This is being reposted because much more is being added on to it.
I periodically collect postings about similar subject matter together into a compound posting. This new compound posting is about our language. The compound postings are listed in the introductory posting at the top, "Introduction To This Blog System". Some compound postings are about science and some are about the world and human issues. Use the search utility in the upper left of the screen to bring up the listed compound postings.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) OUR CONFUSING LANGUAGE
2) MISSING WORDS
3) THE STORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
4) THE ROOTS OF ABBREVIATION
5) THE PARADOX OF WORDS
6) THE BATTLE OF THE ALPHABETICAL ORDERS
7) HAMPTON COURT PALACE AND THE KING JAMES BIBLE
1) OUR CONFUSING LANGUAGE
Today I would like to express sympathy to anyone who is learning to speak English.
The first thing that is confusing is that the same letter, "s", is used for both the possessive and the plural. You just have to remember that if there is an apostrophe between the word and the "s" it is possessive, if not it is plural. Some words have plurals, "trees" but some don't, "fish", there is no pattern so you just have to remember.
"Go" is a very-often used word. If we have already left then the past tense is "gone". The present tense is "going". But if the journey is already completed it becomes a completely different word, "went", that has no apparent connection to forms of "go".
There is a clear connection between the words, "affect" and "effect". The first is a verb and the second is a noun. Using the same logic it would appear that there is also a connection between "principle" and "principal", but the two words have nothing to do with each other and mean completely different things.
Then there are words with more than one meaning. "Like" means "similar to" but also "to have affection for". "Does" is the present tense of "to do" but, with a different pronunciation, is also plural female deer. "Mine" is a possessive, an underground excavation from which minerals are extracted and also, a hidden explosive device.
A scenic road that runs through or along a park is often called a "parkway". "To park" also means to bring a vehicle to a stationary position. Homes and businesses have places for vehicles to drive into, before parking, called "driveways". The bizarre result is that we drive on a parkway but park on a driveway.
There are words that sound the same but have different completely meanings. There are "steel" and "steal", "spear" and "sphere" and "scene" and "seen". There are words that look like they should rhyme but they don't, "rough", "cough", "dough" and, "plough"
A word that I found confusing is "delight". "Decompress" means to take away compression. The prefix "de-" means to take away something. So "delight" should mean "to turn off the lights", instead of being pleased or happy.
Even if words all made sense, sentences can be confusing. "I got on the bus and went to my assigned position". But what does that mean exactly? Does it mean that they went to their assigned seat on the bus, or does it mean that they rode the bus to their assigned position in the city?
THE CHEMISTRY CONUNDRUM
One of the best examples of how confusing our language can be is what I call "The Chemistry Conundrum".
There is something about basic chemistry that is confusing and doesn't make sense. It concerns valence, or the exchange of electrons between atoms to form molecules.
There are two electric charges, negative and positive. But negative and positive are represented by the symbols "-" and "+". The confusion begins because these two symbols also have another meaning.
Minus, "-", means to subtract or take away. This is the same symbol that is used for negative electric charge.
Plus, "+", means to add or join to. This is the same symbol that is used for positive electric charge.
There are two types of bonds between atoms so that they form compounds or molecules. Ionic bonds are where one atom loses an electron to another so that one atom has a net negative charge and the other has a net positive charge, so that they join together by mutual opposite charge attraction. Covalent bonds, in structures such as the complex structures of carbon atoms, is where two atoms share one or more electrons.
Ionic bonds are more in inanimate matter but the molecular bonds in living things rely on covalent bonds. As you can see by your flesh, matter based on covalent bonds is often flexible while ionic bonds tend to be brittle or inflexible.
This conundrum concerns ionic bonds. Suppose that two atoms are close together and one takes an outer electron from the other. Because electrons have a negative charge, the atom that loses the electron will then have a net positive charge. The atom that gains the electron will then have a net negative charge.
Do you see how confusing this is?
An atom loses an electron which has a negative charge, as in "-", yet it now has a positive charge, as in "+", as if it has gained something because "+" also means addition.
