Middle English is the name given by historical linguists Modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity to the diverse forms of the English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of in use between the late 11th century and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London London is a leading global city being the world's largest financial centre alongside New York City, and has the largest city GDP in Europe. Central London is home to the headquarters of most of the UK's top 100 listed companies and more than 100 of Europe's 500 largest. London's influence in politics, finance, education, entertainment, media,-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts, the invention and spread of the printing press are widely regarded as the most influential event in the second millennium AD, revolutionizing the way people conceive and describe into England The area now called England has been settled by people of various cultures for about 35,000 years, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant by William Caxton William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England. He was also the first English retailer of printed books (his London contemporaries were all Dutch, German or French) in the late 1470s. By that time the variant of the Northumbrian Northumbria or Northhumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory: the Humber Estuary dialect (prevalent in Northern England) spoken in southeast Scotland Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland was developing into the Scots language The history of the Scots language refers to how Anglic varieties spoken in parts of Scotland developed into modern Scots. The language of England The area now called England has been settled by people of various cultures for about 35,000 years, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant as used after this time, up to 1650, is known as Early Modern English Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century) to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English, although the King James Bible intentionally keeps.

Unlike Old English Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon, which tended largely to adopt Late West Saxon scribal conventions in the immediate pre-Conquest period, Middle English as a written language displays a wide variety of scribal (and presumably dialectal) forms. However, the diversity of forms in written Middle English may signify neither greater variety of spoken forms of English than could be found in pre-Conquest England, nor a faithful representation of contemporary spoken English (though presumably greater fidelity to this than may be found in Old English texts).

Rather, this diversity suggests the gradual end of the role of Wessex The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons (Old English: Westseaxna rīce) was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest of 1016, from 1020 to 1 as a focal point and trend-setter for scribal activity, and the emergence of more distinct local scribal styles and written dialects, and a general pattern of transition of activity over the centuries that follow, as Northumbria Northumbria or Northhumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory: the Humber Estuary, East Anglia The Kingdom of East Anglia or the Kingdom of the East Angles was one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. The kingdom was founded by Angles from Angeln in northern Germany, and was divided between the "North Folk" and the "South Folk", whose territories form the basis of the later shires of Norfolk and Suffolk. The precise and London emerge successively as major centres of literary production, with their own generic interests.

History

Eleventh to fourteenth centuries

Sample passage of Old English (Late West Saxon) of the 11th century

(Note the letters ⟨þ⟩ Thorn, or þorn , is a letter in the Old English and Icelandic alphabets, as well as some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th. The letter originated from the rune ᚦ in the Elder Fuþark, called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs ("giant") in the and ⟨ð⟩ ETH Zurich or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich is a science and technology university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland. Locals sometimes refer to it by the name Poly, derived from the original name Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum or Federal Polytechnic Institute represent [θ] The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. Though rather rare as a phoneme in the world's inventory of languages, it is encountered in some of the most widespread and influential . The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is θ, and the equivalent X- and/or [ð] The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, eth, is ð, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is D. The symbol ð was taken from the Old English letter eth, which could stand for either a voiced or unvoiced)

Syððan wæs geworden þæt he ferde þurh þa ceastre and þæt castel: godes rice prediciende and bodiende. and hi twelfe mid. And sume wif þe wæron gehælede of awyrgdum gastum: and untrumnessum: seo magdalenisce maria ofþære seofan deoflu uteodon: and iohanna chuzan wif herodes gerefan: and susanna and manega oðre þe him of hyra spedum þenedon.

A literal translation, using descendants of the original words where possible (bold words are explanations), might be

"Sith (since) [it] was worthen (had come to happen) that he fared through the towns: God's rich (kingdom) predicating and boding, and he [had] twelve (disciples) [along with him], and some wives (women), that were healed of suffocating ghosts and un-upright-nesses: Mary, Magdalene, out of whom seven devils out-went, and Johanna, Chuza (Herod's steward)'s wife, and Susanna, and many others that (gave) him of their speeds (things thought of as "fast") "

The typical modern translation is

"And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance."

—Translation of Luke The Gospel According to Luke , generally shortened to the Gospel of Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension. The author is traditionally identified as Luke the Evangelist ch.8 v.1–3, from the New Testament The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament. Unlike the Old Testament, the contents of the New Testament deal explicitly with Christianity, although both the Old and New Testament are regarded, together, as Sacred Scripture. The New Testament

The 11th century

Norman French in the Kingdom of England

The transfer of power in 1066 resulted in only limited culture shock. But the top levels of society of English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies were removed. Their replacements spoke Norman French Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. Norman can be classified in the northern Oïl languages with Picard and Walloon. The name Norman-French is sometimes used to describe not only the Norman language, but also the administrative languages of Anglo-Norman and Law French used in England and used Latin for administrative purposes. Thus Norman French 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.

