The dialects of Old English

Christian poetry

The Vercelli Book and Exeter Book contain four long narrative poems of saints' lives, or hagiography. In Vercelli are Andreas and Elene and in Exeter are Guthlac and Juliana.

The Junius manuscript contains three paraphrases of Old Testament texts. These were re-wordings of Biblical passages in Old English, not exact translations, but paraphrasing, sometimes into beautiful poetry in its own right. The first and longest is of Genesis. The second is of Exodus. The third is Daniel.

The Psalter Psalms 51-150 are preserved, following a prose version of the first 50 Psalms. It is believed there was once a complete psalter based on evidence, but only the first 150 have survived.

Simile and Metaphor

Anglo-Saxon poetry is marked by the comparative rarity of similes. This is a particular feature of Anglo-Saxon verse style, and is a consequence of both its structure and the rapidity with which images are deployed, to be unable to effectively support the expanded simile. This can be contrasted sharply with the strong and extensive dependence that Anglo-Saxon poetry has upon metaphor, particularly that afforded by the use of kennings.

Old English prose

The amount of surviving Old English prose is much greater than the amount of poetry. Of the surviving prose, sermons and Latin translations of religious works are the majority. Old English prose first appears in the 9th century, and continues to be recorded through the 12th century.

Christian prose

The most widely known author of Old English was King Alfred, who translated many books from Latin into Old English. These translations include: Gregory the Great's The Pastoral Care, a manual for priests on how to conduct their duties; The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius; and The Soliloquies of Saint Augustine. Alfred was also responsible for a translation of the fifty Psalms into Old English. ?lfric of Eynsham, wrote in the late 10th and early 11th century. He was the greatest and most prolific writer of Anglo-Saxon sermons, which were copied and adapted for use well into the 13th century. He also wrote a number of saints lives, an Old English work on time-reckoning, pastoral letters, translations of the first six books of the Bible, glosses and translations of other parts of the Bible including Proverbs, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus.

In the same category as Aelfric, and a contemporary, was Wulfstan II, archbishop of York. His sermons were highly stylistic. His best known work is Sermo Lupi ad Anglos in which he blames the sins of the British for the Viking invasions. He wrote a number of clerical legal texts Institutes of Polity and Canons of Edgar.

9. Middle English

Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century. By this time the Northumbrian dialect spoken in south east Scotland was developing into the Scots language. The language of England as spoken after this time, up to 1650, is known as Early Modern English.

Unlike Old English, which tended largely to adopt Late West Saxon scribal conventions in the immediate pre-Conquest period, Middle English as a written language displays a wide variety of scribal (and presumably dialectal) forms. However, the diversity of forms in written Middle English signifies neither greater variety of spoken forms of English than could be found in pre-Conquest England, nor a faithful representation of contemporary spoken English (though perhaps greater fidelity to this than may be found in Old English texts). Rather, this diversity suggests the gradual end of the role of Wessex as a focal point and trend-setter for scribal activity, and the emergence of more distinct local scribal styles and written dialects, and a general pattern of transition of activity over the centuries which follow, as Northumbria, East Anglia and London emerge successively as major centres of literary production, with their own generic interests.

Literary and linguistic cultures

Middle English was one of the five languages current in England. 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, and may be regarded as the only true vernacular language of most English people after about the mid-12th century, with Anglo-Norman becoming, like Latin, a learned tongue of the court. Welsh and Cornish were also used as spoken vernaculars in the west. English did not cease to be used in the court: it retained a cartulary function (being the language used in royal charters); nor did it disappear as a language of literary production. Even during what has been called the 'lost' period of English literary history, the late 11th to mid-12th century, Old English texts, especially homilies, saints' lives and grammatical texts, continued to be copied, used and adapted by scribes. From the later 12th and 13th century there survive huge amounts of written material of various forms, from lyrics to saints' lives, devotional manuals to histories, encyclopaedias to poems of moral (and often immoral) discussion and debate, though much of this material remains unstudied, in part because it evades or defies modern, arguably quite restricted, categorisations of literature. Middle English is more familiar to us, the 14th- and 15th-century literature cultures clustered around the West Midlands and around London and East Anglia. This includes the works of William Langland, the Gawain Poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, Malory, Caxton, and Hoccleve. Perhaps best known, of course, is Chaucer himself in his Canterbury Tales and other shorter poems, where the poet consistently revalues and reinvents older traditions while managing to avoid completely abandoning them.

