Middle English

Middle English
A page from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Region	England, some parts of Wales, south east Scotland and Scottish burghs, to some extent Ireland
Era	developed into Early Modern English, Scots and Yola in Wexford by the 16th century
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic North Sea Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic Middle English
Early forms	Old English Middle English
Language codes
ISO 639-2	enm
ISO 639-3	enm
ISO 639-6	meng
Glottolog	midd1317

Middle English (ME) refers to the varieties of the English language spoken after the Norman Conquest (1066) until the late 15th century; scholarly opinion varies but the Oxford English Dictionary specifies the period of 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly followed the High to the Late Middle Ages.

Middle English developed out of Late Old English, seeing many dramatic changes in its grammar, pronunciation and orthography. Writing customs during Middle English times varied widely, but by the end of the period, about 1470, aided by the invention of the printing press, a standard based on the London dialect (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely forms the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by the era of Early Modern English, which lasted until about 1650. By that time, a variant of the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in northern England and spoken in southeast Scotland) was developing into the Scots language.

During the Middle English period many Old English grammatical features were simplified or disappeared. This includes the reduction (and eventual elimination) of most grammatical cases, and the simplification of noun, adjective and verb inflection. Middle English also saw a mass adoption of Norman French vocabulary, especially in areas such as politics, law, the arts, religion and other courtly language. Everyday English vocabulary remained mostly Germanic, with Old Norse influence becoming apparent. Significant changes in pronunciation took place, especially in the case of long vowels and diphthongs, which in the later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift.

Little survives of early Middle English literature, most likely due to the Norman domination and the prestige that came with writing in French rather than English. During the 14th century a new style of literature emerged, with the works of notable writers such as John Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer , whose Canterbury Tales remains the most studied and read work of the period.. Poets wrote both in the vernacular and courtly English.

It is popularly believed that William Shakespeare wrote in Middle English, but he actually wrote in Early Modern English.

History

Transition from Old English

The latter part of the 11th century was a period of transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English.

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 saw the replacement of the top levels of the English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies by Norman rulers who spoke an Old French dialect called Old Norman, which in England developed into a variety called Anglo-Norman. Norman thus came into use as a language of polite discourse and literature, and this fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration, even though many Normans of the early period were illiterate and depended on the clergy for written communication and record-keeping. Large numbers of words of French origin started to be borrowed into the English language, often existing alongside native English words of similar meaning, giving rise to such Modern English pairs as pig/pork, chicken/poultry, calf/veal, cow/beef, sheep/mutton, wood/forest, house/mansion, worthy/valuable, bold/courageous, freedom/liberty.

The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen in the abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government that derive from Anglo-Norman: court, judge, jury, appeal, parliament. There are also many Norman-derived terms relating to the chivalric cultures that arose in the 12th century, an era of feudalism and crusading.

Sometimes, and particularly later, words were taken from Latin, giving such sets as kingly (from Old English), royal (from Latin through French), regal (direct from Latin). Later French borrowings came from standard rather than Norman French; this leads to such cognate pairs as warden (from Norman), guardian (from later French; both of these words in fact derive from Germanic).

The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not, of course, change the language immediately. The general population would have spoken the same dialects as before the Conquest; these changed slowly until written records of them became available for study, which varies in different regions. Once the writing of Old English comes to an end, Middle English has no standard language, only dialects that derive from the dialects of the same regions in the Anglo-Saxon period.

The influence of Old Norse certainly helped move English from a synthetic language towards a more analytic or isolating word order, a deep change at the grammatical level. The eagerness of Vikings in the Danelaw to communicate with their southern Anglo-Saxon neighbors produced a friction that led to the erosion of the complicated inflectional word-endings; Old Norse likely had a greater impact on this deep change to Middle and Modern English than any other language. Simeon Potter notes: “No less far-reaching was the influence of Scandinavian upon the inflexional endings of English in hastening that wearing away and leveling of grammatical forms which gradually spread from north to south. It was, after all, a salutary influence. The gain was greater than the loss. There was a gain in directness, in clarity, and in strength".

