English is a complex language that has changed and evolved drastically over time. This exhibit includes materials that illustrate the development and growth of English as a written language, and how historical events and cultural movements impacted the language. Each item demonstrates different landmark changes that occurred at different points in the evolution of English. The formation of written English as shown in this exhibit begins with runic characters and Old English (Anglo-Saxon), travels through Middle English, and ends with early Modern English. Take a look at these materials to see how the English language has changed over time.
The Rune Poem. Edited by Bill Griffiths. Prints by Nicholas Parry.
A facsimile of an Anglo-Saxon work known as The Rune Poem, this item is particularly interesting because three distinct periods of the English language are shown. The left page shows an Anglo-Saxon rune, while the right page shows that runic character’s corresponding verse from the 29-verse Rune Poem in latinized Anglo-Saxon (Old English). Beneath this is a modern English translation.
Each verse in the full poem corresponds to a different rune, similar to a modern alphabetic poem. The runic characters were part of a written language called Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, which was the earliest form of written English, used most extensively between the 5th and 9th centuries AD. Futhorc was adapted from an even older runic language originating in Scandinavia and Germany known as Elder Futhark. The Rune Poem was likely first written in the 9th century, during a time of overlap between the use of Futhorc and latinized Anglo-Saxon script.
Aelfric, Abbot of Eynsham. Divers ancient monuments in the Saxon tongue… Edited by William L’isle.
Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot and one of the most influential Anglo-Saxon writers during the late 10th and early 11th centuries. He is famed for creating a Latin-English grammar, as well as several homilies and other works. His “Treatise on the Old and New Testament” was rediscovered by William L’Isle, an Anglo-Saxon scholar, who published it in 1623 as part of the effort to establish historical differences between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. In 1638 a second edition of the publication, shown here, was published.
The left page shows the original Latinized Anglo-Saxon script (or Old English) that began to be used around the 7th century, and the right page shows a translation into modern English by William L’Isle. The Anglo-Saxon character set was mainly adapted from Latin. However, there were also characters not used in Latin, which can be seen here. These include æ (“ash”), đ (“deth”), þ (“thorn”) and more. These characters no longer exist in the English language. Several characters on the left page are identical to modern English characters but are shown in a slightly different form (see h and f). The longest holdover character from the Anglo-Saxon period is ∫ (or “the long s”). This character can be seen on both the left and right pages; it was often used as a lowercase s from the 8th century all the way until the 1800s.
Also of note: the margin note on the right page states “This is false translated,” showing that a previous unknown owner of this volume took issue with some of L’Isle’s translations.
English manor house rolls: chiefly from Wilburton Manor in the bishopric of Ely, Cambridgeshire.
This is a manor roll from Wilburton Manor, which was in the diocese of Ely, England. “Wilburton” can be seen on the very bottom of the roll. Special Collections holds hundreds of manor rolls from this medieval manor, all from the years 1302 – 1506. Manor rolls contain several different types of information, including accounts of products traded/sold, court records for serfs and other vassals, information on what each serf owes to the manor (either in days of work or in rent), and more. English manor rolls were written primarily in Latin by skilled writers, typically of noble station. They were full of abbreviations, contractions, and other unique writing conventions. The unusual writing style makes it difficult for modern researchers to study medieval manor rolls.
In the 1300s, English-speakers spoke in what is now considered Middle English, which started in the 12th century. Middle English is differentiated from Old English by the increasing influence of other languages, including Old Norse, French, and Latin. The influence of the Latin language can be ascertained here in this document, as even though English was frequently used in written documents in the 14th century, the nobility and the church still used Latin extensively in official contexts.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The workes of Geffrey Chaucer… Edited by Ihon Lidgate.
The Canterbury Tales was written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 14th century in Middle English. It was a collection of stories about various pilgrims journeying to visit St. Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. Shown here is a 1561 publication of Chaucer’s works, opened to the first page of the Knight’s Tale, with a woodcut image of a knight on horseback.
The transition from Old to Middle English saw numerous changes to the English language. English lost most of its inflections (word-modifications) to describe gender, tense, and case; and word order became more important grammatically. English also became much less homogenous as French and Latin loanwords entered the English language by storm. At this time, there was still very little spelling regulation in the English language; words could be spelled in any way the author desired. The way an author chose to spell a word often matched the word’s pronunciation more than it does in modern English. Try to read a sentence or two from the Canterbury Tales to hear what Middle English may have sounded like!
Swift, Jonathan. Travels into several remote nations of the world: In four parts.
Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, or, Gulliver’s Travels was written in 1726 by Jonathan Swift in Modern English. The book satirized the tone and characteristics of travel books, a popular genre at the time. In the book, Lemuel Gulliver travels to several different fantastical lands and interacts with strange peoples. When the book was first published, Gulliver’s Travels sold out almost immediately, prompting several immediate follow-up printings. This copy, a 3rd printing, came out the same year as the first printing. It is opened to the first page of part one, where Gulliver travels to the island of Lilliput, an island where the people are only six inches tall.
The development of Modern English from Middle English saw many changes to the language. Spelling became more standardized with the influence of the printing press, but pronunciation drifted away from the way words were spelled. This can be seen most evidently in what is known as the “Great Vowel Shift,” a change in the way long vowels were pronounced that developed from the 15th to 17th centuries.
Here are some examples of how Middle English words were pronounced differently than they are in Modern English: the oa in boat was pronounced like the word law; the i in mite was pronounced like modern meet; the ou in bout was pronounced like modern boot. Several consonants that used to be pronounced became silent during this change as well. This can be seen in the letter k (example: knight), as well as w (ex: wrist, wrought), and gh (ex: bought, high, night). Because these shifts happened concurrently with the standardization of spelling with the influence of the printing press, our current spelling standards rarely match the corresponding pronunciation.