History

1000

Although it is possible to overestimate the degree of culture shock which the transfer of power in 1066 represented, the removal from the top levels of an English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their replacement with a Norman-speaking one, both opened the way for the introduction of French as a language of polite discourse and literature and fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration. Although Old English was by no means as standardised as modern English, its written forms were less subject to broad dialect variations than post-Conquest English.

Even now, after a thousand years, the Norman influence on the English language is still visible.

The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen by the abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government derived from Anglo-Norman: court, judge, jury, appeal, parliament. Also prevalent are terms relating to the chivalric cultures which arose in the 12th century as a response to the requirements of feudalism and crusading activity. This period of trilingual activity developed much of the flexible triplicate synonymy of modern English. For instance, English has three words meaning roughly "of or relating to a king":

kingly from Old English,

royal from French and

regal from Latin.

Deeper changes occurred in the grammar. Bit by bit, as we have seen, the wealthy and the government anglicised again, though French remained the dominant language of literature and law for several centuries, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy. The new English did not look the same as the old. Old English had a complex system of inflectional endings, but these were gradually lost and simplified in the dialects of spoken English. Gradually the change spread to be reflected in its increasingly diverse written forms. This loss of case-endings was part of a general trend from inflectional to fixed-order words which occurred in other Germanic languages, and cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking layers of the population. English remained, after all, the language of the majority. It certainly was a literary language in England, alongside Anglo-Norman and Latin from the 12th to the 14th centuries. In the later 14th century, Chancery Standard (or London English) -- itself a phenomenon produced by the increase of bureaucracy in London, and a concomitant increase in London literary production -- introduced a greater deal of conformity in English spelling. While the fame of Middle English literary productions tends to begin in the later fourteenth century, with the works of Chaucer and Gower, an immense corpus of literature survives from throughout the Middle English period.

c. 1400

The Establishment is using English increasingly around this time. With some standardization of the language, English begins to exhibit the more recognisable forms of grammar and syntax that will form the basis of future standard dialects:

However, this was a time of upheaval in England. The language changed too -- there was much change during the 15th century. But towards the end of that century, a more modern English was starting to emerge. With its simplified case-ending system, Middle English is closer to modern English than its pre-Conquest equivalent.

Nouns

Despite losing the slightly more complex system of inflectional endings, Middle English retains two separate noun-ending patterns from Old English. The strong -s plural form has survived into Modern English, while the weak -n form is rare (oxen, children, brethren and in some dialects eyen (instead of eyes) shoon (instead of shoes) and kine (instead of cows)).

Verbs

As a general rule, the first person singular of present tense verbs ends in -e (ich here), the second person in -(e)st (?ou spekest), and the third person in -e? (he come?). (? is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think"). In the past tense, weak verbs are formed by an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. These, without their personal endings, also form past participles, together with past-participle prefixes derived from the old English ge-: i-, y- and sometimes bi-. Strong verbs form their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g. binden -> bound), as in Modern English.

Pronouns

Post-Conquest English inherits its pronouns from Old English:

First and second pronouns survive largely unchanged, with only minor spelling variations. In the third person, the masculine accusative singular became 'him'. The feminine form was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into 'she', but unsteadily -- 'ho' remains in some areas for a long time. The lack of a strong standard written form between the eleventh and the fifteenth century makes these changes hard to map.

Pronunciation

Generally, all letters in Middle English words are pronounced. Therefore 'knight' is pronounced [kn?ct] (with a pronounced K and a 'gh' as the 'ch' in German 'nicht'), not [na?t], as in Modern English.Words like 'straunge' are disyllabic. 'Palmeres' is trisyllabic. Comparison with Old English has led some to claim Middle English (and therefore Modern English) developed as a sort of creole.

