A brief glance to the History of English

The history behind Old English

New languages result from gradual changes, from a sense of the political and cultural communality of the people.

The earliest known language of Great Britain was spoken by a people called the Celts.

When the Roman arrived (55 b.C), they conquered the Celts and though Celtic was still spoken, most people did learn to speak (at least to understand) Latin. Celtic was not written, therefore its influence in English was very little and even less is what survived the subsequent conquests.

Words that remain:

Place names: Avon, Thames, Kent, Liverpool

Other words: basket, bother, mop, loss (as well as some recent introductions such as: kilt, whiskey, clan)

When the Roman Empire began to fall, they left Britain after 400 years leaving it defenseless and “unprotected”. How deep was the “Romanization” of Britain? Difficult to say. In many areas it was superficial. During the decay and collapse of the province, the Romano-Britons lost much of their Latin culture. By the time of the invasions during the 5^th and 6^th centuries, they were not greatly different in economic and political organization from the newcomers.

The Anglo-Saxon tongue

4 Germanic groups: The Angles, Saxons, Frisians and jutes, taking advantage of the Celtic tribes being relative defenselessness, came to raid, conquer and settle in the island.

They came from today’s Denmark and the northern coast of Europe. So thoroughly did those people succeed in overwhelming the Celts that more or less nothing of the Celt tongue survived (Some place names: Avon, Kent; and some traditions: Halloween). IN a certain manner, this conquest can be compared to the interaction between English speaking people and the Native Americans).

They killed or enslave the natives and those who survived were pushed to the Celtic fringe: Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France where they preserved their language and their customs. However, there is evidence of some peaceful co-existence and continuity. A proportion of the British population was silently incorporated into the new society. Particularly in the areas where there was land, the natives suffered a variety of fates, from enslavement to intrusion.

The Germanic invaders of the 5^th century were never under the effective command of one great leader, therefore, the conquest was uncoordinated and piecemeal. In the 6^th century, a number of small kingdoms were created by war leaders by it by a) conquering the native population; or b) imposing the rule over former Germanic settlements

All of the different Germanic peoples spoke some form of West Germanic. Settlement patterns (Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, West Saxon) resulted in differences between these dialects. Over time, due to warfare and inter-marriage, the number of kingdoms was reduced. At the end, two basic kingdoms remained Angles in the north and Saxons in the south (more or less). Evidence suggests that any of the original kingdoms (even less these final two kingdoms) were exclusively composed of people form a single tribe. Alfred was the first king to Unite England for a long period of time giving thus stability and unity which promoted the flourishing of the Anglo-Saxon culture. Alfred was Saxon, so the West Saxon dialect was the most representative dialect for the formation of the Old English OE.

The coming of Christianity

There was already a Christian tradition among the Celts. The Christian church brought to England a large investment in the written word and particularly Latin script which quickly replaced runic writing. That promoted the creation and preservation of OE texts. OE borrowed freely from Latin into English enriching thus the A-S vocabulary. The Church, of course, encouraged the use of English, so the tradition of literacy and creativity in English was born.

By the end of the 6^th century, the English kingdoms had become pockets of heathenism in western Christendom. The Christina church in Britain had survived the invaders and grown in Wales and spread to Ireland and Scotland. But the English kingdoms were still deeply attached to their Germanic gods.

- In 560, King Ethelbert of Kent started evangelizing.

- An important event which was to greatly affect English history was the mission of Pope Gregory I to Kent in 590.

- King Oswia of Northumbria accepted the customs of the Roman church. This ensured the English would receive, for centuries, a stream of cultural influence form the remnants of the Roman empire.

- 4 years later, Archbishop of Canterbury (still the most important post in church) established a great school for education of the clergy. Thus the English had entered the fellowship of civilized nations.

- In the 7^th century, Irish-Scottish missionaries converted the greatest part of England. (An alternative point of research would be the relation of monks (missionaries) with the legend of Saint-George who killed the dragon and Saint Patrick who expelled the snakes.)

