous etymologies. (Seriously, nobody has any idea where "easy" came from.)[[/note]] Furthermore, "small fraction" doesn't mean much when it comes to English vocabulary, because English has such a large vocabulary, that this "small fraction" isn't really that small when push comes to shove.

->''Whan that Aprill with his shoures[[note]]showers[[/note]] sote''
->''The droughte[[note]]drought[[/note]] of March hath perced to the roote''

->''Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote''
->''The droughte of March hath perced to the roote''

Though Old English words make up a relatively small fraction of modern English vocabulary, they do include many if not most of the most commonly used words (depending on how you count and also depending on how you analyze certain ambiguous etymologies).[[note]]Yes, ambiguous etymologies. Because of the aforementioned similarity between Old English and Old Norse, it is often hard to tell whether a word in today's English has its roots in the one or the other. On top of that, the Old French spoken by the Normans, while primarily a Romance language with a Latin-derived word inventory, had a big chunk of Germanic vocabulary from Old Frankish, a tongue more closely related to Old English even than Old Norse. (To this day, about 15% of Modern French words are of Old Frankish origin, more than any other source other than Latin; the proportion was still higher in Old French, especially in northern dialects like Norman.) To make things even weirder, the Normans were themselves descended from Danish vikings (and basically ''were'' Danish vikings culturally, except that they spoke French and fought as cavalry), and their French was thus peppered with Norse words amidst the Frankish and Latinate vocabulary. The upshot is that not only can it be hard to tell if a word came in from Old English or Old Norse, sometimes it's a tossup between Old English, Old Norse, and ''Old French'' (if the potential Old French root has an Old Frankish etymon).[[/note]] It's basically impossible to create a sentence devoid of Old English vocabulary, but quite easy to write one with hardly any words having any other roots.[[note]]Like the two halves of that sentence: the half before the "but" is mostly Latinate, but "it's", "to", "a", "old", and "English" are all from Old English, as are all the words from "but" onwards except "quite".[[/note]] Furthermore, "small fraction" doesn't mean much when it comes to English vocabulary, because English has such a large vocabulary, that this "small fraction" isn't really that small when push comes to shove.

Though Old English words make up a relatively small fraction of modern English vocabulary, they do include many if not most of the most commonly used words (depending on how you count and also depending on how you analyze certain ambiguous etymologies).[[note]]Yes, ambiguous etymologies. Because of the aforementioned similarity between Old English and Old Norse, it is often hard to tell whether a word in today's English has its roots in the one or the other. On top of that, the Old French spoken by the Normans, while primarily a Romance language with a Latin-derived word inventory, had a big chunk of Germanic vocabulary from Old Frankish, a tongue more closely related to Old English even than Old Norse. (To this day, about 15% of Modern French words are of Old Frankish origin, more than any other source other than Latin; the proportion was still higher in Old French, especially in northern dialects like Norman.) To make things even weirder, the Normans were themselves descended from Danish vikings (and basically ''were'' Danish vikings culturally, except that they spoke French and fought as cavalry), and their French was thus peppered with Norse words amidst the Frankish and Latinate vocabulary. The upshot is that not only can it be hard to tell if a word came in from Old English or Old Norse, sometimes it's a tossup between Old English, Old Norse, and ''Old French'' (if the potential Old French root has an Old Frankish etymon).[[/note]] It's basically impossible to create a sentence devoid of Old English vocabulary, but quite easy to write one with hardly any words having any other roots.[[note]]Like the two halves of that sentence: the half before the "but" is mostly Latinate, but "it's", "to", "a", "old", and "English" are all from Old English, as are all the words from "but" onwards.[[/note]] Furthermore, "small fraction" doesn't mean much when it comes to English vocabulary, because English has such a large vocabulary, that this "small fraction" isn't really that small when push comes to shove.