The other atom gains the electron. To gain means to add something. Addition is symbolized by the plus sign, "+", but the atom now has a negative charge, which is symbolized by the opposite sign, "-".
The negative and positive designations given to the two opposite electric charges are entirely arbitrary. We could just as easily called negative positive and vice versa. If we said that the electron has a positive charge, while the nucleus has a negative charge, which is now what we define as antimatter, it would make more sense.
An atom that GAINED an electron would then have a POSITIVE electric charge, as in "+".
An atom that LOST an electron would then have a NEGATIVE electric charge, as in "-".
Wouldn't that make more sense and be less confusing?
2) MISSING WORDS
Has anyone ever wondered if there are things that we don't have words for? Technology and society are always progressing and so there is a continuous flow of new words. But that is not what I mean. What I mean is things that we have always had with us but never gotten around to assigning a word to, at least in our language.
It is sometimes said that love and hate are not really opposites but are more like "flip sides of the same coin". When we have strong feelings for someone or something those feelings may be manifested as either love or hate. But that doesn't make the two opposites. They are both at one end of the scale. The opposite of either love or hate is indifference.
Religious people know that the furthest person from God is not one who hates God or religion. We have to have some regard for something before we can hate it. The furthest person from God is one who is just indifferent, not interested. Furthermore love and hate can be mixed together, as in a "love-hate relationship". So it is not accurate to describe love and hate as opposites.
How about the relationship between salt and pepper? The two are found together, in shakers or dispensers at restaurants. But yet the two cannot be described as opposites. One may use both salt and pepper. The word "pair" isn't quite right either. A pair is two things that always go together. Salt and pepper are usually offered together but yet cannot really be described as a "pair" because one can use one or the other, or both, or neither.
A similar example is the relationship between tea and coffee. The two are often offered together but are more exclusive than salt and pepper. Unlike salt and pepper one gets either tea or coffee but not both, so describing them as a "pair" fits even less than with salt and pepper. But neither can the two be described as "opposites" because they have so much in common, a hot brewed drink, and are often offered together and served in a similar way.
The truth is that these three relationships represents a missing word, something that we never assigned a word to. Two words that might come close are "pair" and "opposites", but neither quite fits the relationship between love and hate, between salt and pepper, and between tea and coffee.
The closest we come to describing these relationships is the phrase "like flip sides of the same coin", which is somewhere between opposites and a pair. This is one example of something that never got a word assigned to it.
Sometimes words get left behind from one place to another. A British word that I notice Americans don't use is "crumple". When something collapses and it's components come apart, as with a concrete structure, it "crumbles", with a "b". When something collapses and it's components stay joined together, as with a sheet of paper, it "crumples", with a "p".
3) THE STORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
The reason that the English language is suitable to be the global language that it is today is that it has such a wide "span" of words, in comparison with most other languages. This makes it easy for foreign words to be readily adapted into English.
To understand how this came about, we must go far back into history. English is basically a northern European, or Germanic, language. The structure of the language is similar to that of German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and, Swedish. A close correspondence can be seen between many English words and their counterparts in German, for example. There is I and Ich, water and wasser, house and haus, Friday and Freitag.
But the English language underwent a special event that transformed it by greatly broadening it's span of words and sounds. There are two basic language groups in western Europe, the Germanic languages in the north and the Romance languages around the Mediterranean area. Romance languages include Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan (spoken in the area around Barcelona) and, Romanian. What is now England turned out to be the frontier where the two would meet.
England was originally a part of the Roman Empire. But it is one of the few areas of Roman occupation in Europe that did not end up speaking a Latin-based Romance language. England was later settled by Anglo-Saxons, from what is now Germany, and also Danes and Vikings. This was the beginning of English as a northern European language.
The critical event in shaping the language that we have today was, in my view, the landing of a group of Vikings, known as Normans, in what is now Normandy on the north coast of France. The Normans established a kingdom and adopted the French language. Later they crossed the English Channel, into what is now England, and brought their language with them.