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 Pigs are a genus of even-toed ungulates within the family Suidae. The name hog most commonly refers to the domestic pig in everyday parlance, but technically encompasses several distinct species, including the wild boar. Swine is a collective noun generally used to describe pigs as a group rather than an individual, however it may often be implied/pork, chicken The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Jungle Fowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other bird. Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food, consuming both their meat and their eggs/poultry Poultry is the category of domesticated birds that people keep for the purpose of collecting their eggs, or killing for their meat and/or feathers. These most typically are members of the superorder Galloanserae , especially the order Galliformes (which includes chickens, quails and turkeys) and the family Anatidae (in order Anseriformes),, calf Calves are the young of domestic cattle. Calves are reared to become adult cattle, or are slaughtered for their meat, called veal/veal Veal is the meat of young cattle . Though veal can be produced from a calf of either sex and any breed, most veal comes from male calves of dairy cattle breeds. Veal has a tender texture, cow Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius. Cattle are raised as livestock for meat (beef and veal), as dairy animals for milk and other dairy products,/beef Beef is the culinary name for meat from bovines, especially domestic cattle . Beef is one of the principal meats used in the cuisine of Australia, Argentina, Europe and America, and is also important in Africa, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Beef is considered a taboo food in some cultures: especially in Hinduism (although not strictly forbidden),, wood Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many plants. It has been used for centuries for both fuel and as a construction material for several types of living areas such as houses. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. In the strict sense wood is produced as/forest A forest is an area with a high density of trees. There are many definitions of a forest, based on the various criteria. These plant communities cover approximately 9.4% of the Earth's surface (or 30% of total land area), though they once covered much more (about 50% of total land area), in many different regions and function as habitats for, sheep Domestic sheep are quadrupedal, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Although the name "sheep" applies to many species, in everyday usage it almost always refers to Ovis aries. Numbering a little over 1 billion, domestic sheep are the most/mutton Lamb, hogget, and mutton are the meat of domestic sheep. The meat of an animal in its first year is lamb; that of an older sheep is hogget and later mutton, house A house is a home, shelter, building or structure that is a dwelling or place for habitation by human beings. The term includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures. In some contexts, "house" may mean the same as dwelling, residence, home, abode, lodging,/mansion A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. realtors define a mansion as a dwelling of over 8,000 square feet . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms. Today, however, there is no formal definition beyond being a large and well-appointed house, worthy/honourable The prefix The Honourable or The Honorable is a style used before the names of certain classes of persons. It is considered an honorific styling, bold A means of emphasis that does not have much effect on “blackness” is the use of italics, where the text is written in a script style, or the use of oblique, where the vertical orientation of all letters is slanted to the left or right. With one or the other of these techniques , words can be highlighted without making them stand out much from/courageous, freedom Free will is the purported ability of agents to make choices free from constraints. Historically, the constraint of dominant concern has been the metaphysical constraint of determinism. The opposing positions within that debate are metaphysical libertarianism, the claim that determinism is false and thus that free will exists; and hard determinism,/liberty Liberty is the concept of ideological and political philosophy that identifies the condition to which an individual has the right to behave according to one's own personal responsibility and free will.^[1]

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 A court is a form of tribunal, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law. In both common law and civil law legal systems, courts are the central means for dispute, judge A judge, or arbiter of justice, is a lead who presides over a court of law, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is like an umpire in a game and conducts the trial impartially and in an open court. The, jury A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to judge whether an accused person is not guilty or guilty of a crime. (There is no such verdict as 'innocent'), appeal The specific procedures for appealing, including even whether there is a right of appeal from a particular type of decision, can vary greatly from country to country. Even within a jurisdiction, the nature of an appeal can vary greatly depending on the type of case, parliament A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French parlement, the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which such a discussion took place. It acquired. Also prevalent in Modern English are terms relating to the chivalric Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood. It is usually associated with ideals of knightly virtues, honor and courtly love. The word is derived from the French word "chevalerie", itself derived from "chevalier", which means knight, derived from "cheval", horse cultures which arose in the 12th century, an era of feudalism Feudalism is a political and military system between a feudal aristocracy , and his vassals. In its most classic sense, feudalism refers to the Medieval European political system composed of a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs. Although and crusading The Crusades were a series of religiously sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291. Other campaigns in Spain and Eastern. Early on, this vocabulary of refined behaviour began to work its way into English: the word 'debonaire' appears in the 1137 Peterborough Chronicle The Peterborough Chronicle , one of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, contains unique information about the history of England after the Norman Conquest. According to philologist J.A.W. Bennett, it is the only prose history in English between the Conquest and the later 14th century; so too does 'castel A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a fortress, which was not a home, and from a fortified town, which was a public defence. The term' (castle), another import of the Normans The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of mostly Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock. Their identity emerged initially in the first half of the tenth century, and gradually evolved over succeeding centuries. The name &, 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 (itself of Germanic origin).

