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Middle English
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Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the 1470s, and slightly later by Richard Pynson. By this time the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in Northern England) spoken in southeast Scotland was developing into the Scots language.
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Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the 1470s, and slightly later by Richard Pynson. By this time the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in Northern England) spoken in southeast Scotland was developing into the Scots language. The language of England as spoken after this time, up to 1650, is known as Early Modern English.
Unlike Old English, which tended largely to adopt Late West Saxon scribal conventions in the immediate pre-Conquest period, Middle English as a written language displays a wide variety of scribal (and presumably dialectal) forms. However, the diversity of forms in written Middle English signifies neither greater variety of spoken forms of English than could be found in pre-Conquest England, nor a faithful representation of contemporary spoken English (though perhaps greater fidelity to this than may be found in Old English texts). Rather, this diversity suggests the gradual end of the role of Wessex as a focal point and trend-setter for scribal activity, and the emergence of more distinct local scribal styles and written dialects, and a general pattern of transition of activity over the centuries that follow, as Northumbria, East Anglia and London emerge successively as major centres of literary production, with their own generic interests.
Literary and linguistic cultures
Middle English was one of many languages spoken in England at that time . Though never the language of the Roman Catholic Church, which was always Latin, it lost status as a language of courtly life, literature and documentation, being largely supplanted by Anglo-Norman. It remained, though, the spoken language of the majority, and may be regarded as the only true vernacular language of most English people after about the mid-12th century, with Anglo-Norman becoming, like Latin, a learned tongue of the court. Welsh and Cornish were used as spoken vernaculars in the west (specifically Cornwall); the Celtic Cumbric Language spoken in the northwest had become extinct. English did not cease to be used in the court: it retained a cartulary function (being the language used in royal charters); nor did it disappear as a language of literary production. Even during what has been called the 'lost' period of English literary history, the late 11th to mid-12th century, Old English texts, especially homilies, saints' lives and grammatical texts, continued to be copied, used and adapted by scribes. From the later 12th and 13th century there survive huge amounts of written material of various forms, from lyrics to saints' lives, devotional manuals to histories, encyclopędias to poems of moral (and often immoral) discussion and debate, though much of this material remains unstudied, in part because it evades or defies modern, arguably quite restricted, categorisations of literature. Middle English is more familiar to us as the language of Ricardian Poetry and its followers, the 14th- and 15th-century literature cultures clustered around the West Midlands and around London and East Anglia. This includes the works of William Langland, the Pearl Poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, Malory, Caxton, and Hoccleve. Perhaps best known, of course, is Chaucer himself in his Canterbury Tales and other shorter poems, where the poet consistently revalues and reinvents older traditions while managing to avoid completely abandoning them.
History
1000
(Note the letters ž and š are equivalent to modern "th")
- Syššan węs geworden žęt he ferde žurh ža ceastre and žęt castel: godes rice prediciende and bodiende. and hi twelfe mid. And sume wif že węron gehęlede of awyrgdum gastum: and untrumnessum: seo magdalenisce maria ofžęre seofan deoflu uteodon: and iohanna chuzan wif herodes gerefan: and susanna and manega ošre že him of hyra spedum ženedon.
A literal translation, using descendants of the original words where possible (bold words are explanations), might be
- "Sith (since) [it] was worthen (had come to happen) that he fared through the towns: God's rich (kingdom) predicating and boding, and he [had] twelve (disciples) [along with him], and some wives (women), that were healed of suffocating ghosts and un-upright-nesses: Mary [called] Magdalene, out of whom seven devils out-went, and Johanna, Chuza (Herod's steward)'s wife, and Suzanna, and many others that (gave) him of their speeds (things thought of as "fast") "
The typical modern translation is
- "And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance."
- Translation of Luke ch.8 v.13, from the New Testament
Although it is possible to overestimate the degree of culture shock which the transfer of power in 1066 represented, the removal from the top levels of society of an English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their replacement with a Norman-speaking one, opened the way for the introduction of Norman French as a language of polite discourse and literature, and fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration. And although Old English was by no means as standardised as modern English, its written forms were less subject to broad dialect variations than was post-Conquest English.
Even now, after nearly a thousand years, the Norman influence on the English language is still apparent.
Consider these pairs of Modern English words. The first of each pair is derived from Old English and the second is of Anglo-Norman origin: pig/pork, cow/beef, wood/forest, sheep/mutton, house/mansion, worthy/honourable, bold/courageous.
