- Read her brief account of the history.
- Now, zip down to the "Modern English Period" in her timeline; under the section "17th-18th centuries," click on the "Excursus: Borrowed Words in English." No need to read all of it, just check out what a "borrowed" word is, and where some of our most familiar words came from.
2. Click here to see what Philip Durkin, principal etymologist at the Oxford English Dictionary chose (we don't know if he actually wrote it or just chose the historical moments and had a lackey write it...) as seminal events in the development of English.
- When do the authors say Latin really began to have a weighty influence on English?
- What essential differences in the history do you think are noteworthy, if any?
3. Try your hand at this game, recognizing Early American handwritten letters and dragging them down to the modern letters you think correspond (from Reed College).
4. Ok, what's with all the Capitalized Nouns and Adjectives?
Here's what I've found out....
Stefan Dollinger, writing in connection with the University of Vienna, paraphrases a guy named Noel E. Osselton who published an analysis of 17th and 18th century British handwriting in 1985:
[Osselton] identifies two core rules: therefore, a noun is capitalized if the author or printer either wishes to make a word more ‘prominent’ (rule no. 1), or if it fits a certain semantic ‘category’ (rule no. 2),. Thus, during the heyday of extended capitalization between 1660 and 1720, a writer was supposed to capitalize the following semantic categories, which are subsets of rule no. 2.
2a) animate nouns (Persons, Mathematicians)
2b) names of area of study or disciplines (Grammar, Science)
2c) names of concrete, physical objects (Book, Leaves)
2d) abstract nouns occur with capital initial the greater their generality (judgement as compared to Ambition).
Further prescriptions were possible, e.g. all house-keeping devices were meant to be capitalized, as one contemporary guide recommended (Osselton 1985: 54-57).
(Citation:
Dollinger, Stefan. "What the Capitalization of Nouns in Early Canadian English May Tell Us about ‘Colonial Lag’ Theory: Methods and Problems. Located October 10, 2009 at http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/ang_new/online_papers/views/03_1/DOL_SGLE.PDF.)
Posts
