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107-571: As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that east is the direction where the Sun rises: east comes from Middle English est , from Old English ēast , which itself comes from the Proto-Germanic * aus-to- or * austra- "east, toward the sunrise", from Proto-Indo-European *aus- "to shine," or " dawn ", cognate with Old High German *ōstar "to the east", Latin aurora 'dawn', and Greek ἠώς ēōs 'dawn, east'. Examples of

214-738: A demonstrative ( þis , þat ), after a possessive pronoun (e.g., hir , our ), or with a name or in a form of address. This derives from the Old English "weak" declension of adjectives. This inflexion continued to be used in writing even after final -e had ceased to be pronounced. In earlier texts, multisyllable adjectives also receive a final -e in these situations, but this occurs less regularly in later Middle English texts. Otherwise, adjectives have no ending and adjectives already ending in -e etymologically receive no ending as well. Earlier texts sometimes inflect adjectives for case as well. Layamon's Brut inflects adjectives for

321-815: A dialect of Old French , now known as Old Norman , which developed in England into Anglo-Norman . The use of Norman as the preferred language of literature and polite discourse fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration, even though many Normans of this period were illiterate and depended on the clergy for written communication and record-keeping. A significant number of Norman words were borrowed into English and used alongside native Germanic words with similar meanings. Examples of Norman/Germanic pairs in Modern English include pig and pork , calf and veal , wood and forest , and freedom and liberty . The role of Anglo-Norman as

428-486: A goldsmith member enrolled in the Strasbourg militia . In 1437, there is evidence that he was instructing a wealthy tradesman on polishing gems, but where he had acquired this knowledge is unknown. In 1436/37 his name also comes up in court in connection with a broken promise of marriage to a woman from Strasbourg, Ennelin. Whether the marriage actually took place is not recorded. Following his father's death in 1419, he

535-502: A largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary (with many Norse borrowings in the northern parts of the country) but a greatly simplified inflectional system. The grammatical relations that were expressed in Old English by the dative and instrumental cases were replaced in Early Middle English with prepositional constructions. The Old English genitive - es survives in the -'s of the modern English possessive , but most of

642-494: A lengthened – and later also modified – pronunciation of a preceding vowel. For example, in name , originally pronounced as two syllables, the /a/ in the first syllable (originally an open syllable) lengthened, the final weak vowel was later dropped, and the remaining long vowel was modified in the Great Vowel Shift (for these sound changes, see Phonology , above). The final ⟨e⟩ , now silent, thus became

749-495: A lesser extent), and, therefore, it cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population: English did, after all, remain the vernacular . It is also argued that Norse immigrants to England had a great impact on the loss of inflectional endings in Middle English. One argument is that, although Norse and English speakers were somewhat comprehensible to each other due to similar morphology,

856-573: A letter to Cardinal Carvajal , March 1455 Around 1439, Gutenberg was involved in a financial misadventure making polished metal mirrors (which were believed to capture holy light from religious relics) for sale to pilgrims to Aachen : in 1439 the city was planning to exhibit its collection of relics from Emperor Charlemagne but the event was delayed by one year due to a severe flood and the capital already spent could not be repaid. Until at least 1444 Gutenberg lived in Strasbourg , most likely in

963-491: A more analytic language with a stricter word order. Both Old English and Old Norse were synthetic languages with complicated inflections. Communication between Vikings in the Danelaw and their Anglo-Saxon neighbours resulted in the erosion of inflection in both languages. Old Norse may have had a more profound impact on Middle and Modern English development than any other language. The effect of Old Norse on Old English

1070-501: A papal letter and two indulgences were printed, one of which was issued in Mainz. In view of the value of printing in quantity, seven editions in two styles were ordered, resulting in several thousand copies being printed. Some printed editions of Ars Minor , a schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus , may have been printed by Gutenberg ; these have been dated either 1451–52, or 1455. Every copy of printed books were identical; this

1177-581: A part of the church orientation concept liturgical east and west . The Orient is the East , traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the Eastern world , in relation to Europe. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and referring to the same area as, the continent of Asia, divided into the Far East , Middle East , and Near East . Despite this Eurocentric origin, these regions are still located to

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1284-529: A process called apophony ), as in Modern English. With the discontinuation of the Late West Saxon standard used for the writing of Old English in the period prior to the Norman Conquest, Middle English came to be written in a wide variety of scribal forms, reflecting different regional dialects and orthographic conventions. Later in the Middle English period, however, and particularly with