The strength of the Viking influence on Old English appears from the fact that the indispensable elements of the language - pronouns, modals, comparatives, pronominal adverbs (like "hence" and "together"), conjunctions and prepositions - show the most marked Danish influence; the best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in the extensive word borrowings for, as Jespersen indicates, no texts exist in either Scandinavia or in Northern England from this time to give certain evidence of an influence on syntax. The change to Old English from Old Norse was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Like close cousins, Old Norse and Old English resembled each other, and with some words in common, they roughly understand each other; in time the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. It is most “important to recognize 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.”

While the influence of Scandinavian language was strongest in dialects in the Danelaw region and Scotland, the spoken words crept into the language in the tenth and eleventh centuries near the transition from the Old to Middle English period, but such borrowed words only appeared in the Middle English writing at the beginning of the thirteenth century, likely because of a scarcity of literary texts from an earlier date.

Early Middle English

Early Middle English (1100–1300) has a largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary (with many Norse borrowings in the northern parts of the country), but a greatly simplified inflectional system. The grammatical relations that were expressed in Old English by the dative and instrumental cases are replaced in Early Middle English with prepositional constructions. The Old English genitive -es survives in the -'s of the modern English possessive, but most of the other case endings disappeared in the Early Middle English period, including most of the roughly one dozen forms of the definite article ("the"). The dual personal pronouns (denoting exactly two) also disappeared from English during this period.

Gradually, the wealthy and the government Anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French) remained the dominant language of literature and law until the 14th century, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy. The loss of case endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages, and therefore cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population: English did, after all, remain the vernacular. It is also argued 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, the Norse-speakers' inability to reproduce the ending sounds of English words influenced Middle English's loss of inflectional endings. Another argument is 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.

Important texts for the reconstruction of the evolution of Middle English out of Old English are the Peterborough Chronicle, which continued to be compiled up to 1154; the Ormulum, a biblical commentary probably composed in Lincolnshire in the second half of the 12th century, incorporating a unique phonetic spelling system; and the Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group, religious texts written for anchoresses, apparently in the West Midlands in the early 13th century. The language found in the last two works is sometimes called the AB language.

14th century

From around the early 14th century there was significant migration into London, particularly from the counties of the East Midlands, and a new prestige London dialect began to develop, based chiefly on the speech of the East Midlands, but also influenced by that of other regions. The writing of this period, however, continues to reflect a variety of regional forms of English. The Ayenbite of Inwyt, a translation of a French confessional prose work, completed in 1340, is written in a Kentish dialect. The best known writer of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote in the second half of the 14th century in the emerging London dialect, although he also portrays some of his characters as speaking in northern dialects, as in the "Reeve's Tale".

In the English-speaking areas of lowland Scotland, an independent standard was developing, based on the Northumbrian dialect. This would develop into what came to be known as the Scots language.

Late Middle English

Official documents, which since the Norman Conquest had generally been written in French, began to appear in English from about 1430. From here on the Chancery Standard of written English begins to emerge – based, like Chaucer's work, on the East Midlands-influenced London speech. The clerks who used this standard would have been familiar with French and Latin, which probably influenced the forms they chose. By the mid-15th century, Chancery Standard was used for most official purposes except by the Church, which still used Latin, and for some legal purposes, for which Law French and some Latin were used. It was disseminated around England by bureaucrats on official business and slowly gained prestige.

Chancery Standard was not the only influence on later forms of English—its level of influence is disputed, and of course a variety of spoken dialects continued to exist—but it provided a core around which Early Modern English could crystallize. Towards the end of the 15th century, a more modern English began to emerge. Printing began in England with the introduction of the printing press by William Caxton in the 1470s, and this helped stabilise the language. In the late 1490s and early 1500s, printer Richard Pynson favored Chancery Standard in his published works, and consequently pushed the English spelling further towards standardization. A wider public became familiar with a uniform language with a standardised, printed English Bible and Prayer Book being read to church congregations from the 1540s onward, and the era of Modern English began.

