What is a middle english word

Plural Middle English pronouns	Modern English translation
We	We
Us / ous	Us
ure(n) / our(e) / ures / urne	Our
Oures	Ours
Us self / ous silve	Ourselves
ȝe / ye	You (ye)
eow / (ȝ)ou / ȝow / gu / you	You
eower / (ȝ)ower / gur / (e)our	Your
Youres	Yours
Ȝou self / ou selve	Yourselves
From Old English: heo / heFrom Old Norse: þa / þei / þeo / þo	They
From Old English: his / heo(m)From Old Norse: þem / þo	Them
From Old English: heore / herFrom Old Norse: þeir	Their
From Old Norse: þam-selue	Themselves

Middle English
Englisch, English, Inglis
A page from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
Region	England (except for west Cornwall), some localities in the eastern fringe of Wales, south east Scotland and Scottish burghs, to some extent Ireland
Era	developed into Early Modern English, Scots, and Yola and Fingallian in Ireland by the 16th century
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic North Sea Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic Middle English
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Germanic Old English
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-2	enm
ISO 639-3	enm
ISO 639-6	meng
Glottolog	midd1317
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Middle English (abbreviated to ME^[1]) 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 the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the Oxford English Dictionary specifies the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500.^[2] This stage of the development of the English language roughly followed the High to the Late Middle Ages.

Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English language became fragmented, localized, and was, for the most part, being improvised.^[2] By the end of the period (about 1470) and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, 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 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 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 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 the most studied and read work of the period.^[4]

History[edit]

Transition from Old English[edit]

The transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English occurred at some point during the 12th century.

The influence of Old Norse aided the development of English from a synthetic language with relatively free word order, to a more analytic or isolating language with a more strict word order.^[2][5] Both Old English and Old Norse (as well as the descendants of the latter, Faroese and Icelandic) were synthetic languages with complicated inflections. The eagerness of Vikings in the Danelaw to communicate with their Anglo-Saxon neighbours resulted in the erosion of inflection in both languages.^[5][6] Old Norse may have had a more profound impact on Middle and Modern English development than any other language.^[7][8][9] Simeon Potter says: «No less far-reaching was the influence of Scandinavian upon the inflexional endings of English in hastening that wearing away and leveling of grammatical forms which gradually spread from north to south.»^[10]

Viking influence on Old English is most apparent in the more indispensable elements of the language. 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, yet no texts exist in either Scandinavia or in Northern England from this period to give 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 the Old English syntax to Norse syntax.^[11] The effect of Old Norse on Old English was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character.^[5][6] Like close cousins, Old Norse and Old English resembled each other, and with some words in common, they roughly understood each other;^[6] in time the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged.^[8][12] It is most «important to recognise that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of the word was so nearly the same in the two languages that only the endings would put obstacles in the way of mutual understanding. In the mixed population which existed in the Danelaw these endings must have led to much confusion, tending gradually to become obscured and finally lost.» This blending of peoples and languages resulted in «simplifying English grammar.»^[5]

While the influence of Scandinavian languages was strongest in the dialects of the Danelaw region and Scotland, words in the spoken language emerge in the 10th and 11th centuries near the transition from the Old to Middle English. Influence on the written language only appeared at the beginning of the 13th century, likely because of a scarcity of literary texts from an earlier date.^[5]

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 a dialect of Old French 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 words of Norman origin began to appear in the English language alongside native English words of similar meaning, giving rise to such Modern English synonyms as pig/pork, chicken/poultry, calf/veal, cow/beef, sheep/mutton, wood/forest, house/mansion, worthy/valuable, bold/courageous, freedom/liberty, sight/vision, and eat/dine.

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 that are derived from Anglo-Norman: court, judge, jury, appeal, 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, which inherited it 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 resultant cognate pairs include the words warden (from Norman), and guardian (from later French; both share a common Germanic ancestor).

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 derived from the dialects of the same regions in the Anglo-Saxon period.

Early Middle English[edit]

Early Middle English (1150–1300)^[13] 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 instrumental cases are 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 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.

Gradually, the wealthy and the government Anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French) remained the dominant language of literature and law until the 14th century, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy. 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 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^[14] 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, 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 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.^[15] The language found in the last two works is sometimes called the AB language.

More literary sources of the 12th and 13th centuries include Layamon’s Brut and The Owl and the Nightingale.

Some scholars^[16] 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).

14th century[edit]

From around the early 14th century, there was significant migration into London, particularly from the counties of the East Midlands, and a new prestige London dialect began to develop, based chiefly on the speech of the East Midlands, but also influenced by that of other regions.^[17] 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 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», «probable».^[18]

Late Middle English[edit]

The Chancery Standard of written English emerged c. 1430 in official documents that, since the Norman Conquest, had normally been written in French.^[17] 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 the Church and legalities, which used Latin and Law French (and some Latin), 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[19] Early Modern English began in 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.

Phonology[edit]

The main changes between the Old English sound system and that of Middle English include:

• Emergence of the voiced fricatives /v/, /ð/, /z/ as separate phonemes, rather than mere allophones of the corresponding voiceless fricatives.
• Reduction of the Old English diphthongs to monophthongs, and the emergence of new diphthongs due to vowel breaking in certain positions, change of Old English post-vocalic /j/, /w/ (sometimes resulting from the [ɣ] allophone of /ɡ/) to offglides, and borrowing from French.
• Merging of Old English /æ/ and /ɑ/ into a single vowel /a/.
• Raising of the long vowel /æː/ to /ɛː/.
• Rounding of /ɑː/ to /ɔː/ in the southern dialects.
• Unrounding of the front rounded vowels in most dialects.
• Lengthening of vowels in open syllables (and in certain other positions). The resultant long vowels (and other pre-existing long vowels) subsequently underwent changes of quality in the Great Vowel Shift, which began during the later Middle English period.
• Loss of gemination (double consonants came to be pronounced as single ones).
• Loss of weak final vowels (schwa, written ⟨e⟩). By Chaucer’s time this vowel was silent in normal speech, although it was normally pronounced in verse as the meter required (much as occurs in modern French). Also, non-final unstressed ⟨e⟩ was dropped when adjacent to only a single consonant on either side if there was another short ⟨e⟩ in an adjoining syllable. Thus, every began to be pronounced as evry, and palmeres as palmers.

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).

