Pedants' Paradise

[Sir Velo]

That is fascinating. What is the source, please?

Caxton: Preface to "Eneydos".

[mangerton]

Caxton: Preface to "Eneydos".

Thank you.

[french frank]

Perhaps this is the place for more on Mr Gwynne.

"I heard Gwynne on a BBC Radio 4 program revealing that he thinks the most misused word in English is hopefully. That tells me that he hasn't paid any attention to informed commentary on English usage in roughly 50 years (see my comments here on hopefully). If he can show so little regard for his adopted subject, then perhaps I can be forgiven for not paying any attention to him for 50 years. I'll return to the topic in the year 2063, good health and basic will to live permitting."

[Pabmusic]

This one did, eventually - though it was a question of two different dialect words rather than different pronunciations of the same one:

For we Englysshe men ben borne under the domynacyon of the mone...[etc]

Yes. Caxton's point was to discuss just which version of English he should use in printing (also, how should it be spelt). He settled eventually on what we now call East Midlands dialect, the language of the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle. It became 'standard' English.

Caxton continued the passage you quoted:

For in these dayes euery man that is in ony reputacyon in his countrie wyll vtter his commynycacyon and maters in such maners & termes that fewe men shall vnderstonde theym. And som honest and grete clerkes haue ben with me and desired me to wryte the most curious termes that I could fynde. And thus between playne rude & curious I stande abashed. But in my iudgemente the comyn termes that be dayli vsed ben lighter to be vnderstonde than the olde and auncyent englysshe.

It's noticeable, isn't it, that Caxton's London dialect of 1490 is very much easier to understand than Chaucer's of a century before. It's also noticeable that V and U were treated as variants of the same letter (U is generally used for the consonantal form, V for the vowel form - the opposite of how it eventually settled). No J either - iudgemente would have been pronounced 'judgement', and sometimes written with a J - but that was just a consonantal form of I.

[aeolium]

Yes. Caxton's point was to discuss just which version of English he should use in printing (also, how should it be spelt). He settled eventually on what we now call East Midlands dialect, the language of the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle. It became 'standard' English.

How different the story of English might have been if Caxton had settled on the dialect of the West Midlands - perhaps less influenced by French and Latin and with more affinity with the "olde and auncyent englysshe".

[Pabmusic]

How different the story of English might have been if Caxton had settled on the dialect of the West Midlands - perhaps less influenced by French and Latin and with more affinity with the "olde and auncyent englysshe".

Indeed. Or if he'd settled on Wessex (Winchester had been the capital of England, after all). Wessex dialect would at least have left us with forming plurals by adding -en rather than -s (which had originally been a Northern variant anyway).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Perhaps this is the place for more on Mr Gwynne.

The whole blog is riddled with those nausiating "...ize" endings.
So I decided not to join the hate campaign.

[Thropplenoggin]

The whole blog is riddled with those nausiating "...ize" endings.
So I decided not to join the hate campaign.

Furthermore, it has a preference for authors with nouns for a surname:

Melvyn Quince
Steven Bird
Bill Poser

and, er, David Beaver. Let's hope it's not a case of nominative determinism.

[jean]

The whole blog is riddled with those nausiating "...ize" endings.
So I decided not to join the hate campaign.

I really don't understand why you feel so strongly about them!

I tend to prefer my Greek endings filtered through French, but I don't see it as a huge problem.

I'm not very keen on nausiating, though.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm not very keen on nausiating, though.

I thought someone would bring that one up!

[Bryn]

I thought someone would bring that one up!

Do feel free to get your coat.

[Serial_Apologist]

Do feel free to get your coat.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I really don't understand why you feel so strongly about them!

Well you do go on about usage, and only a few Greek fanatics (and American coffee shops) seem to use ...ize endings over here.

I tend to prefer my Greek endings filtered through French, but I don't see it as a huge problem.

The Greeks didn't even use our alphabet (and still don't).

I'm not very keen on nausiating, though.

[french frank]

Well you do go on about usage, and only a few Greek fanatics (and American coffee shops) seem to use ...ize endings over here.

And Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the OUP. Though, like Jean, I prefer the -ise ending.

[vinteuil]

I tend to follow the house style of the Oxford University Press in preferring the -ize ending, for the reasons set out by Fowler and in Hart's Rules.

Re the awful Mr Gwynne, I liked AA Gill's take : "Mr Gwynne rhapsodised that, in his day, everyone of whatever class all had perfect grammar and perfect manners. They are, apparently, synonymous. The point of all this is, well, is that there is no point to all this: grammar wardens are playing culturally insecure middle-class Scrabble, they are the intellectual wing of UKIP. Declaiming on grammar is dropping Pooh sticks into a rill that feeds a burn that runs into a stream that disappears into the torrent of the English language. Nobody can dam or alter its path or direct its destination, it belongs to whoever finds it in their mouth. It washes away dictionaries and lexicons and laws and fun-licking grammars. It is global and as free as breathing, and the only truly democratic thing we all own. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that it’s more theirs than yours because they don’t dangle participles."