An
Introduction to Middle English
WHAT IS MIDDLE ENGLISH?
The English language has changed continually throughout
history. In the early Middle Ages these changes were often the result of
invasions or migrations; as people from other countries settled in the British Isles they brought their own languages, which
combined with or even superceded the native languages.
Old English
If you were to travel back in time to the tenth century, you
probably wouldn’t be able to understand a word that anyone said to you. They’d
be speaking Old English (or Anglo-Saxon, as it’s sometimes called), a language
very different from the English that we speak today. For a start, the grammar
was entirely different – more like Latin or Russian than modern English. Words
were inflected – that is to say, rather than using a preposition like ‘of’ or
‘from’ to show what is happening in the sentence, a suffix would be attached to
the word. For example, a word like ‘stow’, meaning ‘place’, would have the
suffix ‘um’ attached to it to mean ‘in’. And, as you can see, not only the
grammar but the vocabulary was very different. Talking to a tenth-century
Englishman, you’d probably only be able to recognize a few words like ‘a’ or
‘the’. Only about one-sixth of current English vocabulary has an Old English
root, with the rest being foreign influences – but these are often the most
important and commonly used words – such as ‘to be’. Other old words still
exist in place names – you may not recognize that the word ‘stow’ means
‘place’, but there are plenty of towns called Stowe or which include it in
their name. And even if you could understand a word when it was written down,
Old English pronounciation was very different to today. Even the alphabet was
different – there are extra letters taken from the Norse runes.
Take a look at this piece of Old English poetry and see if
you can understand any of it:
Wæs se
grimma gæst Grendel haten,
mære mearcstapa, se þe moras heold,
fen ond fæsten
mære mearcstapa, se þe moras heold,
fen ond fæsten
Choose what you think this is about –
- a monster living on a moor
- the arrival of an unwelcome guest at a house
- a sheep-shearing contest
In fact, these lines are from Beowulf, a great poem from the
11th century, and this description is the first time that Grendel, a
monster, is described. This is how it might run in modern English:
Grendel this monster grim was
called,
march-riever mighty, in moorland living,
in fen and fastness (trans R.I.Altman)
march-riever mighty, in moorland living,
in fen and fastness (trans R.I.Altman)
There are a few words you might recognize – ‘grimma’ is
‘grim’, ‘moras’ is ‘moorland’ and ‘fen’ is ‘fen’. A ‘march-riever’ is someone
who sneaks over a border to steal from and harass the inhabitants. Some words
make sense if you think about them a little more – ‘gaest’ is an evil spirit or
monster, and our word ‘ghost’ is its descendent. Other words you might guess
from your knowledge of foreign languages – ‘haten’ does not mean ‘hate’, but
‘called’ or ‘named’, like the German ‘heissen’. (Beowulf is a wonderful poem –
try to get hold of the translation by Seamus Heaney if you can).
The Changing Language
So why did the language change? There are a number of
reasons, but a major factor was the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066. The Normans spoke an early form of French, which quickly
became the ‘official’ language of England, overtaking the native
language for governmental administration and legal matters. But the Normans and
the English had to communicate somehow, and their struggles to speak changed
the English language. New French vocabulary was introduced to Old English, and
the English grammar gradually became simplified as the Normans struggled with it. (As well as French
and English, Latin was also an important language in the Middle Ages. It was used
for some government business, for education and during religious worship in
church.)
Gradually Old English turned into the Middle English that
Chaucer writes in – but still the official language of England was French! It was only in
1362, during Chaucer’s lifetime, that English was used at the opening of
Parliament for the first time. During the same year a law called the ‘Statute of Pleading’ was
passed, making English the official language of the courts and in Parliament
(and even then, it took a while to get everyone to speak English). In 1399,
King Henry IV became the first king of England since the Norman Conquest
whose mother tongue was English.
However, English was a still a language of low status –
especially when it came to writing poetry and literature. During the 14th
century, the Italians and French were experiencing an explosion of creativity –
great poets like Dante, Petrach and Boccaccio were writing in entirely new
ways. But English had no such great writers. This was where Chaucer made a
difference – he took the language of the man in the street and turned it into a
series of masterpieces. Chaucer proved that poetry written in English could be
every bit as good as books in Latin or French.
Chaucer’s Middle English and Regional Dialects
To see how different Middle English is from Old English,
take a look at this passage from Chaucer’s famous book The Canterbury Tales.