The end of the Middle English period is taken to occur at some point around the end of the 15th century, possibly with the introduction of printing in the 1470s, or the start of the Tudor period in 1485. The next phase in the development of the language is that of Early Modern English (the language of Shakespeare), which lasted until about 1650.

Phonology

Main article: Middle English phonology

The main changes between the Old English sound system and that of Middle English include:

• Emergence of the voiced fricatives /v/, /ð/, /z/ as separate phonemes, rather than mere allophones of the corresponding voiceless fricatives.
• Reduction of the Old English diphthongs to monophthongs, and the emergence of new diphthongs due to vowel breaking in certain positions, change of Old English post-vocalic /j/, /w/ (sometimes resulting from the [ɣ] allophone of /g/) to offglides, and borrowing from French.
• Merging of Old English /æ/ and /ɑ/ into a single vowel /a/.
• Raising of the long vowel /æː/ to /ɛː/, and raising and rounding of /ɑː/ to /ɔː/.
• Unrounding of the front rounded vowels in most dialects.
• Lengthening of vowels in open syllables (and in certain other positions). The resultant long vowels (and other pre-existing long vowels) subsequently underwent changes of quality in the Great Vowel Shift, which began during the later Middle English period.
• Loss of gemination (double consonants came to be pronounced as single ones).
• Loss of weak final vowels (schwa, written ⟨e⟩). By Chaucer's time this vowel was silent in normal speech, although it could optionally be pronounced in verse as the meter required. Also, non-final unstressed ⟨e⟩ was dropped when adjacent to only a single consonant on either side if there was another short ⟨e⟩ in an adjoining syllable. Thus, every began to be pronounced as "evry", and palmeres as "palmers".

The combination of the last three processes listed above led to the spelling conventions associated with silent ⟨e⟩ and doubled consonants (see under Orthography, below).

Grammar

Nouns

Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from the more complex system of inflection in Old English. The early Middle English nouns engel ("angel") and name ("name") demonstrate the two patterns:

singular
	strong	weak
nom/acc	engel	name
gen	engles	namen
dat	engle	namen
plural
	strong	weak
nom/acc	engles	namen
gen	engle	namen(e)
dat	engle(n)	namen

Some nouns of the engel type have an -e in the nominative/accusative singular, like the weak declension, but otherwise strong endings. Often these are the same nouns that had an -e in the nominative/accusative singular of Old English (these in turn inherited from Proto-Germanic ja-stem and i-stem nouns.)

The distinct dative case was lost in early Middle English. The genitive survived, however, although by the end of the Middle English period only the strong -'s ending (variously spelt) was in use.

The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form is now rare, used only in oxen and, as part of a double plural, in children and brethren. Some dialects still have forms such as eyen (for eyes), shoon (for shoes), hosen (for hose(s)), kine (for cows), and been (for bees).

Pronouns

Middle English personal pronouns mostly developed from those of Old English, with the exception of the third-person plural, a borrowing from Old Norse (the original Old English form clashed with the third person singular and was eventually dropped). Also the nominative form of the feminine third-person singular was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into sche (modern she), although the alternative heyr remained in some areas for a long time.

As with nouns, there was some inflectional simplification (and here also the distinct Old English dual forms were lost), but pronouns, unlike nouns, retained distinct nominative and accusative forms. Third-person pronouns also retained a distinction between accusative and dative forms, but this was gradually lost: the masculine hine was replaced by him south of the Thames by the early 14th century, and the neuter dative him was ousted by it in most dialects by the 15th.

The following table shows some of the various Middle English pronouns, together with their modern (in italics) and Old English equivalents. Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources due to differences in spellings and pronunciations at different times and in different dialects.