Archaic Characters

The following characters which may be unfamilar to modern readers are found in Middle English texts.

letter	name	pronunciation
?	Ash	[?]
?	Eth	[?]
?	Thorn	[?]
?	Yogh	[?] [g] [?]

Chancery Standard

Chancery Standard was a written form of English used by government bureaucracy and for other official purposes from the late 14th century. It is believed to have contributed in a significant way to the development of the English language as spoken and written today. Because of the differing dialects of English spoken and written across the country at the time, the government required a clear and unambiguous form for use in its official documents. Chancery Standard was developed to meet this need.The Chancery Standard (CS) was developed during the reign of King Henry V (1413 to 1422) in response to his order for his chancery (government officials) to use, like himself, English rather than Anglo-Norman or Latin. It had become broadly standardized by about the 1430s.

It was largely based on the London and East Midland dialects, for those areas were the political and demographic centres of gravity. However, it used other dialectical forms where they made meanings more clear; for example, the northern "they", "their" and "them" (derived from Scandinavian forms) were used rather than the London "hi/they", "hir" and "hem." This was perhaps because the London forms could be confused with words such as he, her, him. By the mid-15th century, CS was used for most official purposes except the Church (which used Latin) and some legal matters (which used French and some Latin). It was disseminated around England by bureaucrats on official business, and slowly gained prestige.

10. Preterite-present verbs

Most of the Old English auxiliaries (also called "helping verbs") belong to a class of verbs called "preterite-presents," whose present tenses look like strong past tenses ("preterites") and whose past tenses look like weak pasts. Modern English still has several of these verbs, whose forms we here classify as "present" and "past" according to their origins, even though we no longer think of the past forms as past:

present	past	present	past
can	could	shall	should
may	might	---	ought
---	must

The Modern English "present" forms betray their affiliation with the strong past by a peculiarity of their inflection: like a past tense, they lack the ending -s in the third-person singular.

The class of preterite-present verbs is larger in Old English than in Modern English and includes several verbs that are not auxiliaries. The present forms of these verbs match the past forms of strong verbs almost precisely: the main differences are that the second-person singular forms have the first past rather than the second past vowel and the ending -st or -t, and the present subjunctive forms sometimes have i-mutation.

11. Features of Middle English phonology

The following sections should be seen in the context of the above one Writing and Sounds of Old English as it offers a discussion of the main changes between Old and Middle English and elaborates on some of the features of Middle English which are relevant to developments today.

LENGTHENING IN OPEN SYLLABLES This is a phonological process which started in the north of England in the 13th century and affected the high vowels /i/ and /u/ in the following century. It is one of the major sound changes of early Middle English and involves lengthening and lowering as seen in the following examples.



RETENTION OF MORA THROUGH COMPENSATORY LENGTHENING To understand Open Syllable Lengthening properly one must start with the notion of mora. A mora corresponds metrically to the quality of a short vowel; all long vowels and diphthongs are bimoric in English. The constituents of a syllable correspond to morae in metrics. One can see that in the history of English various cases of compensatory lengthening recognize that with the loss of a consonant its mora is transferred to a preceding vowel, for instance light /l?xt/ [l?ct] (-VCC) > /li:t/ (-V:C).

SYLLABIC RESTRUCTURING Recall here that a metrical foot (F = foot) refers to those syllables which stand between two stressed (S = strong, i.e. stressed, indicated by a superscript stroke: ?) syllables including the first stressed syllable, irrespective of the number of weak, i.e. unstressed (W = weak) syllables after it: ?He's pre?dicting a ?landslide ?victory.

The labels S, `strong', and W, `weak', refer to the relative accentuation of the syllable. With the designations L, `light', and H, `heavy', the reference is to the quantity of the syllable. The correlation between strong and heavy on the one hand and weak and light on the other is in Middle English such that when a syllable is the only one in a foot then it must also be `heavy', hence the lengthening of short stressed vowels after the loss of final /?/. The entire metrical quantity of the words was retained by Open Syllable Lengthening.