1391-456: A softer copper bar, creating a matrix . This is then placed into a hand-held mould and a piece of type, or "sort", is cast by filling the mould with molten type-metal; this cools almost at once, and the resulting piece of type can be removed from the mould. The matrix can be reused to create hundreds, or thousands, of identical sorts so that the same character appearing anywhere within the book will appear very uniform, giving rise, over time, to

1498-571: A standard based on the London dialects (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely formed the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by Early Modern English , which lasted until about 1650. Scots developed concurrently from a variant of the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in northern England and spoken in southeast Scotland ). During

1605-492: A way as to have required large quantities of type, some estimates suggesting as many as 100,000 individual sorts. Setting each page would take, perhaps, half a day, and considering all the work in loading the press, inking the type, pulling the impressions, hanging up the sheets, distributing the type etc., the Gutenberg–Fust shop may have employed many craftsmen. Gutenberg's technique of making movable type remains unclear. In

1712-591: Is assumed to have studied at the University of Erfurt , where there is a record of the enrollment of a student called Johannes de Altavilla in 1418—Altavilla is the Latin form of Eltville am Rhein. Nothing is now known of Gutenberg's life for the next fifteen years, but in March 1434, a letter by him indicates that he was living in Strasbourg, where he had some relatives on his mother's side. He also appears to have been

1819-513: Is commemorated in the name of the asteroid 777 Gutemberga . Two operas based on Gutenberg are G, Being the Confession and Last Testament of Johannes Gensfleisch, also known as Gutenberg, Master Printer, formerly of Strasbourg and Mainz , from 2001, with music by Gavin Bryars ; and La Nuit de Gutenberg , with music by Philippe Manoury , premiered in 2011 in Strasbourg. Project Gutenberg ,

1926-489: Is mentioned in the inheritance proceedings. "What was written to me about that marvelous man [Gutenberg] seen at Frankfurt [ sic ] entirely true. I have not seen complete bibles but only a number of quires of various books [of the Bible]. The script is extremely neat and legible, not at all difficult to follow [You] would be able to read it without effort, and indeed without glasses" Future pope Pius II in

2033-540: Is no evidence that he had actually printed anything with this technology. He was an inventor and a goldsmith. However, there is one indirect supporter of the claim that Coster might be the inventor. The author of the Cologne Chronicle of 1499 quotes Ulrich Zell , the first printer of Cologne , that printing was performed in Mainz in 1450, but that some type of printing of lower quality had previously occurred in

2140-463: Is not clear when Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but for this, he borrowed another 800 guilders from Fust, and work commenced in 1452. At the same time, the press was also printing other, more lucrative texts (possibly Latin grammars). There is also some speculation that there were two presses: one for the pedestrian texts and one for the Bible. One of the profit-making enterprises of the new press

2247-433: Is now rare and used only in oxen and as part of a double plural , in children and brethren . Some dialects still have forms such as eyen (for eyes ), shoon (for shoes ), hosen (for hose(s) ), kine (for cows ), and been (for bees ). Grammatical gender survived to a limited extent in early Middle English before being replaced by natural gender in the course of the Middle English period. Grammatical gender

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2354-751: The A&;E Network ranked Gutenberg the No. 1 most influential person of the second millennium on their "Biographies of the Millennium" countdown, while Time–Life magazine picked Gutenberg's invention as the most important of the second millennium in 1997. The scholar of paper history, Thomas Francis Carter , drew parallels between Cai Lun , the traditional inventor of paper during the Eastern Han dynasty , and Gutenberg, calling them "spiritual father and son" respectively. In his 1978 book, The 100: A Ranking of

2461-616: The Early Modern English and Modern English eras. Middle English generally did not have silent letters . For example, knight was pronounced [ˈkniçt] (with both the ⟨k⟩ and the ⟨gh⟩ pronounced, the latter sounding as the ⟨ch⟩ in German Knecht ). The major exception was the silent ⟨e⟩ – originally pronounced but lost in normal speech by Chaucer's time. This letter, however, came to indicate

2568-594: The Norman Conquest , had normally been written in French. Like Chaucer's work, this new standard was based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Clerks using this standard were usually familiar with French and Latin , influencing the forms they chose. The Chancery Standard, which was adopted slowly, was used in England by bureaucrats for most official purposes, excluding those of

2675-727: The Northern England (corresponding to the Scandinavian Kingdom of Jórvík ), the East Midlands and the East of England , words in the spoken language emerged in the 10th and 11th centuries near the transition from Old to Middle English. Influence on the written languages only appeared from the beginning of the 13th century, this delay in Scandinavian lexical influence in English has been attributed to

2782-513: The Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with the High and Late Middle Ages . Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography . Writing conventions during