Morphology[edit]

Nouns[edit]

Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from the more complex system of inflection in Old English:

Middle English nouns

Nouns	Strong nouns	Weak nouns
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	-(e)	—es	—e	—en
Accusative	—en
Genitive	—es[20]	—e(ne)[21]
Dative	—e	—e(s)

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,^{[citation needed]} 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 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. The genitive survived, however, but by the end of the Middle English period, only the strong -‘s ending (variously spelt) was in use.^[22] 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»).^[23]

The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form 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,^[23] before being replaced by natural gender in the course of the Middle English period. Grammatical gender was indicated by agreement of articles and pronouns, i.e. 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.^[24]

Adjectives[edit]

Single syllable adjectives add -e when modifying a noun in the plural and when used after the definite article (þe), after 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.^[25] This inflexion continued to be used in writing even after final -e had ceased to be pronounced.^[26] In earlier texts, multi-syllable 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.^[26]

Earlier texts sometimes inflect adjectives for case as well. Layamon’s Brut inflects adjectives for the masculine accusative, genitive, and dative, the feminine dative, and the plural genitive.^[27] 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).^[28]

Comparatives and superlatives are usually formed by adding -er and -est. Adjectives with long vowels sometimes shorten these vowels in the comparative and superlative, e.g. greet (great) gretter (greater).^[28] Adjectives ending in -ly or -lich form comparatives either with -lier, -liest or -loker, -lokest.^[28] A few adjectives also display Germanic umlaut in their comparatives and superlatives, such as long, lenger.^[28] Other irregular forms are mostly the same as in modern English.^[28]

Pronouns[edit]

Middle English personal pronouns were mostly developed from those of Old English, with 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 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 Thames by the early 14th century, and the neuter dative him was ousted by it in most dialects by the 15th.^[29]

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.^[30]

Middle English personal pronouns

Personal pronouns	1st person	2nd person	3rd person
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	ic, ich, I	we	þeou, þ(o)u, tu	ye	he	hit	s(c)he(o)	he(o)/ þei
Accusative	mi	(o)us	þe	eow, eou, yow, gu, you	hine	heo, his, hi(r)e	his/ þem
Dative	him	him	heo(m), þo/ þem
Possessive	min(en)	(o)ure, ures, ure(n)	þi, ti	eower, yower, gur, eour	his, hes	his	heo(re), hio, hire	he(o)re/ þeir
Genitive	min, mire, minre	oures	þin, þyn	youres	his
Reflexive	min one, mi selven	us self, ous-silve	þeself, þi selven	you-self/ you-selve	him-selven	hit-sulve	heo-seolf	þam-selve/ þem-selve

Verbs[edit]

As a general rule, the indicative 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 (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:^[31][32]

Middle English verb inflection

Verbs inflection	Infinitive	Present	Past
Participle	Singular	Plural	Participle	Singular	Plural
1st person	2nd person	3rd person	1st person	2nd person	3rd person
Regular verbs
Strong	-en	-ende, -ynge	-e	-est	-eþ (-es)	-en (-es, -eþ)	i- -en	—	-e (-est)	—	-en
Weak	-ed	-ede	-edest	-ede	-eden
Irregular verbs
Been «be»	been	beende, beynge	am	art	is	aren	ibeen	was	wast	was	weren
be	bist	biþ	beth, been	were
Cunnen «can»	cunnen	cunnende, cunnynge	can	canst	can	cunnen	cunned, coud	coude, couthe	coudest, couthest	coude, couthe	couden, couthen
Don «do»	don	doende, doynge	do	dost	doþ	doþ, don	idon	didde	didst	didde	didden
Douen «be good for»	douen	douende, douynge	deigh	deight	deigh	douen	idought	dought	doughtest	dought	doughten
Durren «dare»	durren	durrende, durrynge	dar	darst	dar	durren	durst, dirst	durst	durstest	durst	dursten
Gon «go»	gon	goende, goynge	go	gost	goþ	goþ, gon	igon(gen)	wend, yede, yode	wendest, yedest, yodest	wende, yede, yode	wenden, yeden, yoden
Haven «have»	haven	havende, havynge	have	hast	haþ	haven	ihad	hadde	haddest	hadde	hadden
Moten «must»	—	—	mot	must	mot	moten	—	muste	mustest	muste	musten
Mowen «may»	mowen	mowende, mowynge	may	myghst	may	mowen	imought	mighte	mightest	mighte	mighten
Owen «owe, ought»	owen	owende, owynge	owe	owest	owe	owen	iowen	owed	ought	owed	ought
Schulen «should»	—	—	schal	schalt	schal	schulen	—	scholde	scholdest	scholde	scholde
Þurven «need»	—	—	þarf	þarst	þarf	þurven	—	þurft	þurst	þurft	þurften
Willen «want»	willen	willende, willynge	will	wilt	will	wollen	—	wolde	woldest	wolde	wolden
Witen «know»	witen	witende, witynge	woot	woost	woot	witen	iwiten	wiste	wistest	wiste	wisten

Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with Southern dialects preserving 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.^[33]

The past tense of weak verbs is formed by adding an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, also serve as past participles 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 (binden becomes bound, a process called apophony), as in Modern English.

Orthography[edit]

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 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 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 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 under Phonology, above). The final ⟨e⟩, now silent, thus became 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 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.

Alphabet[edit]

The basic Old English Latin alphabet had consisted of 20 standard letters plus four additional letters: ash ⟨æ⟩, eth ⟨ð⟩, thorn ⟨þ⟩ and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩. There 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 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 (þe, i.e. «the») has led to the modern mispronunciation of thorn as ⟨y⟩ in this context; see ye olde.^[34]

Wynn, which represented the phoneme /w/, was replaced by ⟨w⟩ during 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 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 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/.

Under continental influence, the letters ⟨k⟩, ⟨q⟩ and ⟨z⟩, which had not normally been used by Old English scribes, came to be commonly used in the writing of Middle English. Also the newer Latin letter ⟨w⟩ was introduced (replacing wynn). The distinct letter forms ⟨v⟩ and ⟨u⟩ came into use, but were still used interchangeably; the same applies to ⟨j⟩ and ⟨i⟩.^[35] (For example, spellings such as wijf and paradijs for wife and paradise can be found in Middle English.)

The consonantal ⟨j⟩/⟨i⟩ was sometimes used to transliterate the Hebrew letter yodh, representing the palatal approximant sound /j/ (and transliterated in Greek by iota and in Latin by ⟨i⟩); words like Jerusalem, Joseph, etc. would have originally followed the Latin pronunciation beginning with /j/, that is, the sound of ⟨y⟩ in yes. In some words, however, notably from Old French, ⟨j⟩/⟨i⟩ was used for the affricate consonant /dʒ/, as in joie (modern «joy»), used in Wycliffe’s Bible.^[36][37] This was similar to the geminate sound [ddʒ], which had been represented as ⟨cg⟩ in Old English. By the time of Modern English, the sound came to be written as ⟨j⟩/⟨i⟩ at the start of words (like joy), and usually as ⟨dg⟩ elsewhere (as in bridge). It could also be written, mainly in French loanwords, as ⟨g⟩, with the adoption of the soft G convention (age, page, etc.)

