2. The formation of the national language. The spoken standard

The rise of a new vigorous social class – the bourgeoisie – proved an enormous stimulus to the progress of learning, science, literature and art. Of all the outstanding achievements of this great age the invention of printing had the most immediate effect on the development of the language, its written form in particular. The first book in the English language was printed in the year of 1476 by the first English printer William Caxton (his own translation of the Story of Troy), Recuyell of the Histories of Troy.

Among the earliest publications were the poems of Geoffrey Chaucer still the most popular poet in England, the poems of John Gower, Chaucer’s contemporary, the works of John Lydgate, the most prominent poet of the 15^th c., Trvisa’s Polychronicon, and others. The language the first printers used was the London literary English established since the age of Chaucer and modified in accordance with the linguistic changes that had taken place during the past hundred years. In the ensuing century the form of the language used by the printers became the standard form of literary English recognized throughout the country.

In conclusion it should be recalled that so great was the effect of printing on the development of the language that the year 1476 – the date of the publication of the first English book – is regarded by many as a turning point in English linguistic history and the start of a new period - New English.

The written form of the English language became standardized earlier than its spoken form. The literary form of English came into existence in the age of Chaucer, was fixed and spread with the introduction of printing and was further developed as the national in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

The most prominent writers of the 15^th century were the disciples and imitators of Geoffrey Chaucer: Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate. The language of Chaucer’s successors is believed to have drawn farther away from everyday speech. The style used and advocated by the writers is known as the “aureate language”, which was highly affected in character, abounding in abstract words and strongly influenced by Latin rhetoric.

In the 16^th century the most important prose writers were certainly Thomas More (1478-1535), who wrote both in Latin and in English (his first work Utopia was written in Latin in 1516 and was first translated into English by Ralph Robynson in 1551) and William Tyndale, the famous translator of the Bible. His translation of the New Testament was first published in Worms in 1525.

The progress of literature and especially the flourishing of the drama in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries are linked up with an unparalleled enrichment of the language. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and his contemporaries (Edmund Spencer, Christopher Marlowe, John Fletcher and others) wrote in what is known now as Early New English literary language. It was represented by a wide variety of literary styles and was characterized by a rapid growth of the vocabulary, freedom in creating new words and meanings, and versatility of grammatical constructions. In all these qualities the language of Shakespeare certainly excelled that of his contemporaries.

The formation of the Spoken Standard

The earliest date suggested as the time of the formation of the spoken standard is the end of the 17^th century; the type of speech used in London and in the Universities was unanimously proclaimed the best type of English. The phoneticians and grammarians recommend it as a model of correct English. Naturally we possess no direct evidence of the existence of a spoken standard, since all the evidence comes from written sources. Valuable information is furnished by the language of private letters (compared to the language of professional writers), the speech of various characters in the Early New English drama, and also by some direct references of contemporary writers to different types of speech.