2889-687: The Reformation . Martin Luther 's Ninety-five Theses were printed and circulated widely; subsequently he issued broadsheets outlining his anti- indulgences position (certificates of indulgences were one of the first items Gutenberg had printed). Due to this, Gutenberg would also be viewed as a proto-Protestant. The broadsheet contributed to the development of the newspaper. There are many statues of Gutenberg in Germany, including one by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1837) at Gutenbergplatz in Mainz , home to

2996-455: The St. Arbogast parish. It was in Strasbourg in 1440 that he is said to have perfected and unveiled the secret of printing based on his research, mysteriously entitled Aventur und Kunst (enterprise and art). It is not clear what work he was engaged in, or whether some early trials with printing from movable type were conducted there. After this, there is a gap of four years in the record. In 1448, he

3103-473: The right-hand side of a map is east. This convention has developed from the use of a compass, which places north at the top. However, on maps of planets such as Venus and Uranus which rotate retrograde , the left hand side is east. To go east using a compass for navigation , one sets a bearing or azimuth of 90°. East is the direction toward which the Earth rotates about its axis , and therefore

3210-645: The 12th century, incorporating a unique phonetic spelling system; and the Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group , religious texts written for anchoresses , apparently in the West Midlands in the early 13th century. The language found in the last two works is sometimes called the AB language . Additional literary sources of the 12th and 13th centuries include Layamon's Brut and The Owl and

3317-422: The 13th century and was replaced by thorn. Thorn mostly fell out of use during the 14th century and was replaced by ⟨th⟩ . Anachronistic usage of the scribal abbreviation [REDACTED] ( þe , "the") has led to the modern mispronunciation of thorn as ⟨ y ⟩ in this context; see ye olde . Wynn, which represented the phoneme /w/ , was replaced by ⟨ w ⟩ during

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3424-409: The 13th century. Due to its similarity to the letter ⟨p⟩ , it is mostly represented by ⟨w⟩ in modern editions of Old and Middle English texts even when the manuscript has wynn. Under Norman influence, the continental Carolingian minuscule replaced the insular script that had been used for Old English. However, because of the significant difference in appearance between

3531-518: The 1470s. Others have not accepted some or all of their suggestions, and have interpreted the evidence in other ways, and the truth of the matter remains uncertain. A 1568 book Batavia by Hadrianus Junius from Holland claims the idea of the movable type came to Gutenberg from Laurens Janszoon Coster via Fust, who was apprenticed to Coster in the 1430s and may have brought some of his equipment from Haarlem to Mainz. While Coster appears to have experimented with moulds and castable metal type, there

3638-527: The 14th century, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy . In the aftermath of the Black Death of the 14th century, there was significant migration into London , of people to the counties of the southeast of England and from the east and central Midlands of England, and a new prestige London dialect began to develop as a result of this clash of

3745-604: The 1540s after the printing and wide distribution of the English Bible and Prayer Book , which made the new standard of English publicly recognizable and lasted until about 1650. The main changes between the Old English sound system and that of Middle English include: The combination of the last three processes listed above led to the spelling conventions associated with silent ⟨e⟩ and doubled consonants (see under Orthography , below). Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from

3852-446: The Bible printing workshop. Thus, Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt, but it appears he retained, or restarted, a printing shop and participated in the printing of a Bible in the town of Bamberg around 1459, for which he seems at least to have supplied the type. But since his printed books never carry his name or a date, it is difficult to be certain. It is possible the large Catholicon dictionary , printed in Mainz in 1460 or later,

3959-572: The Church and legalities, which used Latin and Law French respectively. The Chancery Standard's influence on later forms of written English is disputed, but it did undoubtedly provide the core around which Early Modern English formed. Early Modern English emerged with the help of William Caxton 's printing press, developed during the 1470s. The press stabilized English through a push towards standardization, led by Chancery Standard enthusiast and writer Richard Pynson . Early Modern English began in

4066-569: The Danelaw, this endings tended gradually to become obscured and finally lost, "simplifying English grammar" in the process. In time, the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. Viking influence on Old English is most apparent in pronouns , modals, comparatives, pronominal adverbs (like hence and together ), conjunctions, and prepositions show the most marked Danish influence. The best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in extensive word borrowings; however, texts from

4173-418: The Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439,

4280-675: The Middle English period, many Old English grammatical features either became simplified or disappeared altogether. Noun, adjective, and verb inflections were simplified by the reduction (and eventual elimination) of most grammatical case distinctions. Middle English also saw considerable adoption of Anglo-Norman vocabulary, especially in the areas of politics, law, the arts, and religion, as well as poetic and emotive diction. Conventional English vocabulary remained primarily Germanic in its sources, with Old Norse influences becoming more apparent. Significant changes in pronunciation took place, particularly involving long vowels and diphthongs, which in