Other symbols[edit]

Many scribal abbreviations were also used. It was common for the Lollards to abbreviate the name of Jesus (as in Latin manuscripts) to ihc. The letters ⟨n⟩ and ⟨m⟩ were often omitted and indicated by a macron above an adjacent letter, so for example in could be written as ī. A thorn with a superscript ⟨t⟩ or ⟨e⟩ could be used for that and the; the thorn here resembled a ⟨Y⟩, giving rise to the ye of «Ye Olde». Various forms of the ampersand replaced the word and.

Numbers were still always written using Roman numerals, except for some rare occurrences of Arabic numerals during the 15th century.

Letter-to-sound correspondences[edit]

Although Middle English spelling was never fully standardised, the following table shows the pronunciations most usually represented by particular letters and digraphs towards the end of the Middle English period, using the notation given in the article on Middle English phonology.^[38] As explained above, single vowel letters had alternative pronunciations depending on whether they were in a position where their sounds had been subject to lengthening. Long vowel pronunciations were in flux due to the beginnings of the Great Vowel Shift.

Symbol	Description and notes
a	/a/, or in lengthened positions /aː/, becoming [æː] by about 1500. Sometimes /au/ before ⟨l⟩ or nasals (see Late Middle English diphthongs).
ai, ay	/ai/ (alternatively denoted by /ɛi/; see vein–vain merger).
au, aw	/au/
b	/b/, but in later Middle English became silent in words ending -mb (while some words that never had a /b/ sound came to be spelt -mb by analogy; see reduction of /mb/).
c	/k/, but /s/ (earlier /ts/) before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨y⟩ (see C and hard and soft C for details).
ch	/tʃ/
ck	/k/, replaced earlier ⟨kk⟩ as the doubled form of ⟨k⟩ (for the phenomenon of doubling, see above).
d	/d/
e	/e/, or in lengthened positions /eː/ or sometimes /ɛː/ (see ee). For silent ⟨e⟩, see above.
ea	Rare, for /ɛː/ (see ee).
ee	/eː/, becoming [iː] by about 1500; or /ɛː/, becoming [eː] by about 1500. In Early Modern English the latter vowel came to be commonly written ⟨ea⟩. The two vowels later merged.
ei, ey	Sometimes the same as ⟨ai⟩; sometimes /ɛː/ or /eː/ (see also fleece merger).
ew	Either /ɛu/ or /iu/ (see Late Middle English diphthongs; these later merged).
f	/f/
g	/ɡ/, or /dʒ/ before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨y⟩ (see ⟨g⟩ for details). The ⟨g⟩ in initial gn- was still pronounced.
gh	[ç] or [x], post-vowel allophones of /h/ (this was formerly one of the uses of yogh). The ⟨gh⟩ is often retained in Chancery spellings even though the sound was starting to be lost.
h	/h/ (except for the allophones for which ⟨gh⟩ was used). Also used in several digraphs (⟨ch⟩, ⟨th⟩, etc.). In some French loanwords, such as horrible, the ⟨h⟩ was silent.
i, j	As a vowel, /i/, or in lengthened positions /iː/, which had started to be diphthongised by about 1500. As a consonant, /dʒ/ ( (corresponding to modern ⟨j⟩); see above).
ie	Used sometimes for /ɛː/ (see ee).
k	/k/, used particularly in positions where ⟨c⟩ would be softened. Also used in ⟨kn⟩ at the start of words; here both consonants were still pronounced.
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/, including its allophone [ŋ] (before /k/, /g/).
o	/o/, or in lengthened positions /ɔː/ or sometimes /oː/ (see oo). Sometimes /u/, as in sone (modern son); the ⟨o⟩ spelling was often used rather than ⟨u⟩ when adjacent to i, m, n, v, w for legibility, i.e. to avoid a succession of vertical strokes.[39]
oa	Rare, for /ɔː/ (became commonly used in Early Modern English).
oi, oy	/ɔi/ or /ui/ (see Late Middle English diphthongs; these later merged).
oo	/oː/, becoming [uː] by about 1500; or /ɔː/.
ou, ow	Either /uː/, which had started to be diphthongised by about 1500, or /ɔu/.
p	/p/
qu	/kw/
r	/r/
s	/s/, sometimes /z/ (formerly [z] was an allophone of /s/). Also appeared as ſ (long s).
sch, sh	/ʃ/
t	/t/
th	/θ/ or /ð/ (which had previously been allophones of a single phoneme), replacing earlier eth and thorn, although thorn was still sometimes used.
u, v	Used interchangeably. As a consonant, /v/. As a vowel, /u/, or /iu/ in «lengthened» positions (although it had generally not gone through the same lengthening process as other vowels – see history of /iu/).
w	/w/ (replaced Old English wynn).
wh	/hw/ (see English ⟨wh⟩).
x	/ks/
y	As a consonant, /j/ (earlier this was one of the uses of yogh). Sometimes also /g/. As a vowel, the same as ⟨i⟩, where ⟨y⟩ is often preferred beside letters with downstrokes.
z	/z/ (in Scotland sometimes used as a substitute for yogh; see above).

Sample texts[edit]

Most of the following Modern English translations are poetic sense-for-sense translations, not word-for-word translations.

Ormulum, 12th century[edit]

This passage explains the background to the Nativity (3494–501):^[40]

Forrþrihht anan se time commþatt ure Drihhtin wolldeben borenn i þiss middellærdforr all mannkinne nedehe chæs himm sone kinnessmennall swillke summ he wolldeand whær he wollde borenn benhe chæs all att hiss wille.

Forthwith when the time camethat our Lord wantedbe born in this earthfor all mankind sake,He chose kinsmen for Himself,all just as he wanted,and where He would be bornHe chose exactly as He wished.

