Language change, accents and dialects · Year 12
English has changed enormously over 1,500 years, and it is still changing. It also varies from place to place and from group to group. At A level you study how and why language changes, and what accents, dialects and other varieties tell us about speakers.
Key facts
- Periods: Old English (about 450 to 1150), Middle English (about 1150 to 1500, Chaucer), Early Modern English (about 1500 to 1700, Shakespeare and the first printed books) and Modern English.
- New words are made by borrowing from other languages (safari, karaoke), compounding (laptop), blending (brunch), clipping (exam) and acronyms (NASA).
- Meanings change: broadening (holiday once meant a holy day), narrowing (meat once meant any food), amelioration (nice once meant foolish) and pejoration (silly once meant blessed).
- An accent is the way words are pronounced; a dialect is the words and grammar of a region (bairn for child, we was).
- A sociolect is the language of a social group (teenagers, gamers, doctors); an idiolect is one person's own way of speaking.