Of course England was not Christianized in a day. The New Testament was so different from the morals of the Germanic warriors that most saw it as an alternative way of life (to be followed specially before death). However, for some it turned into a missionary work. Women, enjoying a high position in Germanic society, took an important part in these activities.

Danish Invaders

Christianity had already added stability to the OE world. However, the Anglo-Saxons (particularly in the east) had to withstand the attacks of their cousins from Denmark, the Vikings. Between 835 and 865 there were at least 12 Viking raids on the English coast. Such raid were succeeded by armies of conquest and conquest was followed by settlement.

By 878, King Alfred (Saxon) drove Guthram’s (Viking) army out of Wessex, The Danes had conquered the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia.

In 886, Alfred and Guthram made a treaty by which the boundary between the 2 kingdoms was created. The result of that is known as Danelaw.

Danelaw was not inhabited exclusively by Danes for which there are several theories:

(Dubitable) Aristocratic domination rather than a peasant migration

(More probable) The pattern of settlement varied:

Heavy colonization in new lands

Aristocratic domination replacing the old landlords.

The Old Norse, the language spoken by the Vikings, had a great impact in the English language because:

The Danes came in came and settled in great number.

They were protected (culturally, politically, economically, etc) under the Danelaw.

From 909 to 954, Alfred’s son, Edward the elder and his grandsons reconquered Danelaw, creating some fragile unity which lasted to 1066. The descendants of Alfred were not only interested in military conquest. They also reorganized the administration together with a reform of the English church. From this an hybrid kingdom was formed with Danish and British. Having the same Germanic origin, Danes and English regarded themselves as equals, a clear contrast respecting the Romano-British people, therefore it a had a major effect in the language.

There were more Danish invasions where the Danish kings again took power from Ethlred the Unready. Swegn, the Danish king, was followed by his son Cnut. Cnut’s reign would

Some notes about the language – Old English 450 a.D. – 1100 a.D.

The Celtic languages had very little influence in the formation of the language. Though OE is overwhelmingly the Germanic speech of A-S, 2 languages had a major impact on its dialect: Latin and Old Norse.

Borrowings from Latin were generally related to religion: alms, angel, antichrist, cell, martyr, noon, offer, prophet, relic, temple. But there are also words dealing with education and domestic affairs: school, grammar, radish, sock, chest, lentil…

The influence of Old Norse was of a different order. As they conquered and settled in numbers, they left their mark on the land, i.e. names ending in “by” (Old Norse for “farm” or “town”): Derby, Rugby, Grimsby, etc.

More important, the Vikings left thousands of common words of everyday usage because the culture was very similar. In fact, the languages were so similar that OE adopted the pronouns they, them and their instead of hi/hie, him, hira

Some words from Old Norse

Nouns: birth, crook, dirt, scab, sly, loose, rotten, odd…

Verbs: (to) call, crawl, gasp, give, get, take, raise…

Old English is very different from Present Day English; actually it was already very different from Middle English. Technically is a different language which can be studied (in England basically) as a foreign language. (Intercultural curiosity: J.R.R. Tolkien was teacher of Old English at the University of Oxford).

Highly inflected OE grammar

Old English Verbs were classified into to groups Strong and weak

Strong verbs marked changes in tense and person with a change in the vowel stem. Most strong verbs come down to PDE as irregular verbs where they have kept this pattern:

Rise-rose

Write-wrote

Freeze-froze

Drink-drank

Though PDE kept this pattern, some dialects have actually moved some verbs into a regular pattern. The correctness of dove/dived or dreamed/dreamt is not in the history of English, but in the standards of the time. With the simplification of the language, it is likely that many irregular verbs disappear.

Weak verbs used endings added to an unchanged stem, like PDE regular verbs. But of course in OE both kinds of verbs varied depending upon the person, number and subject.

