Talk:Early Modern English

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Contents 1 Spanish and Early Modern English? 2 References on T-V distinction 3 Birth of EME 4 Dates 5 I for J, a request 6 July 11, 2007 edit and removal 7 Differences from Modern English 8 Bogus spelling section

[edit] Spanish and Early Modern English?

Is there a good web page to find out about the similarities between Early Modern English and modern Spanish? (For example, "Have you a pen?" (as in Spanish) instead of "Do you have a pen?"

My guess is it would be more similar to German, being they are both Germanic languages; the earlier forms of both closing in on each becoming ever more identified as analogous to eachother before any romance languages. 71.59.231.70 22:34, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I honestly didn't quite catch that last bit of the response before mine, but I have the following to say. In regard to question-formation, the resemblance of English to German is clear, inverting the usual subject-verb order as likewise in the imperative. However (and this was not mentioned above) the formal distinction between thou/you is actually closer to that of the Romance languages than to that of German, since it was consciously modeled on that of French, specifically, the distinction between tu and vous. That is, English, French (and Spanish) all make use of the second person plural form rather than the singular when speaking formally. While in Romance languages, the formal is used less and less frequently, in English, the formal form has virtually replaced the informal entirely. In contrast, when speaking formally, modern German speakers will use forms derived from the third-person plural. (68.198.181.134 06:04, 27 July 2007 (UTC))

Modern Spanish actually uses third-person forms for formality. —Ruakh_TALK 15:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The comments made above about English not following the Germanic usage of the second-person plural for formal usage as the second-person singular are incorrect, and probably based on confusion between the German 2nd Person Plural "Sie" and the 3rd Person Plural "sie", which is a different word altogether. For the assistance of non-German speakers, the correct German 2nd Person pronouns are

Familiar: Singular du   Plural   ihr
Formal:   Singular Sie  Plural   Sie

The words "du" and "ihr" are capitalised in correspondence where the use of du/ihr is appropriate, ie, with family or friends. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.41.65.223 (talk) 14:33, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

I think you must have misread one of the above comments, as nothing in your comment seems to disagree with anything in any of them. —Ruakh_TALK 19:03, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References on T-V distinction

Does anyone have any references to the use of T-V distinction in Early Modern English? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its usage was irregular (and only for superiors, not everyone) and had fallen out of use by this time. If none can be produced, I recommend removing it from the article. Rt66lt 21:13, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Umm, clearly T-V distinction was widespread in literature throughout the Early Modern period. Have you ever read anything by, uh, a fellow named Shakespeare? (68.198.181.134 06:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Birth of EME

I don't like the article stating 1485 as the start of Early Modern English. Middle English is much fuzzier on the date of ending, saying "the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the 1470s", and there is no bright linguistic line between Early Modern English and Middle English.--Prosfilaes 19:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dates

"...was used in the later half of the 1400s, and 1650."

Could someone please clarify this piece of information? It's not clear if it was used within that time period or not. - Zerida 09:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I for J, a request

I've been doing some work on the etymology of Jury rig and am referring to works by Captain John Smith from the 1620s. In these works "I" is being used in place of "J" (i.e. "Iury mast"). I'd like to be able to point to this article by way of explanation, however I don't have any refs handy to add an authoritative bullet point to the list here. Could someone more familiar with the history of English orthography please add some content regarding the use of I for J? Thanks! --Dfred (talk) 15:31, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

In the Latin alphabet, I and J, and U and V are entirely interchangeable since they were thought of as the same letter. Thus, since rules of English orthography derive from those of Latin, it was not until relatively recently that these letters became fully differentiated in the minds of English-language writers. (68.198.181.134 06:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC))

[edit] July 11, 2007 edit and removal

The following edit was added on this date, "It has been found that early modern English started in the area of Leicester, England (1)"

When I read the reference, it referred to Leicester being the place where Anglo Saxons and Vikings put down their weapons and shared their language, something that happened hundreds of years before the development of Early Modern English. Because of this, I have removed this addition from this article. The information should be added to the Old English language article rather than here. Additions to this article should reflect Early Modern English or how Middle English transformed into Early Modern English. Cynrin 14:14, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Differences from Modern English

I'm a bit confused, since as far as I can tell there are no distinctions given here between "Early Modern English" and "Modern English," other than the more widespread existance of the second-person singular pronoun "thou" and an already highly limited subjunctive mood, both of which after all continue to exist today, if perhaps they seem a bit archaic and are frequently misunderstood; and in any case they were commonly used in formal writing through the last century. I'm left to wonder if these are more linguistic changes or simply stylistic ones. Either the article needs to be greatly lengthened or greatly shortened, for it to make sense. (68.198.181.134 05:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Bogus spelling section

A lot of stuff about spelling differences was added on 13 May 2007 by User:68.218.221.215. None of it was sourced. Some of it was wrong. I plan to remove anything that I don't find obviously correct, and let people add it back if it turns out to have been true.

The obvious falsehood was the spelling *happinesſe for happineſse. "SS" becomes "ſs" in German, and a quick Google Books search reveals[1] that the same rule applies in English. --Quuxplusone 04:05, 3 November 2007 (UTC)