Talk:Middle English/Archive 1

Transition to Modern English
Would it be possible for an expert on this to add a section on the transition from Middle English to modern English? I will try to write a section as well, but I am not an expert. Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 20:19, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Links to archaic characters
Cumbersome sentence to be refrased: Original Frase: "Though never the language of the Roman Catholic Church, which was always Latin, it lost status as a language of courtly life, literature and documentation, being largely supplanted by Anglo-Norman French. It remained, though, the spoken language of the majority" Suggested refrassing: Though the language of the Roman Catholic Church, which always had been Latin..."never lost its status as a language of courtly life, literature and documentation" (In the originial is not clear whether this is the meanining intended, or just the contrary: "Though it was never lost, It had been largely replaced by Anglo-norman). Please somebody that know the facts correctly kindly refrase it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.197.48.37 (talk) 15:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Would it be sensible to include a list of the archaic letters somewhere on the page? It would be useful for people like me, an interested layperson. There is a link to the page for Eth but none to Yogh, which is what I was looking for. I found it after a bit of searching but that involved leaving wikipedia. Jaybee 20:33, 3 July 2007
 * I've added the table and IPA for pronunciation. Can someone who is familiar with IPA and the way these letters should be pronounced check this for correctness please? 12:19, 6 July 2007
 * There, I've fixed it. More information can be found in the article on Old English. By the way, should I include <ƿ> as well? I know it was largely replaced with  and later with  in Middle English. Tasnu Arakun (talk) 22:33, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * If it ever shows up (which I think it does), you might as well. The Jade Knight (talk) 03:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I've changed some the abbreviations in this article into their full form in the past (as it is easier to read and the wikipedia isn't paper anyway) but they've since been changed back.

Is there a reason for this that I haven't thought of? - 03:03 Apr 9, 2003 (U


 * Abberviations are bad because you can't tell what they mean when you read a bit halfway through the article... I've taken them back out, and standardized the markup a bit more. --Brion 05:23 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

I've taken out the ridiculously dated notion that Middle English was exclusively the language of the 'lewed', and tried to open up a slightly more modern and sophisticated outlook in the introduction.

also a distinction needs to be made between the natural language (mother tongue) of the population and learnt languages. The Norman nobility originally spoke French, of course, but there is evidence that by the late 12th century they had lost it as their natural language (due to the children of the Norman elite being brought up by English wives or wetnurses) This meant that by this time everyone in England had English as their first language. However, the nobility did hang on to French, but had to learn it as a second language.--Cap 11:40, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

can we get rid of the whole 'mother tongue' 'milk language' rubbish. Language acquisition can be a little more complicated than 'learned it at the breast of a wetnurse'. Consider chicano/latino kids growing up in California, who have two spanish-speaking, monolingual parents, who learn English through peers, schools, having to conduct business on behalf of their parents, work places, etc. Wetnurses. Pah.

I was not trying to deny that it was a complicated issue. If anything I was trying to emphasise this complexity, as the part of the article I was referring to uses the even more simplistic argument that the nobility spoke one language and the common people antother, when in reality the majority of the nobility (and maybe even a few common people) were bilingual in French and English. I was not saying that children only learnt English, but that English would likely be their most natural language. They did of course learn French "through peers, schools...work places, etc." aswell, and an ability to speak fluent French was probably commonplace amongst the nobility. but language is aquired at very young age and their first contact with languge was most likely English. There is also plenty of evidence that the nobility of England were becoming less competent in their use of French in the 14th/15th centuries. I was just trying to make a distinction between someone's first language and a second language which is aquired (however competently) after this.--Cap 11:40, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is the original post (on the History of the English Language page which is the article i was actually referring to "French was the language of the aristocracy, while English remained the language of the common people" - French was the language of the Norman aristocracy after 1066, but after the late 12th century they began to lose it as a mother tongue (which was now English). This didn't mean that French died out however, the nobility still used French, but had to learn it as a second language.

"had nature not intervened, English may not have survived as a separate language. However, in the 14th century the Black Death killed so many of those in positions of power that many English speakers from the working classes rose to fill such positions, so displacing many of the French speakers." - this may have been an important factor, though it must be remembered that the "French speakers" being displaced also had English as their first language and the use of the French language in places such as parliament and other places of power was artificially maintained by people whose mother tongue was actually English.--Cap 11:40, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Have tidied up and clarified some parts. In particular, trying to clarify the distinctions between the Norman language, Anglo-Norman and Old French. Have removed the following para, as archer is an Anglo-Norman word and does not seem to therefore serve the contrastive purpose intended for the example.


