A. History
of the Language: Old
English period mid-Ve - 1066
Middle
English 1066 - late XVe
Modern
English XVIe – present
1. OLD ENGLISH (Anglo-Saxon)
a)
Germanic & hence heavily inflected language, with changes in orthography to
indicate changes in person, tense, case, mood, #. Hence a synthetic, not
analytic language--great freedom in word order, especially in poetry.
[inflection--not
here a variation of pitch or tone, but an alteration in a word's form to
indicate different grammatical or syntactical relations: drink/drank,
bring/brought, I/me/my, she/her/her]
b) different symbols invented by scribes using Roman alphabet
to represent OE sounds: þ(thorn), đ(eth), æ (ash)
c) Still,
strong survival
to
present--of 1000 most common words, 83% have OE origin and have changed little:
Life, love, man, god, word; come, sit, see, give, seek, be; 80% of pronouns and
prepositions
2. MIDDLE
ENGLISH--earliest examples from late XIIe
a) much less inflection--adjectives do some, and some verbs
b) loss of declensions (toward ModE
nominative/objective)
c) French
(and Latin) influences and borrowings
d) dialects: West Saxon dominant in OE
by late Xe; regional forms quite distinct
in the fourteenth century (SE Midland (Chaucer); W Midland (Piers Plowman); NW
Midland (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), Northern (Yorkshire)
ii)
considerable variation even within dialects, as with
Chaucer's London dialect; Chaucer's and ours grew out of the London
dialect
3. MODERN
ENGLISH--Shakespeare's language and ours.
The so-called Great
Vowel Shift is the major (and largely inexplicable) difference
between ME and ModE—a XVe
phenomenon
ME long a
(pron aa) à ModE
long a (rake)
ME long e
(pron. a) à ModE long e (pron.
e)
ME long o
(pron. o) à ModE long o (pron.
oo, spoon)
ME long i
(pron e) à ModE long i (pron ai, like)
ME long u
(pron oo) à ModE
long u (use)
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Doc Grady's QUICK 'N' DIRTY
GUIDE TO MIDDLE ENGLISH
I. Sounds
A. If you know a
modern romance language, you're all set—just pretend the Great Vowel Shift never happened.
B. VOWELS.
Long when doubled (goon, heeth), terminal
(he); a, e, o when followed by a
consonant/vowel (name, seke); short when
followed by two consonants
(thynne).
vowel spelling ModE equivalent ME
example
long a
a,
aa father,
Hahvahd name, maken
a a hot,
Mann can, that
long e (o & cl) e, ee fate,
there be, sweete, teche
e e set tendre
final e e sofa,
horses sonne
long i i, y machine lif, myn, I, ryden
i i, y sit this, thyng
long o (o & cl) o, oo note,
broad go, goon, bote
o o oft pot, folk
long u
ou,
ow, goose flour, foules
u u, o put ful, love
"final u"
u, eu,
ew, uw, eau pure vertu, beautee, new, aventure
one dipthong ay,ai,ey,ei aisle/day saide, day, wey
C. CONSONANTS:
pronounce 'em all! gnat, knave, folk
c,
g = same as today: certes, gentilesse ch = church
gh = ich, loch, hue: myght, knyght gh = silent at end, indicates long vowel: sigh
gn = n at end, indicates long vowel: sign, regn gg = bigge or brigge
D. FINAL UNSTRESSED
E
1) Pronounced when
final or when needed for meter (more below)
2) Omitted or
elided when preceding "h" or a vowel, or when inconvenient for meter.
"And gladly wolde
he lerne and gladly teche"
3) Slurring medial
(Canterb'ry)
and terminal (ev'r,
nev'r, com'th) syllables
is permissible.
II. Sense
A. Nouns
1) Most possessive
nouns take and –s or an –es (e.g., Of
hertes hele and deedly woundes cure,” PF 128), but some possessive nouns don't inflect:
suster sonne, Lady grace, herte roote, Priamus
sonne. Don't worry about case inflections unless
you're planning to write in ME
.
2) Most nouns add
-s or -es for plural, though some don't inflect
(e.g., hors). Others end in -n, like ModE children or women--cf. ME ÿen.
B) Adjectives and
Adverbs:
1) Adverbs can end in –ly
but also -liche (e.g. rudeliche) or –e (“ful loude he song”)
2)
Adjectives and prepositions can follow nouns and objects (as in verse
generally): shoures soote;
rood hym agayns. Don't worry about case inflections unless
you're planning to write in ME.
C. Pronouns
Nom. Poss. Obj.
