Middle English: Grammar, Orthography, and Sociolinguistic Context
Middle English Linguistic Characteristics
Grammar: Middle English (ME) transitioned from a synthetic to an analytic grammar, resulting in the loss of inflections. Word order became more fixed, and prepositions gained importance.
Orthography: French spelling conventions influenced ME orthography, leading to greater variation due to the absence of a standardized system.
Lexis: The ME vocabulary expanded significantly with the introduction of thousands of French words, approximately 70% of which were nouns. This enrichment led to an increase in synonyms. Word formation processes included affixation and hybridism. This substantial variation contributed to the language’s dynamism and profound change.
Sound Changes: New diphthongs emerged, syllabic consonants appeared, and initial fricatives underwent voicing. Dialectal variations existed in grammar, orthography, and phonology. Key dialects included Northern (Middle of Scotland), Midland (London to Gloucestershire), Southeastern (derived from Old English Kentish), Southwestern (derived from Old English West Saxon), East Anglian, and East Midlands varieties.
ME Spelling: Spelling conventions changed, partly due to the influence of Norman scribes and partly due to the reintroduction of orthographic practices that had become obsolete during the Old English period. This included the substitution of ‘th’ for thorn (þ) and eth (ð), and ‘w’ in place of the runic wynn (ƿ). Norman scribes also introduced the joined-up double ‘u’ (‘w’) that we use today.
The three allophonic values of /g/ were represented by both ‘g’ and ‘ʒ’. Generally, ‘g’ represented /g/, and ‘ʒ’ represented the other two. Anglo-Norman scribes also introduced the use of the graph ‘v’ for [v], which in Old English had been represented by ‘f’, as in Old English ‘drifan’ (to drive) and ‘seofean’ (seven). The continental practice of using ‘v’ and ‘u’ for both sounds was adopted. The spelling ‘ch’ was introduced to represent the palatal sound, as in Old English ‘cild’, Middle English ‘child’, while ‘c’ was retained for /k/, primarily occurring with back vowels and consonants, as in ‘cofre’ (coffin), ‘cunde’ (nature), ‘clerc’ (priest).
Who Used Middle English?
Before the Norman Conquest: The Anglo-Saxon nobility used spoken and written Old English throughout the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
Exceptions: In the northeast and north, Old English was heavily influenced by varieties of Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and in some western areas, people continued to use varieties of Celtic.
After the Conquest (1066): People in the southern half of England continued to speak English, and texts written in Old English (such as the great prose homilies of Ælfric and Wulfstan) continued to be copied for at least a century after the conquest. However, the new ruling nobility spoke Norman French, the variety of French used in Normandy, which was then called Anglo-Norman because it was spoken in England. The introduction of continental documentary practices meant that Latin, the international language of law and learning, gradually replaced English as the medium of legal record. In the twelfth century, most members of the aristocracy were bilingual, and very few were monolingual French speakers by that point. A hundred years later, the upper and middle classes spoke French, which caused French to become a generalized language of culture. When it comes to English, it was considered a marginal language in Western European terms. It was used in the small classrooms of parish priests or for writing texts for a local readership.
Late Middle English Period: In the fourteenth century, this situation began to change. The slump in population following the Black Death led to a labor shortage and a demand for higher wages. Social fluidity encouraged the growth of towns and the appearance of the bourgeoisie in the shape of an emerging royal bureaucracy and the mercantile class. This bourgeoisie (/ˌbɔːʒ.wɑːˈziː/) was Anglophone, and its sons were taught in grammar schools in English. By the end of the Middle Ages, French had become marginalized as a second ‘high-status’ language, and the importance of the vernacular was reinforced by two extralinguistic developments: printing (rising demand for texts) and the Reformation (the Bible was written in the vernacular).
The Norman Conquest and Its Impact
The Norman Conquest had the greatest effect on the English language. If the conquest had not occurred, English would be different from how we know it today; it would have probably maintained its inflections, preserved more Germanic vocabulary, and lacked many of the French words that now make up the English language.
The Origin of Normandy
Normandy is located on the northern coast of France. It takes its name from the Northmen who invaded the country in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Scandinavians had a great capability to adapt, and they soon adopted and enhanced the most important aspects of French civilization, such as military tactics, legal systems, and Christian ways. Concerning language, by the time of the Norman Conquest, Normans spoke almost only French. The relationship with England at the time was close. When the Danish line died out in England, Edward the Confessor, son of a previous English king, took the place of his father, who had been overthrown, and brought with him many of his Norman noble friends.
The Year 1066
After twenty-four years of reign, Edward the Confessor died childless, and England was again faced with the choice of a successor. At his succession, Edward found England divided into powerful districts, each with its own earl. The most powerful of these earls, Godwin, became Edward’s advisor until his death, and Harold, his eldest son, took his title and influence during the rest of Edward’s reign. After Edward’s death, Harold was the one elected king. However, this election did not long go unchallenged. William, the Duke of Normandy, was second cousin to the late king, and even though this relationship did not give him a right of inheritance, he was determined to inherit Edward’s throne by force. William was an exceptionally able man; he had succeeded to the dukedom of Normandy at the age of six and had not lost any battle since then. Thanks to the blessing of the church, he received a lot of support from all parts of Europe, and by the time he arrived in the south of England, he already had a huge army. Harold was busy in the north of England meeting an invasion by the king of Norway, another claimant to the throne, and after his victory, Harold heard of William’s landing but he wasn’t prepared for it. Harold was killed by a Norman arrow.
