The following is an outline of the major changes in Modern English compared to its previous form (Middle English), and also some major changes in English over the course of the 20th century. Note, however, that these are generalizations, and some of these may not be true for specific dialects:
Morphology • "
like", "same as", and "immediately" are used as
conjunctions. • The elevation of
singular they to some formal registers. • Placement of frequency
adverbs before
auxiliary verbs.
Verbs •
Regularisation of some
English irregular verbs. • Revival of the present ("mandative")
English subjunctive. •
"Will" preferred to "shall" to mark the
future tense in the first person. •
Do-support for the verb "have". • Increase in
multi-word verbs. • Development of
auxiliary verbs "wanna", "
gonna", "gotta" in informal discourse. • Usage of
English progressive verbs in certain present perfect and past perfect forms.
Phonology Up until the American–British split (1600–1725), some major phonological changes in English included: •
Initial cluster reductions, like of /ɡn, kn/ into /n/: making
homophones of gnat and nat, and not and knot. • The
meet–meat merger in most dialects: making the words "meat" and "meet" homophones, but, through its exceptions, causing "meat", "threat" and "great" have three different vowels, although all three words once rhymed. • The
foot–strut split: so that "cut" and "put", and "pudding" and "budding" no longer rhyme; and "putt" and "put" are no longer homophones. • The
lot–cloth split: the vowel in words like "cloth" and "off" is pronounced with the vowel in "thought", as opposed to the vowel used in "lot". After the
American-British split, further changes to English phonology included: •
Non-rhotic (/ɹ/-dropping) accents develop in the
English of England, Australasia, and South Africa. •
Happy-tensing: final
lax [ɪ] becomes tense [i] in words like "happy"
. Absent from some dialects. •
Yod-dropping: the
elision of /j/ in certain consonant clusters, like those found in "chute", "rude", "blue", "chews", and "Zeus". •
Wine–whine merger from the reduction of /ʍ/ to /w/ in all national standard varieties of English, except Scottish and Irish. • In
North American and Australasian English, /t, d/ are reduced to an alveolar tap between vowels, realised as [t̬] or [ɾ]. •
Cot–caught merger, the merger of /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ to /ɑ/ in some dialects of
General American.
Syntax • disuse of the
T–V distinction (
thou,
ye). Contemporary Modern English usually retains only the formal second-person personal pronoun, "
you" (ye), used in both formal and informal contexts. • use of auxiliary verbs becomes mandatory in
interrogative sentences. •
"less", rather than "fewer", is used for
countable nouns. • For
English comparisons, syntactic comparison (
more) is preferred to analytic comparison (
-er). • Usage of the
Saxon genitive ('s) has extended beyond human referents.
Alphabet Changes in alphabet and spelling were heavily influenced by the advent of printing and continental printing practices. • The letter
thorn (þ), which began to be replaced by
th as early as Middle English, finally fell into disuse. In Early Modern English printing, thorn was represented with the Latin
y, which appeared similar to thorn in blackletter typeface (𝖞). The last vestige of the letter was in
ligatures of thorn, ye (thee), yt (that), yu (thou), which were still seen occasionally in the
King James Bible of 1611 and in Shakespeare's folios. • The letters
i and
j, previously written as a single letter, began to be distinguished; likewise for
u and
v. This was a common development of the
Latin alphabet during this period. Consequently, Modern English came to use a purely
Latin alphabet of 26 letters. ==See also==