History of the English Language : The Middle English Period
Sweeping changes in vocabulary occurred, first by the Scandinavian influence and then by the Norman French. The real force of the Norse influence on the language became perceptible only in early Middle English. It was the effect of the Norman Conquest and of the consequent French influence which later deprived English of its homogenous character. From 1042 onwards, Norman-French must have been spoken at the English Court. But It could not influence the common people. They used to speak in their native language. Thus, for some years there were two languages spoken side by side: English and Norman French. French remained the language of officials and enjoyed a special social status. Whereas ninety percent of the population still spoke English. Gradually these two languages mingled together to give what is known as Middle English, the mixed Anglo-French tongue from which English is descended. F T Wood points out that this process was completed by about 1300, and it is significant that the resultant language was still predominantly a Saxon one, despite the vastly superior status that had been attached to Norman's tongue for the past two centuries.
MIDDLE ENGLISH DIALECTS
Middle English had a variety of dialects, more numerous and divergent than that of Old English.
The Northern: This includes the dialects of counties north of the Humber and the lowlands of Scotland.
The Midland Group: This includes the dialects of the vast central area, north of the Thames and south of the Humber. This group can be subdivided into East Midland, West Midland, South Midland, North Midland, and Central Midland. It is the East Midland dialect that late emerged as the standard language of the period. It was spoken in and around London and as London became increasingly important as the centre of English life and affair. Moreover, it was the language used at Oxford and Cambridge. It was the dialect in which Geoffrey Chaucer, the literary icon of the period wrote. These are the main reasons for its status as a standard language and its special literary status.
The Southern Group: This group includes the countries south of the Thames. It is further subdivided into South-Eastern and South-Western. While studying the evolution of English during the Middle English period, we must consider four different aspects. • Grammatical changes • Changes in pronunciation• Change in spelling• Changes in and additions to the vocabulary
MIDDLE ENGLISH GRAMMAR
There was a remarkable simplification of the inflectional system, with the reduction of a few inflections, and the period is rightly called the period of “leveled inflections”. As a result, word order became less free. All word's final unaccented syllables were reduced to –e which had phonetic value. E.g. Seeke, sweete, etc.
Old English had several plural markers. In Middle English ‘–en’ emerged as the general plural marker in most of the dialects, but in East Midland, the most popular dialect used –es which came to be established as the plural marker.
In Middle English, the infinitive form of a verb was indicated by adding –en to it. Later, in addition to the –en, they added a ‘to’ also to the verb, i.e., to + vb + -en. Initially ‘to’ had restricted usage, indicating only the directional sense. Later it came to be used with all kinds of verbs and gradually the ‘–en’ was dropped. In Middle English, the indeclinable ‘the’ (ie. ‘the’ which does not change according to the gender and number of the noun) was added to all forms of nouns. In inflected languages like Old English, it had different forms with different forms of nouns.
The personal pronoun ‘she’ was introduced in this period. The dative and accusative case forms of personal pronouns were early combined generally under the dative, ‘him’, ‘her’, and ‘them’. Gender came to be based on logic and common sense and the natural gender system replaced the grammatical one. After 1200, when English was used for writing purposes by laymen, they adopted the simpler system of the natural gender.
MIDDLE ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
The Old English long vowels ‘e’ and ‘o’ became ‘I’ and ‘u’ respectively.
e > I
fet > fit
o> u
fod > fud
The long vowels ‘a’, ‘I’, and ‘u’ changed into the diphthongs ‘ei’, ‘ai’, and ‘au’ respectively.
ei name > neim
i > ai
fir > fair
u > au
hus > haus
MIDDLE ENGLISH SPELLING
Changes in spelling were due to the influence of the French and Norman French orthographic conventions. The difficulties of the French scribes who were the chief copyists led to a lot of confusion in spelling and the consequent loss of the phonetic habit of Old English. The French scribes introduced some of their own methods of spelling without any corresponding changes in pronunciation. Thus, the sound /u/ came to be represented by the spelling ‘ou’ and the long /o/ by ‘oo’.
Eg. u > ou
hus >hous
o > oo
god > good
The hard ‘c’ of Old English came to be written ‘k’ before front vowels as in ‘keep’ but retained as ‘c’ before back vowels as I ‘cool’. Thus Old English ‘cyning’ came to be written as ‘king’. Again, the letter ‘c’ before front vowels came to be pronounced ‘s’ after the French fashion, as in ‘city’, ‘receive’ etc. In a few words, mostly coming from Greek, the spelling ‘ch’ is pronounced as/k/as in ‘chorus’, choir’ etc.
MIDDLE ENGLISH VOCABULARY
The French influence brought in not only grammatical and orthographic changes but considerable vocabulary changes also. This is not surprising as French was for many years the official language of the court and was used in parliament, law courts, and schools. The existence of English and French side by side sometimes gave rise to synonyms, one from the native tongue and the other from Norman French which gradually became differentiated in meaning. For instance, ‘wed’ and ‘marry’. The former is native and originally meant ‘to take a pledge’ and the latter from French means ‘to become a husband’. This probably reflects the simple homely wedding of the Saxons as against the formality of marriage among the rich French nobles. Many terms relating to food and cooking have come from the French.
Interestingly, the name of the animals was English, but when they were killed and served on the table, they took on French names. Thus, ox, cow, calf, sheep, goat, deer, and pig were all English but beef, veal, mutton, venison, and pork were all French. Many words relating to culinary arts were French borrowings. For example, words like sauce, soup, toast, sausage, jelly, and pastry. The native word breakfast remains, but the more luxurious meals, dinner, supper, and feast were French. The Normans introduced English words relating to the feudal system. Examples are prince, peer, duke, baron, castle, etc. In fact, the now common villain is a French villain which originally meant a laborer.
The modern English legal system borrows several words from French. The word ‘law’ is Scandinavian, but the greater part of the English legal vocabulary has come from French.
E.g. court, judge, panel, attorney, arrest, etc. The manes of the phrases with adjectives placed after nouns as in, proof demonstrative, attorney general, heir-apparent, etc. are all from French.
Many words relating to religion, such as ‘religion’, cathedral, salvation, cardinal, parish, etc., have come from the French. Abstract qualities like grace and charity and words like discipline, save, blame, etc., were at first ecclesiastical words but now belong to the common vocabulary.
Here is the list of words borrowed or came from French to English:
Astrological terms
Influence, zenith, disaster, jovial, mercurial, saturnine
Words associated with medieval scholarship
Mercy, pity, humility
Scientific terms
Medicine, physician, surgeon, leper, plague
Words related to dress and fashion
Lace, frock, petticoat, pleat, apparel, veil
Names of colors
Vermilion, blue, brown, and scarlet
Names of precious stones
Topaz, garnet, emerald, ruby, pearl, crystal
Words related to the Fine arts
Letters, poetry, art, ballad, comedy, melody
Words related to architecture
Tower, pillar, vault, castle, aisle
We find several hybrid words in English coined by adding French suffixes to native stems or by adding Old English suffixes to French stems:
English stem French suffix
Break-age Breakage
Short-age Shortage
God-ess Godess
Love-able Lovable
Colour-less Colourless
Court-ship Courtship
Noble-est Noblest
Using of surnames became a practice in English during this period. Surnames were originally names to distinguish one man from another which over time became family names. Surnames were derived from various sources such as personal features e.g. Longfellow, Good fellow, Longman, etc., and occupations e.g. Smith, Baker, Cook, etc.
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