Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [329]
9. Trevisa re. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, i, 59. The text is given in the (London) form published by William Caxton in 1482, since this is substantially easier to read than Trevisa’s own Cornish dialect. The punctuation and capitalisation are also adjusted for ease of modern reading. The relevant words of Higden are: ’Haec quidem nativae linguae corruptio provenit hodie multum ex duobus; quod videlicet pueri in scholis contra morem caeterarum nationum a primo Normannorum adventu, derelicto proprio vulgari construere Gallice compelluntur; item quod filii nobilium ab ipsis cunabulorum crepundiis ad Gallicum idioma informantur. Quibus profecto rurales homines assimilari volentes, ut per hoc spectabiliores videantur, francigenare satagunt omni nisu.’
10. Cursor Mundi, Assumption of Our Lady, II.51-4.
11. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseide, v, **II. 1793-9.
12. From William Caxton, Prologue to Eneydos, 1490.
13. The most celebrated was Johann Clajus, Grammatica Germanicae linguae…ex Bibliis Lutheri Germanicis et aliis ejus libris collecta, Leipzig, 1578. These last two paragraphs are heavily dependent on Febvre and Martin (1958: 481-91).
14. They are listed in Nicolson (2003: 247-50), along with many of their Continental contemporaries, starting with the first printed Bible in Czech in 1488.
15. By the 1620s, all the gentry could read. By the 1640s, so could 45 per cent of the yeomanry, and perhaps 5 per cent of labourers. Literacy was higher among men than women, and in London than in the provinces (Nicolson 2003: 122).
16. Sir John Seeley, The Expansion of England, Lecture I.
17. Keynes (1930: 156-7).
18. Ferguson (2003: 11).
19. ibid.: 13.
20. Williams (1643: chs i, vi, viii). The full title is: ‘A Key into the Language of America, or An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England. Together with brief Observations of the Customes, Manners and Worships, &c of the aforesaid Natives, in Peace and Warre, in Life and Death. On all of which are added Spirituall Observations, Generall and Particular, of the Authour, of chiefe and speciall use (upon all occasions,) to all the English Inhabiting those parts; yet pleasant and profitable to the view of all men.’ The author was expelled from Massachusetts for his liberal opinions, but went on to found Providence, Rhode Island.
21. Williams (1643: chs iii and xvii).
22. Examples derived from Silver and Miller (1997: 319). Penobscot, referred to there, is a variety of Abenaki.
23. Eliot (1666). Although a formal grammar, it does not pass up the odd opportunity for improving comments, e.g. p. 7: ‘And hence is that wise Saying, That a Christian must be adorned with as many Adverbs as Adjectives: He must as well do good, as be good. When a man’s virtuous Actions are well adorned with Adverbs, every one will conclude that the man is well adorned with virtuous Adjectives.’
24. Eliot (1663): this has the distinction of being the first translation of the Bible in the Americas, although the Spanish, with their Catholic approach to Christianity, had been publishing prayers and confessionals in American languages since 1539. See Chapter 10, ‘First chinks in the language barrier: Interpreters, bilinguals, grammarians’, p. 341.
25. Cotton Mather (1663-1728), quoted in (indirectly) Bailey (1992: 73).
26. Barraclough (1978: 221).
27. The border with Mexico was finalised a little later, by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, which added a southern sliver to the modern states of Arizona and New Mexico to field a new route for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
28. Quoted in Milner et al. (1994:168). The acquisition of the west was immediately cemented by the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in northern California in January 1848, and the world’s most famous gold rush. The resulting jump in population accelerated California’s acquisition of statehood to a period of two years, a new record.
29. Quoted in ibid.: