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Unlike
Old English, which tended largely to adopt Late
West Saxon scribal conventions in the period immediately before the
Norman conquest of England, written Middle English displays a wide variety of scribal (and presumably dialectal) forms. This diversity suggests the gradual end of the role of
Wessex as a focal point and trend-setter for writers and scribes, the emergence of more distinct local scribal styles and written dialects, and a general pattern of transition of activity over the centuries that followed, as
Northumbria,
East Anglia, and London successively emerged as major centres of
literature, each with their own particular interests.
Middle English literature of the 12th and 13th centuries is comparatively rare, as written communication was usually in
Anglo-Norman or in
Medieval Latin. Middle English became much more important as a literary language during the 14th century, with poets such as
Chaucer and
Langland.
History
The second half of the 11th century is the transitional period from Late Old English to Early Middle English. Early Middle English is the language of the 12th and 13th centuries. Middle English is fully developed as a literary language by the second half of the 14th century. Late Middle English and the transition to Early Modern English takes place from the early 15th century and is taken to have been complete by the beginning of the
Tudor period in 1485.
Transition from Old English
- Norman in the Kingdom of England
The transfer of power in 1066 resulted in only limited culture shock; however, the top levels of English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies were removed. Their replacements spoke
Norman and used Latin for administrative purposes. Thus Norman came into use as a language of polite discourse and literature, and this fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration, even though many Normans of the early period were illiterate and depended on the clergy for written communication and record-keeping. 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.
[clarification needed] Even now, after nearly a thousand years, the Norman influence on the English language is still apparent, though it did not begin to affect Middle English until somewhat later.
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, an era 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) which appears in the above Biblical quotation, another import of the
Normans, who made their mark on the English language as much as on the territory of England itself.
This period of trilingual 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 (Both "warden" and "guardian" are derived from Germanic.)
Old and Middle English
The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not of course change the language immediately. Although the most senior offices in the church were filled by Normans, Old English would continue to be used in chronicles such as the Peterborough Chronicle until the middle of the 12th century. The non-literate would have spoken the same dialects as before the Conquest, although these would be changing slowly until written records of them became available for study, which varies in different regions. Once the writing of Old English comes to an end, Middle English has no standard language, only dialects which derive from the dialects of the same regions in the Anglo-Saxon period.
Early Middle English
Early Middle English (1100–1300) has 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 locative cases are replaced in Early Middle English with prepositional constructions. This replacement is, however, incomplete: the Old English genitive "
-es" survives in the modern
Saxon genitive—it is now called the "possessive": e.g., the form "dog's" for the longer "of the dog". But most of the other case endings disappeared in the Early Modern English period, including most of the
roughly one dozen forms of the definite article ("the"). The dual grammatical number (expressing exactly two persons performing a task) also disappeared from English during the Early Modern English period (apart from personal pronouns), further simplifying the language.
Deeper changes occurred in the grammar. Gradually, the wealthy and the government
anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently
French) remained the dominant language of literature and law for a few centuries, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the
English monarchy. The new English language did not sound 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 as well. The loss of case endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages, and therefore cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population: English did, after all, remain the
language of the vast majority. It is also argued
[3] that Norse immigrants to England had a great impact on the loss of inflectional endings owing to their semi-mutually comprehensible (to the native English speakers) vocabulary, but lack of capability to reproduce their endings.
Late Middle English
The Late Middle English period was a time of upheaval in England. After the deposition of
Richard II of England in 1399, the
House of Plantagenet split into the
House of Lancaster and the
House of York, whose antagonism culminated in the
Wars of the Roses (1455–1487). Stability came only gradually with the
Tudor dynasty under
Henry VII.
During this period, social change, men coming into positions of power, some of them from other parts of the country or from lower levels in society, resulted also in linguistic change. Towards the end of the 15th century a more modern English was starting to emerge. Printing began in England in the 1470s, which tended to stabilise the language. 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 under way.
Chancery Standard
Chancery Standard 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 dialect forms where they made meanings clearer; 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 who used Chancery Standard would have been familiar with
French and
Latin, which must have influenced the forms they chose. Chancery Standard was not the only influence on later forms of English — its level of influence is disputed and a variety of spoken dialects continued to exist — but it provided a core around which Early Modern English could crystallise.
By the mid-15th century, Chancery Standard was used for most official purposes except by the Church (which used Latin) and for some legal purposes (for which
Law French and some Latin were used). It was disseminated around England by bureaucrats on official business, and slowly gained prestige.
With its simplified case-ending system, the grammar of Middle English is much closer to that of modern English than that of Old English. Compared to other Germanic languages, it is probably most similar to that of modern
West Frisian, one of
English's closest relatives.
Nouns
Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from the more complex system of
inflection in Old English. The early Modern English words
engel (angel) and
name (name) demonstrate the two patterns:
|
| strong | weak |
|---|
| singular | plural | singular | plural |
| nom/acc | engel | engles | name | namen |
| gen | engles* | engle(ne)** | name | namen |
| dat | engle | engle(s) | name | namen |
Some nouns of the
engel 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. (These in turn inherited from
Proto-Germanic ja-stem and
i-stem nouns.)