Example

Cyssan (kiss)

Present

Cysse

Cyssest

Cysseth

Cyssath

Cyssath

Cyssath

Past

Cyste

Cystest

Cyste

Cyston

Cyston

Cyston

Singan

Present

Singe

Singest

Singeth

Singoth

Singoth

Singoth

Past

Singte

Singtest

Singte

Sington

Sington

Sington

Notice that all plurals are the same (does that remind to another language?).

OE Nouns

Nouns in OE had endings that varied for a) case, basically subject, direct object, indirect object, possessive; b) number, singlular, plulal, dual; and c) gender, masculine, feminie and neuter.

Example

	singular	Plural
Subject	Stan	Stanas
Direct object	Stan	Stanas
Indirect object	Stane	Stanum
possessive	stanes	Stana

Word order was totally upside-down if we compare it to PDE.

Thea sealed se cynning him sweord (OE)

Then gave the king him a sword (OE trans)

God geseah tha thaet hit god waes (OE)

God saw then that it good was (OE trans)

The more inflections a languge has, usually the greater its flexibility in word order.

PDE has the usual word order Subject + Verb + Complement. It is very likely that OE had more patterns than PDE:

A- A sentence that begun with a conjunction: conjuction + subject + complement + verb

B- A sentence that begun with an adverbial form: adverb + verb + subject + complement

C- If the object was a pronoun: subject + complement (pronoun) + verb

OE lacked the tens of thousands of words of Latin and particularly French origin that have been added. However, of the one thousand most frequently used words, 83% are of OE origin (pronouns, parts of the boduy, prefixes (un, under,over, after) suffixes (kind, dom, en, hodd, ship). After this first thousand, roughly 30% of the vocabulary consists of OE words.

Many OE words have come down to PDE unchanged (almost):

OE	OE meaning	PDE
Folc	People	Folk
Mynd	Memory	Mind
Feond	Enemy	Fiend
Gast	spirit	Ghost
Burg	Walled town	Borough
Wieldan	Control	Wield
Cwethan	To say	Quoth
With	Against, opposite	With

Modern German uses a lot of compound words. They can combine a base word into other words, sometimes with a prefix or suffix thrown in) to express an idea that English speakers might need a phrase to express.

This word formation process to express new ideas was very common in OE. However OE vocabulary was still much smaller than PDE with all its borrowings from French/Latin.

Compounding in OE

Combining a base word with other words

Mod (PDE Mood) + cræft (PDE skill) = modcræft (PDE Intelligence)

Mod (PDE Mood) + lufu (PDE love) = modlufu (affection)

Mod (PDE Mood) + heah (PDE high) = heahmod (noble)

Mod (PDE Mood) + leas (PDE without) = modleas (spiritless)

Exercise

With the OE words given form the words from the list below.

Jeweler, dawn, lamp, epilepsy, minstrel, gout

OE words

Ealo (ale), Fielle (falling), Fot (foot), Leoth (light), Dae (day), Gimm (gem), Faet (vessel), Gred (red), Seones (sickness), Scop (singer, poet), Wyrtha (worker),

Adl (disease)

The history behind Middle English 1100 a.D. – 1500 a.D.

The Norman invasion

The Norman Conquest has traditionally marked the start of the ME period, though, evidently, the changes in the language could be felt time later. It is, undoubtedly, the most significant political event on the language

The background of the Norman invasion was mostly political. Whenever there was confusion –different people claiming legal claims to the throne– the issue was decided by war. William the Bastard (le Conquérant for the French) invaded to prosecute his slender legal claim.

William the Bastard claim was by Emma (from the Norman ducal family) who was married first to Ethlred and then to Cnut. The son of Cnut and Emma, Edward the Confessor died childless, therefore William claimed the throne.