4387-675: The Most Influential Persons in History , Michael H. Hart ranked him 8th, below Cai but above figures such as Christopher Columbus , Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin . The capital of printing in Europe shifted to Venice , where printers like Aldus Manutius ensured widespread availability of the major Greek and Latin texts. The claims of an Italian origin for movable type have focused on this rapid rise of Italy in movable-type printing. This may perhaps be explained by

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4494-514: The Netherlands. However, the chronicle does not mention the name of Coster, while it actually credits Gutenberg as the "first inventor of printing" in the very same passage (fol. 312). The first securely dated book by Dutch printers is from 1471, and the Coster connection is today regarded as a mere legend. The 19th-century printer and typefounder Fournier Le Jeune suggested that Gutenberg

4601-557: The Nightingale . Some scholars have defined "Early Middle English" as encompassing English texts up to 1350. This longer time frame would extend the corpus to include many Middle English Romances (especially those of the Auchinleck manuscript c.  1330 ). Gradually, the wealthy and the government Anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French ) remained the dominant language of literature and law until

4708-644: The Norse speakers' inability to reproduce the ending sounds of English words influenced Middle English's loss of inflectional endings. Important texts for the reconstruction of the evolution of Middle English out of Old English are the Peterborough Chronicle , which continued to be compiled up to 1154; the Ormulum , a biblical commentary probably composed in Lincolnshire in the second half of

4815-544: The Old English -eþ , Midland dialects showing -en from about 1200, and Northern forms using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural. The past tense of weak verbs was formed by adding an -ed(e) , -d(e) , or -t(e) ending. The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, also served as past participles with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i- , y- , and sometimes bi- . Strong verbs , by contrast, formed their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g., binden became bound ,

4922-490: The basis of a later document indicating that he came of age by 1420, scholarly estimates have ranged from 1393 to 1406. The year 1400 is commonly assigned to Gutenberg, "for the sake of convenience". Tradition also holds his birthdate to be on the feast day of Saint John the Baptist , 24 June, since children of the time were often named after their birthday's patron saint . There is no verification for this assumption, since

5029-557: The cemetery were later destroyed, and Gutenberg's grave is now lost. In 1504, he was mentioned as the inventor of typography in a book by Professor Ivo Wittig. It was not until 1567 that the first portrait of Gutenberg, almost certainly an imaginary reconstruction, appeared in Heinrich Pantaleon's biography of famous Germans. Gutenberg's early printing process, and what texts he printed with movable type , are not known in great detail. His later Bibles were printed in such

5136-507: The comparative and superlative (e.g., greet , great; gretter , greater). Adjectives ending in -ly or -lich formed comparatives either with -lier , -liest or -loker , -lokest . A few adjectives also displayed Germanic umlaut in their comparatives and superlatives, such as long , lenger . Other irregular forms were mostly the same as in modern English. Middle English personal pronouns were mostly developed from those of Old English , with

5243-779: The conflict in August. Friele left, presumably with the Gutenberg family, and probably stayed in the nearby Eltville since Else had inherited a house on the town walls there. The archbishop mediated a peace between the rival parties, allowing the family to return to Mainz later that Autumn. The situation remained unstable and the rise of hunger riots forced the Gutenberg family to leave in January 1413 for Eltville. No documents survive concerning Gutenberg's childhood or youth. The biographer Albert Kapr  [ de ] remarked that "most books on Gutenberg pass over this period with

5350-428: The daughter of a shopkeeper; Johannes was probably the youngest of the couple's three children, after his brother Friele ( b. c.  1387 ) and sister Else ( b. c.  1390–1397 ). Scholars commonly assume that the marriage of Friele to Else, who was not of patrician lineage, complicated Gutenberg's future. Because of his mother's commoner status, Gutenberg would never be able to succeed his father at

5457-497: The development of distinct styles of typefaces or fonts . After casting, the sorts are arranged into type cases, and used to make up pages which are inked and printed, a procedure which can be repeated hundreds, or thousands, of times. The sorts can be reused in any combination, earning the process the name of "movable type". The invention of the making of types with punch, matrix and mold has been widely attributed to Gutenberg. However, recent evidence suggests that Gutenberg's process

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5564-486: The development of the Chancery Standard in the 15th century, orthography became relatively standardised in a form based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Spelling at the time was mostly quite regular . (There was a fairly consistent correspondence between letters and sounds.) The irregularity of present-day English orthography is largely due to pronunciation changes that have taken place over