 * Archer and fletcher are special cases. Although there is no particular reason why we kept the English version - archer - and the French word fletcher has fallen, it is more than likely the archers themselves used the word 'archer' and the generals used the word 'fletcher'.

Man vyi 06:41, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Are thorn and yogh necessary?
I propose we replace thorn with 'th' and use of 3 for yogh with 'y', which I believe is the usual transliteration of those characters. I don't really think their presence adds much, other than making the text harder for non-experts to understand. If we must keep them, then there should be an explanatory note about the characters and what they mean. Nohat 08:48, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * You should keep them IMO - see my note at the top of the page about coming here as a non-expert to find out about Yogh. If someone is going to learn enough to read a M.E. poem, for instance, they need to know how to read and pronounce those characters. Jaybee 12:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

E sound?
Did Old and Middle English have the X-Sampa /e:/ sound, which Modern English lacks?


 * Yes, this was lost in the Great Vowel Shift. --Saforrest 01:23, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Chancery English
I cleaned up the article on the Chancery Standard - and then noted that the previous version is repeated at the base of this article. Should the separate article on Chancery English be removed? Should the extended info on this page be removed and replaced with a link? Or should (elements of) the new version (plus links - I must add those...) be integrated in the text of the Middle English article? I'd do it myself if I had more expertise on the subject matter - plus I wouldn't like to tread on anyone's toes. Suggestions please. Thanks Parmesan 18:32, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Replaced Chancery Standard text with that from the separate page due to no comments being made. Redirected separate page here. Parmesan 18:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation
I don't know much about the pronunciation of now-silent e's in Middle English, and I understand that Chaucer's verse was not as rigidly decasyllabic as later poets, but the claim "Words like 'straunge' are disyllabic. 'Palmeres' is trisyllabic" doesn't make much sense to me; it gives that line 12 syllables, while pronouncing both 'straunge' and 'palmeres' with two syllables, the last 'e' in 'palmeres' dropped, gives a metrically perfect line of iambic pentameter with a feminine ending.

Maintaining smooth meter likewise gives a one-syllable 'thanne' in front of an 'l', and a two-syllable 'ferne' in front of an 'h' - where I'd expect the last 'e' to be silent. Sadly, I don't know much about the issue, but from what I've read it seems like 'e' can be dropped or kept largely depending on meter. Someone who knows more should talk about this, as to me it seems like a pretty big part of Chaucer's verse. And as for the structure of the language itself, is the retention of the 'e' in these circumstances conservative, or was it probably still in normal use? -- Parvomagnus 11:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The "Pronunciation" section as it stands is not good. I advise you to ignore it and refer instead to something more authoritative like the "Language and Versification" section of the introduction to The Riverside Chaucer, which includes helpful material like a section of the general prologue marked up with stresses and silent syllables.
 * A quick note that may help, however, is that it's important not to think of Chaucerian verse in terms of syllable counts. The lines in question here are constructed on the basis of having five stresses, not ten syllables. I suspect "palmeres" here should actually be slurred into two syllables; the elision of the second syllable of "thanne" is predictable before a vowel, and the second syllable of "ferne" is kept because the following syllable, the first of "halwes", is stressed and in a word from a Germanic root ( being IIRC only silent in words borrowed from French).  But all that's off the top of my head and may well be wrong. &mdash; Haeleth Talk 13:51, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Alphabet
Could use a section on the alphabet/orthography. -- Beland 13:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

This article is exceptionally boring.
 * I agree that it needs something on orthography. The Jade Knight 23:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Where are the citations/references?
Or was it all sourced from    * Sweet, Henry (2005). First Middle English Primer. Evolution Publishing: Bristol, PA. ISBN 1-889758-70-1. Just wondering.

Asd2112 19:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Incubator Link
I commented out the | incubator link- the | page that you are sent to is empty; the main page of Incubator has no mention of the Middle English version. If someone has a good reason for keeping that link there, feel free to remove the comments. Cymbalta 17:41, 18 May 2007 (UTC) Boring stuff!!

