Inventing English : a portable history of the language

315 Pages·2007·1.186 MB·English

by  Lerer, Seth

Inventing English

inventing english
A Portable History of the Language
Seth Lerer
columbia university press : new york
Columbia University Press : Publishers Since 1893 : New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lerer, Seth, 1955–
Inventing English : a portable history of the language / Seth Lerer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-10 0–231–13794–X (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13 978–0–231–13794–2 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN-10 0–231–51076–4 (e-book)
ISBN-13 978–0-231–51076–9 (e-book)
1. English language—History. 2. English language—Etymology. 3. English
language—Old English, ca. 450–1100. 4. English language—Middle English,
1100–1500. 5. Linguistics. I. Title.
PE1075.L47 2007
420.9—dc22 2006030652
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
contents
A Note on Texts and Letter Forms vii
INTRODUCTION: Finding English, Finding Us 1
1. Caedmon Learns to Sing
Old English and the Origins of Poetry 12
2. From Beowulf to Wulfstan
The Language of Old English Literature 25
3. In This Year
The Politics of Language and the End of Old English 39
4. From Kingdom to Realm
Middle English in a French World 54
5. Lord of This Langage
Chaucer’s English 70
6. I Is as Ille a Millere as Are Ye
Middle English Dialects 85
7. The Great Vowel Shift and the Changing Character
of English 101
8. Chancery, Caxton, and the Making of English Prose 115
9. I Do, I Will
Shakespeare’s English 129
10. A Universal Hubbub Wild
New Words and Worlds in Early Modern English 141
11. Visible Speech
The Orthoepists and the Origins of Standard English 153
12. A Harmless Drudge
Samuel Johnson and the Making of the Dictionary 167
13. Horrid, Hooting Stanzas
Lexicography and Literature in American English 181
14. Antses in the Sugar
Dialect and Regionalism in American English 192
15. Hello, Dude
Mark Twain and the Making of the American Idiom 207
16. Ready for the Funk
African American English and Its Impact 220
17. Pioneers Through an Untrodden Forest
The Oxford English Dictionary and Its Readers 235
18. Listening to Private Ryan
War and Language 246
19. He Speaks in Your Voice
Everybody’s English 258
Appendix: English Sounds and Their Representation 267
Glossary 271
References and Further Reading 277
Acknowledgments 289
Index 291
vi Contents
a note on texts and letter forms
All texts from different periods of English appear here in original spellings.
Texts from Old and Middle English use some letters not found elsewhere.
These are
Þ, þ “thorn,” indicating a -th- sound
Ð, ð “edth,” indicating a -th- sound
æ, Æ “ aesch,” indicating the vowel sound as in Modern
American English, “cat”
 “ yogh,” indicating a sound like a “y” at the begin-
nings of words, and a sound like a “gh” in the
middle of words
7 the abbreviation for “and”
In addition to these letters, I will occasionally represent sounds by using
the International Phonetic Alphabet. Each vowel and consonant sound in
a language has a special symbol in this alphabet. The appendix to this
book lists these symbols, the sounds they represent, and the ways in which
speech sounds are described by linguists.
Words that are discussed as words, or words from other languages,
appear in italics. Words that explain, translate, or define other words
appear in “quotations.” Words that are transcribed into the International
Phonetic Alphabet to record their pronunciation appear between /slæʃ
marks/.
At the end of this book are chapter-by-chapter lists of references and
suggestions for further reading. In addition to the specific sources and
editions I use, there are often many different editions available—in books
and on line.
Throughout this book, I use the following abbreviations:
vii
CHEL The Cambridge History of the English Language, general editor
Richard M. Hogg, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992–2002).
OED The Oxford English Dictionary, originally edited by James A. H.
Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1889–1928); Supple-
ment, 1933; second edition, 1989. Online at http://dictionary.
oed.com.
Finally, unless otherwise noted, all translations from Old English, Mid-
dle English, and early Modern English, and from other languages, are my
own.
viii ANote onTextandLetterForms
Inventing English