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.

The 12th to 14th centuries

Deeper changes occurred in the grammar. Bit by bit, the wealthy and the government anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French) remained the dominant language of literature and law for 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 too. The loss of case-endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages, so cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population. English remained, after all, the language of the vast majority.

It was also a literary language in England, the language of poets such as Chaucer and Langland, from the 12th to the 14th centuries, alongside Anglo-Norman and Latin. In the later 14th century, Chancery Standard (or London English) — a phenomenon produced by the increase of bureaucracy in London, and the concomitant increase in London literary output —introduced a greater conformity in English spelling. Although the fame of Middle English literature tends to derive principally from the later 14th century, with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and of John Gower, a substantial body of literature survives from throughout the Middle English period. Early Middle English (1100-1300) has a largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary (in the North, with many Norse borrowings). But it has a greatly simplified inflectional system. The grammatical relations that were expressed in Old English by the dative and accusative cases are replaced in Early Middle English with constructions with prepositions. This replacement is incomplete. We still today have the Old English genitive in many words (we now call it the "possessive": the form dog's for "of the dog"; but the apostrophe here doesn't mean that anything has been "left out." But most of the other case endings disappear in the Early ME period, including most of the dozens of forms of the word the. Grammatical genders also disappear from English during the Early ME period (apart from personal pronouns) further simplifying the language.

c. 1400

The ruling class began to use Middle English increasingly around this time. The Parliament of England used English from about the 1360s, and the king's court used mainly English from the time of King Henry V (who acceded in 1413). The oldest surviving correspondence in English, by Sir John Hawkwood, dates from the 1390s. With some standardisation of the language, English began to exhibit the more recognisable forms of grammar and syntax that would form the basis of future standard dialects:

And it is don, aftirward Jesus made iourne bi cites & castelis prechende & euangelisende þe rewme of god, & twelue wiþ hym & summe wymmen þat weren helid of wicke spiritis & sicnesses, marie þat is clepid maudeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis wenten out & Jone þe wif off chusi procuratour of eroude, & susanne & manye oþere þat mynystreden to hym of her facultes

—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."

—Translation of Luke ch.8 v.1–3, from the New Testament

A text from 1391: Geoffrey Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe.

This was a time of upheaval in England. Four kings were deposed between 1399 and 1500, and one of them was deposed twice. New men came into positions of power, some of them from other parts of the country or from lower levels in society. Stability came only gradually, after 1485, with the Tudor dynasty. The language changed too—there was much change during the 15th century. But towards the end of that century a more modern English was starting to emerge. Printing began in England in the 1470s, which tended to 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.

Construction

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 Dutch.

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) demonstate the two patterns:

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 and brethren; and it is slightly less rare in some dialects, used in eyen for eyes, shoon for shoes, hosen for hose(s) and kine for cows.

Verbs

As a general rule (and all these rules are general), the first person singular of verbs in the present tense ends in -e ("ich here" - "I hear"), the second person in -(e)st ("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").

In the past tense, weak verbs are formed by adding an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. These, without their personal endings, also form past participles, together with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i-, y- and sometimes bi-.

Strong verbs, by contrast, form their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g. binden -> bound), as in Modern English.

Pronouns

Post-Conquest English inherits its pronouns from Old English, 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):

Here are the Old English pronouns. Middle English pronouns derived from these.

The first and second person pronouns in Old English survived into Middle English largely unchanged, with only minor spelling variations. In the third person, the masculine accusative singular became 'him'. The feminine form was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into 'she', but unsteadily—'ho' remained in some areas for a long time. The lack of a strong standard written form between the eleventh and the fifteenth century makes these changes hard to map.