Middle English in Scotland and the coming of Scots

 * "Scots emerged from Early Northern Middle English not as Middle English became Modern English"

This topic is somewhat difficult to deal with as "Scots" was still "Inglis" and some centuries away from its speakers deciding they'd like to change the name of their language at the time you mention (evolution from "Early Northern Middle English which im assuming is a reference to one of "Northumbrian" or "Anglo-Saxon" as seen here). Even if it is generally decided to anachronistically refer to a certain stage of Middle English as spoken in Scotland as "Scots" it doesnt change the fact that Middle English was spoken in Scotland and if this:


 * "his article doesn't describe what was spoken in Scotland"

Is the case you should insert any missing information rather than remove undoubted fact from the article. Middle English was spoken in Scotland and the fact that its speakers eventually decided to adopt a different identity and, consequently, eventually a different name for their language doesnt have any bearing upon this fact. siarach (talk) 20:56, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been looking into this 'Scots Language' topic for a couple of months now. My conclusion is that it is essentially a 'political' artifact with no serious linguistic or literary substance or evidence to back up any claims to a seperate existence from English. The British people in what is now lowland Scotland, exactly like those in what is now England, were both colonised by Anglo-saxons 1,500 years ago and both have been using English, Anglish, Inglis, Ynglish and all its many other early spelling variants ever since. True there are Scots (and English) dialects which vary from 'standard English', but they vary just as much from the so-called 'Scots language' - which turns out on close examination to have always been 'English' (except when the term 'Scots language' was intended to mean Gaelic, as spoken by the also-colonising Scotii tribe from Ireland after whom the country was eventually, and in one sense rather misleadingly, named.) Several Wiki pages have references and links to 'the Scots language' without making it clear that it means in essence just 'the language commonly used in Scotland' i.e. English. One final point: because of a later Danish invasion and their occupation of much of eastern central Britain I speculate that the 'Scots language' may in fact have historically always remained closer to southern 'standard' English than much of central and northern England. Hope all that helps someone someday. Steve. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.11.202 (talk) 14:59, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

You are quite right. The whole idea of an historic Scots Language is little better than academic fraud. The idea was first suggested only at the the start of the 19th century and was later given traction by the Scottish Nationalist movement in the 20th century. The reality is that the Scottish Lowlanders were not a Celtic people but Anglo-Saxons or English who had established the first Anglic kingdom, Bernicia there in the 7th century. It was later part of the vast English kingdom of Northumbria. What is today described as 'Scots' Language is in fact simply Northumbrian, an historic English variant, like Mercian. Northumbrian English was once spoken from the Trent to the Firth of Forth. Far from being a distinct historic language it is simply one of the ancestors of our Modern English and is thus as much 'Middle English' as every other variant. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.170.147 (talk) 13:21, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Entirely wrong. Scots has records stretching from it's Panama colony to even the Papacy itself recording the thoughts that Scots was seperate from English. The people in Lowland Scotland are generally of Non-Northumbrian ancestry except in the South East but even then so many British or Welsh placenames exist in that part it is very unlikely that anything but a absorption of the British into the Northumbrian culture occurred there but I wont pretend that happened or didn't since I don't know much myself on that. It's strange you tell the obvious lie that it was not considered a language until the 19th century, but how would that stop it being one anyway?, when the first clear and obvious reference to it being one goes back to 1494 and many reference in England exist saying it is a language as well. There are even records from Scandinavia and France reporting Kings and Queens being fluent in Scots and others requiring translators for Scots. It seems you are heavily biased against the Scottish language. - Signed ScotCuchullin — Preceding unsigned comment added by ScotCuchullin (talk • contribs) 10:53, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

. ..
Why is there a citation needed tag on the representation of yogh? And what's this nonsense about English being a creole? Obviously somebody with a race agenda there. Good job with that, Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.0.43 (talk) 20:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Recent "standardization" of example
I feel that this edit changes the article for the worse by not showing the original Middle English spelling, but replacing it with a standardized version. I propose that this change be reverted. Thoughts? The Jade Knight (talk) 21:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Add to your watchlist
Could we get some more eyes on the article please? A test edit/vandalism in which the whole page was blanked went unnoticed for an hour today. Thanks. Hadrian89 (talk) 19:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Date of Origin
The article describes Middle English as beginning with the Norman invasion in 1066. To me, dating a language to a precise year seems a little mind-boggling, and in this case it may also place too singular an emphasis on the Norman influence (whereas the "creole hypothesis" article suggests that this influence, though huge in terms of vocabulary, is not responsible for other important changes like the reduction of inflections). Would it be better to do what http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/history.htm in dating Middle English to "roughly the 12th century"? Hickoryhillster (talk) 14:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I've always seen it dated as 'circa 1100', though your suggestion is good too. Hadrian89 (talk) 14:30, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Translation in Modern English spelling
The parallel text most certainly was not in "Modern English spelling" but a complete translation into Modern English period. I've changed the heading to that text. It might be interesting to see a version of the text in modernized spelling but keeping Middle English vocabulary and grammar, but that's not what's being presented here. Inter lingua 00:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Profanity on page
Someone has added the words "what a load of bullshit" in a few places on this page. Grow up already. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DiamondDJ (talk • contribs) 00:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Canterbury tales
Observation: IMHO a more literal translation of the CT prologue would be helpful. It would help the novice see more clearly the relationship between the old language and the modern. Perhaps something like