Epitaph of John the smyth, died 1371[edit]

An epitaph from a monumental brass in an Oxfordshire parish church:^[41][42]

Original text	Word-for-word translation into Modern English	Translation by Patricia Utechin[42]
man com & se how schal alle dede li: wen þow comes bad & barenoth hab ven ve awaẏ fare: All ẏs wermēs þt ve for care:—bot þt ve do for godẏs luf ve haue nothyng yare:hundyr þis graue lẏs John þe smẏth god yif his soule heuen grit	Man, come and see how shall all dead lie: when thou comes bad and barenaught have we away fare: all is worms that we for care:—but that we do for God’s love, we have nothing ready:under this grave lies John the smith, God give his soul heaven great	Man, come and see how all dead men shall lie: when that comes bad and bare,we have nothing when we away fare: all that we care for is worms:—except for that which we do for God’s sake, we have nothing ready:under this grave lies John the smith, God give his soul heavenly peace

Wycliffe’s Bible, 1384[edit]

From the Wycliffe’s Bible, (1384):

Luke 8:1-3

First version	Second version	Translation
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 3 out, and Jone, þe wyf of Chuse, procuratour of Eroude, and Susanne, and manye oþere, whiche mynystriden to him of her riches.	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.	1And it happened afterwards, that Jesus made a journey through cities and settlements, preaching and evangelising the realm of 2God: and with him The Twelve; and some women that were healed of wicked spirits and sicknesses; Mary who is called Magdalen, from whom 3seven devils went out; and Joanna the wife of Chuza, the steward of Herod; and Susanna, and many others, who administered to Him out of their own means.

Chaucer, 1390s[edit]

The following is the very 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.

First 18 lines of the General Prologue

Original in Middle English	Word-for-word translation into Modern English[43]	Translation into Modern U.K. English prose[44]
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote	When [that] April with his showers sweet	When April with its sweet showers
The droȝte of March hath perced to the roote	The drought of March has pierced to the root	has drenched March’s drought to the roots,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,	And bathed every vein in such liquor,	filling every capillary with nourishing sap
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;	From which goodness is engendered the flower;	prompting the flowers to grow,
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth	When Zephyrus even with his sweet breath	and when Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth	Inspired has in every holt and heath	has coaxed in every wood and dale, to sprout
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne	The tender crops; and the young sun	the tender plants, as the springtime sun
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,	Has in the Ram his half-course run,	passes halfway through the sign of Aries,
And smale foweles maken melodye,	And small birds make melodies,	and small birds that chirp melodies,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye	That sleep all night with open eyes	sleep all night with half-open eyes
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);	(So Nature prompts them in their boldness);	their spirits thus aroused by Nature;
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages	Then folk long to go on pilgrimages.	it is at these times that people desire to go on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes	And pilgrims (palmers) [for] to seek new strands	and pilgrims (palmers) seek new shores
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;	To far-off shrines (hallows), respected in sundry lands;	and distant shrines venerated in other places.
And specially from every shires ende	And specially from every shire’s end	Particularly from every county
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,	Of England, to Canterbury they wend,	of England, they go to Canterbury,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke	The holy blissful martyr [for] to seek,	in order to visit the holy blessed martyr,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.	That has helped them, when [that] they were sick.	who has helped them when they were unwell.

Gower, 1390[edit]

The following is the beginning of the Prologue from Confessio Amantis by John Gower.

Original in Middle English	Near word-for-word translation into Modern English:	Translation into Modern English: (by Richard Brodie)[45]
Of hem that written 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:	Of them that wrote us before The books dwell, and we therefore Been taught of that was written then: For it is good that we also In our time among us here Do write some new matter, Exemplified by these old ways So that it might in such a way, When we be dead and elsewhere, Be left to the world’s ear In time coming after this. But for men say, and so it is, That who that all of wisdom writes It dulls often a man’s wit To him that shall it every day read, For that like cause, if that you read, I would go the middle way And write a book between the two, Somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore, That of the less or of the more Some man may like of that I write:	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.

Translation in Modern English: (by J. Dow)

Of those who wrote before we were born, books survive,

So we are taught what was written by them when they were alive.
So it’s good that we, in our times here on earth, write of new matters –
Following the example of our forefathers –
So that, in such a way, we may leave our knowledge to the world after we are dead and gone.
But it’s said, and it is true, that if one only reads of wisdom all day long
It often dulls one’s brains. So, if it’s alright with you,
I’ll take the middle route and write a book between the two –
Somewhat of amusement, and somewhat of fact.

In that way, somebody might, more or less, like that.

See also[edit]

• Medulla Grammatice (collection of glossaries)
• Middle English creole hypothesis
• Middle English Dictionary
• Middle English literature
• A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English

References[edit]

• Brunner, Karl (1962) Abriss der mittelenglischen Grammatik; 5. Auflage. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer (1st ed. Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer, 1938)
• Brunner, Karl (1963) An Outline of Middle English Grammar; translated by Grahame Johnston. Oxford: Blackwell
• Burrow, J. A.; Turville-Petre, Thorlac (2005). A Book of Middle English (3 ed.). Blackwell.
• Mustanoja, Tauno (1960) «A Middle English Syntax. 1. Parts of Speech». Helsinki : Société néophilologique.

External links[edit]

• A. L. Mayhew and Walter William Skeat. A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580
• Middle English Glossary (archived 22 February 2012)
• Oliver Farrar Emerson, ed. (1915). A Middle English Reader. Internet Archive. Macmillan. With grammatical introduction, notes, and glossary.
• Middle English encyclopedia on Miraheze

2.1.
General characteristics

An
analysis of the vocabulary in the Middle English period shows great
instability and constant and rapid change. Many words became
obsolete, and if preserved, then only in some dialects: many more
appeared in the rapidly developing language to reflect the
ever-changing life of the speakers and under the influence of
contacts with other nations.

2.2.
Means of enriching vocabulary in Middle English

2.2.1.
Internal means of enriching vocabulary

Though
the majority of Old English suffixes are still preserved in Middle
English, they becoming less productive, and words formed by means of
word-derivation in Old English can be treated as such only
etymologically.

Words
by means of word-composition in Old English, in Middle English are
often understood as derived words.

2.2.2.
External means of enriching vocabulary

The
principal means of enriching vocabulary in Middle English are not
internal, but external borrowings. Two languages in succession
enriched the vocabulary English of that period – the Scandinavian
language and the French language, the nature of the borrowings and
their amount reflecting the conditions of the contacts between the
English and these languages.

• Scandinavian
  borrowings

The
Scandinavian invasion and the subsequent settlement of the
Scandinavians on the territory of England, the constant contacts and
intermixture of the English and Scandinavians brought about many
changes in different spheres of the English language: word-stock,
grammar and phonetics. The relative ease of the mutual penetration of
the languages was conditioned by the circumstances of the
Anglo-Scandinavians contacts.