Person (gender)		Subject	Object	Possessive determiner	Possessive pronoun	Reflexive	Old English forms (N, A, D, G)
Singular
First modern		ic / ich / I I	me / mi me	min / minen [pl.] my	min / mire / minre mine	min one / mi selven myself	iċ, mec/mē, mē, mīn
Second modern (archaic)		þou / þu / tu / þeou you (thou)	þe you (thee)	þi / ti your (thy)	þin / þyn yours (thine)	þeself / þi selven yourself (thyself)	þū, þec/þē, þē, þīn
Third	Masculine modern	he he	him (dat.) / hine (acc.) him	his / hisse / hes his	his / hisse his	him-seluen himself	hē, hine, him, his
	Feminine modern	sche[o] / s[c]ho / ȝho she	heo / his / hie / hies / hire her	hio / heo / hire / heore her	- hers	heo-seolf herself	hēo, hīe, hiere, hiere
	Neuter modern	hit it	hit (acc.) / him (dat.) it	his its	his its	hit sulue itself	hit, hit, him, his
Plural
First modern		we we	us / ous us	ure[n] / our[e] / ures / urne our	oures ours	us self / ous silve ourselves	wē, ūsic, ūs, ūser/ūre (dual: wit, etc.)
Second modern (archaic)		ȝe / ye you (ye)	eow / [ȝ]ou / ȝow / gu / you you	eower / [ȝ]ower / gur / [e]our your	youres yours	Ȝou self / ou selve yourselves	ġē, ēowic, ēow, ēower (dual: ġit, etc.)
Third	From Old English	heo / he	his (acc.) / heo[m] (dat.)	heore / her	-	-	hīe, hīe, heom, heora
	From Old Norse	þa / þei / þeo / þo	þem / þo	þeir	-	þam-selue
	modern	they	them	their	theirs	themselves

Verbs

As a general rule, the indicative first person singular of verbs in the present tense ends in -e ("ich here" — "I hear"), the second person in -(e)st ("þou spekest" — "thou speakest"), and the third person in -eþ ("he comeþ" — "he cometh/he comes"). (þ (the letter ‘thorn’) is pronounced, in this case, like the unvoiced th in "think", but, under certain circumstances, may be like the voiced th in "that"). The following table illustrates the conjugation pattern of but one dialect.

strong verbs	weak verbs	present tense to be	present tense to have	present tense to want
Person Conjugation I singe thou singest he/she/it singeth we singen ye singen they singen	Person Conjugation I bathede thou bathedest he/she/it bathede we bathede ye bathede they bathede	Person Conjugation I am thou art he/she/it is we ben ye ben they ben	Person Conjugation I have thou hast he/she/it hath we haven ye haven they haven	Person Conjugation I will thou wilt he/she/it will we wollen ye wollen they wollen

Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with southern dialects preserving the Old English -eþ, Midland dialects showing -en from about 1200 onward and northern forms using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural.

The past tense of weak verbs is formed by adding an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, also serve as past participles, together with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i-, y- and sometimes bi-.

Strong verbs, by contrast, form their past tense by changing their stem vowel (binden → bound, a process called apophony) as in Modern English.

Orthography

With the discontinuation of the Late West Saxon standard used for the writing of Old English in the period prior to the Norman Conquest, Middle English came to be written in a wide variety of scribal forms, reflecting different regional dialects and orthographic conventions. Later in the Middle English period, however, and particularly with the development of the Chancery Standard in the 15th century, orthography became relatively standardised in a form based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Spelling at the time was mostly quite regular (there was a fairly consistent correspondence between letters and sounds). The irregularity of present-day English orthography is largely due to pronunciation changes that have taken place over the Early Modern English and Modern English eras.

Middle English generally did not have silent letters. For example, knight was pronounced [ˈkniçt] (with both the ⟨k⟩ and the ⟨gh⟩ pronounced, the latter sounding as the ⟨ch⟩ in German Knecht). The major exception was the silent ⟨e⟩ – originally pronounced, but lost in normal speech by Chaucer's time. This letter, however, came to indicate a lengthened – and later also modified – pronunciation of a preceding vowel. For example, in name, originally pronounced as two syllables, the /a/ in the first syllable (originally an open syllable) lengthened, the final weak vowel was later dropped, and the remaining long vowel was modified in the Great Vowel Shift (for these sound changes, see under Phonology, above). The final ⟨e⟩, now silent, thus became the indicator of the longer and changed pronunciation of ⟨a⟩. In fact vowels could have this lengthened and modified pronunciation in various positions, particularly before a single consonant letter and another vowel, or before certain pairs of consonants.

