Talk:Early Modern English

This line about the subjunctive makes no sense

Under: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_English#Verbs

Line: The second-person singular indicative was marked in both the present and past tenses with -st or -est (for example, in the past tense, walkedst or gav'st).[25] Since the indicative past was not and still is not otherwise marked for person or number,[26] the loss of thou made the past subjunctive indistinguishable from the indicative past for all verbs except to be.

What is "past subjunctive" referring to? English does not have a subjunctive conjugation, never mind a past subjunctive. In fact, the subjunctive conjugation was already totally lost by Middle English. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.32.197.234 (talk • contribs)

That is not correct. Even modern English has both a present and a past subjunctive, though there are only a few cases where it's morphologically different from the indicative.

An example of the present subjunctive is it is important that you be prompt (rather than indicative are).

The past subjunctive is distinct from the past indicative only for the verb "to be", and only for the first and third person singular. If I were a rich man.

Hope that clarifies. --Trovatore (talk) 19:25, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

The first shortening of (Early Modern English) seems to be (EModE) when was it coined?

Also, who coined “EModE” and why was “EModE” as an abbreviation firstly chosen and not “EME” and suchlike?

The older(?) ”EModE” abbreviation does seem to somewhat look more becoming also standout moreso than the likes of “EME”. 2A00:23C7:2B13:9001:A025:DCEE:FB20:7C87 (talk) 17:24, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Split of /ʌ/ and /ʊ/

'/ʌ/ ⓘ (as in drum, enough and love) and /ʊ/ ⓘ (as in could, full, put) had not yet split and so were both pronounced in the vicinity of [ɤ] ⓘ.'

This would imply that the vowel in full and put was unrounded and later became rounded for some reason?! I'm 90% sure that this is wrong. The rounded pronunciation is the original one. Northern English and Irish dialects that keep a rounded pronunciation of words like drum and love remain closer to the original realisation of the vowel. Words like love and full had a rounded pronunciation in Middle English and Old English, too; the idea that full would have been first rounded, then unrounded, then rounded again is highly implausible and not something that I recall from my readings on the subject. The vowel in the recording sounds somewhat rounded to me, too, for what it's worth; but the recording doesn't give a very clear idea of the sound either - among other things, the speaker pronounces it long, whereas the actual words had - and still have, in England English - a short vowel. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 09:43, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Exactly, from the article on Phonological history of English close back vowels:

'The origin of the split is the unrounding of /ʊ/ in Early Modern English, resulting in the phoneme /ʌ/. Usually, unrounding to /ʌ/ did not occur if /ʊ/ was preceded by a labial consonant, such as /p/, /f/, /b/, or was followed by /l/, /ʃ/, or /tʃ/, leaving the modern /ʊ/. Because of the inconsistency of the split, put and putt became a minimal pair that were distinguished as /pʊt/ and /pʌt/. The first clear description of the split dates from 1644.[5]

In non-splitting accents, cut and put rhyme, putt and put are homophonous as /pʊt/, and pudding and budding rhyme.'

So this is clearly an error introduced by an editor in this article.--62.73.72.3 (talk) 09:50, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that you are perfectly right, so I shall remove the statement from the article. JBW (talk) 12:32, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Well, I see you have,already done that. JBW (talk) 12:35, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Vowel Table Suggestion

Total take-it-or-leave-it suggestion, but the following might be a more parsimonious and explanatory vowel table. It only re-arranges the existing vowel table, no symbol choices are changed; the main goal is to have the front-back symmetry of the English vowel space 'jump out' at the reader rather than leaving the whole thing kind of disorganized.

I've made four main changes:

• Prioritizing the front-back axis rather than the close-open axis.
• Moving /a/ and /aː/ into the front series instead of leaving it uncorrelated to the other vowels.
• Moving /ɤ/ up a row into the same slot as /oː/ instead of /ɔː/, which lines up better with both the symbol choice and the future development of these vowels (GOAT patterning with STRUT is not at all unheard of).
• Compressing certain related vowels (/ɛ/ and /eː/, /ɒ/ and /ɔː/) into single rows, like how /ɪ/ and /iː/ or /ʊ/ and /uː/ are compressed together in the existing table.

I do think these changes can be mixed-and-matched if anyone else happens to disagree with a particular choice.

Early modern English vowels

		Monophthongs		Diphthongs
		Short	Long	+/j/	+/w/
Front	Close	ɪ	iː		ɪw
	Mid	ɛ	eː	ɛj
	Open	a	aː
Central	Mid	ə		əj	əw
Back	Close	ʊ	uː
	Close-mid	ɤ	oː
	Open-mid	ɒ	ɔː	ɔj	ɔw

~2025-36139-08 (talk) 22:52, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Not sure if I'm thinking about a slightly different time period, but I'm pretty sure that strut wasn't a distinct phoneme then, ɒ would've still been ɔ especially early on, ɔː was still aw (at least in the earlier stages and in some dialects probably for longer), some sources suggest ɔw and ɛi instead of əj əw (although these collide with other diphthongs, so perhaps only dialects which merged old ɔw and ɛj into the long vowels already used these, which would make sense with vowel dispersion).

Also I'm pretty sure whatever dialects that became modern English had to have lost x and ç before the first half of Great Vowel Shift (and therefore before Early Modern English) otherwise words like right would've been pronounced like "reet" (as they apparently are in some British dialects that kept the fricatives around for longer). ~2026-30061-23 (talk) 07:36, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

the King James text is not early modern english

I have studied and can read accurately middle english and obviously early modern English as well. I also have studied theology and personally own a facsimile of the 1611 King James, the picture in this article is clearly the 1769 version commonly thought to be the original and "early modern english" but by definition in this article it is not. Attached is an image of my copy. I will let others decide if they wish to include as I am new to wikipedia.