5671-495: The different dialects, that was based chiefly on the speech of the East Midlands but also influenced by that of other regions. The writing of this period, however, continues to reflect a variety of regional forms of English. The Ayenbite of Inwyt , a translation of a French confessional prose work, completed in 1340, is written in a Kentish dialect . The best known writer of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer , wrote in

5778-531: The double consonant represented a sound that was (or had previously been) geminated (i.e., had genuinely been "doubled" and would thus have regularly blocked the lengthening of the preceding vowel). In other cases, by analogy, the consonant was written double merely to indicate the lack of lengthening. The basic Old English Latin alphabet consisted of 20 standard letters plus four additional letters: ash ⟨æ⟩ , eth ⟨ð⟩ , thorn ⟨þ⟩ , and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ . There

5885-587: The east of the Geographical centre of Earth . Within an individual city within the Northern Hemisphere , the east end is typically poorer because the prevailing winds blow from the west. Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME ) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following

5992-468: The end of the Middle English period only the strong -'s ending (variously spelled) was in use. Some formerly feminine nouns, as well as some weak nouns, continued to make their genitive forms with -e or no ending (e.g., fole hoves , horses' hooves), and nouns of relationship ending in -er frequently have no genitive ending (e.g., fader bone , "father's bane"). The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form

6099-554: The eponymous Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and Gutenberg Museum on the history of early printing. The latter publishes the Gutenberg-Jahrbuch , the leading periodical in the history of printing, and the book. In 1952, the United States Postal Service issued a five hundredth anniversary stamp commemorating Johannes Gutenberg invention of the movable-type printing press. In space, he

6206-418: The exception of the third person plural, a borrowing from Old Norse (the original Old English form clashed with the third person singular and was eventually dropped). Also, the nominative form of the feminine third person singular was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into sche (modern she ), but the alternative heyr remained in some areas for a long time. As with nouns, there

6313-470: The first item to be printed there. Gutenberg was able to convince the wealthy moneylender Johann Fust for a loan of 800 guilders . Peter Schöffer , who became Fust's son-in-law, also joined the enterprise. Schöffer had worked as a scribe in Paris and is believed to have designed some of the first typefaces . Gutenberg's workshop was set up at Humbrechthof , a property belonging to a distant relative. It

6420-403: The following decades, punches and copper matrices became standardized in the rapidly disseminating printing presses across Europe. Whether Gutenberg used this sophisticated technique or a somewhat primitive version has been the subject of considerable debate. In the standard process of making type, a hard metal punch (made by punchcutting , with the letter carved back to front) is hammered into

6527-410: The funds. Gutenberg's two rounds of financing from Fust, totaling 1,600 guilders at 6% interest, now amounted to 2,026 guilders. Fust sued at the archbishop's court. A legal document, from November 1455, records that there was a partnership for a "project of the books," the funds for which Gutenberg had used for other purposes, according to Fust. The court decided in favor of Fust, giving him control over

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6634-564: The general direction from which the Sun appears to rise. The practice of praying towards the East is older than Christianity , but has been adopted by this religion as the Orient was thought of as containing mankind's original home. Hence, Christian churches have been traditionally oriented towards the east. After some early exceptions, this tradition of having the altar on the liturgical east has become

6741-412: The indicator of the longer and changed pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ . In fact, vowels could have this lengthened and modified pronunciation in various positions, particularly before a single consonant letter and another vowel or before certain pairs of consonants. A related convention involved the doubling of consonant letters to show that the preceding vowel was not to be lengthened. In some cases,

6848-406: The invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the invention of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. The alloy

6955-583: The lack of written evidence from the areas of Danish control, as the majority of written sources from Old English were produced in the West Saxon dialect spoken in Wessex , the heart of Anglo-Saxon political power at the time. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 saw the replacement of the top levels of the English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies by Norman rulers who spoke

7062-760: The language of government and law can be seen in the abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government that are derived from Anglo-Norman, such as court , judge , jury , appeal , and parliament . There are also many Norman-derived terms relating to the chivalric cultures that arose in the 12th century, an era of feudalism , seigneurialism , and crusading . Words were often taken from Latin, usually through French transmission. This gave rise to various synonyms, including kingly (inherited from Old English), royal (from French, inherited from Vulgar Latin), and regal (from French, which borrowed it from Classical Latin). Later French appropriations were derived from standard, rather than Norman, French. Examples of

7169-403: The later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift . Little survives of early Middle English literature , due in part to Norman domination and the prestige that came with writing in French rather than English. During the 14th century, a new style of literature emerged with the works of writers including John Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer , whose Canterbury Tales remains