English remained a northern European language in it's structure. But the mixing in of the Normans, and their language, introduced a flood of French words. This would make English almost as much a Romance language as a northern European one. In many cases, new words from French would displace the older Germanic words. As one example, English uses the French "place" instead of a variation of the German "stadt".
You may wonder what real difference this makes, whether we say "place" or "stadt". But it is this influx of new words from a foreign language group that gave English the very wide span that it has today, and this is what gives it the adaptability to be a global language. It readily adapts words from all over the world, just as it once did French words from the Normans.
Most of the new words were changed in pronounciation, or spelling, or both. The French language itself had earlier undergone a similar process. French is classified as a Romance language, descended from the Latin of the Romans and related to Spanish, Portuguese and, Italian. But the Celts were very prominent in France and a lot of their words were absorbed into the language.
This is a fairly common occurence, a language being spread by conquest but then being changed by absorption of local words. Mexican Spanish differs from that of Spain because of the inclusion of so many native Indian words.
I spent a few days keeping a list of all the words I coult think of that seemed to be of French origin or influence. So many of the words that we use everyday have a very French appearance, even though these words may not be used any more, or were never used, in French: active, avenue, beautiful, boutique, bureau, carousel, cataract, chandelier, change, complete, dentist, depot, economy, enroute, envelope, equal, finish, force, glorious, individual, office, origin, palisade, persevere, pharmacy, entreat, precise, provide, route, sequence, service, severe, spontaneous, tour, treasure, unique, venue.
Some French words are still pronounced the same in English, such as depot and debut. Others have has their endings anglicized from -ie to -y, such as economie to economy, -eur to -or, -aire to -ary, such as documentaire to documentary and, -ique to-ic, such as electronique to electronic. The common -aux and -eux endings in French are rarely seen in English.
French words are often formed from a "mix-and match" selection of prefixes and suffixes. A good example is the word "constellation", an arrangement of stars. The word "stellar" means something to do with stars. The prefix con- means "put together", as in construction. The suffix -tion means "a manifestation of something" so that a constellation is a manifestation of an arranging of stars.
The French language is, like English, not always as precise as this. Induction and capacitance are two French words for related concepts in electronics. But one uses the -tion suffix and the other uses the -ance suffix.
Intend and extend are also French words that seem as if they should be opposites. But the two apparently related words actually have nothing to do with each other, to intend is to plan something and to extend is to lengthen something.
The most common French influence on English is probably the -tion, or -ion, ending. It simply means a manifestation of something. The list is nearly endless: addition, communication, compensation, conclusion, concussion, conduction, confirmation, construction, contraption, deception, definition, destruction, division, edification, edition, education, induction, information, institution, instruction, introduction, nation, obstruction, occupation, pension, perfection, position, probation, provision, subtraction, vacation, validation, vibration, vision, vocation.
Then there is the French -ment ending: basement, confinement, escarpment, employment, government, ointment, parliament, replacement, retirement, treatment. This -ment ending is somewhat more focused than the -tion ending, and usually means a place or thing or method that does something. A government is that which governs and a basement is that which acts as a base.
Then there is the -age ending: adage, advantage, beverage, encourage, entourage, language, mortgage, village and, voyage. The -age ending is similar in meaning to -ment. An entourage, for example, is those that are all around one.
The -ance ending falls into the same pattern of something that does something: capacitance, distance, entrance, finance, insurance, renaissance, resistance, resonance.
Notice that these various endings are of the same pattern as common French verbs. There are the verbs in French ending with -er, those ending with -re, and those ending with -ir.
Some French words in English end with -ant: brilliant, enchant, important, infant, restaurant, servant.
Other end with -ate: estate, exaggerate, illuminate. There is altitude, attitude and, gratitude. There is lovable, portable and, soluble. There is also interest and modest. There is defense and offense, content and patent and patient, frontier and cavalier, mortician and politician.
