THE SPREAD OF LONDON ENGLISH The fact that the form of English which had grown up in the area of the metropolis and its immediate environs was that in which Caxton and the other early printers produced their books, undoubtedly promoted its rapid dissemination in all parts of the country, but the use of London English as the common language of literature, though facilitated by the introduction of printing, was not the result of this. There is plenty of evidence to show that a knowledge of this type, and its use in writing, were wide spread before the art of printing was thought of. There are collections of private letters, literary works and official docu ments written during the first half of the i 5th century and a few years later, in areas as remote from London as Norfolk, Devonshire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire, for instance, in which the traces of local dialect are so few, that the language is hardly distinguishable from that of London. This does not imply that the old regional dialects had ceased to be spoken, but merely that their use in writing was gradually discontinued. (For an admirable account of the profound effects of Norman French upon the English vocabulary, the reader should consult Jespersen's Growth and Structure of English, and works there referred to.) Meanwhile the external form of English had not remained unaltered during the centuries which elapsed between the coming of the Normans and the death of Chaucer in 1400. Opinions differ as to the most suitable approximate date at which to place the beginnings of the modern period of the language. Most of those who have considered the subject in the light of a knowledge of the written sources down to and into the f5th century, will recognize the abundant signs that what has been called the "great vowel shift," that is, that remarkable series of changes in pro nunciation which distinguishes Modern English, was not the result of a process which started suddenly and produced its effects within a few years, but of slow-working, gradual tenden cies, which had been at work for centuries. From the i3th century onwards certain occasional spellings occur scattered in mss. written in various parts of the country, which must be regarded as unconscious scribal lapses in the direction of a more phonetic expression of actual pronunciation, than was exhibited by a mode of spelling which had already become more or less fixed and con ventional. Thus the (13th century) spelling sichen, "seek," in place of the normal sechen, suggests a sound nearer to the modern one in beseech, than that which e was originally intended to ex press, namely, a long vowel closely resembling in quality that written e in French. The M.E. scribe generally adheres pretty closely to the models in which he was trained, and his lapses are comparatively few, but during the i 5th century, and still more in the i6th, when writing became an art no longer confined to pro fessional scribes, these unconscious, occasional phonetic spellings are very numerous, in documents of all kinds written by private persons who followed the rules less rigidly.
It is in the i 5th century that we first get really copious evi dence from spellings that great changes have come about, not only in the vowels and stressed syllables, but in those of un accented syllables, and in many consonantal combinations. Cax ton, however, and other early printers, adopted the conventional scribal spelling of the late i4th century, and this, with very slight modifications, and these not of a phonetic character, has been retained, so that we learn next to nothing from them of the beginning of the new era in pronunciation which must have been well under way before the end of the i4th century. The M.E. vowels had the so-called "continental" values, and the symbols express, for the most part, the sounds which they expressed in Italian or in French.
The main changes which distinguish Modern English pro nunciation from that of the M.E. period are: M.E. a, hadde, "had," etc. (with sound of German mann) has been fronted; M.E. a (with sound of Ital. capo) has likewise been fronted, M.E. made, "made," etc.; M.E. e, in sechen, "seek" (with sound of Fr. e) has been raised; M.E. e as in mete, "meat" (with sound of Fr. e) was first made into a sound like that of Fr. e, and later, in some dia lects, also raised to the same sound as that of e'; M.E. i, in wif, "wife," child, "child," etc. (with sound of Fr. tire) was diph thongized ; M.E. o', as in mane, "moon," etc. (with sound of Ger man roth) was over-rounded, and raised to the present u-sound; M.E. a as in bot, "boat" (with sound resembling that in present day saw) was made tense as in German roth, etc. ; M.E. u in hus, hous, "house" (with sound of the present vowel in hoot) was diphthongized; M.E. ai, as in M.E. rain, "rain," etc. (with sound of present vowel in rite) had the first element fronted, lost the second element, and was levelled under the same sound as M.E. a; M.E. au, as in taughte, "taught" (with a diphthong similar to that of present-day shout) was monophthongized, the first element being rounded, and the second element gradually weakened and lost, giving the present sound; M.E. ou, as in M.E. doughter, etc., simply lost the second element of the diphthong and was levelled under the new sound derived from M.E. au; M.E. as in M.E. sine, more often written sone, "son" (with vowel as in present day pull) was unrounded and lowered to the characteristic Mod ern English vowel heard in shut, hurry, etc.; M.E. ii in French words such as judge, just, etc., and the same sound, when it oc curred in English words, suche, bundel, etc., was retracted to the sound of English u, and together with this, was unrounded, etc.; M.E. is in French words, pure, fruit, rude, etc., retained the French sound, and was, perhaps during the early i6th century, diphthongized to the sound we now give in naming the letter u.
