Talk:Early Modern English

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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)

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)

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)

Split of /ʌ/ and /ʊ/

'/ʌ/ ⓘ (as in drum, enough and love) and /ʊ/ ⓘ (as in could, full, put) had not yet split and so were both pronounced in the vicinity of [ɤ] ⓘ.'

This would imply that the vowel in full and put was unrounded and later became rounded for some reason?! I'm 90% sure that this is wrong. The rounded pronunciation is the original one. Northern English and Irish dialects that keep a rounded pronunciation of words like drum and love remain closer to the original realisation of the vowel. Words like love and full had a rounded pronunciation in Middle English and Old English, too; the idea that full would have been first rounded, then unrounded, then rounded again is highly implausible and not something that I recall from my readings on the subject. The vowel in the recording sounds somewhat rounded to me, too, for what it's worth; but the recording doesn't give a very clear idea of the sound either - among other things, the speaker pronounces it long, whereas the actual words had - and still have, in England English - a short vowel. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 09:43, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Exactly, from the article on Phonological history of English close back vowels:

'The origin of the split is the unrounding of /ʊ/ in Early Modern English, resulting in the phoneme /ʌ/. Usually, unrounding to /ʌ/ did not occur if /ʊ/ was preceded by a labial consonant, such as /p/, /f/, /b/, or was followed by /l/, /ʃ/, or /tʃ/, leaving the modern /ʊ/. Because of the inconsistency of the split, put and putt became a minimal pair that were distinguished as /pʊt/ and /pʌt/. The first clear description of the split dates from 1644.[5]

In non-splitting accents, cut and put rhyme, putt and put are homophonous as /pʊt/, and pudding and budding rhyme.'

So this is clearly an error introduced by an editor in this article.--62.73.72.3 (talk) 09:50, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that you are perfectly right, so I shall remove the statement from the article. JBW (talk) 12:32, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Well, I see you have,already done that. JBW (talk) 12:35, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Vowel Table Suggestion

Total take-it-or-leave-it suggestion, but the following might be a more parsimonious and explanatory vowel table. It only re-arranges the existing vowel table, no symbol choices are changed; the main goal is to have the front-back symmetry of the English vowel space 'jump out' at the reader rather than leaving the whole thing kind of disorganized.

I've made four main changes:

• Prioritizing the front-back axis rather than the close-open axis.
• Moving /a/ and /aː/ into the front series instead of leaving it uncorrelated to the other vowels.
• Moving /ɤ/ up a row into the same slot as /oː/ instead of /ɔː/, which lines up better with both the symbol choice and the future development of these vowels (GOAT patterning with STRUT is not at all unheard of).
• Compressing certain related vowels (/ɛ/ and /eː/, /ɒ/ and /ɔː/) into single rows, like how /ɪ/ and /iː/ or /ʊ/ and /uː/ are compressed together in the existing table.

I do think these changes can be mixed-and-matched if anyone else happens to disagree with a particular choice.

Early modern English vowels

		Monophthongs		Diphthongs
		Short	Long	+/j/	+/w/
Front	Close	ɪ	iː		ɪw
	Mid	ɛ	eː	ɛj
	Open	a	aː
Central	Mid	ə		əj	əw
Back	Close	ʊ	uː
	Close-mid	ɤ	oː
	Open-mid	ɒ	ɔː	ɔj	ɔw

~2025-36139-08 (talk) 22:52, 18 December 2025 (UTC)