![]() These early views are evident in the Proposal for the Publication of a New Dictionary by the Philological Society (1859) which envisages a starting point for the dictionary of 1250 (the date of the ‘rise’ of ‘our language’), very much in accordance with the thinking of Herbert Coleridge (the first editor of the proposed dictionary), whose own Dictionary of the first, or Oldest Words in the English Language (1863) covers the period 1250-1300. In the scholarship of the time this earliest stage of English was in fact usually considered to be a wholly different language from later English-and therefore not properly within the remit of an English dictionary. ![]() When plans for what became known as the Oxford English Dictionary were being drawn up in the late 1850s, it was a commonly held view that the borderline between Old English and later forms of English should be regarded as 1250, rather than 1150. When did Old English end and Middle English begin?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |