CREATOR
CHELSEA NICHOLSON
Middle English
1100 - 1500 AD
Again, in 1066, England was invaded and conquered, this time by William the Conqueror (who was the Duke of Normandy). The conquerors bought with them the French language which became part of the royal court. It was then at this time that the languages were separated into social class. The upper class spoke French while the lower class spoke English.
It wasn't until the 14th century that English became more dominant with French being left behind. Although, there were many french words that made their way into the English language. If you remember back to the changes in lexicology, you would recognise that this is the form of borrowing in terms of where words come form.
During this period, 10,000 french words were adopted with 75% of them still being used today.
There was also few words that carried onto Middle English from Anglo-Saxon (Old English). Some words include:
As you can see Middle English was a lot easier to read or pronounce. The way that they spelt was how they would sound the words out. Take the example 'Queen.' They spelt it 'cwene.' This is very literal in the way that they (and we still) say /kween/. This made a lot of sense and it was therefore easier to read and write by using common sense of how the word sounded.
Today in Modern English where we would spell 'knee,' they would spell it 'ni,' because that it the way that it is pronounced.
Imagine if it we still wrote like that today. It would be easier for foreign people to read the English language because there would be no silent letters. We have these today because of the origins of the words (see more about this in Modern English).
From the early 1400s Kind Henry V's court began using English. This was not due to linguistics but there were many reasons.
In Middle English word order became much more important. There was also more structure in how words formed sentences. Middle English lost many word endings (inflections) because of the transition from a synthetic language to an analytical one. As discussed earlier, Old English used the gender to show grammatical relationships, but toward the end of the Middle English period, this dropped off, and non-living objects took on a more neutral meaning.
The orthography of Middle English changed quite a bit from Old English. If you are to look below, this alphabet is much more recognisable and we can see how our Modern English alphabet started to come about. There were no capital letters and the only letter that we now have today that was not present was 'v'. As you can see there are also a couple of IPA symbols.
Middle English changed significantly due to the Norman invasion in 1066. These changes include:
- the loss of inflections
- less freedom in word order
- loss of grammatical gender
- more phonetic spelling
- final -e pronounced, as well as all consonants
- emergence of Middle English dialects: Northumbrian (Northern dialect), West Saxon (Southern dialect), Kentish and Merican (West Midland and East Midland dialect)
- the eventual dominance of the London dialect as the standard spoken and written language
(St Thomas, 2003)
'During the Middle English period the English language is characterised by a complete lack of a standard variety' (ODEL, 2014) whereas Old English had an almost standard dialect of West Saxon. During the Middle English period, English became a secondary language due to the political changes occurring in England after the Norman Conquest in 1066. As a result, several distinct dialects emerged in Middle English as no one dialect was standard. The 4 distinct dialects of Middle English can be seen on the map to the right and are listed below:
- Northumbrian (Northern dialect)
- West Saxon (Southern dialect)
- Kentish
- Merican (West Midland and East Midland dialect)
