logy. Unfortunately the vocabulary of many writers of that time was too poor to express such ideas. That s why Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Philip Sidney, and William Shakespeare borrowed words from other languages ??to express new ideas and distinctions. In many cases they even invented new words, neologisms, themselves. They confirmed the positions of the English as the national language.estimate that, during the XVI-XVII centuries Latin, Greek and modern Romance languages ??added more than 30,000 new words to the English language. Shakespeare s vocabulary as far as we can judge from his texts included approximately 17,000 words, several times larger than the vocabulary of most his educated contemporaries. He is supposed to be the author of about +3000 new words, because he was the first author to write them down.
. SHAKESPEARE S INNOVATIONS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
William Shakespeare s works influenced not only theatre and literature, but the English language itself. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language [5], and his poetry and prose that have influenced a large number of great novelists and poets, including Charles Dickens and an Melville, continue to influence modern authors today. Shakespeare is the most quoted English-speaking writer [4], and a lot of his quotations are now repeated in many languages, not only in English. was writing at the period of great cultural and intellectual development. It is the time of discoveries and innovations in arts and sciences. Scholars were taking a renewed interest in classical languages, and explorers and traders were making intrepid expeditions to the New World. introduced new words and phrases which helped to enrich the language make it colorful and expressive. This is his greatest contribution to the native language. According to some estimations Shakespeare coined about several thousands of words. Warren King says that, Shakespeare uses 17,677 words in his texts and 1,700 were first used (that is written) by him. He is also known for borrowing from the classical literature and foreign languages. [1] We still use Shakespeare s phrases in conversations; they are a part of our language usage. For example: it s Greek to me, strange bedfellows, seen better days, a sorry sight, full circle, at one fell swoop, hold the mirror up to nature, I must be cruel only to be kind, love is blind, with bated breath, in my mind s eye, and so on. Shakespeare s effect on vocabulary is astounding especially taking into account that language has changed significantly since his lifetime.who struggle with understanding Shakespeare s language often say that one of the biggest problems is the vocabulary. Indeed, there are a lot of words unfamiliar to modern readers. To successfully understand Shakespeare s vocabulary one have to know some facts about his attitude to words. of all, according to the Oxford English Dictionary Shakespeare introduced about 3,000 new words. Besides William Shakespeare readily used obsolete words such as wight (man) or ycleped (called). He included insults in his plays to amuse the audience. That were the insults that everyone could enjoy - vulgar, cruel, comical, or just descriptive. A vivid example of his of his use of insults is the description of Kent, a rogue steward from King Lear: a knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, three-suited, hundred-pound, fifthly-worsted-stocking knave; a lilly-livered ... whoreson ... finical rogue, one-trunk-inheriting slave he was facile in employing words and managed to use over 7,000 of them only once. It is more than the whole vocabulary of an average speaker of English. special vocabulary case is Shakespeare s common use of contractions. We also use contractions in everyday speech especially when chatting with friends. The most common Shakespeare s contractions are: =Give
tis=it is er=never=open er=over=often =In =He er=ever 'en=evenmade some stylistic improvements to a loose, spontaneous English language of his age. At that time words were written the same way they were spoken. There exist no formalized grammar rules binding the use of language. Sounds good for those who hates grammar rules, but the lack of rules of grammar caused vagueness in literature. characteristic of this language was free expression of feelings. Shakespeare used the exuberance of the language in his prose and poetry to reach the average people. As a result we have a unique combination of majestic stateliness and racy tang peculiar to Shakespeare s language. [1] created neologism, that s true, but it doesn t mean that he was the only one. Jonathan Hope who studied Shakespeare s works for many years, states that, his texts were cited more often and read more thoroughly, and, he is often said to be the first one to use some words or phrases which in fact b...
