what was so important about Old English and Middle English that we felt the need to label them and what are the main differences?
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>As spelling was heavily standardized in the 1500 and 1600s
To add a bit of clarification about what ‘heavily standardized’ means, and why it was important to the development of the modern English language:
Prior to the 1500s, there was no set orthographic (spelling) standard. The spelling of a word would almost always vary, often several times in the same sentence, and…well, to be perfectly honest, the common person usually focused on learning skills that were relevant to their occupation, so how a word was *spelled* usually wasn’t as important as how it was *pronounced*.
Even as the printed word became more common, it didn’t entirely remedy the problem — rather, it *solidified* many irregularities with remnants of the multiple languages that influenced the gradual evolution of the English language.
It wasn’t until 1755, when Samuel Johnson published the first significant English dictionary, that there was a concrete example of the ‘proper’ way to spell most English words, that was *also* accessible to the often-poorly-educated peasantry.
So, the next time you feel like getting uppity over the whole ‘there, their, they’re’ issue — just know that modern writers are hardly the first to ever make such a mistake.
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