7276-413: The manor, which existed beside St. Christoph's . His father Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden was a patrician and merchant, likely in the cloth trade . Friele later served among the "master of the accounts" for the city and was a Münzerhausgenossenschaft ( lit.   ' minting house cooperative ' ), a part of the mint 's companionship. In 1386 Friele married his second wife, Else Wyrich,

7383-417: The masculine accusative, genitive, and dative, the feminine dative, and the plural genitive. The Owl and the Nightingale adds a final -e to all adjectives not in the nominative, here only inflecting adjectives in the weak declension (as described above). Comparatives and superlatives were usually formed by adding -er and -est . Adjectives with long vowels sometimes shortened these vowels in

7490-458: The mass spread of books across Europe, causing an information revolution . As a result, Venzke describes the inauguration of the Renaissance , Reformation and humanist movement as "unthinkable" without Gutenberg's influence. Described as "one of the most recognized names in the world", a team of US journalists voted Gutenberg as the "man of the millennium" in 1999. Similarly, in 1999

7597-667: The mint; according to the historian Ferdinand Geldner  [ de ] this disconnect may have disillusioned him from high society and encouraged his unusual career as an inventor. The patrician ( Patrizier ) class of Mainz—the Gutenbergs included—held a privileged socioeconomic status, and their efforts to preserve this put them into frequent conflict with the younger generations of guild ( Zünfte ) craftsmen. A particularly violent conflict arose in February 1411 amid an election dispute, and at least 117 patricians fled

7704-427: The more complex system of inflection in Old English : Nouns of the weak declension are primarily inherited from Old English n -stem nouns but also from ō -stem, wō -stem, and u -stem nouns, which did not inflect in the same way as n -stem nouns in Old English, but joined the weak declension in Middle English. Nouns of the strong declension are inherited from the other Old English noun stem classes. Some nouns of

7811-460: The most studied and read work of the period. The transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English had taken place by the 1150s to 1180s, the period when the Augustinian canon Orrm wrote the Ormulum , one of the oldest surviving texts in Middle English. The influence of Old Norse aided the development of English from a synthetic language with relatively free word order to

7918-511: The name "Johannes"—and variants such as "Johann", "Henne", "Hengin" and "Henchen"—was widely popular at the time. In full, Johannes Gutenberg's name was 'Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg', with "Laden" and "Gutenberg" being adopted from the family's residences in Mainz. The latter refers to the Hof zum Gutenberg , a large and now destroyed Gothic -style residence inherited by Gutenberg's father. Gutenberg probably spent his earliest years at

8025-693: The old insular g and the Carolingian g (modern g ), the former continued in use as a separate letter, known as yogh , written ⟨ȝ⟩ . This was adopted for use to represent a variety of sounds: [ɣ], [j], [dʒ], [x], [ç] , while the Carolingian g was normally used for [g]. Instances of yogh were eventually replaced by ⟨j⟩ or ⟨y⟩ and by ⟨gh⟩ in words like night and laugh . In Middle Scots , yogh became indistinguishable from cursive z , and printers tended to use ⟨z⟩ when yogh

8132-409: The oldest digital library , commemorates Gutenberg's name. The Mainz Johannisnacht (St. John's Night), has commemorated Gutenberg in his native city since 1968. Chinese paper was suitable only for calligraphy or block-printing; there were no screw-based presses in the east, because they were not wine-drinkers, didn't have olives, and used other means to dry their paper. The second necessary element

8239-423: The other case endings disappeared in the Early Middle English period, including most of the roughly one dozen forms of the definite article ("the"). The dual personal pronouns (denoting exactly two) also disappeared from English during this period. The loss of case endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages (though more slowly and to

8346-521: The period in Scandinavia and Northern England do not provide certain evidence of an influence on syntax. However, at least one scholarly study of this influence shows that Old English may have been replaced entirely by Norse, by virtue of the change from Old English to Norse syntax. While the Old Norse influence was strongest in the dialects under Danish control that composed the southern part of

8453-530: The prior eminence of Italy in the paper and printing trade. Italy's economy was growing rapidly at the time, facilitating the spread of literacy. Christopher Columbus had a geography book printed with movable type, bought by his father; it is now in the Biblioteca Colombina in Seville . Finally, the city of Mainz was sacked in 1462, driving many printers into exile. Printing was also a factor in

8560-455: The remark that not a single fact is known". As the son of a patrician, education in reading and arithmetic would have been expected. A knowledge of Latin —a prerequisite for universities—is also probable, though it is unknown whether he attended a Mainz parish school, was educated in Eltville or had a private tutor. Gutenberg may have initially pursued a religious career, as was common with