During the Battle of Hastings, in 1066, William the Conqueror, with efficient battle tactics defeated King Harold. However, there still were some Viking invasions to claim the throne (1069, 1070, 1075). In 1085, Cnut, King of Denmark, planned and attack, but was killed before setting sail. That was the last great Viking attack on the English Coast. England was to remain 70 years under the ducal Norman family. (Very little time respecting the great influence it had on the language).

William established real French domination. HE brought French-speaking nobles and clergy to replace the English-speaking powers of England. By 1072, only 1 of 12 earls in England were Englishmen… four years later that 1 Englishman had had his chopped off.

The Normans

The Normans were originally Vikings (north men) who settled in Northern France in the 9^th Century. Probably because the environment was more foreign and no accommodation could be made with the language (unlike the Vikings in England) the Northern Vikings gradually adopted the French language and culture. By 1066 the Normans carried their French culture to the English and not to the Germanic side.

English Society

It is not easy to decide at what point after 1066 one can speak of English nationality or patriotism. Society was racially divided.

The royal family became increasingly international.

The agricultural, peasant classes were village patriots

The nobility, unlike the monarchy, became increasingly provincial –they spoke their own kind of French, not the one in Paris.

The Church was universal, speaking three languages; However it soon became Anglican.

It was, in fact, the historical writers in the church who gave expression to the continuity of English history. The Anglo-Saxon chronicle began in Alfred’s reign) continued until 1154. It helped recovering the respectability of the English language. Also the English pre-conquest saints were recovered recovering thus England’s heroic spiritual past traditions minimizing the impact of 1066.

It is important to mention, that English became substratum language and French superstratum language in England, what means that English was spoken by the vast majority of people, but not by those who had social/political power of influence. Therefore, all official issues should be held in French, upper class spoke French, lower class spoke English. Had it been longer the stay of the Normans in England, English might have not been the language of England nowadays.

Brief, The coming of the Anglo-Normans (as they were known) did not mean the end of the English Language or culture, However, The Norman domination accelerated the process of change in the language, particularly the loss of inflections and the vocabulary. English absorbed many French/Latin words, but also, and very important for PDE, it developed a great tolerance for borrowing and adoption.

***

In the early 13^th century, another series of political events occurred that had a great influence in the language. The Anglo-Normans lost control over Normandy to the King of France. The Anglo-Normans had to choose (submit to the French of break ties with Normandy) The situation weakened the position of the Anglo-Normans. The loss of Normandy provided an opportunity for English-speaking people to regain both social and political power in England.

The gradual reestablishment of English as a superstratum language was slowed by the emergence of Parisian French as a language of great status (embraced even by the English-speaking nobility who had resisted Norman French for political reasons). It was simply a matter of fashion.

However the use of Parisian French was quickly tampered by the start of the 100 years war between England and France (1377). The situation increased the position of English in England as the language of government, the church and literature. By the 15^th century, the language was again “official”.

One other historical event that had an important role in the ME period is The Black Death of the last part of the 14^th century which killed 30-40% of the population. Laborers who, of course, spoke English became more important; Monks and nuns who wrote in French and Latin were replaced by English-speaking people. Thus English fully regained its status as superstratum.

A final note on history. There is another fact (and person) who would become of great importance both for the language and for the creation of a sense of Englishness: Henry V and his conquest of France (actually of Normandy) in 1415. It was a decisive point in the growth of a national identity and, upon his death, a decisive point in changing the character of the state.

Henry V was probably the greatest warrior-king of England; also probably the most successful and popular king. He inherited a (more or less) powerful kingdom; loyal and united. Henry V was a very strong administrator. He spent 7 years abroad and held the kingdom together. ON his death, the underlying problems arose; under his reign, he kept on top of them.

Henry V overwhelmed the French forces at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) in spite of being outnumbered in a ratio of 5-1. He thus recovered the sovereignty of Normandy (by the treaty of Troyes in 1420). It seemed as though England had finally triumphed in the long dynastic war. After Henry V’s death, the dual kingdom, under Henry VI, developed disputes and domestic unrest leading to the War of 100 years between France and England, and the war of the roses between two different dynasties of England.