Circumstances Promoting the Continued Use of French
The most important factor in the continued use of French by the English upper class until the beginning of the thirteenth century was the close connection that existed throughout all these years between England and the continent. By the end of his life, William seems to have felt more attached to his dukedom than to England. Due to this, he gave his eldest son the dukedom of Normandy and his second son the throne of England. Later, the two domains were united again by Henry I, and later on, his son Henry II conquered almost two-thirds of France, so he possessed this land and also England. Most of them spent their lives mostly in France, like most of the upper classes of Englishmen.
The Attitude towards English
The preference of French over English is a result of nothing else but natural circumstances. On the one hand, we have English, which was an uncultivated tongue spoken by a socially inferior class, and on the other hand, we have French, which was the conquerors’ tongue. For obvious reasons, English people felt resentment, and Normans were haughty and overbearing against them. In spite of that, peaceful cooperation and mutual respect were evident; if not, how is it that there was room left for intermarriage? Even William the Conqueror himself made an effort to learn English, not as successfully as planned, but still, he tried. The reason why later kings lacked acquaintance with the language is not by reason of a fixed purpose, but because of simple indifference (at least in the period up to 1200). Speaking English was not a must for them neither for their activities in England nor for their continental affairs.
French Literature at the English Court
Most of the literature produced by the court was in French. In an age that had few of our modern means of entertainment, literature played a much more important part in the lives of the leisured class. Adela, daughter of William, was a patron of the poets, and his son Henry I married two women who were very generous with the poets.
Examples: Bestiary by Philippe de Thaun, Roman de Brut by Wace.
Middle English Legacy
A standard language has been defined as one that shows maximal variation in function and minimal variation in form. Maximal variation means a community uses its language locally and nationwide (for all purposes). In the late Middle Ages, England was ruled by French and Latin, not English, so this was not the case. Prestige varieties (high) vs. Informal varieties (low). Diglossia: co-occurring languages served different functions in the community.
Chancery Standard
In 1066, the Norman Conquest had replaced English with French as the medium of administrative, literary, and religious writings in England.
Latin, as the international lingua franca, continued to be used in law and administration and as the language of the Catholic Church and higher education.
11th century: English was mostly used for local purposes. 14th century: it began to gain ground supralocally as a written medium. 15th century: French considerably declined in official use. English that replaced it as the first nationwide written model was the idiom of the government documents issued by the King’s writing offices. In the late Middle Ages, English began to be written more widely by men with little training in writing their mother tongue. Royal Clerks were accustomed to writing in Latin and French (had established written forms). Represented southern usage but it also displayed many northern dialect features. The language of the documents they produced is often referred to as the Chancery Standard. Standard-language requirement of ‘minimal variation in form’ but does represent a move towards it.
While dialectal variation was freely expressed in English, this vast amount of orthographic variation is recorded in A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME; McIntosh et al. 1986). Through could have anything up to 500 variant forms ranging from thurgh, thorough, and orowe to barely recognizable forms such as drowg, yhurght, trghug, and trowffe (Smith 1996: 68, 76). But the fourteen spellings of through found in a corpus of fifteenth-century official documents shows a considerable reduction (Fisher et al. 1984: 392).
The Problem with Scribes
Who were they? What was their education level? If they didn’t understand something they were copying, did they change it? Did they try to improve what they saw? Both these manuscripts are said to be written by the same scribe, although they display remarkable differences throughout. We wanted to exhibit the major differences that Horobin and Smith showed within this chapter. Each line corresponds to its matching line from the other manuscript so it’s easy to follow.
First, you can straight away notice the different titles for the same work, and then in the second line, distinct tenses are used and the prepositions are switched, though they don’t alter the utter meaning. The authors comment on the possibility that the explanation for this phenomenon is the use of exemplars with variabilities to copy both of the manuscripts. However, there is said to be some differences that escape from copying exemplars and are ascribed to the scribe’s own linguistic and writing behavior. For example, there are two ways in which the texts hold the word “not”, nat and noght. Both of them are used indistinctly in both texts. Such is the case with the words “murye” and “myrye”, which mean MERRY, although they are exclusive for just one manuscript, given the fact that they only have one occurrence within the whole text. It is relevant to mention that, for this word in particular, those two varieties correspond to the London dialect of the period.
There are also plenty of instances where the use of capital letters differentiates between both texts. Morphological differences are also present in the form of additions to words in past participle, as in the case of the Ellesmere manuscript. Letter “y” is added to most cases of this tense. This word þat means “that” and is deployed throughout both manuscripts, nevertheless presenting differences in use. And finally, syntactically speaking, we find some instances where words were placed in different orders within the same corresponding sentence, thus adding to the idea that the reason behind it relates to the scribe’s preference or differences in the exemplars used for the copying. When we observe and analyze Middle English texts in their manuscript forms, it helps making differences between Middle English and Present Day English a lot more evident and clear.