From the evidence of the occasional spellings, and of certain rhymes which now appear for the first time, it seems certain that, by the first third of the i 5th century, most of these considerable changes had progressed at least far enough to justify the state ment that the old M.E. vowel system had passed away, and that what may fairly be called modern pronunciation was approaching while some vowels had fully attained this. By the end of the i 5th century something very near the present day must have been reached, though the processes of change were not perhaps abso lutely complete for all vowels, nor had the exact shades of sound which we now regard as the standard type finally developed, nor become everywhere current.
The prevalence of regional dialect among the upper grades of society is evident, for instance, from many of the letters in the incomparable Verney collection, the writers of which nearly all belonged to the landed class, from the novels of Fielding and Smollett, while the rhymes of such poets as Waller and Dryden here and there betray regional influence. But another, and per haps more important factor, in moulding the spoken standard, and in determining which type should ultimately prevail, was the in fluence of class dialect, and especially is this observable in the gradual elimination of the old types of unstudied, careless, tra ditional pronunciation common to the upper classes during the 16th, 17th and i8th centuries, in favour of a more careful mode of speech which aimed at a greater "correctness" and a closer ad herence to utterance suggested by the spelling. This tendency, to which we owe much in our present habitual pronunciation, came from the educated middle and lower classes, who, lacking estab lished tradition of easy polished conversation current among the superior ranks, though often exceeding these in learning, were compelled to build up a colloquial tradition of their own which should be worthy of their culture and their taste.
Somewhere about the middle of the i8th century there seems to have been an appreciable reaction against the fashionable carelessness of pronunciation so long in vogue, and slowly but surely the ideals of the purist, and, as many must have thought, the pedant, began to prevail. Thus the standards of what was polite, or what was ridiculous or vulgar in speech, were slowly modified ; much hitherto held fashionable was eliminated, and much formerly felt as strange and pedantic, was permanently adopted as correct. This process of deliberately substituting a new, careful pronunciation based on the spelling for what is ancient, traditional and unstudied, is for ever at work, though many of the older types of pronunciation die hard, and will probably linger for many generations still among the upper classes who are ever more conservative in their speech.
As recent examples of the process may be cited the introduc tion of an aspirate a few generations ago, in herb, humble, hos pital, and within the last few years, among certain classes of speakers in humour; the substitution of "-ing" in pronunciation, in the ending of present participles, for the old "-in"; the intro duction of a "1" sound in often, 'soften; landscape for old lanskip; waistcoat pronounced as spelt, instead of "weskot"; the introduction of an aspirate in the last syllable of forehead, and neighbourhood. Yet earlier innovations of a similar kind are the present pronunciation of gold, in place of the traditional "goold," London with a d sounded, instead of older "Lunnon," the long vowel in leap instead of "lep," hundred for "hunderd," Rome (probably from French or Ital. type) for older "Roome," china instead of "chayney," the ousting of the pronunciation "dooer" for door, the sounding of w in forward, Edward, and many other words in which this sound was normally lost at the beginning of an unstressed syllable.