Another important aspect of Henry V is that he was the first king to speak and govern in English giving thus a sense of common nationality with Englishness as a transcending class; separating it from the res of Europe.

Some notes about the language – Middle English 1100 a.D. – 1500 a.D.

The ME Verb phrase

During the ME period, the verb forms were also affected by the loss of inflections. Many strong verbs began to follow the weak regular pattern. Although there were still many cases of strong verbs, particularly second person subjects: thou knowest; and third person singular: He knoweth. However, although this was common in written English, they had more or less disappeared in speech; the third person “She knows” had become more widely used.

OE had fewer possible auxiliary combinations than PDE. The ME period saw the introduction of new possibilities with the inclusion of Perfect tenses and passive structures which did not represent the inclusion of a new “time”, but an increase in expressive possibilities.

Due to the substratum character, by the end of the ME period, English had little of the complex (nightmarish) inflectional system of the OE. IN fact, the only inflectional markings left were: plural and possessive for nouns (en as in oxen / es/’s as in John’s), and the variations (endings) for indicate the past forms of the verb and the singular third person. Gender markings had disappear from nouns and adjectives

To compensate for this very dramatic change in structure, English speakers came to use a less variable word order (much like in PDE).

Another development in ME (particularly towards the end) involved the usage of DO. Questions in OE and early ME were formed by an inversion of subject and verb

You see it – See you it?

A pattern which is still used with the verb to be, but we generally use Do to form confirmative questions.

You see it – Do you see it?

This pattern began in ME but it became established until modern times. Actually the PDE form is derived from a combination of the ME auxiliary and the EME emphatic auxiliary.

The negative

In early Middle English it was common to use the French pattern of surrounding the verb with a negative frame (current ne…pas of French).

He ne speketh not (ME)

he does not speak (PDE)

Il ne parle pas. (FR)

But by late Middle English it was more common to have a single negative marker, particularly in oral language due to economy of language (as it also happens in modern oral French)

He speketh not. (ME)

HE does not speak. (PDE)

Il ’ parle pas. (FR)

ME Vocabulary

Many French words were embedded into English, substance, temtacioun, delyvere, as part of the daily prayers of many English speakers. In fact, in PDE it is hard to find a single sentence that does not contain a word borrowed either from French or Latin.

Most English words of more than two syllables that are not compound ones come from a Romance language.

Many prefixes and suffixes like dis-, inter-, -al, -tion, -able. The range of borrowing goes from simple words –aunt, poor, large, pay– to more obvious Romance words like diversity, substance and sumptuous.

For almost every Anglo-Saxon word in modern vocabulary we can find a closely related word borrowed from a Romance language.

talk – converse

walk – traverse

leave – depart

house – residence

writing – inscription

sickness – malady

Interestingly, it is still easier for most English speakers to come up with an Anglo-Saxon synonym given the Romance word, than vice versa (like what might happen to you upon reading the former list). Anglo-Saxon words are the ones used most commonly, but Romance words still give a touch of elegance to the speech.

It is unusual for a language to borrow a sound from another language (particularly an unrelated one). The fact that English got a new sound from French during the ME period shows the general impact of French on the language. The sound /Ž/ in measure, pleasure began in this period. At the same time, OE sounds such as /f/ and /v/ got separated (because many French borrowings began with /v/). Notice that even today, /Ž/ is an unusual sound which actually varies in many dialects.

However, more or less the ME vowel system and phonology was very similar to that of OE. It was not until the Great Vowel Shift (which marks the beginning of EME) that we do see a drastic change.