VOWELS BEFORE /X/ In West Saxon there were only two recognisable variants for /x/, [h] in initial position, [x] in all other positions, irrespective of the preceding vowel. It was only towards the end of the Old English period that the variant [c] appears as an allophone after front vowels. In Middle English this led to a diphthong with the mid front vowels /e/ and /e:/.

There is an equivalent to the diphthongisation of [e(:)c] to [eic] with back vowels. With the latter vowels the allophone was [x] up to early Middle English. During this period a velar glide appears before this sound, [u], the back equivalent to /i/ with [c]. This merged with the preceding vowel and resulted in a diphthong.



THE SHIFT OF /X/ TO /F/ Already by the 14th century a shift is to be found in English which is common in many other languages as well. It is the shift among fricatives from velar to labial place of articulation. In English the shift was unidirectional and represents one of the many reflexes of /-x/ in Modern English (the remaining reflexes are vocalic). Note that there are two main outputs from this shift, one with an original high vowel /?/ (later lowered to /?/) and one with a mid back vowel /?/; occasionally the shift occurred with a mid front vowel, cf. the form dwarf which itself shows later lowering of /e/ to /a/ before /r/.

SHORT VOWEL DEVELOPMENTS The development of late Old English /y/ differed in the various dialects. In Kentish the vowel had already unrounded to /?/ in the late 9th century; in the west midlands and in the south-west it was retained in the Middle English period. In the east midlands it was probably unrounded early on (after the 11th century).

late OE	ME
y	i North and East Midlands
	y West Midlands and South
	? Kent

There are many examples for the unrounding in the east midlands.

The development in the east applies to those cases where there was no phonetic conditioning. If, however, /y/ came after a labial or in the environment of /?/ or before /d?, t?, ?/ it was retracted to /u/. Western dialects show the retraction already in the 12th century and this is responsible for many of the spellings with u to the present day.

In the west midlands and in the south a front vowel was retained longest. The spelling u there stands for /y/ and is not restricted to the environment before /d?, t?, ?/, cf. gult /gylt/ `guilt', kun /kyn/ `kin'.

For Kentish /?/ is attested. The vowel is the short equivalent zu /e:/ which was already to be found in Kentish instead of West Saxon /y:/. Cf. gelt /g?lt/ `guilt', ken /k?n/ `kin'.

The modern standard shows forms which can be traced to the various dialects. The phonetic possibilities are /?/, /?/ or /?/ (from earlier /?/) and the spelling can be i,e or u. There are many instances of a mixture of spelling from one dialect and pronunciation from another.

SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION

busy	West Midlands	East Midlands
bury	West Midlands	Kent
merry	Kent	Kent
shut	West Midlands	West Midlands
pit	East Midlands	East Midlands

Apart from the above developments the short vowels of English have remained remarkably stable throughout the history of the language, for instance Old English cwic, god show the same vowels in Modern English. The two main changes which occur later are (1) /?/ > /?/ after the mid-17th century and (2) an earlier raising of /?/ to /?/ before nasals as in think [??k] and English [??gl??].

Lowering of /e/ to /a/

This is a development which began in the north and spread to the south after about 1400. It is difficult to date this exactly as there is no orthographical indication of the shift. The lowering of /e/ to /a/ explains the present-day pronunciations of many proper names in England such as Derby, Hertfordshire, Berkeley (the name of the philosopher, not that of the Californian city). This shift was very common and in many cases the orthography has been adapted to the pronunciation so that these words cannot be recognised as having originally involved the shift, e.g. dark (from derk), barn (from bern), heart (from herte). The shift affected words irrespective of origin, hence some French loans also have the shift. Note that many instances did not become established and the /er/ (later /?:/) pronunciation was retained.