 * When that April with his sweet showers,
 * The drought of March hath pierced to the root;
 * And bathed every vein in such liquid,
 * Of which virtue engendered is the flower;
 * When Zephirus too with his sweet breath,
 * Hath inspired [breathed into] in every holt [grove] and heath [field],
 * The tender crops, and the young sun,
 * Hath in the Ram [Aries constellation], his half course run;
 * And small fowl make melody,
 * That sleep all the night with open eye;
 * So pricks them Nature in their hearts,
 * Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
 * And palmers to seek strange strands,
 * To distant shrines, hallowed in sundry lands;
 * And especially from every shire's end,
 * Of England to Canterbury they wend;
 * The holy blissful martyr [Thomas Becket] to seek,
 * That them hath helped when they were sick.

Granted an additional non-poetic non-prose version is certainly worthwhile but not providing the literal translation hides some important imformation from the reader.

--Mcorazao (talk) 18:44, 29 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree completely. Same with the Gower 'translation'. Eg. the last line: 'Som man mai lyke of that I wryte' is clear as day, and doesn't need rendering into 'So all can something pleasing find'!1812ahill (talk) 00:29, 12 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Agree also. Seems like some phrasing was changed for the sake dumbing it down and only contributes to a loss of the original meaning. For instance, the last few line of the Grower "translation" needed little more than spelling changes to be made into modern English. Instead it's made less specific and less rhyming, stupid. 75.44.46.239 (talk) 22:15, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Not only that but some of them translations are wrong. Fern means ancient or long ago see: fern. Most of the words can still be found in modern wordbooks like holt ... these I left in there. I'v put the oversettings or the old plural ending (e/en/on) in the parentheses to show where and how they go. I only chang'd the spellings where I thought it might make it easier to read. How about this:

The one for Gower is truly mess'd up. Maybe this is a little better: --AnWulf ... Wes þu hal! (talk) 21:06, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Chancery standard
Here's the para that I removed:


 * "In its early stages of development, the clerks who used Chancery Standard would have been familiar with French and Latin. The strict grammars of those languages influenced the construction of the standard. It was not the only influence on later forms of English — its level of influence is disputed and a variety of spoken dialects continued to exist — but it provided a core around which Early Modern English could crystallise."

My problems with it are -
 * French and Latin have "strict grammars" - what is a "strict grammar" and how is it different to that which applied to early Middle English?
 * French and Latin as written standards replaced English as a spoken language - this makes no sense. A written standard is a written standard; it doesn't replace a spoken language.  I'm more than happy to agree that written language influences spoken language - but to say that Chancery English replaced a spoken standard is simply not true - it formalised a new written standard, and assisted in the ultimate deveopment of what would later (much later, and in co-existence with a multitude of other spoken varieties) become the "received pronunication" standard.  But that had not happened as late as Shakespeare's day.

For these reasons I don't think the paragraph has a high information content (its points are covered elsewhere anyway) and I propose to remove it. Slac speak up! 01:41, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

"The non-literate would have spoken the same dialects as before the Conquest, although these would be changing slowly until written records of them became available for study, which varies in different regions."

One would have a hard time finding a more atrociously constructed sentence --all the more out of place in an article on the English language. --AGF67.128.133.10 (talk) 13:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

"And what's this nonsense about English being a creole? Obviously somebody with a race agenda there."