The overall trend was the gradual reduction in the number of different case endings: the dative case disappeared, but the three other cases were partly retained in personal pronouns, as in he, him, his.

Orthography

Pronunciation

Generally, all letters in Middle English words were pronounced. (Silent letters in Modern English 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 [kniçt] (with a pronounced <k> and the <gh> as the <ch> in German 'Knecht'), not [naɪt] 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). Chaucer followed these conventions: -e is silent in 'kowthe' and 'Thanne', but is pronounced in 'straunge', 'ferne', 'ende', etc. (Presumably, the final <y> is partly or completely dropped in 'Caunterbury', so as to make the meter flow.)

An additional rule in speech, and often in poetry as well, was that a non-final unstressed <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' sounds like "evry" and 'palmeres' like "palmers".

Archaic characters

The following characters can be found in Middle English texts. Ash may still be used as a variant of the digraph <ae> in many English words of Greek or Latin origin; and may be found in brand names or loanwords. Yogh lingers in some Scottish names as z, as in McKenzie with a z pronounced /j/. Yogh became indistinguishable from cursive z in Middle Scots and printers tended to use z when yogh wasn't available in their fonts. Thorn was similarly approximated with y, hence the archaic variant spelling of the, ye pronounced the same as the. Icelandic uses æ, ð, and þ; Faroese uses æ and ð; and Norwegian and Danish use æ. Yogh is not used, although Dutch g is pronounced similarly to one variant pronunciation of yogh.

These were direct hold-overs from the Old English alphabet (a Roman alphabet variant, which drew some additional letters from Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) Runes).

Chancery Standard

Chancery Standard was a written form of English used by government bureaucracy and for other official purposes from the late 15th century. It is believed to have contributed in a significant way to the development of the English language as spoken and written today. Because of the differing dialects of English spoken and written across the country at the time, the government needed a clear and unambiguous form for use in its official documents. Chancery Standard was developed to meet this need.

History of the Chancery Standard

The Chancery Standard (CS) was developed during the reign of King Henry V (1413 to 1422) in response to his order for his chancery (government officials) to use, like himself, English rather than Anglo-Norman or Latin. It had become broadly standardised by about the 1430s.

It was largely based on the London and East Midland dialects, for those areas were the political and demographic centres of gravity. However, it used other 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 CS would have been familiar with French and Latin. The strict grammars of those languages influenced the construction of the standard. It was not the only influence on later forms of 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, CS was used for most official purposes except by the Church (which used Latin) and for some legal purposes (for which French and some Latin were used). It was disseminated around England by bureaucrats on official business, and slowly gained prestige.

CS provided a widely intelligible form of English for the first English printers, from the 1470s onwards.

Sample text

The following is the beginning of the general Prologue from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, which is in Middle English and Modern English.

In modern prose:

When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, bathing every vein in such liquid by which virtue the flower is engendered, and when Zephyrus with his sweet breath has also inspired the tender plants in every wood and field, and the young sun is halfway through Aries, and small birds that sleep all night with an open eye make melodies, their hearts pricked by nature, then people long to go on pilgrimages, and pilgrims seek foreign shores and distant shrines known in sundry lands, and especially they wend their way to Canterbury from every shire of England to seek the holy blessed martyr who has helped them when they were sick.^[3]

See also

• Medulla Grammatice (collection of glossaries)
• Middle English creole hypothesis
• Middle English Dictionary
• Middle English literature

References

1. ^ Scott, Walter. Ivanhoe; chapter 1
2. ^ Gleason, Paul (2002). "Don DeLillo, T.S. Eliot, and the Redemption of America's Atomic Waste Land". Underwords. Joseph Dewey, Steven G. Kellman and Irving Malin. Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp.. p. 131. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=i5BlLrcWUe0C&pg=PA131&dq=%22++++When+in+April+the+sweet+showers+fall+++++And+pierce+the+drought+of+March+to+the+root,+and+all%22&client=firefox-a.
3. ^ Sweet, Henry (d. 1912) (2005). First Middle English Primer. Evolution Publishing: Bristol, Pennsylvania. ISBN 1-889758-70-1.

• 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

External links

• A. L. Mayhew and Walter William Skeat. A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580
• Middle English Glossary

Categories: Middle English personal pronouns | History of the English language | Middle English language | English languages

See Also:

• British English: Encyclopedia
• American English: Encyclopedia
• IPA Chart for English: Encyclopedia
• Rhymes:English:-ɛlə(R): Dictionary

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