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 indocate
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 (
i) 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)
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 = 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. Can be
slurred. "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) Some
possessive nouns don't inflect: suster sonne, Lady grace, herte roote, Priamus sonne.
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 -liche: rudeliche
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
sing I,
ich my,
myn me
plural we oure us
2nd
sing thow thy, thi,
thyn thee, the
plural ye youre you
3rd
sing he his,
hys him,
hym
she, scho her, hir hir(e)
it, hit his it,
hit
plural they, thay hire, thayre them, tham, thaym,
hem
Demonstratives: that
(sing), tho (pl); this (sing.), thise/these (pl) (cp. "Thise woful verse that wepen as I write")
D. Verbs
1)
Infinitives sometimes end in -n, -en: to
sayn, to goon; pres. participles sometimes in –ande: amblande, “walking”
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. But note NW Midlands –es in 3rd
sing: “while my life dures” (WW 108)
3) As in ModE,
there are both strong and weak 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
5) Double negatives are common: ne studieth noght. Note also negative contractions of common
verbs:
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)
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
developped a five-stress line, usually iambic with 10 syllables. First
extensive (perhaps first) use of iambic pentameter; cf. Shakes., Marlowe,
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
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.