The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen in the abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government which derive from Anglo-Norman: court, judge, jury, appeal, parliament. Also prevalent in Modern English are terms relating to the chivalric cultures which arose in the 12th century as a response to the requirements of feudalism and crusading. Early on, this vocabulary of refined behaviour began to work its way into English: the word 'debonaire' appears in the 1137 Peterborough Chronicle; so too does 'castel' (castle), another Norman import, which makes its mark on the territory of the English language as much as on the territory of England itself.
This period of tri-lingual activity developed much of the flexible triplicate synonymy of modern English. For instance, English has three words meaning roughly "of or relating to a king":
- kingly from Old English,
- royal from French and
- regal from Latin.
Likewise, Norman and - later - French influences led to some interesting word pairs in English, such as the following, which both mean "someone who defends":
- Warden from Norman, and
- Guardian from French (itself of Germanic origin).
Deeper changes occurred in the grammar. Bit by bit, the wealthy and the government anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French) remained the dominant language of literature and law for several centuries, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy. The new English language did not look the same as the old: for as well as undergoing changes in vocabulary, the complex system of inflected endings which Old English had was gradually lost or simplified in the dialects of spoken Middle English. This change was gradually reflected in its increasingly diverse written forms too. The loss of case-endings was part of a general trend from inflectional to fixed-order words that also occurred in other Germanic languages, so cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking layers of the population. English remained, after all, the language of the vast majority.
It was also a literary language in England, the language of poets such as Chaucer and Langland, from the 12th to the 14th centuries, alongside Anglo-Norman and Latin. In the later 14th century, Chancery Standard (or London English)a phenomenon produced by the increase of bureaucracy in London, and the concomitant increase in London literary outputintroduced a greater conformity in English spelling. Although the fame of Middle English literature tends to derive principally from the later fourteenth century, with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and of Gower, an immense body of literature survives from throughout the Middle English period.
c. 1400
The ruling class began to use Middle English increasingly around this time. The Parliament of England used English from about the 1360s, and the king's court used mainly English from the time of King Henry V (who acceded in 1413). The oldest surviving correspondence in English, by Sir John Hawkwood, dates from the 1390s. With some standardisation of the language, English began to exhibit the more recognisable forms of grammar and syntax that would form the basis of future standard dialects:
- And it is don, aftirward Jesus made iourne bi cites & castelis prechende & euangelisende že rewme of god, & twelue wiž hym & summe wymmen žat weren helid of wicke spiritis & sicnesses, marie žat is clepid maudeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis wenten out & Jone že wif off chusi procuratour of eroude, & susanne & manye ožere žat mynystreden to hym of her facultes
- Luke ch.8, v.13
"And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance."
- Translation of Luke ch.8 v.13, from the New Testament
A text from 1391: Geoffrey Chaucer's .
However, this was a time of upheaval in England. Five kings were deposed between 1399 and 1500, and one of them was deposed twice. New men came into positions of power, some of them from other parts of the country or from lower levels in society. Stability came only gradually, after 1485, with the Tudor dynasty. The language changed toothere was much change during the 15th century. But towards the end of that century a more modern English was starting to emerge. Printing began in England in the 1470s, which tended to exert a stabilising effect. With a standardised, printed English Bible and Prayer Book being read to church congregations from the 1540s onward, a wider public became familiar with a standard language, and the era of Modern English was underway.
Construction
With its simplified case-ending system, Middle English is much closer to modern English than its pre-Conquest equivalent.
Nouns
Losing the rather more complex system of inflected endings in Old English, Middle English retains only two separate noun-ending patterns. Compare, for example, the early Modern English words engel (angel) and nome (name):
| | singular | plural |
|---|
| nom/acc | engel | nome | engles | nomen |
|---|
| gen | engles* | nome | engle(ne)** | nomen |
|---|
| dat | engle | nome | engle(s) | nomen |
|---|
The strong -s plural form has survived into Modern English, while the weak -n form is rare (oxen, children, brethren ; and in some dialects eyen [instead of eyes], shoon [instead of shoes], hosen [instead of hose(s)] and kine [instead of cows]).
Verbs
As a general rule (and all these rules are general), the first person singular of verbs in the present tense ends in -e ("ich here" - "I hear"), the second person in -(e)st ("žou spekest" - "thou speakest"), and the third person in -ež ("he comež" - "he cometh/he comes"). (ž is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think").
In the past tense, weak verbs are formed by adding an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. These, without their personal endings, also form past participles, together with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i-, y- and sometimes bi-.
Strong verbs, by contrast, form their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g. binden -> bound), as in Modern English.
Pronouns
Post-Conquest English inherits its pronouns from Old English:
Here are the Old English pronouns. Middle English pronouns derived from these.