The older pronunciations here indicated were those used by the best speakers in the 17th and i8th centuries, and many of them might still be heard among old-fashioned speakers of the upper classes far into the last century. Two other important changes in speech habit may be mentioned, involving whole groups of words. The first is almost certainly due to the influence of class dialect though it may be regional in origin. M.E. e, in such words as steal, meat, heat, seat, sea, etc., was by most good speakers pro nounced like stale, mate, hate, sate, say, etc., far into the i8th century. Another type, having the "ee" sound, had existed at any rate in the i6th century, though for a long time it seems to have been confined to a relatively small group of speakers, and was not fashionable in standard English. During the 18th century word after word was gradually transferred, as it were, to the "ee" type, until by the early 19th century, it had become fashionable to pronounce all words of this class in this way except great, and break, and even these may be heard in some dialects with "ee." The spelling ea which is used in most words containing M.E. e, is one of the last attempts at a phonetic distinction in orthography which has become fixed.
The other large class of words for which a different type of pronunciation from that in use in the 17th and i8th centuries is now current, is that group spelt with er. Such words as serve, servant, swerve, diversion, divert, vermin, fervent and many others, as appears both from numerous spellings in private letters, and from the rhymes of poets, were commonly pronounced "sarve, sarvant, swarve, divarsion," etc. The only words which retain the "ar" pronunciation are clerk, and the proper names Derby and Bertie, and in these the "er" pronunciation is still a vulgarism, just as, on the other hand, "sarve, divarsion," etc., would be.
The study of English as preserved in the documents of the past, decade by decade, from the earliest records of every kind, down to the present day, leaves upon the mind a sense of a wonderful continuity. The language is felt indeed to be always changing, but so gradually that the speech of one age passes by almost imperceptible degrees into that of the next. It is impossible to say at what point one period comes to an end and the next begins. And what is true of the external form of the language is true also of the spirit and genius, the atmosphere reflected in the style. To regard the changes of human speech as deliberately brought about, and the language as it exists at a given moment as the result of conscious effort, is an error. Even the vagaries of fash ion, which play a large part in determining the character of a standard of speech, are not so wholly artificial as they appear, since the choice of fashion, of ten an unconscious act, can as a rule be exercised only within the limits of what actually exists in this or that dialect, and consists in the selection of one from among several types, each of which has been developed by a natural, unconscious process, among a community of actual speakers. It is impossible to say by what social currents a given form from some external dialect may have been brought within the ken of speakers of standard English at a certain moment, nor what subtle drift of tendency or motive may have led to its gradual adoption as a current and accepted form. The only really artificial elements in English are such as have been deliberately concocted from the spelling, by speakers who either through ignorance or prejudice, substitute such innovations as we have cited above, for the established traditional forms. But even these novelties, artificial as they may be in origin, often pass, in a few generations, into the storehouse of traditional speech.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-(I.) I. General Bibliographical Works. Lists of Bibliography.-(I.) I. General Bibliographical Works. Lists of current contributions to the study of English appear regularly in the following periodicals:—The Modern Language Review; Review of English Studies; English Studies (Amsterdam) ; Englische Studien, Beiblatt zur Anglia (Halle) ; Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Modern Humanities Association, Cambridge) ; The Year's Work in English Studies (published annually since 1921). Many books in the following sections contain more or less extensive bibliographies; these have (bibl.) after the title. 2. General Works on the History of English. H. Bradley, The Making of English (1904) ; R. Huchon, Histoire de la Langue Anglaise, tome i., "Des origines a la conquete normande" (1923, bibl.) ; O. Jespersen, Growth and Structure of the English Language (1923) ; E. Kluge, Geschichte der englischen Sprache (Halle) in Paul's Grundriss d. German. Philologie (2nd ed.) also published separately (bibl.) ; K. Luick, Historische Grammatik d. englischen Sprache (1913-21) , to p. 548. (bibl.) ; R. Morris, Historical Outlines of English Accidence (revised by Kellner and Bradley) (1897) ; H. Sweet, A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical, pt. 1, Introd. Phonology and Accidence (1892) ; pt. 2, Syntax (1899) ; H. C. Wyld, A Short History of English (3rd ed., revised and enlarged, 1927) (bibl.). 3. Works on the English Vocabu lary and English Etymology. J. B. Greenough and G. L. Kittredge, Words and their Ways in English Speech (1902) ; G. H. McKnight, English Words and their Background (1923, bibl.) ; W. W. Skeat (1) An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (191o), (2) Principles of English Etymology (2 vols., 1891-92) ; E. Weekley, The Romance of Words (1913) . (To this section belong in the main the works by Bradley and Jespersen mentioned above.) The Oxford English Dictionary (ed. by Sir James Murray, Henry Bradley, Sir William Craigie and C. T. Onions) .
