From Old English to Standard English: A Course Book in Language Variation Across Time

by Dennis Freeborn

This practical and informative course book leads the student through the development of the language from Old English, through Middle and Early Modern English to the establishment of Standard English in the eighteenth century. At the core of the book is a series of nearly two hundred historical texts, of which more than half are reproduced in facsimile, exemplifying the progressive changes in the language. The book is firmly based upon linguistic description, with commentaries forming a series of case studies which demonstrate the evidence for language change at every handwriting, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, grammar and meaning. This third edition has been expanded to provide more guidance and background information. New sections have been added to outline the development of writing hands and provide a brief introduction to paleography. Since the publication of second edition new fonts have also become available that enable transcription exercises to be presented more accurately. An extensive and fully integrated ancillary website, including sound recordings, accompanies the third edition. With its emphasis on primary sources and range of activities, this exciting new edition and accompanying website encourage students to start thinking critically about issues in the history of the English language.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Unazoomer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not so much about the older iterations and dialects of English themselves as about the development of English into the standard written form, that was finally established 250 years ago or so, and which we use in a relatively unchanged form to this day. The coverage of the language, therefore, consisting mostly of the attitudes toward the language, and the language's differences from its modern and other regional forms, gets much more extensive and detailed for the ages closer to us than ages long past. This is not _quite_ the book I would have wanted to read, because my interests lie more in getting an intimate familiarity with other (older) varieties of English; whereas I found this book to be mostly forward looking, glossing over a lot of the areas that interest me — Old English getting just two chapters with nearly only examples from the chronicles, rather than the wider multifaceted OE corpus. But then this is a book on language, not literature.

That is not to say I did not enjoy the book, to the contrary! I thought it was great fun. It was a very pleasant read that never got boring for the many diverse facsimile reproductions of texts, dosed in bite-sized chucks, with many fun and frequent activities in between, that take you on a seamless journey across time. I suppose I would just have preferred a journey _through_ time, and a bit more explicit information about spoken forms than just written forms and suggestions. I did also quite appreciate the extensivity and rigour of the later chapters in discussing the minute differences, mostly in style and ever so slightly in grammar, in the language since the first establishment of the standard written English in the mid-to-late eighteenth century. I also enjoyed laughing at some of the preposterous, whimsical, and antiquated opinions of the early prescriptive grammarians.

All in all quite a decent and recommendable book.

[Isham Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book primarily for teachers of Old English, but useful for anyone interested in diving into the distant world of Anglo Saxon, with numerous Old English text samples and excerpts and clear grammatical explanations.

[Confucius · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a fascinating work on English language history, with plenty of pictures about ancient writing materials and books as the reference resources.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is distinguished from other history books of the English language mainly in its abundant manuscript pictures. It is text-based, especially the original texts with ancient calligraphy. It should be a very good complement to other historical linguistics books in English language if you want to read the real medieval texts.