Unlike Beowulf, you shouldn’t have any problems understanding it, even though
it still looks a bit odd compared with Modern English.
A Knight there was, and that a
worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first
bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and
curteisie.
This is the description of the Knight, one of the group of
pilgrims described in The Canterbury Tales; later we’ll look at this passage
more closely as we work through some ways of understanding Middle English. But
if you compare this with the extract from Beowulf, you can see how English had
changed between the 11th and the 14th centuries.
However, this is only one Middle English dialect; The Canterbury
Tales were written in the English spoken by Londoners. In fourteenth-century England,
it was far more difficult to travel around than it was today, since the only
way to travel was by horse, boat, or on foot. With little contact between
people from different regions, regional dialects became noticeably different.
Someone from the North, for example, might find a Londoner almost
incomprehensible. Caxton, the man who brought the printing press to Britian,
tells a famous story about a man trying to buy eggs:
In my days it happened that certain merchants were in a ship
in Thames for to have sailed over the sea into
Zeland, and for lack of wind they tarried atte foreland, and went to land for
to refresh them. And on of them named Sheffield,
a mercer, in-to an house and asked for meat, and especially he asked after
eggs. And the good wife answered, that she could speak no French. And the
merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French, but would have eggs, and
she undestood him not. And then at last another said that he would have eyren?
Then the good wife said that she undestood him well. Lo, what should a man in
these days now write, eggs or Eiern, certainly it is hard to please every man,
by cause of diversity and change of language.
The English we speak today developed from the English that
was spoken in London,
so although we can understand most of Chaucer’s language, Middle English from
the north is much more difficult. Try taking a look at these lines (again,
you’ll see þ, which is ‘th’, so ‘þe’ is spelt ‘the’ today; ʒ is a sort of ‘yuh’
sound, like the ‘gh’ in ‘night’ )
Þis kyng lay at Camylot vpon
Krystmasse
With mony luflych lorde, ledez of þe best,
Rekenly of þe Rounde Table alle þo rich breþer,
With rych reuel oryʒt and rechles merþes.
With mony luflych lorde, ledez of þe best,
Rekenly of þe Rounde Table alle þo rich breþer,
With rych reuel oryʒt and rechles merþes.
The words ‘Camylot’ and the ‘Rounde Table’ should give you a
clue as to this poem. These lines are taken from Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight, written at about the same time as The Canterbury Tales, but by an
author whose name is now forgotten. Here’s a translation into modern English:
King Arthur lay at Camelot upon a
Christmas-tide, with many a gallant lord and lovely lady, and all the noble
brotherhood of the Round Table. There they held rich revels with merry talk and
jokes.
As you can see, the language of Gawain is half-way between
Old English and Chaucer’s English. The other thing you’ll notice is that
Chaucer writes rhyming poetry, as they did in Europe,
whereas the Gawain poet uses alliteration, in the old English tradition that we
also saw in Beowulf.
We can get some idea of how important this different
language was from Chaucer’s own words - Chaucer ends his long poem Troilus and
Criseyde (about the Trojan war) with a plea that his poem will be understood in
different parts of Britian.
And for ther is so gret diversite [great diversity]
In English and in writyng of oure
tonge, [tongue – i.e. language]
So prey I God
that non myswrite thee, [miswrite
– i.e. copy it out wrongly]
Ne thee
mysmetre for defaute of tonge; [mismetre – i.e. get the rhythm wrong
because their language isn’t very good]
And red whereso
thow be, or elles songe, [red = read;
elles = else; songe = sung]
That thow be understonde, God I
beseche! [understonde = understool]
Of course, the English language has continued to change
since Chaucer’s day - for example, Shakespeare’s English is quite different
from Chaucer’s - and is still changing now. Until just a few years ago, ‘C U
L8R’ was just a string of letters and numbers, but now most people know what it
means!
READING MIDDLE ENGLISH - WORING OUT THE MEANING
Although Middle English can look quite tricky to start with,
it isn’t difficult to work out what it means. In this section we’ll take a look
at an example of Chaucer’s English, taken from the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, and suggest some
ways in which you can work through it to gain a clearer understanding of the
language.
A knyght ther was, and that a
worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first
bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and
curteisie.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes
were,
And therto hadde he riden, no man
ferre,
As wel in cristendom as in
hethenesse,
And evere honoured for his
worthynesse.
