3.1.4. Early Modern English (1500 – 1660)

The Modern English period begins at about 1500 and lasts well into our own times. Within the Modern English period it is customary to distinguish between Early Modern English (1500 – 1660) and Late Modern English (1660 till our own times). It should be noted, that such dates as 1500 or 1660 cannot be taken literary: they are merely a convenient means of expressing the statement that by the end of the 11^th and again by the end of the 15^th century changes in the language have accumulated to an extent which makes it possible to state the beginning of a new period in its history.

The might be no consensus about the beginning of this period, but many consider the invention of printing as a determining factor. Printing played a great role not only in fostering the norms of spelling and pronunciation; it also provided more opportunities for people to write and to give books much wider circulation. This period includes also important scientific discoveries and the exploration of Africa, Asia and America. But the most significant factor, which shaped the development of the language, was the “Renaissance” – the period, characterized by a renewed interest in the classical languages and literature, and by major developments in the sciences and arts. All these factors had a major impact on the vocabulary of the language; a considerable number of Greek and Latin borrowings were introduced into the language to express new concepts, techniques and innovations. In fact, it is generally acknowledged that the increase in foreign borrowing is the most distinctive feature of the Renaissance for English (see Crystal 1995: 60).

It is generally accepted, that the most prominent figure of this period was William Shakespeare (1564-1616), whose role in the language could hardly be overestimated. The Shakespearian impact on the lexicon is immense: because his poems and plays introduced or popularized thousands of new words in the language.

Another distinguished work of Early Modern English was the King James Bible (1611). It was appointed to be read in churches throughout the kingdom and had enormous influence on the people and the language. “There are many phrases in the King James Bible that have entered the language as idioms, though sometimes with minor changes in grammar and vocabulary, e.g. a wolf in sheep’s clothing, in the twinkling of an eye, the salt of the Earth, can leopard change his clothes, money is the root of all evil, if the blind lead the blind, etc. The frequency of occurrence of such phrases in both literary and everyday language is a clear indication of the impact that the King James Bible continues to have on contemporary English” [H. Jackson., p.33].

3.1.5. The Modern English Period (1800-present)

Modern English is characterized by another influx of the vocabulary, which was provoked by three main factors: the unprecedented growth of scientific vocabulary, the emergence of American English, which turned to be a dominant variety of the language and other varieties known as ‘New Englishes’.

English scientific vocabulary has been growing steadily since the Renaissance, but the nineteenth century as a consequence of the industrial revolution and the period of extensive scientific exploration and discovery was the boom of innovations in the sphere of lexis. As H. Jackson mentions, “by the end of the nineteenth century, one could actually speak of ‘scientific English as a variety of the language” [H.Jackson, p.35]. A number of terminological systems, covering the whole scope of science have been formed.

A remarkable factor of the historical development of English was its establishment on the New World and the emergence of the USA as the leading economic state of the twentieth century. Although there are still marked differences between British and American English in the sphere of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, the extensive growth of communication and the development of mass media are making these varieties more and more alike.

In sociolinguistics the global spread of English has been viewed as two diasporas, the former of which involved migration of English speakers from the present British Isles to Australia, New Zealand and North America and the latter transported the language to Asia and Africa. “Those English users who left the old country for new ones brought with them their resource of language and its potentials for change, which are always with us, though we are not often called upon to contemplate them explicitly. Thus, the language was brought into new socio-linguistic contexts, and these contact situations have had striking and lasting effects on English in these regions, so that although these contemporary Englishes have much in common, they are also unique in their grammatical innovations and tolerances, lexis, pronunciation, idioms, and discourse” [Sandra Lee McKay Nancy H. Hornberger. Sociolinguistics and Language Learning]

Though Indian English, Philippine English, Singapore English, and African Englishes have the distinctive features of their own, vocabulary is the area in which these new Englishes best assert themselves (See Jackson, p.36).

As Baugh and Cable (1993:1) put it: “The diversity of cultures that find expression in it as a reminder that the history of the English language is a story of cultures in contact during the past 1500”. Following such reasoning, it seams inadequate to deal with loanwords simply linguistically, and ignore the political, economic, social and technological events that brought words like robot, Cossack, intifada, perestroika, glasnost, and the like into the scope of English vocabulary.

Nowadays borrowing takes place on an unprecedented scale, partly because of the enormous number of new inventions in the 20^th century made by people of various nationalities and partly because international communications are much more rapid and important than a century ago (WWW, international TV networks like CNN, mobile telephones, Skype, etc.). As a result, foreign words enter a language like English easily, often without any change in their spelling and pronunciation, e.g.: blitzkrieg (from German – a swift intensive military attack, designed to defeat the opponent quickly), lunnic (the name of the Soviet spacecraft), chernozem (from Ukrainian – dark soil), polka (a Polish folk dance), kibbutz (from Hebrew - a collective agricultural settlement in modern Israel). To render such words into English does not only require time, but would lose a lot in translation. English with its “cosmopolitan vocabulary” (Baugh and Cable 1993:9) does not seem to mind the overwhelming influx of foreign words into its ranks. Quite the opposite, it has always shown a “marked tendency to go outside its own linguistic resources and borrow from other languages” (Baugh and Cable (1993:10).