Early Modern English serve /sarv/ > /s?:v/ certain /sart?n/ > /s?:t?n/ fervent /farv?nt/ > /f?:v?nt/

In one case this development led to a semantic distinction between two words one with the lowered vowel and one without. The word parson is a form of person with this lowering and came to mean not just any person but an ecclesiastical person and so the two forms continued with separate meanings in the standard.

THE LOSS OF FINAL /-?/ The loss of phonetic substance in words is one of the most remarking developments in the history of English. It is already attested in Old English in the simplification of consonants. Later vowels in unstressed syllables lost their distinctiveness, then a final inflectional nasal was dropped and finally -- probably by the 14th century -- the remaining shwa, [?], disappeared as can be seen in the following sequence.

drifan /dri:van/ > /dri:v?n/ > /dri:v?/ > /dri:v/ (> /draiv/)

This phonetic loss always involves unstressed syllables and usually resulted in apocope (loss of endings). There are, however, instances of syncope (medial loss) and procope (initial loss). The latter can be seen quite clearly with the past participles of verbs which originally had a prefix ge- (cf. the similar prefix in German) but which was weakened progressively until it finally disappeared.

ge- /j?-/ > /i:/ > /?/ > o OE gelufod ME yloved NE loved

This phonetic reduction had far-reaching consequences for the typology of English which gradually drifted from a synthetic type (Old English, much like German) to a more analytic type in modern times. The language developed means for compensating for the loss in manifestation of grammatical categories chiefly by a more rigid word order and by the increasing functionalisation of prepositions.

It is difficult to reconstruct the demise of final /?/. The reason is quite simply that final -e continued to be written. The only sound proof is offered by a series of spellings in Middle English where the words have a final -e which is not etymologically justified.

cole (OE col) `coal' shire (OE scir) `county'

The loss of phonetic /-?/ led to a refunctionalisation of the final written -e. It was henceforth used to indicate that the vowel of the preceding (stressed) syllable was long. This function has survived to the present day, cf. pane, with /ei/ from ME /a:/, and pan, with /?/ from ME /a/.

In cases where final /-l/ is still spoken one must differentiate between those which represent a retention of an inherited /-l/ and those where the /-l/ is pronounced because it was reintroduced into the writing, e.g. ModE fault (< ME faute from French).

The situation is slightly different where the present-day English word shows a long low vowel. Here the /-l/ can have disappeared without necessarily having caused a diphthong.

calf /ka:f/, half /ha:f/

12. The language of Shakespeare

There would be presented some of the features of Shakespeare's language as it is manifested in his plays. Care should be exercised when looking at these features not to automatically assume that they applied in all instances to English during the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare is a great manipulator of language, and in the sphere of vocabulary, he is quite innovative and idiosyncratic. In the realm of grammar his language is probably more indicative of contemporary usage.

Pronunciation in plays

1) /r/ was pronounced post-vocalically (car, card) 2) wh was pronounced [?] (which, witch) 3) /?/ was not lowered (but, pull) 4) /a/ before /f, s, ?/ was still short (staff, pass, bath) 5) /a/ after /w/ was not retracted (swan, war) 6) mid-vowels were not diphongised (play, boat) 7) diphthongs /ai, au/ still centralised (time [t??m], house [h??s]) 8) /?:, e:/ had not yet been raised to /i:/ (eat rhymes with great) 9) fewer instances of short /u:/ (book, cook, room)

Colloquial language in Shakespeare

Greeting formulae How now, mine host! How now, Pistol

Blessings God save, your grace! Bless you, sir!

Formulae following greeting And how doth my good cousin Silence? And hos doth my cousin, your bedfellow?

