History of English Language Professor Michael Cheng Presenter Helen Cheng

 English spelling was standardized after the publishing of influential dictionaries  British-Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)  American- Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)

 A Dictionary of the English Language aks. Johnson's Dictionary (1755) The pre-eminent English dictionary before the OED “ one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship ” Deduce to the origin Illustrate with literary quotations Provide Multiple definitions With illustrations

A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806)  Introducing American spelling and words  American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)  Expanding to 70,000 entries  Spelling reform

 based on the Webster’s combined vision of logic and aesthetics  principle of uniformity: words that were alike, nouns and their derivatives, should be spelled alike. (e.g. musick=>music (musical))  respell anomalous British spellings (e.g. gaol/jail)

 Greek Spelling: -our/-or; -se/-ce; -re/-er  Latin-derived Spelling: -ise/-ize; -yse/-yze; - ogue/-og  Doubled Consonants: -ll  Dropped “e”

 British usage: both –ise(more frequent) and – ize (Oxford spelling) e.g. organise, realise, and recognise  American usage: –ize e.g. organize, realize, and recognize  Originated from Greek -ιζειν, Latin -izāre; with the pronunciation /z/  -ise was influenced by the special French spelling in -iser

 Nowadays=> -our for British English and -or for American English e.g. colour/color, labour/labor, and flavour/flavor  Derived from Latin non-agent nouns having nominative – or  Borrowed into English from early Old French ending -or or -ur  After the Norman Conquest =>-our in Anglo-French in an attempt to represent the Old French pronunciation  After the Renaissance, some such borrowings from Latin =>original -or  In16th and early 17th century some British scholars => -or for words from Latin and -our for French loans

 General rule: when adding a suffix beginning with a vowel to words with final stressed syllable and ending with a single vowel followed by a single consonant  The British English “l” doubling is required for all inflections (-ed, -ing, -er, -est) and noun suffixes -er and –or e.g. counsellor, cruellest, modelling, quarrelled, signalling, traveller, and travelling  In American usage, the spelling of words is unchanged when they form the main part (root) of other words e.g. wil(l)ful, skil(l)ful, thral(l)dom, fulfil(l), fulfil(l)ment, enrol(l)ment

 British English: usually keep silent e when adding suffixes except it is unnecessary to indicate pronunciation (e.g. believable,bluish)  American English: usually eliminate silent e except for some ambiguous cases (e.g. die=>dying vs. dye=>dyeing) e.g. likeable/likable, ageing/aging, arguement/ argument

 Language serves as an indicator of cultural and social differences  Language is changing with time and space  The variants of a single language makes it diverse