Loss of inflections

Partly, the loss of inflections occurred during this period was due to the sound changes. The change in pronunciation might be due to a Germanic characteristic of English; the stressing of the root (usually the 1^st syllable in a word). IN PDE it is still possible to get a rough idea of how long a foreign word has been in the English language –or how well it has been assimilated by the same pattern. E.g. borrowings such as final, medicine, justice or journey have initial stress from a long use in English. Other words like immune, ornate and prevent retain the 2^nd syllable stress. In some case, depending on many historical features not to be analyzed now, there might be variations in dialects. Eg. Cigarette, princess; in American English stress the 1^st and in British English stress the last syllable.

Final remark. Differently from OE, the late Middle English, from around 1450-1500 is recognizable to PDE.

The history behind the Early Modern English 1500 – 1700

Some authors mark 1476 as the exact year. Why?

General details.

This period saw a transition from the more or less unfamiliar idiom of ME to a more familiar-looking language. Even if the language of Shakespeare or the King James Bible might seem formal, it is more or less easier to understand a sentence from this period than from a former one.

Two linguistic events took place in this period that took the language to what it is today:

The spread of the Printing press. William Caxton will take a relevant role in its incorporation to England

The Great Vowel Shift

The effects of Literacy

When we speak and listen, our minds work differently than when we write or read. Most literate people can switch comfortably between oral and written situations and styles. Before the printing press, most people knew the language only through oral situations. So, hat we consider essential to a clear communication was not important to them. It has been argued that the invention of writing made possible for the 1^st time certain kinds of thought. If this is true, then the printing press extended those processes to the whole population. Furthermore it is argued that the possibility to preserve and reproduce a text so that it could be re-opened (fixed and unchanged) and re-interpreted is one of the greatest achievements of all human history.

With a more widespread use of the printing press, a larger number of English speakers received information via the visual act of reading, rather than listening to announcements. People could refer to information rather than having to remember it therefore, more accuracy and more permanence of the written form of words.

The most popular read book in English was the Bible. It had an enormous influence on both the written and the spoken styles of English. The impact began in the OE period, but no translation had more influence the 1611 James I translated version, commonly known as King James Bible. (Allegedly, W. Shakespeare would have participated in its translation).

As England tool a more important role in world affairs, the language became a national symbol being the language of important people: Powerful monarchs (kings and queens), mariners and pirates, active merchants and writers, playwrights.

At this time, virtually everything about the language was flexible and its greatest poet, William Shakespeare, seized flux as an opportunity rather than a liability. While others were worrying about the worthiness, the unruliness, the shortcomings, etc of the language, Shakespeare was doing whatever he wanted with it. He found ordinary language from his own imagination rather than creating a new linguistic process.

Before going further it should be said that even with the printing press and with great authors trying to fix the language, it would take a long time to be achieved. Even in the printed version of Shakespeare plays (for example) there are variations in grammar aspects that today are fixed, i.e. in one play we found a usage and in another play we found a different usage of the same element.

Some notes about the language – Early Modern English 1500 a.D. – 1700 a.D.

The Great Vowel Shift

A massive change in some of the English vowel sounds took place in the second half of the 16^th century. Short vowels stayed the same. However vowels that had been long in ME changed. The pronunciation of each of the long vowels changed so that a lower vowel moved higher, right into the area where the vowel above it had been before the shift.

What happened is that the vowel sounds moved

a) forward and up in the mouth.

a. E.g. name in ME sounded more like /nam/, like in PDE viet-nam. The vowel shift changed it from /nam/ to /neim/.

b) Forward and back in the mouth

a. E.g. food in ME sounded more like /foud/, like in PDE rode. The vowel shift changed it from /foud/ to /fu:d/.

c) The sound /i/. It couldn’t move up any higher since it occupies the highest position in the mouth, /i/ in Chaucer’s word bite –pronounced /bi:t, as in PDE beet– so it simply got transformed into a diphthong-like sound.

Perhaps the most important effect of the Great Vowel Shift is how it disengaged English spelling from the pronunciation. Another interesting effect of the Shift is that certain English speakers of the world still use sounds from before the Shift –ancestors of these speakers left England before the Great Vowel Shift.

