Talk:Early Modern English

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Early Modern English article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1: 3 months

Languages Mid‑importance

	Language portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Languages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of languages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LanguagesWikipedia:WikiProject LanguagesTemplate:WikiProject Languageslanguage articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Middle Ages Mid‑importance

	Middle Ages portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle Ages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Middle Ages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Middle AgesWikipedia:WikiProject Middle AgesTemplate:WikiProject Middle AgesMiddle Ages articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

England Top‑importance

	England portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject England, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EnglandWikipedia:WikiProject EnglandTemplate:WikiProject EnglandEngland-related articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

English Language High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject English Language, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to the English language on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.English LanguageWikipedia:WikiProject English LanguageTemplate:WikiProject English LanguageEnglish Language articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

European history Mid‑importance

	Europe portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject European history, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the history of Europe on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.European historyWikipedia:WikiProject European historyTemplate:WikiProject European historyEuropean history articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archives

Index

Archive 1

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by when more than 5 sections are present.

BCP 47 language tag

There is now a BCP 47 language tag for Early Modern English: en-emodeng. Doug Ewell 17:59, 20 November 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by DougEwell (talk • contribs)

'Orthography' confusing.

The current text reads : 'The orthography of Early Modern English was fairly similar to that of today, but spelling was unstable'.

This is slightly confusing because the word 'orthography' has two meanings (i) writing i.e. the shape of letters and the alphabet used, and (ii) the way words are spelled.

Might I suggest a change to something like :'As for orthography, the form of written letters and the alphabet were broadly similar to those of today, but as yet spelling had no agreed standard form.' Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.105.248.144 (talk) 18:49, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Early English language" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Early English language. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 19:41, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This line about the subjunctive makes no sense

Under: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_English#Verbs

Line: The second-person singular indicative was marked in both the present and past tenses with -st or -est (for example, in the past tense, walkedst or gav'st).[25] Since the indicative past was not and still is not otherwise marked for person or number,[26] the loss of thou made the past subjunctive indistinguishable from the indicative past for all verbs except to be.

What is "past subjunctive" referring to? English does not have a subjunctive conjugation, never mind a past subjunctive. In fact, the subjunctive conjugation was already totally lost by Middle English. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.32.197.234 (talk • contribs)

That is not correct. Even modern English has both a present and a past subjunctive, though there are only a few cases where it's morphologically different from the indicative.

An example of the present subjunctive is it is important that you be prompt (rather than indicative are).

The past subjunctive is distinct from the past indicative only for the verb "to be", and only for the first and third person singular. If I were a rich man.

Hope that clarifies. --Trovatore (talk) 19:25, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The first shortening of (Early Modern English) seems to be (EModE) when was it coined?

Also, who coined “EModE” and why was “EModE” as an abbreviation firstly chosen and not “EME” and suchlike?

The older(?) ”EModE” abbreviation does seem to somewhat look more becoming also standout moreso than the likes of “EME”. 2A00:23C7:2B13:9001:A025:DCEE:FB20:7C87 (talk) 17:24, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]