Due
to contacts between the Scandinavians and the English people many
words were borrowed from the Scandinavian language, for example:

Nouns:
law, fellow, sky, skirt, skill, egg, anger, awe, bloom, knife, root,
bull, cake, husband, leg, wing, guest, loan, race

Adjectives:
big,
weak, wrong, ugly, twin

Verbs:
call,
cast, take, happen, scare, hail, want, bask, gape, kindle

Pronouns:

they, them, their

The
conditions and the consequences of various borrowings were different.

1. Sometimes
   the English language borrowed a word which it had no synonym. These
   words were simply added top the vocabulary. Examples: law, fellow

2. The
   English synonym was ousted by the borrowing. Scandinavian Taken
   (to
   take)
   and callen
   (to
   call)
   ousted the English synonyms niman
   and
   clypian,
   respectively.

3. Both
   the words, the English and the corresponding Scandinavian, are
   preserved, but they became different in meaning. Compare Modern
   English native words and Scandinavian borrowings:

Native
Scandinavian borrowing

Heaven
sky

Starve
die

1. Sometimes
   a borrowed word and an English word are etymologically doublets, as
   words originating from the same source in Common Germanic.

Native
Scandinavian borrowing

shirt
skirt

shatter

scatter

raise
rear

1. Sometimes
   an English word and its Scandinavian doublet were the same in
   meaning but slightly different phonetically, and the phonetic form
   of the Scandinavian borrowing is preserved in English, having ousted
   the English counterpart. For example, modern English to
   give,
   to
   get
   come from the Scandinavian gefa,
   geta,
   this ousted the English giefan
   and gietan,
   respectively. Similar English words: gift, forget, guild, gate,
   again.

2. There
   may be a shift of meaning. Thus, the word dream
   originally
   meant “joy, pleasure”; under the influence of the related
   Scandinavian word it developed its modern meaning.

• French
  borrowings

It
stands to reason that the Norman Conquest and the subsequent history
left deep traces in the English language, mainly in the form of
borrowings in words connected with such spheres of social and
political activity where French-speaking Normans had occupied for a
long time all places of importance. For example:

• Government
  and legislature:

government,
noble, baron, prince, duke, court, justice, judge, crime, prison,
condemn, sentence, parliament, etc.

• military
  life:

army,
battle, peace, banner, victory, general, colonel, lieutenant, major,
etc.

• religion:

religion,
sermon, prey, saint, charity, etc.

• city
  crafts:

painter,
tailor, carpenter, etc. (but
country occupations remained English: shepherd, smith, etc.)

• pleasure
  and entertainment:

music,
art, feast, pleasure, leisure, supper, dinner, pork, beef, mutton,
etc. (but
the corresponding names of domestic animals remained English: pig,
cow, sheep)

• words
  of everyday life:

air,
place, river, large, age, boil, branch, brush, catch, change, chain,
chair, table, choice, cry, cost, etc.

• relationship:

aunt,
uncle, nephew, cousin.

The
place of the French borrowings within the English language was
different:

1. A
   word may be borrowed from the French language to denote notions
   unknown to the English up to the time:

Government,
parliament, general, colonel, etc.

1. The
   English synonym is ousted by the French borrowing:

English
French

micel
large

here
army

ēa
river

1. Both
   the words are preserved, but they are stylistically different:

English
French

to
begin to commence

to
work to labour

to
leave to abandon

life
existence

look
regard

ship
vessel

As
we see, the French borrowings are generally more literary or even
bookish, the English word – a common one; but sometimes the English
word is more literary. Compare:

Foe
(native,
English)
– enemy (French
borrowing)

1. Sometimes
   the English language borrowed many words with the same word-building
   affix. The meaning of the affix in this case became clear to the
   English-speaking people, and they began to add it to the English
   words, thus forming word-hybrids. For instance: the suffix –ment
   entered the language within such words as “government”,
   “parliament”, “agreement”, but later there appeared such
   English-French hybrids, such as fulfillment,
   amazement

The
suffix –ance/-ence, which was an element of such borrowed words as
“innocence”,
“ignorance”, “repentance”,
now also forms words-hybrids, such as hindrance

A
similar thing: French borrowings “admirable”, “tolerable”,
“reasonable”, but also:

Readable,
eatable, unbearable.

1. One
   of the consequences of the borrowings from French was the appearance
   of the etymological doublets.

—
from the Common Indoeuropean:

native
borrowed

fatherly
paternal

—
from the Common Germanic:

native
borrowed

yard
garden

ward
guard

choose
choice

—
from Latin:

Earlier
later

(Old
English borrowing) (Middle English borrowing)

Mint
money

Inch
ounce

1. Due
   to the great number of French borrowings these appeared in the
   English language such families of words, which though similar in
   their root meaning, are different in origin:

native
borrowed

mouth
oral

sun
solar

see
vision

1. There
   are calques on the French phrase:

It’s
no doubt Se n’est doute

Without
doubt Sans doubte

Out
of doubt Hors de doute

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Middle English was the language spoken in England from about 1100 to 1500. Five major dialects of Middle English have been identified (Northern, East Midlands, West Midlands, Southern, and Kentish), but the «research of Angus McIntosh and others… supports the claim that this period of the language was rich in dialect diversity» (Barbara A. Fennell, A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach, 2001).

Major literary works written in Middle English include Havelok the Dane, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The form of Middle English that’s most familiar to modern readers is the London dialect, which was the dialect of Chaucer and the basis of what would eventually become standard English.

Middle English in Academics

Academicians and others have explained the use of Middle English in everything from its importance in English grammar, and modern English in general, to fatherhood, as the following quotes demonstrate.

