The sixteenth century was a tome of changes in Europe. Europeans began to explore the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The English language grew in order to express a large number of new ideas.
The growth of education, the introduction of printing, and the new interest in learning, this began to change.
More and more people wanted to read books in English.
The acceptance of English as a language of learning was not complete until the end of the seventeenth century.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, writers in English borrowed about, 30,00 words from about fifty languages, mainly to describe new things and ideas. About half of these words are still used today. This very large growth of vocabulary was the main change in English at this time.
People were adventurous with language: they used verbs as nouns, or nouns as verbs, or made adjectives from nouns.
The age of Queen Elizabeth the first was one of a great flowering of literature.
Shakespeare (1564-1616) is considered the greatest writer of plays. He had the largest vocabulary of any English writer and made about two thousand new words, and large number of expressions which are now part of Modern English.
When Elizabeth the First died in 1603 she left no children, so her cousin, King James the sixth if Scotland, became King James the First of England. In 1604 the new king ordered a translation of the Bible into English.
The king James Bible appeared in 1611 and was read in churches everywhere in England, Scotland, and Wales for the next three hundred years. It was also read in people´s homes and taught at school, and for many people it was the only book that they read again and again.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were some grammatical changes to English. People began to use do with a main verb.
Pronouns changed. From the middle of the fifteenth century the seven long vowels began to change. Sounds in some other words disappeared.
The big growth in vocabulary and the flowering of literature happened when England was quite peaceful.
However, in the middle of the seventeenth century this peace was destroyed, and the changes that followed had some interesting effects on the language.