(II.) The Old English Period. I. Dictionaries. James Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; also Supplement by T. N. Toller (1923) ; Clarke Hall, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; H. Sweet, A Student's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary 0910. 2. Grammars. K. Biilbring, Altenglisches Elementarbuch (only pt. i., Phonology) (Heidel berg, 1902, bibl.) • E. Sievers, Angelsachsische Grammatik (3rd ed.) (Halle, 1898, bibl.) ; E. E. Wardale, An Old English Grammar (1922) ; J. and M. E. Wright, (i.) An Old English Grammar (1908), (ii.) An Elementary Old English Grammar (1923) . 3. Foreign Loan-words in ,O.E. F. Kluge. See "Englische Sprache" in Paul's Grundriss, cit. in (I.) 2. above; H. S. MacGillivray, The Influence of Christianity on the Vocabulary of Old English (Halle, 1902, bibl.) ; A. Pogatscher, Zur Lautlehre der griech., latein., and roman. Lehnworter im Altenglfischen (1888) . 4. Old English Handwriting and Runes. W. Keller, Angel sochsische Palaeographie (2 pts.; pt. 2 contains facsimiles and trans criptions, 1906) ; E. Sievers, "Schriftkunde," in Paul's Grundriss, 1899 (contains a table of Runes) ; W. Vietor, Die nordhumbrischen Runen steine (Marburg, 2905) . 5. Old English Texts and Sources. The following contain lists of the principal texts classified according to dialect: K. D. Bulbring, Altenglisches Elementarbuch, §§ 19-27; K. Luick, Historische Grammatik d. Englischen Sprache §§ 20-26; H. C. Wyld, Short History of English, pp. 55-56. For a general account of O.E. literature see A. Brandl's Geschichte der altenglischen Literatur, 1908.
(III.) Middle English. I. Dictionaries. A. L. Mayhew and W. W. Skeat, A Concise Middle English Dictionary (1888) ; F. H. Stratmann, re-edited by Henry Bradley, A Middle English Dictionary (1891) . (Editions of M.E. texts published by the Early English Text Society, and by the Clarendon Press, usually contain copious glossaries.) 2. Grammars. R. Jordan, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik (1925), pt. 1, "Lautlehre" (bibl.) ; L. Morsbach, Mittelenglische Gram matik, only a fragment of 192 pp. Halle, 1896 (bibl.) ; J. and E. M. Wright, An Elementary M.E. Grammar (1925) ; H. C. Wyld, chap. vi. and ix. in Short History of English (cit. I. 2. above) and chap. ii. in History of Modern Colloquial English (cit. iv. below). 3. The London Dialect and the Rise of a Literary Language in M.E., W. Dibelius, "John Capgrave and die englische Schriftsprache," in Anglia vols. xx111. and xxiv.; H. M. Flasdieck, Forschungen z. Frihhzeit der englischen Schriftsprache, 1922 (bibl.) ; W. Heuser, Alt-London, mit besonderen Beriicksichtigung d. Dialekts, 1954 (bibl.) ; B. A. Mackenzie, Contributions to the History of the Early London Dialect (1928, bibl.) ; L. Morsbach, Ober den Ursprung der neuenglischen Schriftsprache (Heilbronn, 1888) ; B. Ten Brink, Chaucersprache and Verskunst (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1899) ; F. Wild, Sprache d. wichtigeren Chaucer-mss. (Leipzig, 1915, bibl.) . 