Jeremy J. Smith

«[T]he transition from Middle to early modern English is above all the period of the elaboration of the English language. Between the late 14th and 16th centuries, the English language began increasingly to take on more functions. These changes in function had, it is argued here, a major effect on the form of English: so major, indeed, that the old distinction between ‘Middle’ and ‘modern’ retains considerable validity, although the boundary between these two linguistic epochs was obviously a fuzzy one.»
(«From Middle to Early Modern English.» The Oxford History of English, ed. by Lynda Mugglestone. Oxford University Press, 2006)

Rachel E. Moss

«Middle English varied enormously over time and by region; Angus McIntosh notes that there are over a thousand ‘dialectically differentiated’ varieties of Middle English. Indeed, some scholars go so far as to say that Middle English is ‘not… a language at all but rather something of a scholarly fiction, an amalgam of forms and sounds, writers and manuscripts, famous works and little-known ephemera.’ This is a little extreme, but certainly prior to the later fourteenth century Middle English was primarily a spoken rather than a written language, and did not have official administrative functions in either a secular or religious context. This has resulted in a critical tendency to place English at the bottom of the linguistic hierarchy of medieval England, with Latin and French as the dominant languages of discourse, instead of seeing the symbiotic relationship between English, French, and Latin…
«By the fifteenth century Middle English was extensively used in the written documentation of business, civic government, Parliament, and the royal household.»
(Fatherhood and Its Representations in Middle English Texts. D.S. Brewer, 2013)

Evelyn Rothstein and Andrew S. Rothstein

— «In 1066, William the Conqueror led the Norman invasion of England, marking the beginning of the Middle English period. This invasion brought a major influence to English from Latin and French. As is often the case with invasions, the conquerors dominated the major political and economic life in England. While this invasion had some influence on English grammar, the most powerful impact was on vocabulary.»
(English Grammar Instruction That Works! Corwin, 2009)

Seth Lerer

— «The core vocabulary of [Middle] English comprised the monosyllabic words for basic concepts, bodily functions, and body parts inherited from Old English and shared with the other Germanic languages. These words include: God, man, tin, iron, life, death, limb, nose, ear, foot, mother, father, brother, earth, sea, horse, cow, lamb.
«Words from French are often polysyllabic terms for the institutions of the Conquest (church, administration, law), for things imported with the Conquest (castles, courts, prisons), and terms of high culture and social status (cuisine, fashion, literature, art, decoration).»
(Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language. Columbia University Press, 2007)

A. C. Baugh and T. Cable

— «From 1150 to 1500 the language is known as Middle English. During this period the inflections, which had begun to break down during the end of the Old English period, become greatly reduced…
«By making English the language mainly of uneducated people, the Norman Conquest [in 1066] made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward unchecked.
«French influence is much more direct and observable upon the vocabulary. Where two languages exist side by side for a long time and the relations between the people speaking them are as intimate as they were in England, a considerable transference of words from one language to the other is inevitable…
«When we study the French words appearing in English before 1250, roughly 900 in number, we find that many of them were such as the lower classes would become familiar with through contact with a French-speaking nobility: (baron, noble, dame, servant, messenger, feast, minstrel, juggler, largess)… In the period after 1250,… the upper classes carried over into English an astonishing number of common French words. In changing from French to English, they transferred much of their governmental and administrative vocabulary, their ecclesiastical, legal, and military terms, their familiar words of fashion, food, and social life, the vocabulary of art, learning, and medicine.»
(A History of the English Language. Prentice-Hall, 1978)

Simon Horobin

— «French continued to occupy a prestigious place in English society, especially the Central French dialect spoken in Paris. This prompted an increase in the numbers of French words borrowed, especially those relating to French society and culture. As a consequence, English words concerned with scholarship, fashion, the arts, and food—such as college, robe, verse, beef—are often drawn from French (even if their ultimate origins lie in Latin). The higher status of French in this [late Middle English] period continues to influence the associations of pairs of synonyms in Modern English, such as begin-commence, look-regard, stench-odour. In each of these pairs, the French borrowing is of a higher register than the word inherited from Old English.»
(How English Became English. Oxford University Press, 2016)

Chaucer and Middle English

Probably the most famous author who wrote during the Middle English period was Geoffrey Chaucer, who penned the classic 14th-century work, «The Canterbury Tales,» but also other works, which present fine examples of how the language was used in the same time period. The modern-English translation is presented in brackets following the Middle English passage.

Canterbury Tales

«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…»
[«When the sweet showers of April have pierced
The drought of March, and pierced it to the root
And every vein is bathed in that moisture
Whose quickening force will engender the flower…»]
(General Prologue. Translation by David Wright. Oxford University Press, 2008)

«Troilus and Criseyde»

«Ye knowe ek that in forme of speeche is chaunge
Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do;
Ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry ben usages.»
[«You know also that in (the) form of speech (there) is change
Within a thousand years, and words then
That had value, now wonderfully curious and strange
(To) us they seem, and yet they spoke them so,
And succeeded as well in love as men now do;
Also to win love in sundry ages,
In sundry lands, (there) are many usages.»]
(Translation by Roger Lass in «Phonology and Morphology.» A History of the English Language, edited by Richard M. Hogg and David Denison. Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Presentation on theme: «The Middle English Vocabulary»— Presentation transcript:

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The Middle English Vocabulary

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Borrowings came mostly from two sources:Scandinavian And French
Scandinavian borrowings were not so great, but they were mostly everyday words of very high frequency. There were such borrowings as bag anger skin happy take call window fog ugly

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Apart from many place names (over1400)in – by, -thorpe and -thwaite some personal pronouns were borrowed as well. The Scandinavian forms þeir(they), þeim (them) and þeirra (their) ousted the OE. forms hie, him, hira. In some cases only the meaning of a word, not its form was changed. For example, ME word bloom has not only the meaning of ‘‘flower’’ but also ‘‘the technical meaning ‘‘of a thick bar or iron’’ The OE word bloma had only the second meaning. The first was borrowed from the Scandinavian word blom. The OE dream meant ‘‘joy’’ .Its present meaning came with the Scandinavians.

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The number of French borrowings was much greater than the Scandinavian loan words
There were 2 stages of borrowing. During the 1st one words connected with titles of respect (E. sir, madam), ranks( prince, duke, noble). During the 2nd one words connected with administration and government (E. parliament, crown, reign) war (E. enemy, battle, war, victory, defence) religion ( pray, saint, miracle) art ( painting, colour, beauty, romance, sculpture, )

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The relation between the English people and the French aristocracy is also reflected in the semantic correlation of some English words. As Walter Scott pointed out in ‘‘Ivanhoe’’, the domestic animals kept their English names while the English were looking after them in the fields (E. ox, cow, sheep), but were given French names when they appeared on the Norman lord’s table( E. veal, beef, mutton)

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It is necessary to remember that there were 2 varieties of French borrowings Norman French (NF) and Central French (CF). Up to the 13th century French borrowings were mostly from NF. Later the overwhelming majority of French loan-words came from CF. It often happened that a word was borrowed twice and new doublets were formed (canal (NF) and channel (CF)).

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The word building in Middle English
There were 2 types of word derivation: 1)based on native elements 2)based on the mixture of elements Native affixes + borrowed words. The English suffixes(- ful,-less,-hood,-like and –ship )were added to French words. For example, unfaithful, beautiful, courtship. The same situation with compounding.Gentle(1225) + woman=gentlewoman(1230).