Even if some of these are not French words, they still show the tremendous influence of the patterns in French on English and how it gave it the wide span of the global language that it is today.
Then there is the prefixes, or beginnings of words, from French.
The in- prefix is often seen: incomplete, influence, information, inspection, institution, instruction, insurance, interest. The prefix inter- means between, such as intermission or international.
Examples of the con- prefix are: conduction, confinement, congruent, consolidate, continuation, control, construction.
There is the ex- prefix: exaggerate, exchange, exhibition, explain.
Then there is the French en- prefix: enchant, encourage, enlighten.
The de- prefix means to undo something. Decode means to undo a code. Perception is to see something, deception is to prevent from seeing something. But there is also deficient, definition and, deliver.
The dis- prefix is similar in meaning: discontinue, discourage, disengage.
Re- is generally the opposite of de-: reconnaissance, renaissance, replace, report, request, reverse.
There is pro-: produce, pronounce, provide.
Com- means to put together: combination, compare, compensation, compile.
Pre- means before: precede, prefer, previous.
Even though cars were developed long after the time of the Normans, the subject of cars is especially loaded with French words: alternator, automobile, carburetor, chassis, chauffeur, coupe, exhaust, garage, gasoline, limousine, lubrication, sedan, transmission.
Now, you can see how much the French language has influenced English. It is the grafting of all of these French and French-influenced words onto the northern European structure of English that has given it the broad span that makes it suitable to be the global language that it is today.
4) THE ROOTS OF ABBREVIATION
Our language got the wide span of words, that makes it suitable to be the global language of today, by being basically a Germanic language but then having French words added after the Norman Invasion. What I would like to add to that is how the French-influenced words in the language are far more likely to be the words which are commonly abbreviated. This is simply because these added words were originally alien, and abbreviation was a way of adapting them.
Words of Germanic origin are almost never abbreviated. These are words that can be seen as similar to their counterparts in other northern European languages, such as drink, house, water and, school. This is not a strict rule because "street" is abbreviated as st. and "near" is sometimes abbreviated as nr. and both of these words are of northern European Germanic origin.
French-influenced words commonly use prefixes, such as con-, or suffixes, such as -tion. Some English words have their roots in French clearly seen, such as the word "donate" from the French "donner", meaning "to give". Almost all French words have had their pronunciations anglicized. The first exceptions that I can think of are the words "depot" and "debut".
Two words that illustrate the French way of forming words involves the prefix con-, meaning to put together, and the suffix -tion. Construction means the putting together of a structure. Stellar means something to do with stars, and so constellation means a group of stars that have been put together.
Here is a list of the words that I can think of which are commonly abbreviated. Every one is a word of French origin or form:
Abbr. for abbreviation
Amp. for ampere
Auto for automobile
Ave. for avenue
Avg. for average
Co. for company
Comps. for comparables (in real estate)
Const. for constant
Cont. for continued
Corp. for corporation
Dept. for department
Dist. for distance
Ed. for education
Esq. for esquire
Est. for established
Expo for exposition
Ext. for extension
Freq. for frequency
Gen. for generation
Govt. for government
Info for information
Ins. for insurance
Inst. for institution
Intel for intelligence
Max for maximum
Mfg. for manufacture
Min. for minimum
Neg. for negative
Org. for organization
Pos. for positive
Pres. for pressure
Prop. for propulsion or propellor
Req. for require
Spec. for specifications
St. for saint
Tel for telephone
Temp. for temperature
Var. for variable
Notice how French-sounding all of these words are, and most are the same or similar to their French counterparts. It is very likely that, if English was originally a Romance language and northern European Germanic words were added later, the pattern would be reversed and it would be those words which would be abbreviated today.
5) THE PARADOX OF WORDS
Language developed early in the history of humans. There are many different languages but the world uses the same number system.
Suppose that we suddenly forgot all spoken and written languages and had to develop them again, but would still know what we know now. My conclusion is that we wouldn't even need words, we could express everything with numbers.