8667-569: The resulting doublet pairs include warden (from Norman) and guardian (from later French; both share a common ancestor loaned from Germanic). The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not result in immediate changes to the language. The general population would have spoken the same dialects as they had before the Conquest. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Middle English had no standard language, only dialects that evolved individually from Old English. Early Middle English (1150–1350) has

8774-544: The same elegant way as manuscript Bibles from the same period. 48 substantially complete copies are known to survive, including two at the British Library that can be viewed and compared online. The text lacks modern features such as page numbers, indentations , and paragraph breaks . An undated 36-line edition of the Bible was printed, probably in Bamberg in 1458–60, possibly by Gutenberg. A large part of it

8881-415: The same formation in other languages include Latin oriens 'east, sunrise' from orior 'to rise, to originate', Greek ανατολή anatolé 'east' from ἀνατέλλω 'to rise' and Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine'. Ēostre , a Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personification of both dawn and the cardinal points. East is sometimes abbreviated as E . By convention ,

8988-422: The same letters (types) appearing in different parts of the printed text. Gutenberg's type had irregularities, particularly in simple characters like the hyphen. These variations could not have been caused by ink smears or wear on the metal pieces. Detailed image analysis suggests the variations could not have come from the same matrix. Examination of transmitted light pictures of the page revealed substructures, in

9095-740: The second half of the 14th century in the emerging London dialect, although he also portrays some of his characters as speaking in northern dialects, as in " The Reeve's Tale ". In the English-speaking areas of lowland Scotland , an independent standard was developing, based on the Northumbrian dialect . This would develop into what came to be known as the Scots language . A large number of terms for abstract concepts were adopted directly from scholastic philosophical Latin (rather than via French). Examples are "absolute", "act", "demonstration", and "probable". The Chancery Standard of written English emerged c.  1430 in official documents that, since

9202-458: The second person singular in -(e)st (e.g., þou spekest , "thou speakest"), and the third person singular in -eþ (e.g., he comeþ , "he cometh/he comes"). ( þ (the letter "thorn") is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think", but under certain circumstances, it may be like the voiced th in "that"). The following table illustrates a typical conjugation pattern: Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with Southern dialects preserving

9309-409: The strong type have an -e in the nominative/accusative singular, like the weak declension, but otherwise strong endings. Often, these are the same nouns that had an -e in the nominative/accusative singular of Old English (they, in turn, were inherited from Proto-Germanic ja -stem and i -stem nouns). The distinct dative case was lost in early Middle English, and although the genitive survived, by

9416-436: The type, that could not have been made using traditional punchcutting techniques. Based on these observations, researchers hypothesized that Gutenberg's method involved impressing simple shapes in a " cuneiform " style onto a matrix made of a soft material, such as sand. Casting the type would then destroy the mold, necessitating the recreation of the matrix for each additional sort. This hypothesis could potentially explain both

9523-418: The variations in the type and the substructures observed in the printed images. Thus, they speculated that "the decisive factor for the birth of typography", the use of reusable moulds for casting type, was a more progressive process than was previously thought. They suggested that the additional step of using the punch to create a mould that could be reused many times was not taken until twenty years later, in

9630-524: The world. To celebrate the 500th anniversary of his birth in 1900, the Gutenberg Museum was founded in his hometown of Mainz . In 1997, Time Life picked Gutenberg's invention as the most important of the second millennium. Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz (in modern-day Germany), a wealthy city along the Rhine , between the 14th and 15th centuries. His exact year of birth is unknown; on

9737-427: The youngest sons of patricians, since the proximity of many churches and monasteries made it a safe prospect. It has been speculated that he attended the St. Victor's  [ de ] south of Mainz (near Weisenau  [ de ] ), as he would later join their brotherhood. It was the site of a well-regarded school and his family had connections there, though his actual attendance remains speculative. He

9844-500: Was a mixture of lead, tin , and antimony that melted at a relatively low temperature for faster and more economical casting, cast well, and created a durable type. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible , was the first printed version of the Bible and has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality. Gutenberg is often cited as among the most influential figures in human history and has been commemorated around

9951-478: Was a significant departure from handwritten manuscripts, which left room for possible human error. In 1455, Gutenberg completed copies of a well-executed folio Bible ( Biblia Sacra ), with 42 lines on each page. Copies sold for 30 florins each, roughly three years' wages for a clerk. Nonetheless, it was much cheaper than a manuscript Bible that could take a single scribe over a year to prepare. After printing, some copies were rubricated or hand-illuminated in

10058-487: Was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg's invention of the printing press enabled a much faster rate of printing . The printing press later spread across the world , and led to an information revolution and the unprecedented mass-spread of literature throughout Europe. It had a profound impact on the development of the Renaissance , Reformation , and humanist movements. His many contributions to printing include

