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British Latin which may have lacked noun case, like most modern Romance languages.
2.3 Modern English
Modern English began in the 15th century, the transition from Middle Eglish to Modern English began. Much of the transition was authority to the
expansion of the British Empire throughout the world and to the development of printing. The printing press and increasing in publishing of books drove the
standardization of the languge. spelling grammar was formalized due to the publication of various literary works and pamphlets.
Barnet 1967 : 64 say that Modern English was also the period of the English Renaissance when people develoved, on the one hand, a keen interest in
the past and, on the other, a more daring and imaginative view of the picture. Modern English has made many features of Modern English perfectly familiar to
many people down to present times, even though we do not use these features in present day speech andwriting. It is not always realized, however, that
considerable sounds changes have taken place between early Modern English and the english of the present day. Modern English did succeed in establishing certain
attiudes which, though they haven‘t had much effect on the development of the language itself, have certainly changed the native speakers feeling about the
language. When we speak English now, we must specify whether we mean
American English, British English, and Australian English, Indian English, or what, since the diffrences are considerable. The American cannot go to England
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orthe Englishman to America confident that he will always understand and be understood.
2.4 How Old and Modern English are related
Old and Modern English are very related. Modern English are very related to Old English, though in different way, for old and Modern English are really
different stages in the development of a single language. The changes that turned Old english into Middle English and Middle English into Modern English took
places gradually, over the centuries and there never was a time when people perceived their language as having broken radically with the language spoken a
generation before. It is worth mentioning in this connection that the terms Old English, and Modern English are themselves modern, speakers of these languages
all would have said, if asked that the language they spoke was English.
There is no point, on the other hand in playing down the differences between Old and Modern English, for they are obvious at a glance. The rules for
spelling Old English were different from the rules for spelling Modern English, and that accounts for some of the difference. But there are more substantial
changes as well. The three vowels that appeared in the inflectional endings of Old English words were reduced to one in Middle English and then most inflectional
endings dissappeared entirely. Most case distinctions were lost, so weremost of the endings added to verbs, even while the verb system became more complex,
adding such features as a future tense, a perfect and a pluperfect. While the number of endings was reduced, the order of elements within clauses and
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sentences became more fixed, so that, it came to sound archaid and awkward to place and object before the verb, as Old English hadfrequently done.
The vocabulary of Old English was of course Germanic, more closely related to the vocabularyof such languages as Dutch and German than to Frenchor
Latin. The viking age, which culminated in the reign of the Danish king Cnut in England, introduced a great many Danish words in to English but these were
Germanic words as well.the conquest of England by a French speaking people in the year 1066 eventually brought about immense changes in the vocabulary of
english. During the Middle English period, English borrowed some ten thousand words from French, and at the sme time it was friendly to borrowings from latin ,
dutch and flemish. Now relatively few Modern English words come form Old English; but the words that do survive are some of the most common in the
language, including almost all the grammar words‘ articles, pronouns, prepositions and a great many words for everyday concepts. For example, the
words in this paragraph that come to us from Old English Some of the Modern English which come Old English : Eald old, brodor
brother, hus house, nett net, riht right, widuwe widow, wiftman woman, half loaf, apostle apostol, chalk cealc, wine win, monk munuc, gefaran
act, onettan active, be, gelyfed advanced, ongean again, against, eall all, mid amid, hatheart angry, deor animal, ahwear anywhere, gretan
approach, fyrd army, gelendan arrive, beon be, leger bed, geliefan believe, deore beloved, betera better, begeondan beyond, lean blean,
blestian bless, blowan bloom, blodig bloody, blawan blow, bat boat, ban
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bone, brieg bridge, beorht bright, byrnan burn, ciese cheese, breost chest, betynan close, heretoga commander, bisgu concern, belucan
contain, coc cook, scieppan create, cyrm crry, cuckoo geac, astandan get up, acennan give birth, alecgan give up, abugan give away, awedan go
mad, abugan yield, wage war, anbidian wait , abaedan ward off , ansund whole, amyran wound, awritan write, ahebban raise, awestan ravage,
alysan release, aferran remove, areccean render, ahreddan rescue, anwealda ruler, asecgan say, ahreddan save, asendan send, andgit sense,
assettan set, anfeald simple, asingan sing, anlepe single, ansund sound, arian spare, afylan stain, astandan stand up, abrecan storm, asteccan
stretch out, atteon ateon, awendan translate, asmeagan understand.
2.5 Old English different from Modern English