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Middle English borrowed a lot of foreign elements and with
the help of them new words were formed. For example, such morphemes as –able, dis- and –re were used with words of French origin. So we have enter-reenter, write- rewrite, blame-blamable. Some of them were used with native Germanic roots as well:eatable, readable, bearable, misdo.

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chance –to chance account-to account.
One of the most important innovations was the development of conversion. Owing to the levelling of endings and the loss of –n in unstressed syllables this way of word formation gains importance. As a result of conversion a lot of new nouns from verbs and vice versa were formed: smile-to smile comfort-to comfort, annoy-to annoy chance –to chance account-to account.

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Middle English was the form of English spoken in England and Lowland Scotland between 1150 and 1500 C.E.. The aim of this page is to standardise the layout of Middle English entries and explain the rationale behind that standardisation.

Orthography[edit]

Diacritics[edit]

Although diacritics usually appeared in many Middle English dictionaries to indicate the length and stress of vowel sounds, they were not widely used in Middle English writing to distinguish between short and long vowels. Such marks are modern additions used in dictionaries and textbooks – that is why some editors use macrons (¯), while others use acute accents (´), circumflexes (ˆ), overdots (˙), and/or breves (˘). Consequently, Middle English entries here should be without diacritical marks in the page title. Within the entry itself, optional marks can be used with the word as given under the part-of-speech heading. The custom here is to forgo using diacritics for Middle English altogether. Otherwise, in links, these marks can be piped in, e.g. [[gliden|glīden]].

Th, Þ, Ð and Y[edit]

In early Middle English, as in Old English, the letters thorn (þ) and eth (ð) were largely interchangeable: the use of one over the other being more a matter of preference than of orthography. Oftentimes it was customary to use þ at the beginning and medial positions of a word, and ð at the end. By the end of the Early Middle English period, þ began to replace ð in all positions; it is the form most often seen in Middle English dictionaries. The combination th was also in use, however, in foreign words (often borrowed from Latin or Greek), it often represented /t/. In later Middle English, the form of thorn coalesced with that of y; this can still be seen in archaic spellings such as Ye Olde Schoppe (= The Olde Schoppe). For consistency, entries here are usually given with th (except in certain function words; see below). There is no reason why entries using þ, ð and y should not exist as well; there is a lot of work waiting for someone if they want to start creating triplicate entries with thorns, eths and y’s.

Ȝ[edit]

As in the case with þ and ð, Middle English yogh (ȝ) has counterparts in consonantal y (/j/), gh (velar fricatives /ɣ/ and /x/), and w. During the late Middle English period, the use of yogh increasingly fell away; where it was still in use, its form tended to coalesce with that of z. Again, for the sake of ease, entries here are usually given with y, gh and w, but there is no reason why entries using ȝ should not exist.

Æ[edit]

As with yogh, ash (æ) was used very early in the Middle English period. Words using æ usually have later counterparts with a or e.

I/J and U/V[edit]

During the Middle English period, i/j and u/v were considered variants of the same letter; the choice between them often depended on the surrounding letter, if they were even distinguished at all. At Wiktionary, the convention is to employ i and u for the vowel sounds, while using j and v for the consonant sounds, even if that is at variance with the forms which are actually found in the original text; i.e. love, not loue (an alternate-form entry for the original manuscript form can be created using {{alternative typography of}}). There are exceptions; for instance, the digraph ij for /iː/ is never written as ii at Wiktionary, so lijf is preferred over liif.

Long S (ſ) etc.[edit]

ſ (long s), r rotunda, and similar letter variants should be substituted with s, r, etc. in the names of entries, as they lack any phonetic significance and are usually absent from modern editions of Middle English texts. However, it is acceptable to include them in quotes.

Variation[edit]

Periodisation[edit]

Forms, terms or senses specific to a period can be placed in one of the following categories:

• Early Middle English: the language from 1150-1300; there is a subcategory for terms and forms exclusively found in the Ormulum.
• Late Middle English: the language from 1400-1500.

Anything from before 1150 or after 1500 is not considered Middle English on Wiktionary.

Dialects[edit]

Middle English is conventionally divided into five major dialectal groups; categories exist for forms, terms, and senses specific to them:

• East Midland Middle English (Category:East Midland Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in the East Midlands.
• Kentish Middle English (Category:Kentish Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.
• Northern Middle English (Category:Northern Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in Northern England; probably the most distinct dialectal grouping.
• Southwestern Middle English (Category:Southern Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in the remainder of southern England.
• West Midland Middle English (Category:West Midland Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in the West Midlands.

Additionally, categories exist for more peripheral varieties:

• Category:Cornish Middle English: for terms, forms and senses specific to Middle English spoken in Cornwall.
• Category:East Anglian Middle English: for terms, forms and senses specific to Middle English spoken in East Anglia.
• Category:Early Scots: for terms, forms and senses specific to Early Scots, the variety of Middle English spoken in Scotland and the ancestor of modern Scots.

East Midland Middle English is the dialect typically used for main entries at Wiktionary.

Alternative forms[edit]

To avoid duplication of content, information about a word (pronunciation, meanings, declension) should be centralised at one entry (lemma); alternate forms should be connected to it with a template like {{alternative form of}}. While some Middle English words have a single form that clearly predominates, oftentimes it is not clear what form should be the primary form. There are no hard and fast rules; instead, a decision must be made based on the following criteria (in rough order of priority):

• Convention: Ideally, words should use th, gh, y rather than þ, ð and ȝ. Infinitives should end with -en rather than -e, and forms like hevy are preferred to heuy.
• Consistency: Spellings should match those of related words as closely as possible; suffixes and prefixes should ideally only be spelled in one way.
• Frequency: common spellings should be prioritised over rare ones. The more common spelling should be chosen if multiple spellings are otherwise equally suitable.
• Standardisation: the spellings used should be typical of London Middle English of the late 1300s and the early 1400s; i.e. the forms that Chaucer would use.

Note that some sources (such as the MED) tend to replace vocalic y with i; this should be avoided unless the form with i is the form which best fulfills the above criteria.
Exceptionally, pronouns, conjunctions, and certain prepositions are given with þ rather than th, as for these words, forms with þ are vastly more common in actual usage.

Pronunciation[edit]

Guidelines for adding IPA to Middle English words are located at Appendix:Middle English pronunciation; it may also useful to look at Middle English entries that already have IPA may be so one can acquire familiarity with the conventions used. The orthographic form of a word often does not suffice for determining the pronunciation of a word, so one must have recourse to Old English, (modern) English, and a word’s alternative forms.