10165-460: Was back in Mainz, where he took out a loan from his brother-in-law Arnold Gelthus, possibly for a printing press or related paraphernalia. By this date, Gutenberg may have been familiar with intaglio printing; it is claimed that he had worked on copper engravings with an artist known as the Master of Playing Cards . By 1450, the press was in operation, and a German poem had been printed, possibly

10272-521: Was executed in his workshop, but there has been considerable scholarly debate. Meanwhile, the Fust–Schöffer shop was the first in Europe to bring out a book with the printer's name and date, the Mainz Psalter of August 1457, and while proclaiming the mechanical process by which it had been produced, it made no mention of Gutenberg. In 1462, during the devastating Mainz Diocesan Feud , Mainz

10379-425: Was indicated by agreement of articles and pronouns (e.g., þo ule "the feminine owl") or using the pronoun he to refer to masculine nouns such as helm ("helmet"), or phrases such as scaft stærcne (strong shaft), with the masculine accusative adjective ending -ne . Single-syllable adjectives added -e when modifying a noun in the plural and when used after the definite article ( þe ), after

10486-492: Was not available in their fonts; this led to new spellings (often giving rise to new pronunciations), as in McKenzie , where the ⟨z⟩ replaced a yogh, which had the pronunciation /j/ . Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg ( c.  1393–1406 – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who invented the movable-type printing press . Though movable type

10593-403: Was not using type cast with a reusable matrix, but wooden types that were carved individually. A similar suggestion was made by Nash in 2004. Between 1450–55, Gutenberg printed several texts, some of which remain unidentified; his texts did not bear the printer's name or date, so attribution is possible only from typographical evidence and external references. Certainly church documents including

10700-520: Was not yet a distinct j , v , or w , and Old English scribes did not generally use k , q , or z . Ash was no longer required in Middle English, as the Old English vowel /æ/ that it represented had merged into /a/ . The symbol nonetheless came to be used as a ligature for the digraph ⟨ae⟩ in many words of Greek or Latin origin, as did ⟨œ⟩ for ⟨oe⟩ . Eth and thorn both represented /θ/ or its allophone / ð / in Old English. Eth fell out of use during

10807-417: Was ousted by it in most dialects by the 15th. The following table shows some of the various Middle English pronouns. Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources because of differences in spellings and pronunciations at different times and in different dialects. As a general rule, the indicative first person singular of verbs in the present tense ended in -e (e.g., ich here , "I hear"),

10914-498: Was sacked by Archbishop Adolph von Nassau . On 18 January 1465, Gutenberg's achievements were recognized by Archbishop von Nassau. He was given the title Hofmann (gentleman of the court). This honor included a stipend and an annual court outfit, as well as 2,180 litres of grain and 2,000 litres of wine tax-free. Gutenberg died in 1468 and was buried likely as a tertiary in the Franciscan church at Mainz. This church and

11021-613: Was shown to have been set from a copy of Gutenberg's Bible, thus disproving earlier speculation that it was the earlier of the two. "What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg. Everything can be traced to this source, but we are bound to bring him homage, … for the bad that his colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the good with which mankind has been favored." American writer Mark Twain (1835–1910) Gutenberg's invention had an enormous impact on subsequent human history , both on cultural and social matters. His design directly impacted

11128-475: Was some inflectional simplification (the distinct Old English dual forms were lost), but pronouns, unlike nouns, retained distinct nominative and accusative forms. Third person pronouns also retained a distinction between accusative and dative forms, but that was gradually lost: The masculine hine was replaced by him south of the River Thames by the early 14th century, and the neuter dative him

11235-493: Was somewhat different. If he used the punch and matrix approach, all his letters should have been nearly identical, with some variation due to miscasting and inking. However, the type used in Gutenberg's earliest work shows other variations. In 2001, the physicist Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Princeton librarian Paul Needham , used digital scans of a Papal bull in the Scheide Library , Princeton, to carefully compare

11342-411: Was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Like close cousins, Old Norse and Old English resembled each other, and with some words and grammatical structures in common, speakers of each language roughly understood each other, but according to historian Simeon Potler the main difference lied on their inflectional endings, which led to much confusion within the mixed population that existed in

11449-403: Was the printing of thousands of indulgences for the church, documented from 1454 to 1455. In 1455, Gutenberg completed his 42-line Bible , known as the Gutenberg Bible . About 180 copies were printed, three quarters on paper, and the rest on vellum . Some time in 1456, there was a dispute between Gutenberg and Fust, in which Fust demanded his money back, and accused Gutenberg of misusing

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