Page of Psalms 23 from the original King James bible

Trc1986 (talk) 07:22, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

Let's assume you're correct about the image being from the 1769 Oxford edition. Then there seem to be two separate issues in your complaint: First, what to do about the image caption, and second, whether the 1769 edition is in Early Modern English.

I don't have strong feelings about the image caption. The fact that 1769 Oxford edition redirects to a section of the article on the King James Version suggests to me that it's considered an edition of that version, not a separate version, but I wouldn't object to clarifying the caption.

The second point is whether the 1769 edition counts as Early Modern English. I think it's clear that it does. There are light alterations to the spelling, but the verb endings and the pronoun thou clearly point to it being EMnE. The fact that the article states that EMnE ends in the "mid-to-late 17th century" is presumably talking about the way people actually spoke and wrote in that time period, not about preserved religious texts. --Trovatore (talk) 20:57, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

I am simply going be the first paragraph of the definition in the article. I have seen some argue that the 1611 King James and shakespere are bascailly "very very late middle english" as opposed to early modern, though they are the minorit, what is certain though is 1769 is the mid 18th century, not 17th and I do believe it a practical example of "true" early modern by most scholars. It is literally just modern english with some thous and thees and 'eths" at the end. It very distinctly different from a near universally accepted as early modern english text, the 1611 version which contains archaic letters like the long s, the thorn, u and vs being inverted, many silent es that were dropped later, no Js etc.. I concede some (a small minority) consider it very late middle english, but for the purposes of the continuity of this article which explicitly states it ending in the mid 17th century I don't find much sense in have an image of a book written 100 years afterwards as an example worthy of being shown. Trc1986 (talk) 22:42, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

Also ironically though an agnostic I own many religious texts, the 1769 as well which is how I recognized it, in addition to my Quran, Tanankh etc... kinda came up as I was interested in history and one cant put history in context without deep understanding of religions role in whichever time period. I quick google as I don't feel like digging through a box shows the text here is verbatim with the mid 18th century Oxford.

https://www.bibliatodo.com/en/the-bible/king-james-version/psalm-23 Trc1986 (talk) 22:49, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

The point is that the 1769 edition is not written in 1769 English. The differences you point out are mainly spelling, not the language. --Trovatore (talk) 23:04, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

It sure reads like other 1769 texts ive read, they just add a few thous and thees and eths to make it more archaic sounding, but it omit any of the archaic written styles like having the Letter J, no thorn letter, many many silent e that are no longer, switching of where and v and u are used, many many other what are now considered not correct spellings "Iohn, "Ieſus" "euill" "staffe" "goodneſſe". I could have read tha 1769 with complete understanding by the time i was in 3rd grade, the same can not be said of shakespeare, that to me indicates the 1769 is essentially modern Trc1986 (talk) 23:20, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

You keep talking about spelling. Who cares about spelling? The "thous and thees and eths" are much more critical to evaluating what stage of the language we're talking about than spelling or typography is. --Trovatore (talk) 05:48, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand why youd rather include a picture of an "example" that with absolute certainity is made outside the time period, when I provided a universally accepted version written during the timeline the article in question claims it is. The 1769 is definitely not written to appear as an earlier form other than using than very basic things done intentionally as having read many english papers from that time period shortly before the American revolution i am positive it was not written in an "old" style beyond the 3 token examples. If anything its written more modern than every in all other aspects, I don't even see the long S being used despite it being it still being used in this time period, like in our constitution. Trc1986 (talk) 11:54, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not necessarily wedded to that particular image. I was responding more to the arguments, which I found flawed, than to the specific question of which image to use.

If we come down to it, isn't it true that the two texts are word-for-word identical, except for differences in spelling and typography? This article is not mainly about the written language, and I think linguists generally consider written language to be subordinate to spoken language.

So the choice between them would come down to the 1611 edition having more authentic "flavor", versus the 1769 edition being easier for a modern reader to figure out what the (identical) language of the psalm actually is. --Trovatore (talk) 04:05, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I just landed on this again, I just think it is kind of confusing for the article because it explicitly uses a period accurate Shakespeare image, states that late Early Modern texts such as the King James Bible and Shakespeare are understandable to most modern English readers, so the page itself is treating the King James bible as an example of the language stage, and I would think showing the 1611 physical/textual form would make that claim much more visually apparent. Trc1986 (talk) 21:32, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Oh and to clarify I understand that there is a difference between spoken and written language, I was merely stating that first for internal consistency it seems unusual to include a contemporary written document, refer to "Shakespeare or King James Bible English" but then use the 1769 version when in modern contexts nearly anyone studying or researching anything to do with early modern english and late middle english for that matter, which I can reliably read back to around the early 1400s, is going to be the written variety, while I can read documents written then I am not sure how they would be spoken and there are very few if any real places where anyone could speak middle english practically with anyone else nor do it accurately, that is why I believe it to be substantially relevant Trc1986 (talk) 20:06, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

“My objection isn't that the 1769 KJV ceases to contain Early Modern English as far as the spoken form. My objection is that the article uses a genuine 1609 Shakespearean text as its Early Modern English illustration while using a 1769 standardized edition of a 1611 translation for the KJV illustration. If the purpose is to show period English, the illustrations should be chronologically consistent: either use period editions for both or explicitly identify the KJV image as a later edition of an Early Modern text.” Trc1986 (talk) 05:43, 25 September 2026 (UTC)