Talk:Middle English

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are thorn and yogh necessary?

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

E sound?

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

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

Chancery English

I cleaned up the article on the Chancery Standard - and then noted that the previous version is repeated at the base of this article. Should the separate article on Chancery English be removed? Should the extended info on this page be removed and replaced with a link? Or should (elements of) the new version (plus links - I must add those...) be integrated in the text of the Middle English article? I'd do it myself if I had more expertise on the subject matter - plus I wouldn't like to tread on anyone's toes. Suggestions please. Thanks Parmesan 18:32, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Replaced Chancery Standard text with that from the separate page due to no comments being made. Redirected separate page here. Parmesan 18:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Third person plural pronouns.

I was really surprised that the third person plural pronouns weren't related to the scandinavian 'de/dem' - I thought they were introduced during Old English. Does anyone know when English adopted them, and if they came into the language so late, how did they come in at all?

What? "They", "them" and "their" are borrowings from Old Norse, Old English had similar forms, starting with h: hi/hie, him/heom, hiera, related to Modern English he, his, him and her.

Old English Dialects

I am curious about the statement "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." I am currently reading the book "The Stories of English", by David Crystal, and the author makes the point (and cites examples) that there were definite and notable dialectical differences during the Old English period.

Was Crystal talking about the spoken language or the written forms? -Lethe | Talk 22:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Comprehensible?

Would a Modern English speaker be able to understand a Middle English speaker around the year 1430? Would they understand us? Stallions2010 20:38, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

• I would say yes and yes but there would be many misunderstandings and I think it would probably be easier for us to understand them than vice versa, being that we have some sense of how words have changed meaning whereas they would have no way to predict how words would change meaning, pronunciation and form. Although many changes were taking place between 1430 and c. 1600, (the time of Shakespeare), I would say that the fact that Shakespeare is very identifiable as Modern English is a good indication that the English of c. 170 years prior (6-7 generations) would be fairly intelligible to us. But I'm interested to hear how everyone else will weigh in on this.--Hraefen 07:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm guessing that it would be pretty hard both ways since as we can easily see from the current confusing state of English orthography, the spoken language changed a lot more than the written one. So just because we can read Shakespeare and it doesn't look too strange to us doesn't mean that we would be able to understand him speaking. --Kenji Yamada 06:26, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Dates

I thought Middle English turned into Modern English because of the Great Vowel Change, not just time.Cameron Nedland 03:05, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Sample text

Is there a reason every line is written as a very low-level header? Cantara 21:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Text removed from article

I have removed the following paragraph due to WP:V and WP:NOR concerns:

The whole notion of "Middle English" has been challenged recently since the concept relies on the assumption that Modern English is an evolved form of Anglo-Saxon -- hence Middle English being the intermediate form between the two languages. Some modern students of palaeolinguistics now consider that there is no connection between English and Anglo-Saxon aside from their both being members of the General Germanic branch of the Indo-European family. What we call Middle English is thus now seen as merely early attempts to transcribe the hitherto unwritten language of English, using of necessity Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman and Latin scribal conventions. This can clearly be seen by reading again the various examples of "Middle English" and noting how little Anglo-Saxon is present and how many Modern English words can be recognised under their thin veneer of non-standard spelling and orthography.

Without any supporting citations, it's impossible to determine whether these "some modern students of palaeolinguistics" even exist, let alone whether their theory is sufficiently sound to warrant a mention in a general-audience encyclopedia article. — Haeleth Talk 21:58, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

added by 195.93.21.42 (talk · contribs). -lethe ^{talk +} 22:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

U/V and I/J distinctions

I realize that Middle English didnt actually distinguish these pairs of letters, but could we/I make the distinctions for the sake of less headakes?Cameron Nedland 02:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Better to acclimatise yourself to it, particularly if you're intending to study Middle English in depth. I think any policy other than following the spelling of whatever edition is cited is likely to meet opposition from some set of Wikipedians or other. (I've also seen at least one case where a well-meaning editor has got it wrong and mistaken beleue for an archaic spelling of "blue"; this both confirms that the old spellings cause problems, and highlights the danger of trying to "improve" authoritative texts.)

Perhaps the parallel-gloss approach adopted in articles like Ormulum and Ayenbite of Inwyt would be a good solution for any texts where the spelling is difficult enough that it is likely to cause significant headaches for modern readers? It would have the additional benefit of making things more accessible to those who have problems understanding the vocabulary as well as just reading the spellings. — Haeleth Talk 14:27, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

sexy

Looks stupid, but probably sounded sexy as hell. Not a very helpful comment, but I might be back--been studying ME since 1996 or so. 67.185.99.246 19:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Canterbury Translation

What's the source of this translated version of the Canterbury Tales? It's certainly not a word for word translation, and it doesn't preserve meter or rhyme, unlike this translation, which does, and is closer to a line by line translation, if not word by word. Anyone in favor of switching the translation we used, esspecially since we can cite the source with this one, whereas no source is given for the one currently listed? Fieari 21:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I assume it's original. I wouldn't have thought citing a source would be necessary for a translation (the "source" is the original text right beside it), so the only real reason to change it would be to improve it.

As for the alternative you propose, I don't think we can use it without permission; the website you link to carries a copyright statement which restricts reuse of material, and while you could argue that such a short passage would be "fair use", the policy seems to be that we cannot use "fair use" material if there is a free alternative, even where the free version is inferior quality. So in order to use the alternative you propose, someone would have to contact that website's operators and get permission from them to use that passage under the terms of the GFDL.

Note that I have no opinion on which version is better. The above comments are merely my thoughts on what is and is not necessary to consider when choosing a translation; I'll leave the actual choosing to other people. :) — Haeleth Talk 23:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Audio?

I think an audio file would be relevant here, to give us a better idea of pronunciation. Am I right? If so, is it allowed? Can't remember seeing any audio on other articles...Ştefan 12:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)