Middle English Language and Dates

Northern, Southern, East Midland, West Midland, Kentish

Examples:

3 Pers Sg.:

• loveth in Southern Dialect and Midland District

• loves in North

Plural indicative form of Verb:

• loveth in Southern Dialect

• loven Midland District

• loves in North District

Present Participle:

• lovinde in the South

• lovende in the Midland

• lovande in the North

Pronouns:

hi here hen in the South

they their them in the North

Südhembrishe Verdumpfung: a: => ↄ:

stone, home in the south

stane, home in the North(Scotland)

Southern voicing

• vor, vrom, vox Southern Middle English

• Northern for, from fox Northern Middle English

ch in the SOuth often corresponds to a k in the north

church vs kirk

bench vs benk

Germanic/OE : rīce ‘kingdom, reign’

Old Norse:

• Lexical Borrowings: anger skirt, sky, window, skill, want, get, give,

• Grammatical Borrowings: they, their, them, are

French:

• Loan Words: noble, army judge, rpison sausage, bacon, fruit

Latin:

• loan words: circus, status minimum, medium,calculus, exit

The three word stock:

Latin, french, Germanic

ME is the Agge of transition

• from synthetic to analytic

• from inflexions to word order

audience poetry was primarily an oral encounter.

Spelling evidence

rhyming evidence

comparative evidence

Single vowels before single or double consonants were short if they are still short vowels in PDE and that single vowels are long if they remain long today

Exception

In ME we had the [e:] sounf for words that are now spelled with <e,ee> such as free

and the [ɛː] for words spelled with <ea>

<ea> like dead and breath now short but in ME were pronounced with the long [ɜː]

<oo> like good and food were pronounced with the long vowel [oː]

feet [e:] =>[i:]

mouth [u:] => [au]

name [a:] => [ei]

Fifteenth and sixteenth century

The shift happened after spelling system become standardized and therefore did not affect the way such words are spelled

OE: cniht

ME: knight

Old Hugh German: kneht

Old Saxon: knecht

450 Germanic Conquest

450-600 prehistoric Old Egnlisch

600 Christianization

600 - 1150 Old Englisch

1066 Norman Conquest

• William the Great invades England=> Battle of Hastings

• 1204 Normandy was lost to King John of England

• Black Death 1348

1150 -1500 Middle English

1476 Printing Press

1500-1700 Early Modern English

1707 Act of Union

1700- now Modern Day English