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Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModE [1] or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle English, in the late 15th century, to the transition to Modern English, in the mid-to-late 17th century.
Diagram of the changes in English vowels during the Great Vowel Shift. The Great Vowel Shift was a series of pronunciation changes in the vowels of the English language that took place primarily between the 1400s and 1600s [1] (the transition period from Middle English to Early Modern English), beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English.
Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) [2] or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late 14th century and was completed by the 17th century.
The history of Old English can be subdivided into: Prehistoric Old English (c. 450–650); for this period, Old English is mostly a reconstructed language as no literary witnesses survive (with the exception of limited epigraphic evidence). This language, or closely related group of dialects, spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and pre ...
Most native English speakers today find Old English unintelligible, even though about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. [12] The grammar of Old English was much more inflected than modern English, combined with freer word order, and was grammatically quite similar in some respects to modern German.
For example, Proto-Germanic * *stainaz became Old English stān (modern stone) (cf. Old Frisian stēn vs. Gothic stáin, Old High German stein). In many cases, the resulting [ɑː] was later fronted to [æː] by i-mutation: dǣlan "to divide" (cf. Old Frisian dēla vs. Gothic dáiljan, Old High German teilen [Modern English deal]).
Word-for-word translation into Modern English [49] Translation into Modern U.K. English prose [50] Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote: When [that] April with his showers sweet When April with its sweet showers The droȝte of March hath perced to the roote: The drought of March has pierced to the root has drenched March's drought to the roots,
Lizard was borrowed into Middle English from Old French lesarde, from Latin lacertus. [1] The earliest occurrence of the word (spelled lusarde) is in the poem Piers Plowman (written about 1360–1399). Old English āðexe does survive dialectally as ask ('newt', 'eft', 'lizard'): cf. German Eidechse, Dutch hagedis. ælepūte: 'burbot'.