Parting fomulae Will you go, gentles? Farewell, good wenches... Have a care of thyself

Compounds in Shakespeare's plays

These are very common and contribute considerably to the lexical flavour of Shakespeare's language, both conforming to poetic usage of the time and at the same time indicating specifically his special kind of English.

heaven-kissing hill temple-haunting martlet little-seeming substance night-tripping fairy

highest-peering hill fearful-hanging rock star-crossed lovers cloud-capped towers high-grown field fen-sucked fogs

Grammar

Multiple negation in Shakespeare I am not valiant neither (O, 3541)

Is't not enough, young man, / That I did never, no nor never can (MND, 780-1)

Older grammar in Shakespeare Use of older inflected form of `do', i.e. `doth' That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears (T&C, 3116)

Use of old genitive as possessive pronoun, i.e. `mine' But no more deep will I endart mine eye (R&J, 444)

Use of `be', and not `have', as an auxiliary verb When we born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools (Lear, 3010)

13. Chaucer's English

Chaucer's Vocabulary

The great majority of the words Chaucer uses are the same in meaning and function as their Modern English counterparts. They usually differ greatly in spelling. But this initial difficulty soon disappears as one reads through the text -- especially if one reads the text aloud. It is soon apparent that "y" and "i" are interchangeable and no one can have much difficulty with a phrase such as "the Frenssh of Paris." Indeed, in some ways Chaucer's vocabulary may be easier for a modern reader than it would have been for many unsophisticated Middle English readers.

This is because one of the most important characteristics of his language and style is his practice of "borrowing" from mainly French and Latin. (He and his contemporaries introduced ("borrowed") words into the English language, moving them practically unchanged from Latin or French into English.

Some of these words -- Aprill, March, pilgrimage -- had been in the language for centuries and seemed pure English to Chaucer's first hearers; others first appear in the fourteenth century and may still have sounded a bit "literary" to the hearers. The word inspired appears here for the first time in English, and its meaning (lit. "breathe into") was clear only to those who knew French or Latin and could realize its metaphoric force. A first-time modern reader may miss the metaphor, but the word "inspire" is now familiar, as are almost all the borrowings in this passage. Such borrowings are part of the "high style" that Chaucer introduced into English literature.

Do, did have their modern meanings but they are also used as causative verbs: And for oure owne tresor doon us hange (And have us hanged for our own treasure).

Gan, gonne are used for periphrastic plurals somewhat like modern "do" and "did": And homward gonne they ride.

Kan, koude Most often means "can, know how to" but it can also be a transitive verb meaning "know" She knew muchel of wandryng (She knew much of wandering)."

Let, leet usually means "allow, permit" but it is also used as a causative" duc Theseus leet crye (Duc Theseus had [caused to be] announced).

Shal, shullen have their modern meaning (How shal the world be served? but they are also used with a sense of obligation ("must"): Whoso shal telle a tale (Whoever must tell a tale). Shal, shullen are also sometimes used with an understood verb of motion: for I shal to Surrye (For I must go to Syria).

Wol, will, wolde usually mean "will" or "would" but they may also carry the meaning "desire, want to": He wolde the see were kept (He wanted the sea to be guarded), That I wol lyve in poverte wilfully? (That I want to live in voluntary poverty?).

Chaucer's Grammar

Nouns

Middle English nouns have the same inflections as modern English -- Nominative: freend("friend"), Possessive: freendes ("friend's"), Plural: freendes ("friends"). Aside from the spelling and the fact that in Middle English the -es is always pronounced, the inflections are the same as ours.

Exceptions to the rule are much the same in both forms of the language. Some plurals are formed by a change in vowels ("men," "geese," "mice," etc.) The word keen is the only one of these plurals that does not survive in Modern English.

In Modern English we have a few old plurals with "-en" ("oxen," "brethren"); Chaucer has more of these forms:

asshen ("ashes") been ("bees") doghtren ("daughters") eyen ("eyes") hosen ("hose") sustren ("sisters") toon ("toes")

The word "children" in both Middle and Modern English is a combination of the "-en" plural with an older plural in "-r."

Pronouns

The pronouns are about the same in Modern English as in Middle English. The only exception is the third person plural (hir = "their," hem = "them"):

Note that "his" is the possessive form of both the masculine and the neuter pronoun; in Aprill with his shoures soote the pronoun his means "its."