A related convention involved the doubling of consonant letters to show that the preceding vowel was not to be lengthened. In some cases the double consonant represented a sound that was (or had previously been) geminated, i.e. had genuinely been "doubled" (and would thus have regularly blocked the lengthening of the preceding vowel). In other cases, by analogy, the consonant was written double merely to indicate the lack of lengthening.

Alphabet

The basic Old English Latin alphabet had consisted of 20 standard letters (there was not yet a distinct j, v or w, and Old English scribes did not generally use k, q or z) plus four additional letters: ash ⟨æ⟩, eth ⟨ð⟩, thorn ⟨þ⟩ and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩.

Ash was no longer required in Middle English, as the Old English vowel /æ/ that it represented had merged into /a/. The symbol nonetheless came to be used as a ligature for the digraph ⟨ae⟩ in many words of Greek or Latin origin, as did œ for ⟨oe⟩.

Eth and thorn both represented /θ/ in Old English. Eth fell out of use during the 13th century and was replaced by thorn. Thorn mostly fell out of use during the 14th century, and was replaced by ⟨th⟩. (Anachronistic usage of the scribal abbreviation ("þe", i.e. "the") has led to the modern mispronunciation of thorn as ⟨y⟩ in this context; see Ye Olde.)

Wynn, which represented the phoneme /w/, was replaced by ⟨w⟩ during the 13th century. Due to its similarity to the letter ⟨p⟩, it is mostly represented by ⟨w⟩ in modern editions of Old and Middle English texts even when the manuscript has wynn.

Under Norman influence, the continental Carolingian script replaced the insular that had been used for Old English. However, because of the significant difference in appearance between the old insular g and the Carolingian g, the former continued in use as a separate letter, known as yogh, written ⟨ȝ⟩. This was adopted for use to represent a variety of sounds: [ɣ], [j], [dʒ], [x], [ç], while the Carolingian g was normally used for [g]. Instances of yogh were eventually replaced by ⟨j⟩ or ⟨y⟩, and by ⟨gh⟩ in words like night and laugh. In Middle Scots yogh became indistinguishable from cursive z, and printers tended to use ⟨z⟩ when yogh was not available in their fonts; this led to new spellings (often giving rise to new pronunciations), as in McKenzie, where the ⟨z⟩ replaced a yogh which had the pronunciation /j/.

Under continental influence, the letters ⟨k⟩, ⟨q⟩ and ⟨z⟩, which had not normally been used by Old English scribes, came to be commonly used in the writing of Middle English. Also the newer Latin letter ⟨w⟩ was introduced (replacing wynn). The distinct letter forms ⟨v⟩ and ⟨u⟩ came into use, but were still used interchangeably; the same applies to ⟨j⟩ and ⟨i⟩. (For example, spellings such as wijf and paradijs for wife and paradise can be found in Middle English.)

The consonantal ⟨j⟩/⟨i⟩ was sometimes used to transliterate the Hebrew letter yodh, representing the palatal approximant sound /j/ (and transliterated in Greek by iota and in Latin by ⟨i⟩); words like Jerusalem, Joseph, etc. would have originally followed the Latin pronunciation beginning with /j/, that is, the sound of ⟨y⟩ in yes. In some words, however, notably from Old French, ⟨j⟩/⟨i⟩ was used for the affricate /dʒ/, as in joie (modern "joy"), used in Wycliffe's Bible. This was similar to the geminate sound [ddʒ] which had been represented as ⟨cg⟩ in Old English. By the time of Modern English, the sound came to be written as ⟨j⟩/⟨i⟩ at the start of words (like joy), and usually as ⟨dg⟩ elsewhere (as in bridge). It could also be written, mainly in French loanwords, as ⟨g⟩, with the adoption of the soft G convention (age, page, etc.)