First and Second Person | First Person | Second Person |
|---|
| singular | plural | singular | plural |
|---|
| nom. | ic, ih | we | žu | ge |
|---|
| acc. | mec, me | usic, us | žec, že | eowic, eow |
|---|
| gen. | min | user, ure | žin | eower |
|---|
| dat. | me | us | že | eow |
|---|
Third Person| | masc. | fem. | neut. | pl. | | nom. | he | heo | hit | hie |
|---|
| acc. | hine | hie | hit | hie |
|---|
| gen. | his, sin | hiere | his, sin | heora |
|---|
| dat. | him | hiere | him | heom |
|---|
The first and second person pronouns in Old English survived into Middle English largely unchanged, with only minor spelling variations. In the third person, the masculine accusative singular became 'him'. The feminine form was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into 'she', but unsteadily'ho' remained in some areas for a long time. The lack of a strong standard written form between the eleventh and the fifteenth century makes these changes hard to map.
The overall trend was the gradual abolition of the now useless distinctions between the nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases. It was word order which now defined the meaning in a sentence, instead of the case ending of the pronoun.
Pronunciation
Generally, all letters in Middle English words were pronounced. (Silent letters in Modern English come from pronunciation shifts, which can no longer be reflected by the written form because of fixed spelling constraints imposed by the invention of dictionaries and printing.) Therefore 'knight' was (with a pronounced and the as the in German 'Knecht'), not as in Modern English.
In earlier Middle English all written vowels were pronounced. By Chaucer's time, however, the final had become silent in normal speech, but could optionally be pronounced in verse as the meter required (but was normally silent when the next word began with a vowel). Chaucer followed these conventions: -e is silent in 'kowthe' and 'Thanne', but is pronounced in 'straunge', 'ferne', 'ende', etc. (Presumably, the final is partly or completely dropped in 'Caunterbury', so as to make the meter flow.)
An additional rule in speech, and often in poetry as well, was that a non-final unstressed was dropped when adjacent to only a single consonant on either side if there was another short 'e' in an adjoining syllable. Thus, 'every' sounds like "evry" and 'palmeres' like "palmers".
Archaic characters
The following characters, which may be unfamiliar to modern readers, are found in Middle English texts.
These were direct hold-overs from the Old English alphabet (a Roman alphabet variant, which drew some additional letters from Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) Runes).
Chancery Standard
Chancery Standard was a written form of English used by government bureaucracy and for other official purposes from the late 14th century. It is believed to have contributed in a significant way to the development of the English language as spoken and written today. Because of the differing dialects of English spoken and written across the country at the time, the government required a clear and unambiguous form for use in its official documents. Chancery Standard was developed to meet this need.
History of the Chancery Standard
The Chancery Standard (CS) was developed during the reign of King Henry V (1413 to 1422) in response to his order for his chancery (government officials) to use, like himself, English rather than Anglo-Norman or Latin. It had become broadly standardised by about the 1430s.
It was largely based on the London and East Midland dialects, for those areas were the political and demographic centres of gravity. However, it used other dialectical forms where they made meanings more clear; for example, the northern "they", "their" and "them" (derived from Scandinavian forms) were used rather than the London "hi/they", "hir" and "hem." This was perhaps because the London forms could be confused with words such as he, her, and him. (However, the colloquial form written as "'em", as in "up and at 'em", may well represent a spoken survival of "hem" rather than a shortening of the Norse-derived "them".)
In its early stages of development, the clerks that used CS would have been familiar with French and Latin. The strict grammars of those languages influenced the construction of the standard. It was not the only influence on later forms of Englishits level of influence is disputed and a variety of spoken dialects continued to existbut it provided a core around which Early Modern English could crystallise.
By the mid-15th century, CS was used for most official purposes except the Church (which used Latin) and some legal matters (which used French and some Latin). It was disseminated around England by bureaucrats on official business, and slowly gained prestige.
CS provided a widely intelligible form of English for the first English printers, from the 1470s onwards.
Sample text
The following is from the first two sentences of the Prologue from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, which is in Middle English and Modern English.
In modern prose:
When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, bathing every vein in such liquid by which virtue the flower is engendered, and when Zephyrus with his sweet breath has also inspired the tender plants in every wood and field, and the young sun is halfway through Aries, and small birds that sleep all night with an open eye make melodies, their hearts pricked by nature, then people long to go on pilgrimages, and pilgrims seek foreign shores and distant shrines known in sundry lands, and especially they wend their way to Canterbury from every shire of England to seek the holy blessed martyr who has helped them when they were sick. But oh they, lost in the mossy forest, they are so tires,they long to rest, and tell good stories. They did not know each other up till now, but now they will because... just listen to them!
See also
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