Some Characteristics of Middle English

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Some Characteristics of Middle English

Vocabulary:
Consider these pairs of Modern English words. The first of each pair is derived from Old
English and the second is of Anglo-Norman origin: pig/pork, chicken/poultry, calf/veal,
cow/beef, wood/forest, sheep/mutton, house/mansion, worthy/honourable, bold/courageous,
freedom/liberty. 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.
Why is middle English called Anglo-Norman? (Because it is a mixture of Old English and
French)
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.
How do you account with example for the triplicate synonymy of English?
Grammar:
With its simplified case-ending system, the grammar of Middle English is much closer to that
of modern English than that of Old English. The changes in English grammar may be
described as a general reduction of inflections. Endings of the noun and adjective marking
distinctions of number and case and often of gender were so altered in pronunciation as to
lose their distinctive form and hence their usefulness. To some extent the same thing is true
of the verb.
Middle English grammar was simpler than Old English grammar, Comment.
Nouns:
How do you account for this feature of Middle English: "name" and "namen"?

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:
nom/acc
gen
dat

strong
singular
plural
engel
engles
engles
engle(ne)
engle
engle(s)

weak
singular plural
name
namen
name
namen
name
namen

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:
How do you account for theses forms of Middle English: ich here, ou spekest, and he come?

As a general rule, the first person singular of verbs in the present tense ends in -e ("ich here" "I hear"), the second person in -(e)st ("ou spekest" - "thou speakest"), and the third person in
-e ("he come" - "he cometh/he comes"). ( is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think").
Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with southern dialects preserving the Old English -e,
midland dialects showing -en from about 1200 onward, and northern forms using -es in the
third person singular as well as the plural.

Some Characteristics of Middle English

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What are the two form of past verbs in Middle English?

In the past tense, weak verbs are formed by adding an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. These,
without their personal endings, also form past participles, together with past-participle
prefixes derived from Old English: i-, y- and sometimes bi-. Strong verbs, by contrast, form
their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g. binden -> bound), as in Modern English.
Pronouns:
Middle English inherits its pronouns from Old English, with the exception of the third person
plural:
First
Second
Third Impersonal
Masculine
Feminine

Subject
ik / ich / I
ou / thou
hit
he
ho / scho / sche

Singular
Object
me
ee/thee
hit / him
him
hire

Possessive
my(n)
y(n) / thy(n)
his
his
hire

Subject
we
e / ye
he
ei / they

Plural
Object
us
ow / you
hem
em / them

Possessive
oure
ower / your
her
eir / their

The first and second person pronouns in Old English survived into Middle English largely
unchanged, with only minor spelling variations. In the third person, the masculine vocative
singular became 'him'. The neuter form was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that
developed into 'sche', but unsteadily'heyr' remained in some areas for a long time. The lack
of a strong standard written form between the thirteenth and the fifteenth century makes these
changes hard to map.
The overall trend was the gradual reduction in the number of different case endings: the
locative case disappeared, but the six other cases were partly retained in personal pronouns,
as inhe, him, his.
Pronunciation:
Generally, all letters in Middle English words were pronounced. (Silent letters in Modern
English generally come from pronunciation shifts, which means that pronunciation is no
longer closely reflected by the written form because of fixed spelling constraints imposed by
the invention of dictionaries and printing.) Therefore 'knight' was pronounced [knit] (with a
pronounced <k> and the <gh> as the <ch> in German 'Knecht'), not [nat] as in Modern
English.
In earlier Middle English all written vowels were pronounced. By Chaucer's time, however,
the final <e> had become silent in normal speech, but could optionally be pronounced in
verse as the meter required (but was normally silent when the next word began with a vowel).
Archaic characters:
What was the source of such characters in Middle English: , , ?
The following characters can be found in Middle English text, direct holdovers from the Old
English Latin alphabet.
letter

name

pronunciation

Ash

[]

Eth

[]

Yogh

[], [], [j] or [d]

Thorn

[]

Wynn

[w] (the group h represents [])

Middle English Literature:

The term Middle English literature refers to the literature written in Middle
English, from the 12th century until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard,

Some Characteristics of Middle English

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a form of London-based English, became widespread and the printing press regularized the
language. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is
widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. Among his many works,
which, he is best loved today for The Canterbury Tales.
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories organized into a frame narrative or frame tale.
The tales (mostly in verse, although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling
contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the
shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.