English word formation

Changes in the ways words were formed in Enlgish were of unparalleled magnitude in the 16^th century. Borrowing, compounding and combining with a freedom and creativity not known before in English. Roots from OE, Latin, French, Greek, Italian, Spanish entered to the language and got combined with other prefixes and suffixes from equally diverse origins. E.g.

beat (OE) + able (Latin) = beatable

beat (OE) + able (Latin) + ity (OE) = beatability

Other major changes

1. Form of the negative statement

EME preferred a negative particle after the verb.

I doubt not

However, Shakesperean usage still allowed the old multiple negative for emphatic negation.

“nor never none shall be mistress of it.”

“Nor no further in sport neither.”

2. Form of the negative

EME normally inverted subject and verb.

“Goes thy heart with us?”

3. Form of the Relative Pronoun.

EME liked to use that and which as a relative pronoun for persons.

“To pardon him that hath from nature stolen.”

“The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man which sowed.”

4. The Possessive

the old particle “his” (actually the pronoun his) follows an uninflected noun.

“Art thou not Poines, his brother?”

(Aren’t you Poines’ brother)

5. Other obsolete uses (some still survive)

a) Adverbs without –ly:

“Exceeding poor”

“Excellent well”

“Right certain”

b) Use of DO

Emphatic character (feelings or emphasize reality)

“I do confess”

“I do desire thee”

“Horses did neigh and dying men did groan and ghosts did shriek and squel abut the street.”

Imperative character

“Do you go at once.”

c) Distribution of Degree Words

Shakespeare did use too and very, but he certainly used a far wider variety of other words which we do not (frequently) use anymore.

“I love thee cruelly.” (PDE, something like “…quite too very, very, very much.”)

“Shall it nor grieve the dearer (PDE more) than thyne owne death.”

d) You and Thou

e) Meanings of some auxiliaries

The old meanings of some modal auxiliaries can still be functional in Shakespeare.

EME	PDE
Shall	Must
will	Want to
can	Know how to
must	possibly
may	Be able to

A bit of the history behind Late Modern English 1800 – yesterday

… then comes Present Day English

Industrial revolution

England was the 1^st country in the world to experience rapid and large scale industrialization. Late 18th (England) and 19^th century (Europe) and 20^th century (the rest of the world) are the centuries of the Industrial Revolution. Everywhere the results have been the same:

1. An increase in material standards
2. A large increase in population; the growth of large towns (urbanization)
3. Large discrepancies in the distribution of wealth leading to big social problems.
4. A vast upheaval in traditional ways of living.

When it is over, hardly anything is the same. The towns, countryside, the character of the people… all is changed.

England, today, (and here she is not alone) is a compound made up of several thousand years of slowly developing tradition plus 200 years or so of very rapid change. There is only one place where you can catch a glimpse of pre-industrial England and that is the countryside. Though the English countryside has changed, the changes have usually been slow and kept strong links with the past.

The forces that changed England from the later 18^th century were basically economic. 1) Trade, world commerce and; 2) New technology. These two forces carried the English society away form its traditional countryside life replacing it by large urbanization with the majority of English depending on industrial development for their livelihood. From the city came the new basic value of their lives changing family relations and values, working conditions, welfare, hopes, loyalties and all of their values and beliefs system.

By the time of the Industrial revolution (and partly it is what permitted it to start in England) England had already achieved:

- cultural and political unity

- property was protected against both private theft and state expropriation

- the rule of law was closer to natural justice than in most other countries

- Tradition of overseas trade. By the 18^th century, London was the financial capital.

- A large and strong middle class.

Concerning the language, the main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries.

Present Day English is simply all of the “Englishes” we speak today, including all of its permanent evolution. Black English, Spanglish, American, Australian, English as Franc language and the very very long etcetera, all that is PDE.