As you look at this, you will realise that you already recognise
many of the words - most of the first line, for example, is made up of modern
words, and you’ll also recognise ‘first’, ‘loved’ and ‘honour’. Some other
words look quite familiar, although the spelling isn’t what you expect -
‘knyght’, for example, instead of ‘knight’, and ‘fredom’ instead of ‘freedom’.
But there are some words that look a bit trickier - ‘bigan’, ‘riden’ and
‘trouthe’, perhaps. So how can you work out what they mean?
1. Working out the meaning
- reading aloud
One of the best ways to understand Middle English is to try
reading it aloud. Often a word will look strange, but will sound perfectly
normal when spoken. So if you read these eight lines out, you’ll find that
‘bigan’ actually sounds like the modern English word ‘began’ - and in fact it
is exactly the same word, just spelled differently.
2. Working out the meaning
- change the spelling
This leads us to another way to work out Middle English.
Often a Middle English word is very similar to a modern English word, but the
spelling is different. So try thinking about the spelling - can you change or
remove some letters from the Middle English word to make it more like modern
English? The word ‘trouthe’ looks hard - but if you take away the ‘o’ and the
‘e’ it becomes ‘truth’.
3. Working out the meaning
- context
There are also some Middle English words which don’t really
have a modern English equivalent - for example, ‘cristendom’ and ‘hethenesse’.
When you look at the first of these words you might notice that it begins with
‘crist’, which looks very much like ‘Christ’, and in fact ‘cristendom’ is an
old-fashioned word meaning ‘the countries where people are Christians’. This
may help to provide some context for the other word, ‘hethenesse’. The poem
says that the knight had ‘riden’ (ridden on horseback) ‘As wel in cristendom as
in hethenesse’. This seems to suggest that ‘cristendom’ and ‘hethenesse’ are
contrasted in some way; are they opposites, perhaps? Could ‘hethenesse’ be the
countries where people are not
Christians? In fact, this is absolutely correct, and if you look again at the
word, you may now think that ‘hethen’ looks like the modern word ‘heathen’.
4. Working out the meaning
- tricky words
Just occasionally there will be Middle English words that
you can’t work out at all, because the word has no modern English equivalent.
In these cases you will need to use some other way of finding out the meaning.
In books of Chaucer’s poetry there is often a mini-dictionary or glossary in
the back; this can help out with tricky words. If this doesn’t help, you will
need to look at a specialist dictionary of Middle English words, like the Middle English Dictionary. You can
access this on the Internet at http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/med/ - the easiest
way to use it is to click on ‘Lookups’ and then type in the word. There are
also some other websites with Chaucer glossaries and dictionaries - see the Web
Links and Resources section below.
SOME OTHER POINTS
References to other texts, etc.
Chaucer’s poetry can seem difficult because he sometimes
mentions the names of people or places you haven’t heard of. Often these are
people from Greek mythology, or from history or literature. It doesn’t always
matter if you don’t know exactly who he’s talking about; you can usually enjoy
the poetry anyway. In some cases, however, it can make the poem more enjoyable
if you find out more about the person he mentions. The poem may have some notes
attached to it, explaining - or you can do a search on the Internet.
The order of words
Chaucer often changes the usual order of words around, just
as modern poets sometimes do. For example, he says ‘A knyght ther was’ instead
of ‘There was a knight’. Sometimes he uses very long sentences, spread over
several lines, which can make it tricky to work out exactly what he’s saying.
But there’s no need to worry; you can usually get the ‘gist’ of it quite
easily, and it doesn’t take very long to get used to unravelling Chaucer’s long
sentences.
Double negatives
Your teachers or parents may have told you that you
shouldn’t use the ‘double negative’; in other words, you shouldn’t say, for
example, ‘I don’t want nothing’, because ‘don’t’ and ‘nothing’ are both
negatives. They may have told you that these two negatives cancel each other
out, making a positive - so ‘I don’t want nothing’ really means ‘I do want
something’. This may be true as far as modern English is concerned, but in
medieval times the opposite was true; poets and other writers used double
negatives all the time to add emphasis to a negative statement. In fact,
sometimes they used a triple negative, when they wanted to make a point really
strongly! E.g. ‘He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde’ means ‘he very definitely
never said anything bad at all’.