--the murmurings of a fool--Middle English was a creole if ever there was one. By what criteria does this pinhead think he can distinguish between Middle English and any other creole? --AGF67.128.133.10 (talk) 14:11, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Middle English Wikipedia
I'm sure where to put this, but I guess this is the best place. Is there a Middle English Wikipedia? Or an Early Modern English Wikipedia?--Fred Bloggs (Come and take discuss with thy master) 21:44, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Adjectives.
What about declension(s) of adjective, hm? Švarn Lvovič (talk) 19:57, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Seriously suspect history
There are more than a few gravely atrocious issues to be taken with this article. First of all, I don't who wrote the bulk of this page, but the style is atrocious, at times reading like an attempt at the Great American Novel, e.g.:

"The Normans too were Scandinavians, so the Norse, using old stones and new, built the sure foundation and strong walls of fortress English, the primary architects of change. The adaptability of the Scandinavians, always a marked characteristic of these people, nowhere showed itself more able than in Normandy; in France the original Norsemen quickly adopted the ideas, language, religion and customs of the more sophisticated local culture, adding French tactics to their impetuous courage and building those great Norman cathedrals.[6] The first to seize upon this newly fashioned fortress and to begin to build the sturdy walls higher was the undisputed genius of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer."

Um, what? This is an encyclopedia article - not a work of historical fiction. The overly verbose and unnecessarily flowery verbiage needs to go.

Furthermore, the statement that "the morphological simplifications were caused by Romano-Britons who were bilingual in Old English and either Brittonic languages (which lack noun case) or British Latin (which may have lacked noun case, like most modern Romance languages). Some scholars even describe Middle English as a creole, coming about through extensive contact between English and either Norse, Norman, Celtic or Latin speakers." is completely baseless and uncited. "Some scholars"? Who? There is also zero evidence that British Latin was caseless, as it's only recorded form was Classical Latin (a heavily declined language), and is particularly erroneous considering that the epoch of Middle English dates to SIX centuries after the Roman withdrawal from Britannia. And most glaring of all is the assertion that the Brittonic languages lacked cases, which is not only present without any citations whatsoever, but is also a patently false assumption. Though Old Welsh may be somewhat scantily attested (at least compared to English), even Middle Welsh featured pronominal declension and limited nominal declension.

The most disgusting fact of all is that all of this comes just from the article's introductory paragraphs, and was so distracting I couldn't even get past it to finish reading the article before I had to go vomit. Either the whole section needs to undergo a serious, scholarly rewrite, or else purged and rewritten entirely. 62.219.155.238 (talk) 02:46, 20 May 2016 (UTC)Engeltheed

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On my recent edits
The part about synonyms from loans and their associated speech registers could be incorporated into a different paragraph, such as the brief mention of linguistic registers in the morphology section (which unfortunately only refers to a common and academic register and doesn't note the place of Norman French) where it could provide an example. I think when we talk about how English has a rich vocabulary with many synonyms that have slightly different meanings, its important to say why so many of them exist-- which is in a large part because they have different origins. The pig and pork example might not be needed for conciseness's sake but if you're interested this article does a great job covering Anglo-Saxon/French word pairs. Please feel free to offer your input here or edit my contributions yourself.--Monochrome _ Monitor  00:00, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Noun table
The table of noun forms seems to have been written and edited by anonymous editors, with no references (except one I saw in an edit comment). The on-line Middle English Dictionary entry for "aungel" (which includes "engel") says "Pl. a(u)nǧeles & engles, angles; gen. pl. (early) englene, anglen; combining form (early) engle-". That contradicts what our table says for the genitive plural. I'm going to edit the table a bit, but can someone with a good book on the subject please check this table? Maybe we need a different word from "engel" for the "strong" example. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:30, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Engel and nome are the words used in A Book of Middle English by Barrow and Turville-Petre, engel as their strong example.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:22, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Inconsistent approach to the theory that Norse contact was a factor in simplifying inflections.
In the History/Transition from Old English section, the theory is handled as accepted consensus:

''Like close cousins, Old Norse and Old English resembled each other, and with some words in common, they roughly understood each other;[6] in time the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged.[8][11] It is most "important to recognise that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of the word was so nearly the same in the two languages that only the endings would put obstacles in the way of mutual understanding. In the mixed population which existed in the Danelaw these endings must have led to much confusion, tending gradually to become obscured and finally lost." This blending of peoples and languages happily resulted in "simplifying English grammar."[5]''

Whereas in the History/Early Middle English section, it is listed as merely a possibility:

''It is also argued[13] that Norse immigrants to England had a great impact on the loss of inflectional endings in Middle English. One argument is that, although Norse- and English-speakers were somewhat comprehensible to each other due to similar morphology, the Norse-speakers' inability to reproduce the ending sounds of English words influenced Middle English's loss of inflectional endings.''

My perception from outside seems to be that this is still a matter of contention and should be treated as such, but I'm not sure and would just like to point it out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.44.239.177 (talk) 04:35, 24 May 2021 (UTC)