Other symbols

Many scribal abbreviations were also used. It was common for the Lollards to abbreviate the name of Jesus (as in Latin manuscripts) to ihc. The letters ⟨n⟩ and ⟨m⟩ were often omitted and indicated by a macron above an adjacent letter, so for example in could be written as ī. A thorn with a superscript ⟨t⟩ or ⟨e⟩ could be used for that and the; the thorn here resembled a ⟨Y⟩, giving rise to the ye of "Ye Olde". Various forms of the ampersand replaced the word and.

Numbers were still always written using Roman numerals, except for some rare occurrences of Arabic numerals during the 15th century.

Letter-to-sound correspondences

Although Middle English spelling was never fully standardized, the following table shows the pronunciations most usually represented by particular letters and digraphs towards the end of the Middle English period, using the notation given in the article on Middle English phonology. As explained above, single vowel letters had alternative pronunciations depending on whether they were in a position where their sounds had been subject to lengthening. Long vowel pronunciations were in flux due to the beginnings of the Great Vowel Shift.

Symbol	Description and notes
a	/a/, or in lengthened positions /aː/, becoming [æː] by about 1500. Sometimes /au/ before ⟨l⟩ or nasals (see Late Middle English diphthongs).
ai, ay	/ai/ (alternatively denoted by /ɛi/; see vein–vain merger).
au, aw	/au/
b	/b/, but in later Middle English became silent in words ending -mb (while some words that never had a /b/ sound came to be spelt -mb by analogy; see reduction of /mb/).
c	/k/, but /s/ (earlier /ts/) before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨y⟩ (see C and hard and soft C for details).
ch	/tʃ/
ck	/k/, replaced earlier ⟨kk⟩ as the doubled form of ⟨k⟩ (for the phenomenon of doubling, see above).
d	/d/
e	/e/, or in lengthened positions /eː/ or sometimes /ɛː/ (see ee). For silent ⟨e⟩, see above.
ea	Rare, for /ɛː/ (see ee).
ee	/eː/, becoming [iː] by about 1500; or /ɛː/, becoming [eː] by about 1500. In Early Modern English the latter vowel came to be commonly written ⟨ea⟩. The two vowels later merged.
ei, ey	Sometimes the same as ⟨ai⟩; sometimes /ɛː/ or /eː/ (see also fleece merger).
ew	Either /ɛu/ or /iu/ (see Late Middle English diphthongs; these later merged).
f	/f/
g	/ɡ/, or /dʒ/ before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨y⟩ (see ⟨g⟩ for details). The ⟨g⟩ in initial gn- was still pronounced.
gh	[ç] or [x], post-vowel allophones of /h/ (this was formerly one of the uses of yogh). The ⟨gh⟩ is often retained in Chancery spellings even though the sound was starting to be lost.
h	/h/ (except for the allophones for which ⟨gh⟩ was used). Also used in several digraphs (⟨ch⟩, ⟨th⟩, etc.). In some French loanwords, such as horrible, the ⟨h⟩ was silent.
i (j)	As a vowel, /i/, or in lengthened positions /iː/, which had started to be diphthongised by about 1500. As a consonant, /dʒ/ ( (corresponding to modern ⟨j⟩); see above).
ie	Used sometimes for /ɛː/ (see ee).
k	/k/, used particularly in positions where ⟨c⟩ would be softened. Also used in ⟨kn⟩ at the start of words; here both consonants were still pronounced.
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/, including its allophone [ŋ] (before /k/, /g/).
o	/o/, or in lengthened positions /ɔː/ or sometimes /oː/ (see oo). Sometimes /u/, as in sone (modern son); the ⟨o⟩ spelling was often used rather than ⟨u⟩ when adjacent to i, m, n, v, w for legibility, i.e. to avoid a succession of vertical strokes.
oa	Rare, for /ɔː/ (became commonly used in Early Modern English).
oi, oy	/ɔi/ or /ui/ (see Late Middle English diphthongs; these later merged).
oo	/oː/, becoming [uː] by about 1500; or /ɔː/.
ou, ow	Either /uː/, which had started to be diphthongised by about 1500, or /ɔu/.
p	/p/
qu	/kw/
r	/r/
s	/s/, sometimes /z/ (formerly [z] was an allophone of /s/). Also appeared as ſ (long s).
s(c)h	/ʃ/
t	/t/
th	/θ/ or /ð/ (which had previously been allophones of a single phoneme), replacing earlier eth and thorn, although thorn was still sometimes used.
u, v	Used interchangeably. As a consonant, /v/. As a vowel, /u/, or /iu/ in "lengthened" positions (although it had generally not gone through the same lengthening process as other vowels – see history of /iu/).
w	/w/ (replaced Old English wynn).
wh	/hw/ (see English ⟨wh⟩).
x	/ks/
y	As a consonant, /j/ (earlier this was one of the uses of yogh). Sometimes also /g/. As a vowel, the same as ⟨i⟩, where ⟨y⟩ is often preferred beside letters with downstrokes.
z	/z/ (in Scotland sometimes used as a substitute for yogh; see above).