The way I see it to express something in numbers we must completely understand it. Numbers are to express what we completely understand while words can express what we only partially understand. An example is the calendar, we couldn't have a numerical system of dates without completely understanding how the calendar works.
I have written on this blog before about a theoretical future "K-Day". The "K" stands for "knowledge", for the day when we will know all that we can practically know. As we progressively gain a more complete understanding of what we know, as time goes on we should be expressing a higher proportion of information in numbers, rather than in words. K-Day is the future day when we can express everything in numbers, and will no longer need words.
My conclusion is that, while we haven't yet reached K-Day, if language was suddenly forgotten and we had to develop it anew, the focus would be on numbers and the use of words would go out of style. I believe that today we are only using words as much as we do because of historical momentum.
Numbers can be interconnected much more easily than words can. Numbering something relative to other numbers can define it much better than any words can. Let's start with the elements of the Periodic Table, since all of the matter that we deal with is made of atoms. The elements are numbered by the number of protons in the nucleus.
These atomic numbers describe the operation of atoms far more efficiently than the names of the elements do. The atomic numbers can be combined together, as atoms combine into molecules and compounds, so that any material can be conveniently expressed by numbers.
The only reason that the elements of the Periodic Table, such as oxygen, iron and, gold have names is because humans were using them long before atoms were understood. If we had to develop language over again using the names of the elements would make no sense at all.
We have already numbered every shade of color and are always using part and model numbers. Why couldn't we number the parts of the body, and each subpart, as well as all activities which involved that body part? That would actually be a lot easier than assigning words.
We could number geological features and all processes of nature, from cloud formation to ocean currents, could be described by numbers.
Remember that numbers are to express what we completely understand while words are for what we only partially understand. Humans developed words for so many things because they did not understand what we know now about them. These things could now be expressed with numbers that can convey a lot more information than the words can.
Today we could make a numerical tree of all living things that was nowhere near understood when the words developed to describe them.
We already extensively use model and part numbers. Everything from the types of and general parts of homes and buildings to the parts of and types of vehicles could be expressed much better with numbers than with words, because it is easier to compare parts with relative numbers.
Since we now know so much about human history we could number the nations in a settlement tree. Within each nation the cities could be numbered in a sub settlement tree.
People today in virtually all nations have some kind of identifying numbers. Why couldn't we just identify primarily with numbers instead of with names?
Numbers would be far more efficient especially considering what I refer to as the "Name Crunch". The world's population has greatly increased but we are still identifying people with the same names as centuries ago. What good is it to try to find someone online when there might be thousands of people with the same name?
A person's number could be based on their body type, the year of their birth, and their ethnicity or the place that they were from. It would be so that one could guess approximately what someone's identifying number would be. Or, having an identifying number and seeing a group of people, select the person whose number it likely was.
Now that we have as much knowledge as we do numbers could convey far more information than words. Since our number system is global there is no need to translate numbers from one language to another. The only reason that we use words as much as we do is historical momentum. I am sure that if all languages were suddenly forgotten, and we had to develop them over again, we would use primarily numbers.
6) THE BATTLE OF THE ALPHABETICAL ORDERS
Here is something that I wonder if anyone else is thinking about. How much longer are keyboards going to be in the Qwerty order? Wouldn't it be much better to just be in the ABC order?
The reason that the letter keys on a keyboard are not arranged in the same order as the letters of the alphabet is that secretaries, in the days of typewriters, used to have to be able to type fast. Secretaries began typing with their fingertips resting on keys in the middle row. The central two keys were between the secretary's index fingers on opposite hands.
Some letters of the alphabet were used more than others. The Qwerty keyboard was designed so that the letters of the alphabet that were used the most were easiest to reach. The objective was for the secretary to be able to type as quickly as possible.
But those days are gone. It used to be that relatively few people could type, mostly secretaries, reporters and, writers. Those had training in typing.
Today everybody types. But there is a difference between typing and writing. Secretaries were not writers. In most cases they didn't have to do much thinking. They were either taking down spoken words or consolidating written documents. Secretaries didn't produce the content that they were taking down.
