English is the second most widespread language on our planet today, behind Mandarin Chinese. More than 1.5 billion people speak, listen, read and write in English every day. But English has evolved dramatically in the last thousand years. The current spelling of English words is a little different from what English-speaking people read or wrote between the 16th and 18th centuries. Look for printed or written documents in English and you should notice a noticeable difference in the spelling of words. The main differences between Early Modern English and Modern English spellings are outlined below.
The letter “u” in early modern English became “v”. Several examples would be: life, euer, fauor, clove (live, always, favor, clover). If the “u” started a word, it became a “v”, like vpon, vuntil, vfull (about, until, usual).
Words with “vv” became “w”: povvder, flovver, tovver, vvither (power, flower, tower, wither).
Sometimes the letter “b” that began a word became “v”: benomous, benerate (poisonous, venerate).
Almost all the words that included “s” in the middle had originally been “f”: caftle, congrefs, mofte (castile, congress, most). The “f” resembled the “s” of classical Greek. This change made the English words seem more distinguished.
“and” became “I”: daily, forgive, faith, article (daily, forgive, faith, article).
Many of today’s words with a consonant as the last letter end in “e”: kingdom, meek, justice, must.
Many words today are written with double letters, such as: Sonne, originall, cann, Batt (sound, original, can, bat).
The first letter of most nouns became capitalized beginning in the 17th century. Noun capitalization was borrowed from the German language, in which all nouns are capitalized. From the 17th to the 18th centuries, this was the rule for all printed words in English. Several examples include: “It has a method of reading the Tytle of any Playe”, or “The dog saw the Flouer and the Hatt”.
If you’re interested enough to examine the words in context, go online and browse pages of original copies of the King James Version of the Bible (1611), the poems and plays of William Shakespeare (1593 to 1613), even the United States Constitution (1776). Of course, much other printed and written literature was produced, which has been carefully preserved in world-class libraries and is searchable on the Internet. You may be pleasantly surprised at how modern day English words were spelled.