The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form is now rare in the standard language, used only in oxen, children, brethren; and it is slightly less rare in some dialects, used in eyen for eyes, shoon for shoes, hosen for hose(s), kine for cows, and been for bees.
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 ("þou spekest" - "thou speakest"), and the third person in -eþ ("he comeþ" - "he cometh/he comes"). (
þ is pronounced like the unvoiced
th in "think"). Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with southern dialects preserving the Old English -eþ, midland dialects showing -en from about 1200 onward, and northern forms using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural.
[4]
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.
Sample texts
This passage explains the background to the
Nativity:
Forrþrihht anan se time comm
þatt ure Drihhtin wollde
ben borenn i þiss middellærd
forr all mannkinne nede
he chæs himm sone kinnessmenn
all swillke summ he wollde
and whær he wollde borenn ben
he chæs all att hiss wille. | As soon as the time came
that our Lord wanted
to be born in this middle-earth
for the sake of all mankind,
at once he chose kinsmen for himself,
all just as he wanted,
and he decided that he would be born
exactly where he wished. |
(3494–501)[5] |
Wycliffe's Bible, 1384
From the
Wycliffe's Bible, (1384):
First version
1And it was don aftirward, and Jhesu made iorney by citees and castelis, prechinge and euangelysinge þe rewme of God, 2and twelue wiþ him; and summe wymmen þat weren heelid of wickide spiritis and syknessis, Marie, þat is clepid Mawdeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis wenten 3out, and Jone, þe wyf of Chuse, procuratour of Eroude, and Susanne, and manye oþere, whiche mynystriden to him of her riches.
—Luke ch.8, v.1–3
Second version
1And it was don aftirward, and Jhesus made iourney bi citees and castels, prechynge and euangelisynge þe rewme of 2God, and twelue wiþ hym; and sum wymmen þat weren heelid of wickid spiritis and sijknessis, Marie, þat is clepid Maudeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis 3wenten out, and Joone, þe wijf of Chuse, þe procuratoure of Eroude, and Susanne, and many oþir, þat mynystriden to hym of her ritchesse.
—Luke ch.8, v.1–3
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.
Chaucer, 1390s
The following is the beginning of the general
Prologue from
The Canterbury Tales by
Geoffrey Chaucer. The text was written in a dialect associated with London and spellings associated with the then-emergent Chancery Standard.
- Original in Middle English:
- Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
- The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
- And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
- Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
- Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
- Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
- The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
- Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
- And smale foweles maken melodye,
- That slepen al the nyght with open ye
- (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
- Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
- And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
- To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
- And specially from every shires ende
- Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
- The hooly blisful martir for to seke
- That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
|
- Translation into Modern English:
- (by Nevill Coghill)
- When in April the sweet showers fall
- And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
- The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
- As brings about the engendering of the flower,
- When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
- Exhales an air in every grove and heath
- Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
- His half course in the sign of the Ram has run
- And the small fowl are making melody
- That sleep away the night with open eye,
- (So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
- Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
- And palmers long to seek the stranger strands
- Of far off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,
- And specially from every shires’ end
- Of England, down to Canterbury they wend
- The holy blissful martyr, quick
- To give his help to them when they were sick
|
Gower, 1390
The following is the beginning of the Prologue from
Confessio Amantis by
John Gower.
- Original in Middle English:
- Of hem that writen ous tofore
- The bokes duelle, and we therfore
- Ben tawht of that was write tho:
- Forthi good is that we also
- In oure tyme among ous hiere
- Do wryte of newe som matiere,
- Essampled of these olde wyse
- So that it myhte in such a wyse,
- Whan we ben dede and elleswhere,
- Beleve to the worldes eere
- In tyme comende after this.
- Bot for men sein, and soth it is,
- That who that al of wisdom writ
- It dulleth ofte a mannes wit
- To him that schal it aldai rede,
- For thilke cause, if that ye rede,
- I wolde go the middel weie
- And wryte a bok betwen the tweie,
- Somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore,
- That of the lasse or of the more
- Som man mai lyke of that I wryte:
|
- Translation into Modern English: (by Richard Brodie)[7]
- Of those who wrote before our lives
- Their precious legacy survives;
- From what was written then, we learn,
- And so it’s well that we in turn,
- In our allotted time on earth
- Do write anew some things of worth,
- Like those we from these sages cite,
- So that such in like manner might,
- When we have left this mortal sphere,
- Remain for all the world to hear
- In ages following our own.
- But it is so that men are prone
- To say that when one only reads
- Of wisdom all day long, one breeds
- A paucity of wit, and so
- If you agree I’ll choose to go
- Along a kind of middle ground
- Sometimes I’ll write of things profound,
- And sometimes for amusement’s sake
- A lighter path of pleasure take
- So all can something pleasing find.
|