What virtually everyone who uses a keyboard does today is writing, as opposed to just typing. Users of keyboards today are almost always producing the written content, rather than just taking it down. The difference that makes is that pure speed is not as important. It doesn't do writers any good to be able to type faster than they can think.
The use of secretaries, whose strength is pure typing speed, has greatly diminished. The vast majority of people today do their own writing, in which speed is not as much a factor as in pure typing because it is of no use for a writer to be able to type faster than they can think.
So the way the alphabet has been skewed into this Qwerty form, so that trained typists can type as fast as possible, is no longer necessary. It would be much easier for untrained typists to write as quickly as practical if the letters of the alphabet were in the traditional ABC order that everyone is familiar with.
I know that I would prefer the ABC order when I am doing my writing here. Imagine someone learning to speak English learning the letters of the alphabet, but then being presented with a keyboard that has the letters in a completely different order. Every culture has things that seem strange to outsiders, and this is certainly one of our things.
This is an ideal example of how we tend to get technically forward but system backward. We make so much progress in technology but we are basing it on an underlying system that has been in use for decades. A prominent example of this is the ASCII system of computer encoding that we saw in the recent compound posting, "Computer Science".
There is another possibility, if we look at this from another angle. Most people use this Qwerty order of the alphabet much more than they use the traditional ABC. This might be one of those gradual changes that we scarcely realize is taking place. Maybe Qwerty is effectively becoming the new order of the alphabet.
We do not have to make a sudden decision as to which order of the alphabet will predominate. Things like this take time to sort themselves out. There really isn't anyone with the authority to decide which alphabetical order will win out.
We know that words and spellings change over time, why not the order of the alphabet? Modern signage and communication technology is already making changes, such as "night" being shortened to "nite". Texting is changing "you" to "u", which would work because it is the Dutch word for "you".
When is either a phone or computer company going to market a keyboard in the traditional ABC order, indicating that the Qwerty order is going away, or someone who makes lists in alphabetical order going to list them in the Qwerty order, indicating that the Qwerty order is taking over? This will give us an indication of which direction this is going to go.
Is there anyone who can recite the Qwerty order, without looking at a keyboard, other than the first six? Depending on which direction this goes, maybe it might be a good idea to start learning it.
QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM
TWO ALPHABETICAL ORDERS MAKE ENCODING EASY
The two alphabetical orders do offer a wonderful opportunity to encode a document so that it will look like gibberish to anyone who doesn't know what the code is.
Most simply the ABC order would be superimposed on the Qwerty order so that A = Q, B = W, and so on. But that might be too obvious. Maybe the ABC alphabet could start at the A on the Qwerty alphabet so that A = A, S = B, and so on.
We could reverse the above example so that the real alphabet of the document is the Qwerty alphabetical order, and the encoding is in the ABC order. Because the alphabetical order doesn't matter in writing.
To get even more confusing for anyone trying to decode our message we could have the alphabetical order of the ABC alphabet but could start the alphabet from a letter other than A, as described in the example above. Because, again, the alphabetical order doesn't matter in the reading of a document or message.
If we were dealing with immediate messages, rather than permanent documents, the possibilities of encoding by using the two alphabetical orders would be endless.
The ABC alphabet could begin on the first letter of the day of the week on the Qwerty keyboard. Maybe we could reverse it, as described above by making the ABC the encoding order and the Qwerty the "real" order, if the date in the month is an odd number but not reverse it if it is an even number.
To make this encoding really effective we would have to include punctuation, periods, paragraph breaks and spaces, in the alphabets so that anyone trying to decode it wouldn't be able to tell how many letters are in each word. If not the decoder might be able to pick out "a" and "the", which would provide clues on how to decode it.
7) HAMPTON COURT PALACE AND THE KING JAMES BIBLE
The King James Bible, first published in 1611, has had an incalculable effect on the English language, particularly the long list of "King James Idioms".