4. Bibliography of M.E. texts, mss., and monographs. J. M. Booker, A Middle English Bibliography (Heidelberg, 1912) ; J. E. Wells, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1400 (1916, 1919 ; with Supplements 1919 and 1923) . (Bibliographical information is also contained, together with lists of M.E. texts classified according to dialect, in the works of Jordan, Morsbach and Wyld', cit. (III.) 2 above.) An excellent general survey of M.E. sources will be found in Brandl's Mittelenglische Literatur, in Paul's Grundriss ii., in Luick's Hist. Grammatik §§ 5. M.E. Handwriting. Charles Johnson and Hilary Jenkinson, English Court Hand from 1066-1500 A.D., illustrated chiefly from the Public Records, pt. I, text; Pt. 2, plates (1915) ; W. W. Skeat, Twelve Facsimiles of English Manuscripts, with transcriptions and introduction (1892) ; Sir E. M. Thompson, History of English Handwriting (19o1) . 6. Foreign Loan-words in M.E. D. Behrens, "Die Franzosische Lehn worter in Englischen" in Paul's Grundriss, i. (2nd ed., 1927) ; Bense, A Dictionary of Low Dutch Words in English (1927) ; E. Bjorkman, Scandinavian Loan-words in Middle English, pt. I (Halle, 1900) ; pt. 2 (1902, bibl.) ; Otto Jespersen, chap. v. in The Growth and Structure of English (1923) ; Lindqvist, M.E. Place Names of Scandi navian Origin (Uppsala, 1912, bibl.) ; W. W. Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, vol. ii. ; J. Vising, Anglo-Norman Language and Literature (1923) ; E. Zachrisson, A Contribution to the Study of Anglo-Norman Influence on English Place Names (Lund, 19o9, bibl.) .
(IV.) History of English after the 14th century. A. J. Ellis, Early English Pronunciation (pt. 1, 1867; pt. 2, 5869; pt. 3, 1871; pt. 4, 1874; pt. 5 (on Mod. Engl. Dialects, 1889), Early English Text Society. W. Horn, Historische neuenglische Grammatik (Strasbourg, 1908, bibl.) ; O. Jespersen, A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, pt. 1, Phonology (Heidelberg, 1909) ; pt. 2, Syntax (1914, bibl.) ; A. Kihlboom, Contribution to the Study of Fifteenth Century English (Uppsala, 1926, bibl.) ; H. T. Price, History of Ablaut in Strong Verbs from Caxton to the end of the Elizabethan Period (Heidelberg, 191o) ; W. Victor, Shakespeare's Pronunciation, pt. 1 Phonology and Rhyme Index (Marburg, 2906) ; pt. 2 Shakespeare Reader (19o7) ; H. C. Wyld (I) A History of Modern Colloquial English (3rd impres sion, 1925, bibl.) ; (2) Studies in English Rhymes from Surrey to Pope ; (3) chaps. v. to ix. in Short History of English, cit. I. 2 above ; R. E. Zachrisson, (i.) Pronunciation of Modern English Vowels, 5400 1700 (Goteborg, 1913, bibl.) ; (ii.) The English Pronunciation at Shakespeare's Time, as taught by Wm. Bullokar (Uppsala, 1927) ; (iii.) Romans, Kelts and Saxons in Ancient Britain (Uppsala, 1927).