Literature

Main article: Middle English literature

Sample texts

(all modern English translations are poetic translations, not word for word.)

Ormulum, 12th century

Further information: Ormulum

This passage explains the background to the Nativity:

Forrþrihht anan se time comm   þatt ure Drihhtin wollde ben borenn i þiss middellærd   forr all mannkinne nede he chæs himm sone kinnessmenn   all swillke summ he wollde and whær he wollde borenn ben   he chæs all att hiss wille.

As soon as the time came that our Lord wanted be born in this middle-earth for all mankind sake, at once he chose kinsmen for himself, all just as he wanted, and he decided that he would be born exactly where he wished.

(3494–501)

Epitaph of John the smyth, died 1371

Further information: Brightwell Baldwin

An epitaph from a monumental brass in an Oxfordshire parish church:

Original text man com & se how schal alle ded li: wen yolk comes bad & bare moth have ben ve awaẏ fare: All ẏs wermēs yt ve for care:— bot yt ve do for god ẏs luf ve haue nothyng yare: yis graue lẏs John ye smẏth god yif his soule hewn grit

Translation by Patricia Utechin Man, come and see how all dead men shall lie: when that comes bad and bare, we have nothing when we away fare: all that we care for is worms:— except for that which we do for God's sake, we have nothing ready: under this grave lies John the smith, God give his soul heavenly peace

Wycliffe's Bible, 1384

From the Wycliffe's Bible, (1384):
First version

¹And it was don aftirward, and Jhesu made iorney by citees and castelis, prechinge and euangelysinge þe rewme of God, ²and twelue wiþ him; and summe wymmen þat weren heelid of wickide spiritis and syknessis, Marie, þat is clepid Mawdeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis wenten ³out, and Jone, þe wyf of Chuse, procuratour of Eroude, and Susanne, and manye oþere, whiche mynystriden to him of her riches.

— Luke ch.8, v.1–3

Second version

¹And it was don aftirward, and Jhesus made iourney bi citees and castels, prechynge and euangelisynge þe rewme of ²God, and twelue wiþ hym; and sum wymmen þat weren heelid of wickid spiritis and sijknessis, Marie, þat is clepid Maudeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis ³wenten out, and Joone, þe wijf of Chuse, þe procuratoure of Eroude, and Susanne, and many oþir, þat mynystriden to hym of her ritchesse.

— Luke ch.8, v.1–3

And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance.

— Translation of Luke ch.8 v.1–3, from the New Testament

Chaucer, 1390s

The following is the beginning of the general Prologue from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The text was written in a dialect associated with London and spellings associated with the then-emergent Chancery Standard.

Original in Middle English	Near word-for-word translation into Modern English	Sense-for-sense translation into Modern English (rhyme scheme by Nevill Coghill)
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages); Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.	When April with his showers sweet The drought of March has pierced to the root And bathed every vein in such liquor, Of whose virtue engendered is the flower; When Zephyrus too with his sweet breath Has quickened, in every grove and heath, The tender sproutings; and the young sun Has in the Ram his half-course run, And small fowls make melody, [While] sleeping all the night with open eye (So Nature pricks them in their hearts); Then folks long to go on on pilgrimages And palmers to seek strange shores To far-off shrines, known in sundry lands; And, [e]specially, from every shire's end Of England, to Canterbury they wend, The holy blessed martyr to seek, Who has helped them when they were sick.	When in April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower, When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath Exhales an air in every grove and heath Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun His half course in the sign of the Ram has run And the small fowl are making melody That sleep away the night with open eye, (So nature pricks them and their heart engages) Then folk long to go on pilgrimages, And palmers long to seek the stranger strands Of far off saints, hallowed in sundry lands, And specially from every shires’ end Of England, down to Canterbury they wend The holy blissful martyr, quick To give his help to them when they were sick

