Made In America - Bill Bryson [10]
Thus Squanto had certain grounds to be disgruntled. Not only had Europeans inadvertently exterminated his tribe, but twice had carried him off and once sold him into slavery. Fortunately for the Pilgrims, Squanto was of a forgiving nature. Having spent the greater part of his adult life among the English, he may well have felt more comfortable among Britons than among his own people. In any case, he settled with them and for the next year, until he died of a sudden fever, served as their faithful teacher, interpreter, ambassador and friend. Thanks to him, the future of English in the New World was assured.
The question of what kind of English it was, and would become, lies at the heart of what follows.
2
Becoming Americans
We whoſe names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereigne Lord, King James, by ye grace of God, of Great Britaine, France and Ireland, King, defender of ye faith, etc., haveing undertaken for ye glory of God and advancement of ye Christian faith, and honour of our King and countrie, a voyage to plant ye firſt Colonie in ye Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by theſe presents Solemnly, and mutualy ... covenant and combine our?elves togeather into a civil body politick for our better ordering and preſervation and furtherance of ye end aforeſaid ...
So begins the Mayflower Compact, written in 1620 shortly before the Mayflower Pilgrims stepped ashore. The passage, I need hardly point out, contains some differences from modern English. We no longer use S interchangeably with s, or ye for the*5 A few spellings – Britaine, togeather, Northerne – clearly vary from modern practice, but generally only slightly and not enough to confuse us, whereas only a generation before we would find far greater irregularities (for example, gelousie, conseil, audacite, wiche, loware for jealousy, council, audacity, which and lower). We would not nowadays refer to a ‘dread sovereign’, and if we did we would not mean by it one to be held in awe. But allowing for these few anachronisms, the passage is clear, recognizable, wholly accessible English. Were we, however, somehow to be transported to the Plymouth colony of 1620 and allowed to eavesdrop on the conversations of those who drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact, we would almost certainly be astonished at how different – how frequently incomprehensible – much of their spoken language would be to us. Though it would be clearly identifiable as English, it would be a variety of English unlike any we had heard before. Among the differences that would most immediately strike us:
Kn-, which was always sounded in Middle English, was at the time of the Pilgrims going through a transitional phase in which it was commonly pronounced tn. Where the Pilgrims’ parents or grandparents would have pronounced knee as ‘kuh-nee,’ they themselves would have been more likely to say ‘t’nee.’
The interior gh in words like night and light had been silent for about a generation, but on or near the end of words – in laugh, nought, enough, plough – it was still sometimes pronounced, sometimes left silent and sometimes given an f sound.
There was no sound equivalent to the ah in the modern father and calm. Father would have rhymed with the present-day gather and calm with ram.
Was was pronounced not ‘woz’ but ‘wass’, and remained so, in