1 one, 2 tuo/twei, 3 thri, 4, fower, 5 five, 6 six, 7 sevene, 8 eight, 9 nine, 10 ten.Vocabulary was similarly mixed between Latinate (French and Latin) and Germanic origin as now, although there was a greater awareness of the distinction (the oldest known song in the English language, Sumer is icumen in‘Summer has arrived’ dates from early Middle English, but its vocabulary is entirely Germanic). People even wrote their own name variously! This mattered less, as proportionately fewer people were literate.Ī “chancery standard”, forms to be used by the Civil Service in effect, did develop from the fifteenth century, but widespread standardisation only occurred well after the invention of the printing press into what is regarded as the (Early) Modern English period. In the Middle English period, variations in spelling and usage were widespread, depending on geographical origin, exact time, and even on simply fitting on to the page or the line. It is just possible that this was slightly different at the time for words borrowed from French or Latin. Middle English was probably pronounced towards the back of the mouth, and with stressed syllables strengthened and lengthened as in the modern language.
Scribes also used and interchangeably, treating them as absolutely the same letter.Įarly Middle English also retained the letter “yogh”, which is usually (but not always) now /g/ it was pronounced somewhere between /g/ and /y/ before /e/ and /i/ (and similar vowels), but more like a hard /x/ (as in Scottish ‘lo ch‘) otherwise. In words such as write, knife or gnat, the initial /w/, /k/ and /g/ were sounded as was the /l/ in talk.Īnglo-Saxon regarded /f/ and /v/ as the same letter (the distinction was only brought in by the influence of Norman French), and these were still variously pronounced around the country and thus used in writing almost interchangeably in some areas. modern German Nacht) at the time of Chaucer. Words such as night were just losing the middle consonant sound (close to IPA /x/, cf. This means a word like name ‘name’ was pronounced exactly as it looks (and as it still is in modern German) was never silent. There was no standard English at the time, but of course the bizarre linguistic truth is that modern Standard English spelling reflects it well, being based on the pronunciation of Middle English, not Modern English. So what was the language of Chaucer like? The rest of the rise from there to global status is history. This, all combined with ongoing wars with France, saw English become the language of late medieval English nationalism. Soon, English also had Chaucer, a major literary figure. As survivors rose up the social scale consequently, so did English the King’s Speech was presented to Parliament in English for the first time in 1362. The Black Death changed that somewhat, as it was indiscriminate, killing the French-speaking aristocracy in big numbers. Furthermore, English was spoken only in England and parts of Wales the language descending from Anglo-Saxon in use in Scotland was recognised as a separate language, Scots.
The administrative and high language of England was Norman French (and the ecclesiastical language was Medieval Latin, based on Classical). It seems astonishing now, but English just before the Black Death in the mid-14th century was a colloquial language of low status. Let us just stop on the way through linguistic history to take a quick glance at Middle English.
0 kommentar(er)