1st I, ich my, myn me
pl. we oure us
2nd thow thy, thyn thee [number distinctions can indicate social
pl. ye youre you distinction: “ye” is more formal than “thou”]
3rd he his him
she her hir(e)
it, hit his it, hit
pl. they hire them, hem
Demonstratives:
that (sing), tho (pl); this (sing.), thise/these
(pl) (cp.
"Thise woful vers that wepen as I write")
Relative pronouns:
Chaucer uses which, that, or which that instead of who and
whom when referring to human beings. (cp."But I, that am
exiled" or "a wyf, I Whiche that he lovede.)"
D. Verbs
1)
Infinitives sometimes end in -n, -en: to sayn, to goon
2) personal endings are -e (1st sing), -st (2nd s.), -th (3rd
s.), -en (pl): ich love, thou lovest, he/she/it loveth, we/you/they loven
3)
As in ModE, there are both strong (vowel changes) and
weak (adding –d or –ed) past
tenses; cp. singen
(I sang/soong; thow songe; he/she/hit sang/soong;
they songen) and preyen (I preyede/preyde; thow preyedest;
he/she/hit preyede/preyde;
they preyeden)
4) Beware i-, y- in
past participles (OE): yronne, ymaked. And watch out for shifts in verb tense in
the middle of a sentence: And doun he kneleth, and with
humble chere / And herte soor, he seyde as ye shul here…
5) Double negatives
are common and typically intensify (rather than cancel one another out): ne studieth noght. Note also
negative contractions of common verbs:
nis (ne + is) = is not nam (ne + am) =
am not
nere (ne + were) = were
not nas (ne + was) =
was not
nill (ne + will) = will
not, do not desire nolde (ne + wolde) = would not, did not desire
nath (ne + haveth) = have/has
not nadde (ne + hadde) = had not
not (ne + wot) = knows not, does not know niste (ne + wiste)
= knew not, did not know
6) Modals sometimes
have meanings in addition to their auxiliary function
ginne; gan/gonne: intensifier & sign of past, like ModE do/did: myn herte gynneth
blede; upon hir knes she gan to falle [NB: it does not mean begin/began]
will/wol; wolde:
"to desire, want" as well as indicating futurity or the conditional
conne/konne; coude/koude: "to know" as well as "can"
shall; sholde:
"must, have to" as well as futurity: the time approcheth that this weddyng sholde be
do; did: "to cause": he dide doon sleen hem; but yt doth me for fere swete
7) Impersonal
constructions: him liketh,
it pleases him; hire reweth,
it pains her; him thynketh,
it
seems to him (but cp. he
thynketh, he thinks)
E. Word order Middle
English is more flexible in word order than Modern English, and uses syntactic
patterns no longer common today—except, of course, in poetry. Some examples (from Kolve &
Olson):
object-subject-verb
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, / He taughte
object-verb-subject
A Yeman hadde he
complement-subject-
verb Curteys he was
complement-verb-subject Short
was his gowne
verb-subject-object
Thus
hath this pitous day a blisful
ende
subject-auxiliary-object-verb
I have thy feith and thy benignitee . . .
assayed
A. OE, Alliterative
ME: rhythm depends on stresses and unrhymed alliterative lines.
1. OE
four-stress line, allit. aa/ax.
Note caesura.
Her
Æþelstan cyning eorla dryhten
Beorna beag-giefa and his broþor eac
Eadmund æþeling ealdor-langne tir
Geslogon æt sæecce sweorda ecgum. . .
2. ME
alliterative poetry (PP): longer lines, more alliteration,
less care of unstresses syllables
B. Chaucer's verse
1. Standard
early ME form: four-stress couplets
HF:
I have gret wonder, be this lyght
How that I lyve,
for day ne nyght
I may nat slepe wel nygh
noght,
I have so many an ydel
thoght.
2. Later
developed a five-stress line, usually iambic with 10 syllables. First extensive
(perhaps first) use of iambic pentameter; cf. Shakes.,
Marlowe, Milton, Pope, Dryden, Wordsworth
PF:
"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne"
cp. Shakespeare, # 130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like
the sun"
a) 5-stress line in stanza form (rime royal) in PF, TC, some
tales
3.
Chaucer's verse is good verse, his rhymes good rhymes--let both of them help
you with their regularity. There is an occasional eleventh, weak syllable (like
unstressed e at end of line).
4. Use
rhyme and meter to help you with meaning, too--try saying an unfamiliar word
out loud
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Some other useful web pages for studying Chaucer’s language: Harvard Chaucer page I; Harvard Chaucer page II; audio files
Here’s a basic Chaucer glossary that highlights the 100 most
common words.