William Caxton - Caxton and The English Language

Caxton and The English Language

Caxton printed four-fifths of his works in English. He translated a large number of works into English, performing much of the translation and editing work himself. Caxton is credited with printing as many as 108 books, 87 of which were different titles. Caxton also translated 26 of the titles himself. His major guiding principle in translating was an honest desire to provide the most linguistically exact replication of foreign language texts into English, but the hurried publishing schedule and his inadequate skill as a translator often led to wholesale transference of French words into English and numerous misunderstandings.

The English language was changing rapidly in Caxton's time and the works he was given to print were in a variety of styles and dialects. Caxton was a technician rather than a writer and he often faced dilemmas concerning language standardization in the books he printed. (He wrote about this subject in the preface to his Eneydos.) His successor Wynkyn de Worde faced similar problems.

Caxton is credited with standardising the English language (that is, homogenising regional dialects) through printing. This facilitated the expansion of English vocabulary, the regularisation of inflection and syntax, and a widening gap between the spoken and the written word.

However, Richard Pynson, who started printing in London in 1491 or 1492, and who favoured Chancery Standard, was a more accomplished stylist and consequently pushed the English language further toward standardisation.

It is asserted that the spelling of "ghost" with the silent letter h was adopted by Caxton due to the influence of Flemish spelling habits.