Chaucer often uses pronouns in the French manner -- singular pronouns (thee, thou. etc.) used for addressing children, servants, or intimates, the plural (ye, you, etc.) used as "the pronoun of respect," for addressing superiors (like French "tu" and "vous"). Chaucer is not completely consistent in this usage, but it is worth noting, since often the choice of pronoun defines the social relationships of the speakers.

Verbs

Two sets of contracted forms are common in Chaucer but completely lacking in Modern English. The first combines the negative ne with a following verb beginning with a vowel, h-, or w-:

nam = ne + am ("am not)

nath = ne + hath ("has not")

In representations of speech some of these forms (singular second person) are further contracted with a following thou, as in niltow ("will thou not"). A similar contraction occurs in forms such as artow ("art thou") and in forms such as ridestou ("do you ride").

The other very common contracted forms are those in which the stem ends with -t, -d, -th, or -s and -eth follows:

bit = biddeth ("asks") rit = rideth ("rides") rist = riseth ("rises") Modifiers

Adjectives and Adverbs are much the same in Middle English as in Modern. The only notable difference is the use of final -e in the "strong" (or "definite") and "weak" ("indefinite") declensions of thre adjective. In the "strong" declension there is no -e in the singular; the final -e is used in all other cases: the "weak" declension has -e in all cases.

A yong knight ("strong") Two yonge knightes ("weak")

Pronouncing Chaucer's English

Middle English is the form of English used in England from roughly the time of the Norman conquest (1066) until about 1500. After the conquest, French largely displaced English as the language of the upper classes and of sophisticated literature. In Chaucer's time this was changing, and in his generation English regained the status it had enjoyed in Anglo-Saxon times, before the Normans came. English was once again becoming the language of the royal court and of the new literature produced by Chaucer and his contemporaries. (

The main difference between Chaucer's language and our own is in the pronunciation of the "long" vowels. The consonants remain generally the same, though Chaucer rolled his r's, sometimes dropped his aitches, and pronounced both elements of consonant combinations (such as "kn-" in knight or "wr-" in write) that were later simplified (to "n-" and "r-"). And the Middle English short vowels are very similar to those in Modern English (Chaucer's "short a" was more like the sound in "rot" than in modern "rat.") But the the Middle English "long" vowels are regularly and strikingly different from our modern forms.

These changes in the pronunciation of the "long vowels" are due to what is called The Great Vowel Shift

Chaucer's Final -e

For Chaucer's poetry, the most important difference between Chaucer's language and our own is due to the fact that in the change from Middle to Modern English the language lost the inflectional or "final e". In Chaucer's language, the inflectional endings (-e, -ed, -en, -es) were pronounced in almost all cases. In Modern English the final -e has become the "silent e" (so Modern English "tale" has but one syllable, whereas in Chaucer's English tale usually had two syllables). And the inflectional endings remain only in a few specific environments (-ed remains after t or d -- wanted , -es remains after s, sh, z -- glasses, dishes, etc.). The inflectional endings were disappearing in Chaucer's own time, and his language (and that of others of his generation, such as John Gower) may have sounded a bit old-fashioned to some younger speakers of English in late fourteenth-century London.

The rhythm of Chaucer's verse is dependent on this final -e. In the Canterbury Tales Chaucer customarily writes a five-stress, ten-syllable line, alternating unstressed and stressed syllables (what would later be called iambic pentameter):

The droghte of March hath perced to the rote. The word perced must have two syllables (rather than the one it has in modern "pierced"). Note that the final -e on droghte is not pronounced; this is because a vowel follows. Final -e is not pronounced when the following word begins with a vowel (or often h- and w-). Incidentally, the final -e on rote at the end of the line is pronounced but not counted as metrical (that is, stands aside from the ten syllables ordinarily required).

It is as important to omit the final -e when a vowel, h-, or w- follows as it is to pronounce it in other contexts:

Words of three syllables and more are frequently slurred in pronunciation, as often happens in modern English. We almost never pronounce the word "every" with three full syllables (we say "evry"). Chaucer did the same.

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