Hampton Court Palace, on the southwestern edge of London, is another of the red brick palaces built by Henry VIII (The Eighth). The other remaining example of these palaces is St. James, in central London. Henry VIII had three children that reigned after him, Edward VI, Mary I and, Elizabeth I. Henry VIII had broken with the Catholic Church, bringing England onto the Protestant side during the Reformation.
The Reformation, a consequence of the Renaissance, was brought about by original versions of the Bible becoming available in the west. Scholars had moved west, carrying many ancient texts with them, when the Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Ottomans. New translations of the Bible appeared regularly as the invention of the printing press ensured that anyone could now read the Bible for themselves, in their own language.
John Wycliffe, sometimes referred to as "The Morning Star of the Reformation", was the first to translate the Bible into English, in handwritten form before the development of the printing press. William Tyndale translated the first English printed version, but did not translate the entire Bible.
There appeared the Coverdale Bible, the Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible and, the Bishops Bible. The competition between versions of the Bible revolved around not so much the words of the Bible itself as the margin notes that were added to the Bible.
Henry VIII's daughter, Mary I, tried to bring England back to Catholicism by force. Puritans set up a printing operation in exile in Geneva, and introduced the very popular Geneva Bible, sometimes referred to as the "Breeches Bible".
After Mary I died another daughter of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, became queen and restored the Reformation while trying to bring peace by compromise with Catholics. The result was the Anglican Church and the Bishops Bible. We can see today how the Anglican Church was the result of such an attempt at Puritan-Catholic compromise in how it still tends to be divided into a "high church", representing the Catholic side, and a "low church", representing the Puritan side.
The Bishops Bible was Elizabeth I's Anglican Bible. But it never gained popular acceptance. The few remaining copies of the Bishops Bible seem to have barely been used.
Elizabeth I was the last of the House of Tudor. She was followed by the first Stuart King, James I. The Puritans, in disagreement with the Anglican Church because they wanted no compromise at all with Catholicism, hoped that James I would listen to them. He did, although he did not sympathize with the Puritans as much as they had hoped. But James I did agree that a new Bible was called for.
A conference was held and teams of scholars were appointed for the necessary translation of the Bible. It was reminiscent of the Septuagint, when the Hebrew Scriptures was translated into Greek for the Jewish community in Alexandria, many of whom were forgetting how to speak Hebrew. The conference took place at a palace that had been built by Henry VIII, Hampton Court Palace. Ironically, the palace was originally intended for a cardinal, but that was changed upon arrival of the Reformation.
The result was the publication, in 1611, of the King James or Authorized version of the Bible. Most of the phrases of William Tyndale, in the parts of the Bible that he translated, were retained in the King James Version. This is the familiar old Bible with the archaic wording such as "thee" and "thou". In 1769, another edition standardized spelling and punctuation.
The King James Bible was not an immediate success. It was decades before it replaced the Geneva Bible, and was plagued with printing errors in it's early days. But the Geneva Bible was considered as the Bible of the Puritans and when they fell increasingly out of favor, the King James Bible took over because it was seen as the Bible of reconciliation.
This is the most printed book ever, in the English language. It was by far the dominant English-language Bible for at least 250 years, from 1700-1950 when versions in "modern" language began to be printed. The King James Bible had more influence on the language than Shakespeare did. Even today, there is a "King James Only" movement in Christianity, that will only use the King James Bible.
My first Bible, that I used to take to school when there was psalm-reading there, was a King James Version (often abbreviated as KJV). Years later, when I started to really study the Bible for myself, it was with another King James Version.
There are over 200 of what are referred to as King James Idioms. These are phrases that were introduced into the language by the King James Bible, and are all around us today. Here is a list of some of these phrases, that most people use without having any idea of how they got into the language.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/feb/18/phrases-king-james-bible
Here is Hampton Court Palace, where the conference that led to the King James Bible was held.
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.
If you want to write see, "The Art Of Writing", on the world and economics blog:
www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-art-of-writing.html?m=0
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