The noun[edit]

Templates[edit]

{{enm-noun}} is the headword-line template for Middle English nouns; because of its insufficiency, constructing a custom headword line with {{head}} may sometimes be preferable. There is a declension template ({{enm-decl-noun}}), but it is rarely needed, due to the breakdown of the declensional system in Middle English.

Grammatical gender[edit]

The normal progression of Middle English was toward simplification. This was especially true for the grammatical gender of nouns. Although grammatical gender continued for some time into the Middle English period, surviving longest in Southern dialects, entries here should be given without reference to grammatical gender. This helps in cases where there are conflicting genders for the same word, and for words where the gender is not precisely known.

Noun declension[edit]

During the Middle English period, we see the coalescence of the majority of Old English noun classes into just two: a strong class with plurals in -(e)s and weak class with plurals in -(e)n. Additionally, Middle English retains a small number of irregular plurals: i-mutation plurals (mous, mice), plurals in -ere (child, childere), static plurals (swine, swine) and double plurals (lamb, lambren).

Strong declension[edit]

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	ston	stones
accusative	ston	stones
genitive	stones	stone
dative	stone	stonen

Weak declension[edit]

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	name	namen
accusative	name	namen
genitive	namen	namene
dative	name(n)	namen

In the latter part of the Middle English period, the paradigm above degrades further, resulting in a mere dialectal preference of one plural form over the other, with -s plurals predominating in the North and Midlands, and -n plurals in the South. We also see the complete abandonment of the case system leading to a situation quite similar to what we have in Modern English today.

The verb[edit]

The headword form of a verb should be the infinitive (even if no infinitive is attested for that verb). Because the conjugation of Middle English verbs is highly variable, it is wise to consult a dictionary rather than blindly inserting templates. Extrapolating from earlier or later forms of the language is also not recommended.

Templates[edit]

The headword-line template used for Middle English verbs is {{enm-verb}}; unless the verb is totally regular, it must be manually filled out with the requisite forms.

Because of the complexity of Middle English conjugation, it is conventional to use a conjugation template on verb entries. There are three Middle English conjugation templates:

• {{enm-conj-wk}}: for weak verbs (verbs with a past in -d- or -t-). Most Middle English verbs are weak.
• {{enm-conj-st}}: for strong verbs (verbs that form their past by modifying their stem vowel)
• {{enm-conj-irr}}: for irregular and preterite-present verbs.

The template {{enm-conj}} should not be used, as it is deprecated.

Unlike with Old English, the convention for Middle English is to leave alternative forms without templates (so quaken should have a conjugation template, but quakiȝen should not). Instead, alternate forms of non-lemma forms should ideally be linked from the page of each verbal non-lemma form; as many lemmas still await creation, this is but a distant ideal.

Infinitives[edit]

The standard verbal infinitive marker used for the Middle English verb is -en (e.g. singen), or -n for verbs with monosyllablic infinitives (e.g. don). Verb entries should be lemmatised at the infinitive in even if the infinitive is not attested for that verb. Similarly, verb lemmas should end in -en or -n even if that specific form of the infinitive is not attested, unless it is clear that the infinitive wouldn’t have taken that form (e.g. if the verb is only found in Northern Middle English, where the -n was dropped at an early stage).

Present participles[edit]

Several endings were utilised to mark the present participles of verbs; they varied according to location and date. The most common were -ende (Midlands), -and (Northern), and -inde (Southern). These later developed into -inge/-ynge in the Midlands and South, giving rise to our Modern English present participle in -ing (Northern -and survives in altered form in a few words like blatant, flippant, and wanion). Consequently, -ynge is the default used by the {{enm-verb|stem=}} template.

Typesetting[edit]

Many browsers’ default fonts render Middle English diacritics and other special characters poorly. On Wiktionary, text marked as Middle English therefore uses the special «Latinx» script code, which helps browsers choose the best font. {{lang}} tags text as Middle English and applies this script formatting. It can be as a wrapper around Middle English text:

#* 1340, Dan Michel, ''Ayenbyte of Inwit'':
#*: {{lang|enm|Nou ich wille þet ye ywite hou hit is ywent}}
#*: {{lang|enm|þet þis boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.}}
#*: {{lang|enm|Þis boc is ymad vor lewede men}}
#*: {{lang|enm|Vor vader and vor moder and vor oþer ken}}
#*: {{lang|enm|ham vor to berȝe vram alle manyere zen}}
#*: {{lang|enm|þet ine hare inwytte ne bleve no voul wen.}}
#*: {{lang|enm|'Huo ase god' in his name yzed,}}
#*: {{lang|enm|Þet þis boc made god him yeve þet bread,}}
#*: {{lang|enm|Of angles of hevene, and þerto his red,}}
#*: {{lang|enm|And ondervonge his zaule huanne þet he is dyad. Amen.}}
#*:: Now I will have you know how it has come about,
#*:: That this book is written in the English of Kent,
#*:: This book is made for laymen,
#*:: For father and for mother and for other kin,
#*:: To save them from all manner of sin,
#*:: So that in their consciences would remain no foul blemish,
#*:: 'Who like God' in His name said,
#*:: That this book made God give him that bread,
#*:: By angels of heaven, and also his council,
#*:: And to receive his soul up once he has died. Amen 

1. • 1340, Dan Michel, Ayenbyte of Inwit:

     Nou ich wille þet ye ywite hou hit is ywent

     þet þis boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.

     Þis boc is ymad vor lewede men

     Vor vader and vor moder and vor oþer ken

     ham vor to berȝe vram alle manyere zen

     þet ine hare inwytte ne bleve no voul wen.

     ‘Huo ase god’ in his name yzed,

     Þet þis boc made god him yeve þet bread,

     Of angles of hevene, and þerto his red,

     And ondervonge his zaule huanne þet he is dyad. Amen.

     Now I will have you know how it has come about,

     That this book is written in the English of Kent,

     This book is made for laymen,

     For father and for mother and for other kin,

     To save them from all manner of sin,

     So that in their consciences would remain no foul blemish,

     ‘Who like God’ in His name said,

     That this book made God give him that bread,

     By angels of heaven, and also his council,

     And to receive his soul up once he has died. Amen

Any template that requires a language code will apply the appropriate formatting to the text given to it automatically. This includes basic and widely-used templates like {{l}}, {{m}}, {{t}}, {{head}} and so on.

{{m|enm|theode}}

theode

* Middle English: {{t|enm|forbusne}}

• Middle English: forbusne

See also[edit]

• Wiktionary:About Old English
• Wiktionary:English entry guidelines

External links[edit]

• Middle English Dictionary (Wikipedia article)