(V.) Readers and collections of extracts from Old and Middle English Texts. Most of the following books contain grammatical introductions, and notes and glossaries. 1. Old English. W. Sedgefield, An Anglo Saxon Book of Verse and Prose (1928) ; H. Sweet, An Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse (9th ed., revised by C. T. Onions, Oxford, 1922) ; A. J. Wyatt, An Anglo-Saxon Reader (Cambridge, 1919) . 2. Middle English. A. S. Cook, A Literary Middle English Reader (New York and London, 1915) ; Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 5924) ; Joseph Hall, Selections from Early Middle English, 1130-125o, pt. 1 texts; pt. 2 notes (Oxford, 192o) ; R. Morris and W. W. Skeat, Specimens of Early English, pt. 1 1150-2300; pt. 2 (Oxford, 1898) ; Kenneth Sisam, Four teenth Century Verse and Prose, with a Glossary by J. R. R. Tolkien (Oxford, 1922). (H. C. WY.) American Dialects.—Dialects of American English are not so important or so marked as those of the mother country. The settlement of much of the United States is so new, and its inhabi tants and educators so migratory, that local peculiarities have had, as a rule, little time in which to develop. The leading types of regional dialects are those of New England, the South, the Central West and the Far West. But between the speech of Boston, which had for a time a certain prestige partly because the early dictionaries were made there, and the speech of New York, New Orleans, Chicago and San Francisco, there are, despite the distances involved, no very great differences. Denial has been made, indeed, of the existence of American dialects.
There are, however, in outlying regions and in settlements of foreigners, local varieties of speech that are genuinely dialectal. James Russell Lowell summarized many peculiarities of Yankee linguistics in his Biglow Papers (1846, 1866) . The vernacular of the Maine coast or of the Cape Cod region exhibits local peculi arities. The language of the Tennessee and Carolina mountain region found literary preservation in the stories of Charles Egbert Craddock (Mary N. Murfree, 1850-1922) and others. The Ozark mountain district has distinctive idioms, vocabulary and pronunciation, revealing many archaic features. Cape Hatteras island has preserved many colonial or Elizabethan turns of expression, now fast fading. Throughout the United States, rang ing from the Adirondack country to the flats of Georgia or the Sandhill region of Nebraska, are communities having curious local expressions or characteristics. The "worst English in the world" is said to be that spoken by the Gullah negroes of the Georgia and Carolina coasts and sea islands. It differs from and has more archaic features than the familiar negro dialect of the works of J. C. Harris, T. N. Page and their successors. Gullah dialect was lifted into literary notice by the "Black Border" stories of A. E. Gonzales (1857-1926). Harris had written a few stories in the Gullah dialect.
The dialects spoken by foreign populations have received atten tion from scholars, but more should be given them. To be taken into account are the French-Creole of Louisiana, French-Canadian, Spanish-Mexican of the Southwest, Italian-English dialects, Ger man, Yiddish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish-American, Jersey and Pennsylvania Dutch, Slavic-English and other hybrid tongues. The Chinook or Trade Jargon of the Pacific North-west, once widely used by Indian tribes and by the white men with whom they traded, has bequeathed a few words to the English vocabu lary, but it now has no utilitarian purpose and is fast dying out.
Some of the interesting features of American dialect speech are the wealth of ancient or historical words, now extinct in the literary language, that linger in remote regions; localisms of vocabulary ; pronominal, verbal and other grammatical peculiari ties; colourful exclamations and interjections in great numbers; varied and numerous indefinite terms used to avoid finding a spe cific one; terms of disparagement and of encomium; ablaut or rhyming compounds ; saws ; proverbs ; striking similes or meta phors. There are popular names, needing special compilation by folklorists, for birds, insects and plants. A study of dialect has social as well as linguistic significance, since the customs, super stitions and daily interests of a community are reflected in its speech.
The dialects or special jargons of separate classes or profes sions, as apart from regional dialects, may be illustrated by the vocabularies of hoboes, crooks, vagabonds, drug addicts, the vocab ularies of oil-well workers, loggers, miners, sailors, vaudeville artists, actors, circus employees, moving-picture people. The spe cial jargons developed by educators, sociologists, psychologists and other professional groups of various types are also sometimes termed dialects.
An American Dialect Society was formed in 1899, and it has collected a large amount of material. In 1927 it began the prep aration of an American dialect dictionary, to be made in co operation with the Historical Dictionary of American English, in progress at the University of Chicago. (L. P.)