Though Old English words make up a relatively small fraction of modern English vocabulary, they do include many if not most of the most commonly used words (depending on how you count and also depending on how you analyze certain ambiguous etymologies).[[note]]Yes, ambiguous etymologies. Because of the aforementioned similarity between Old English and Old Norse, it is often hard to tell whether a word in today's English has its roots in the one or the other. On top of that, the Old French spoken by the Normans, while primarily a Romance language with a Latin-derived word inventory, had a big chunk of Germanic vocabulary from Old Frankish, a tongue more closely related to Old English even than Old Norse. (To this day, about 15% of Modern French words are of Old Frankish origin, more than any other source other than Latin; the proportion was still higher in Old French, especially in northern dialects like Norman.) To make things even weirder, the Normans were themselves descended from Danish vikings (and basically ''were'' Danish vikings culturally, except that they spoke French and fought as cavalry), and their French was thus peppered with Norse words amidst the Frankish and Latinate vocabulary. The upshot is that not only can it be hard to tell if a word came in from Old English or Old Norse, sometimes it's a tossup between Old English, Old Norse, and ''Old French'' (if the potential Old French root has an Old Frankish etymon).[[/note]] It's basically impossible to create a sentence devoid of Old English vocabulary, but quite easy to write one with hardly any words having any other roots.[[note]]Like the two halves of that sentence: the half before the "but" is mostly Latinate, but "it's", "to", "a", "old", and "English" are all from Old English, as are all the words from "but" onwards.[[/note]] are Furthermore, "small fraction" doesn't mean much when it comes to English vocabulary, because English has such a large vocabulary, that this "small fraction" isn't really that small when push comes to shove.

Though Old English words make up a relatively small fraction of modern English vocabulary, they do include many if not most of the most commonly used words (depending on how you count and also depending on how you analyze certain ambiguous etymologies).[[note]]Yes, ambiguous etymologies. Because of the aforementioned similarity between Old English and Old Norse, it is often hard to tell whether a word in today's English has its roots in the one or the other. On top of that, the Old French spoken by the Normans, while primarily a Romance language with a Latin-derived word inventory, had a big chunk of Germanic vocabulary from Old Frankish, a tongue more closely related to Old English even than Old Norse. (To this day, about 15% of Modern French words are of Old Frankish origin, more than any other source other than Latin; the proportion was still higher in Old French, especially in northern dialects like Norman.) To make things even weirder, the Normans were themselves descended from Danish vikings (and basically ''were'' Danish vikings culturally, except that they spoke French and fought as cavalry), and their French was thus peppered with Norse words amidst the Frankish and Latinate vocabulary. The upshot is that not only can it be hard to tell if a word came in from Old English or Old Norse, sometimes it's a tossup between Old English, Old Norse, and ''Old French'' (if the potential Old French root has an Old Frankish etymon).[[/note]] Furthermore, "small fraction" doesn't mean much when it comes to English vocabulary, because English has such a large vocabulary, that this "small fraction" isn't really that small when push comes to shove.

(Translation: "Again he [St Gregory] asked what might be the name of the people from which they came. It was answered to him that they were named Angles. Then quoth he, 'Rightly they are called Angles, for they have the beauty of angels, and it is fitting that such as they should in heaven angels' companions be.")[[note]]For context: "St Gregory" is Pope Gregory I, who saw a merchant selling pagan Angle children as slaves in Rome. Gregory was apparently moved by this, and therefore sent the bishop Augustine to England to evangelise the Angles (and Saxons and Jutes) and bring them into Christendom. He succeeded, which is why the bishop is called St Augustine of Canterbury.[[/note]]

Note: If this stuff interests you, and you're not already an academic linguist, [[https://historyofenglishpodcast.com The History of English Podcast]] is a great and much more detailed introduction (all done in a delightful soft [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents Southern accent]], in case you've ever wondered what the Beowulf poet would sound like if he was a trusts and estates lawyer from eastern UsefulNotes/NorthCarolina).