Editing English language (section)

=== Early Modern English ===
{{Main|Early Modern English}}

[[File:Great Vowel Shift2a.svg|right|upright=1.36|thumb|Graphic representation of the [[Great Vowel Shift]], showing how the pronunciation of the long vowels gradually shifted, with the high vowels i: and u: breaking into diphthongs and the lower vowels each shifting their pronunciation up one level]]

The next period in the history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the [[Great Vowel Shift]] (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation.

The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a [[chain shift]], meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. [[Mid vowel|Mid]] and [[open vowel]]s were [[raising (phonology)|raised]], and [[close vowel]]s were [[vowel breaking|broken]] into [[diphthong]]s. For example, the word ''bite'' was originally pronounced as the word ''beet'' is today, and the second vowel in the word ''about'' was pronounced as the word ''boot'' is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages.{{sfn|Lass|2000}}{{sfn|Görlach|1991|pp=66–70}}

English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during the reign of [[Henry V of England|Henry V]]. Around 1430, the [[Court of Chancery]] in [[Westminster]] began using English in its [[writ|official documents]], and a new standard form of Middle English, known as [[Chancery Standard]], developed from the dialects of London and the [[East Midlands English|East Midlands]]. In 1476, [[William Caxton]] introduced the [[printing press]] to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English.{{sfn|Nevalainen|Tieken-Boon van Ostade|2006|pages=274–79}} Literature from the Early Modern period includes the works of [[William Shakespeare]] and the [[King James Version|translation of the Bible]] commissioned by [[James VI and I|King James I]]. Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the [[consonant cluster]]s {{IPA|/kn ɡn sw/}} in ''knight'', ''gnat'', and ''sword'' were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent the distinct characteristics of Early Modern English.{{sfn|Cercignani|1981}}

In the 1611 [[King James Version]] of the Bible, written in Early Modern English, Matthew 8:20 says, "The Foxes haue holes and the birds of the ayre haue nests."{{sfn|Lass|2006|pp=46–47}} This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with subject–verb–object word order, and the use of ''of'' instead of the non-possessive genitive), and the introduction of loanwords from French (''ayre'') and word replacements (''bird'' originally meaning "nestling" had replaced OE ''fugol'').{{sfn|Lass|2006|pp=46–47}}