In modern prose:

When April with its sweet showers has pierced March's drought to the root, bathing every vein in such liquid by whose virtue the flower is engendered, and when Zephyrus with his sweet breath has also enlivened the tender plants in every wood and field, and the young sun is halfway through Aries, and small birds that sleep all night with an open eye make melodies (their hearts pricked by Nature), then people long to go on pilgrimages, and palmers seek foreign shores and distant shrines known in sundry lands, and especially they wend their way to Canterbury from every shire of England in order to seek the holy blessed martyr, who has helped them when they were sick.

Gower, 1390

The following is the beginning of the Prologue from Confessio Amantis by John Gower.

Original in Middle English: Of hem that writen ous tofore The bokes duelle, and we therfore Ben tawht of that was write tho: Forthi good is that we also In oure tyme among ous hiere Do wryte of newe som matiere, Essampled of these olde wyse So that it myhte in such a wyse, Whan we ben dede and elleswhere, Beleve to the worldes eere In tyme comende after this. Bot for men sein, and soth it is, That who that al of wisdom writ It dulleth ofte a mannes wit To him that schal it aldai rede, For thilke cause, if that ye rede, I wolde go the middel weie And wryte a bok betwen the tweie, Somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore, That of the lasse or of the more Som man mai lyke of that I wryte:

Near word-for-word translation into Modern English: Of them that wrote before us The books remain, and we therefore Are taught of what was written then: Because it is good that we also In our time among us here Do write some matter anew, Given an example by these old ways So that it might in such a way, Whan we are dead and elsewhere, Be left to the world's ear In time coming after this. But for men say, and true it is, That who that entirely of wisdom writes It dulls often a man's wit For him that shall it every day read, For that same cause, if you sanction it, I would like to go the middle way And write a book between the two, Somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore, That of the less or of the more Some man may like of that I write:

Translation into Modern English: (by Richard Brodie) Of those who wrote before our lives Their precious legacy survives; From what was written then, we learn, And so it’s well that we in turn, In our allotted time on earth Do write anew some things of worth, Like those we from these sages cite, So that such in like manner might, When we have left this mortal sphere, Remain for all the world to hear In ages following our own. But it is so that men are prone To say that when one only reads Of wisdom all day long, one breeds A paucity of wit, and so If you agree I’ll choose to go Along a kind of middle ground Sometimes I’ll write of things profound, And sometimes for amusement’s sake A lighter path of pleasure take So all can something pleasing find.

In modern prose:

The books of those that wrote before us survive, and therefore we are taught about what was written then. For this reason it is good that we also in our time, here among us, write some material from scratch, inspired by the example of these old customs; so that it might, when we are dead and elsewhere, be left to the world's ear in the time coming after this. But because men say, and it's true, that when someone writes entirely about wisdom, it often dulls a man's wit who reads it every day. For that reason, if you permit it, I would like to take the middle way, and write a book between the two, somewhat of passion, somewhat of instruction, that whether of high or low status, people may like what I write about.

See also

• Medulla Grammatice (collection of glossaries)
• Middle English creole hypothesis
• Middle English Dictionary
• Middle English literature

References

• Brunner, Karl (1962) Abriss der mittelenglischen Grammatik; 5. Auflage. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer (1st ed. Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer, 1938)
• Brunner, Karl (1963) An Outline of Middle English Grammar; translated by Grahame Johnston. Oxford: Blackwell

External links

• A. L. Mayhew and Walter William Skeat. A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580
• Middle English Glossary
• With grammatical introduction, notes, and glossary.