Handbook of the History of the English Language, for the Use of Schools and Colleges |
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Common terms and phrases
accent adjective adopted alphabet analytic language Angles Anglo-Norman Anglo-Saxon branch called century Chaucer Church composition Conquest corruption Danes Danish declension dialect difference distinct Early English Early English Period element employed England English language Euphuism existed explained extent final foreign French words Frisian German gerund grammar Greek guage haveth heom hire imperf Indo-European infinitive inflexions instance introduced Irish Keltic King Latin latter Layamon literary literature loveth Low German macod menn Middle English modern English native nature never Norman Norse nouns observed Old English origin Ormulum orthography participle passage past peculiar perhaps plur plural poetry possessed present pronouns pronunciation proper prose retained rhyming Romance Saxon Chronicle Scotch Semi-Saxon sing southern SPECIMENS speech spoken language structure swift syllable synthetic synthetic language tendency Teutonic thou tion tongue tribes verb verse vocabulary vowel Welsh writers written þæt
Popular passages
Page 115 - ... of our language, to hinder any words of a foreign coin from passing among us; and in particular to prohibit any French phrases from becoming current in this kingdom when those of our own stamp are altogether as valuable. The present war has so adulterated our tongue with strange words, that it would be impossible for one of our greatgrandfathers to know what his posterity have been doing, were he to read their exploits in a modern newspaper.
Page 100 - England* began first that language; all our ladies were then his scholars ; and that beauty in court which could not parley Euphuism...
Page 126 - a veritable power of expression, such as perhaps never stood at the command of any other language of men," he goes on to say, ".Its highly spiritual genius, and wonderfully happy development and condition, have been the result of a surprisingly intimate union of the two noblest languages in modern Europe, the Teutonic and the Romance.
Page 77 - VIII., they were wont to be formed by adding en; thus, loven, sayen, complainen. But now (whatsoever is the cause) it hath quite grown out of use, and that other so generally prevailed, that I dare not presume to set this afoot again; albeit (to tell you my opinion) I am persuaded that the lack hereof, well considered, will be found a great blemish to our tongue. For seeing time and person be as it were the right and left hand of a verb, what can the maiming bring else, but a lameness to the whole...
Page 112 - Thus, suppose the English language to be divided into a hundred parts : of these, to make a rough distribution, sixty would be Saxon ; thirty would be Latin (including, of course, the Latin which has come to us through the French) ; five would be Greek. We should thus have assigned ninety five parts, leaving the other five, perhaps too large a residue, to be divided among all the other languages from which we have adopted isolated words.
Page 127 - Shakespear), may, with all right, be called a world-language, and, like the English people, appears destined hereafter to prevail with a sway more extensive even than its present, over all the portions of the globe.
Page 95 - The sharpe greene sweete juniper, Growing so fair with branches here and there, That as it seemed to a lyf without, The boughis spread the arbour all about.
Page 114 - The prevailing fault of English diction, in the fifteenth century, is redundant ornament, and an affectation of anglicising Latin words. In this pedantry and use of " aureate terms " the Scottish versifiers went even beyond their brethren of the South.
Page 94 - Wherfor it is right seld that Frenchmen be hangyd for robberye, for that they have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be therfor mo men hangyd in Englond, in a yere, for robberye and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in Fraunce for such cause of crime in vij yers.
Page 93 - ... out by conjecture. In the Paston Letters, on the contrary, in Harding the metrical chronicler, or in Sir John Fortescue's discourse on the difference between an absolute and a limited monarchy, he finds scarce any difficulty : antiquated words and forms of termination frequently occur ; but he is hardly sensible that he reads these books much less fluently than those of modern times.