History of English Language

Professor Michael Cheng

Presenter

Helen Cheng

English spelling was standardized after the publishing of influential dictionaries

British-Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

American- Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)

A Dictionary of the English Language

aks. Johnson's Dictionary (1755) The pre-eminent English dictionary before

the OED “one of the greatest single achievements

of scholarship” Deduce to the origin Illustrate with literary quotations Provide Multiple definitions With illustrations

A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) Introducing American spelling and words

American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)Expanding to 70,000 entries

Spelling reform

based on the Webster’s combined vision of logic and aesthetics

principle of uniformity: words that were alike, nouns and their derivatives, should be spelled alike. (e.g. musick=>music (musical))

respell anomalous British spellings (e.g. gaol/jail)

Greek Spelling: -our/-or; -se/-ce; -re/-er Latin-derived Spelling: -ise/-ize; -yse/-

yze; -ogue/-og Doubled Consonants: -ll Dropped “e”

British usage: both –ise(more frequent) and –ize (Oxford spelling)

e.g. organise, realise, and recognise American usage: –izee.g. organize, realize, and recognize Originated from Greek -ιζειν, Latin -

izāre; with the pronunciation /z/ -ise was influenced by the special

French spelling in -iser

Nowadays=> -our for British English and -or for American English

e.g. colour/color, labour/labor, and flavour/flavor Derived from Latin non-agent nouns having

nominative –or Borrowed into English from early Old French

ending -or or -ur After the Norman Conquest =>-our in Anglo-

French in an attempt to represent the Old French pronunciation

After the Renaissance, some such borrowings from Latin =>original -or

In16th and early 17th century some British scholars =>

-or for words from Latin and -our for French loans

General rule: when adding a suffix beginning with a vowel to words with final stressed syllable and ending with a single vowel followed by a single consonant

The British English “l” doubling is required for all inflections (-ed, -ing, -er, -est) and noun suffixes -er and –or

e.g. counsellor, cruellest, modelling, quarrelled, signalling, traveller, and travelling

In American usage, the spelling of words is unchanged when they form the main part (root) of other words

e.g. wil(l)ful, skil(l)ful, thral(l)dom, fulfil(l), fulfil(l)ment, enrol(l)ment

British English: usually keep silent e when adding suffixes except it is unnecessary to indicate pronunciation (e.g. believable,bluish)

American English: usually eliminate silent e except for some ambiguous cases (e.g. die=>dying vs. dye=>dyeing)

e.g. likeable/likable, ageing/aging, arguement/ argument

Language serves as an indicator of cultural and social differences

Language is changing with time and space

The variants of a single language makes it diverse