english Language homework help?
1. What is language standardisation? Why was it needed in England?
2. When and how did ‘Standardisation’ occur in England?
3. Which King played a key role in the survival of English? What did he do?
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2. Standardisation happened in England when the Cornish language died in the 18th century.
3. Alfred, King of Wessex. He restored the tradition of letters which had decayed during the war when many monasteries were destroyed. The revival of learning and writing and the conditions of relative peace meant that conditions were ripe for standardisation
i found this on the website below, it may have more info about what you are looking for.
all the best =)
1. Language standardisation refers to establishing norms in orthography (spelling) and grammar. It was needed in English because at the time English was an extremely phonetic language. Contributing TO this problem, as English developed her own “growing pains” (in my opinion) was the Norman conquest of England & the influence of the French language on English.
However, by the time books became more accessible through the printing press’ invention, EVERY printer of any book, had their own unique spellings, and typesets often of the same manuscript. It’s not that in looking at these texts, you don’t see what they are saying or can’t understand if you look at these early texts. It’s that it just had no “norms,” and was thus very haphazard. Remember though, that the printing press was not invented until the late 1400’s. Prior to that, books were precious. This invention made them much more accessible to the common man.
2) It isn’t like standardisation just magically occurred. You see many attempts at early standardisation. Remember that language is not static; it is (if it’s used) a living, breathing entity. Think about how your teenager slang is so radically different from anything that might have been used by teenagers of my mother’s generation. However, as a gradual process, standardisation DID occur. For instance, you start to see some standardisation (although not complete) by Chaucer’s time.
3) The King probably MOST responsible for the survival of English was King James, with his King James version of the bible. Although this text is still more middle English than modern English, the fact that a very specific form of language was used is important. Obviously, the book is the bible, a text most individuals, literate or not, knew at least partially.
Standardisation was needed as a ‘universal’ language, and to incorporate old and new words.
I don’t know about the King though?? James or Richard? I did something similar for my A levels, just not related to a specific King, sorry.
All the best
It was needed in England because there were so many languages spoken in that country and words filtered into the language. Ango, Saxon, Celtic, French, German, Norse, Norman, Spanish, Latin and others all crept into the language and often brought their original spellings with them, which created a terrible muddle. So in order to unify the country, as much as anything, the language was standardized. This applied mainly to spoken English.
It’s hard to answer your question about which King played a key role in the survival of English – many of England’s kings did not speak English, so there was no one king whose use of a foreign language threatened the survival of English, there were many of them. Henry VIII, in wresting control of the church from Rome, probably did as much to ensure the retention of English as anyone.
My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that King James was instrumental in bringing commonality to the English language by giving people a common document, the King James bible, that everyone read.
Something similar occurred in Germany, which had many dialects, when Martin Luther created a German translation of the bible, thus giving the country a united language.
I can’t help you with the other two questions.
