РЕФЕРАТ НА ТЕМУ
«THE SHAKESPEARE S LANGUAGE»
INTRODUCTION
often complain that Shakespearean language is too difficult to understand. They wonder why he could not have written in normal English. Actually he could. Shakespeare was writing in everyday language of his age that is in the English spoken in the XVI-XVII centuries. Although Shakespeare was responsible for the appearance of numerous neologisms, he did not make up a language of his own. More that that, if William Shakespeare were alive today, he would have a great difficulty in understanding the way the modern English is written and spoken.contributed to the transformation of the English language. He was creating his plays and sonnets at a time when Latin was still the language of documents. The English of Elizabethan era or the early modern English as linguists call it was only about 100 years old. There existed no published dictionaries yet. There were no established grammar rules, and it was not studied in schools systematically. In fact in schools children studied mostly Latin and Greek, but not English. The syntax rules of the English language were unsteady and the vocabulary was limited. The future of the early modern English was precarious.modern English language owes much to William Shakespeare. He invented almost 2000 of common words. He freely changed nouns into verbs, verbs into adjectives, connected words together, inventing combinations that had never been used before. He added affixes, and devised brand new original words. influenced greatly the entire language system. Prior to his time, the grammatical and lexical rules of English were unstable. They had no standardized variant. [2] Shakespeare s plays contributed to the process of standardization of the English language. Numerous words and expressions coined by Shakespeare became an integral part of the English language through such linguistic projects as Samuel Johnson s A Dictionary of the English Language where one can find more quotes of Shakespeare than of any other writer. [3]
1. PRE-SHAKESPEARIAN ENGLISH
William Shakespeare wrote under the influence of such prominent English writers as Chaucer, Spenser and Sidney. Besides it is necessary to note the setting of Shakespeare s language. In the V century the Germanic tribes had moved to Britain. These tribes were the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. They teamed up with the local Celtic tribes in order to defeat their northern neighbors. After the victory, however, the Germanic tribes slowly pushed the Celts into the territory of modern Wales and Cornwall. The tribes spoke Anglo-Saxon language, often called the Old English language. This language survived the Norman invasion of 1066, which brought French to England. It was spoken mostly by common people and Anglo-Saxon noblemen who refused to speak French. events took place in the beginning of the Middle English period. In fact England became bilingual. Norman officials and supervisors spoke French as well as bilingual children born from French and English parents. English was, not in common use. The state and clergy preferred to speak Latin. The Norman rule ended with the King John s death. The decision of the Edward conquest of Wales contributed to increased usage of the English language. French culture was no longer supreme in England. The English language resumed its place as the dominant language of the land. As a result the dialectal differences were gradually smoothed out and the Standard English appeared. French remained the official language in England until the XIV century and gave its positions only in 1509 when English became the official language. The rhetoric of the English language was deeply indebted to Chaucer. However, it is difficult to talk about innovations of the language, because there were few written records of that period. In the XV-XVI centuries there was an approximate shift from the Middle English to the Early Modern English, also called the language of the Renaissance. Before Shakespeare the future of the English language was uncertain, but by the time his last work was written, the literature of modern English was enriched, full of achievements and mature. [1]
2. CHANGES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
The structure of the early Modern English was unfixed. Its vocabulary changed constantly compared to static Greek or Latin languages. The English language absorbed words from foreign languages ??during wars, colonization and through diplomatic contacts. By the time Shakespeare started writing, English was widely used due to the expansion of physical sciences, philosophy and theo...
