The Lord’s Prayer in Middle English, 1384:
Oure fadir that art in heuenes,
halewid be thi name;
thi kyndoom come to;
be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene:
gyue to us this dai oure breed ouer othir substaunce;
and forgyue to us oure dettis, as we forgyuen to oure gettouris;
and lede us not in to temptacioun, but delyuere us fro yuel.
Middle English (1150-1450) is English after the Norman French Conquest of England in 1066 but before the coming of printed books. It is the language of Chaucer.
- Speakers: 3 million in 1300
- Countries: England
- Script: Roman (29 letters: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z & Ȝ Ƿ Þ Ð Æ. No J or W. U and V are the same letter)
- Language family: Germanic branch of the Indo-European family
Changes that made Old English into Middle English:
- Grammar: word order and prepositions largely take the place of word endings. Gender disappears.
- Spelling: more like French. So: sh instead of sc, wh instead of hw, gh instead of Ȝ, th instead of Þ or Ð.
- Vocabulary: huge compared to Old English. Full of borrowed words, particularly from French and Latin.
- Words that begin with p: Because of sound changes, these were rare in Old English. Many common words that start with p are from this time, mostly from French: people, punish, perfect, peace, push, purpose, pain, etc.
I used to think that the broken English of the Norman French became the prestige dialect of English and took over. It did not go quite like that.
The Vikings broke English. They settled the north and east of England starting in the 800s, speaking Old Norse. Old English and Old Norse had many of the same words but different word endings. A “broken” Old English that used prepositions and word order instead of endings arose as a bridge language. This became the base of Middle English.
Enter the Norman French: They spoke a country dialect of French, one that said the s in forest and beast and the w in question. They did not bring their women: that meant they married English women. Their children grew up speaking both English and Norman French. The top levels of society remained bilingual for some 300 years. The French of Paris pushed out that of Normandy in the 1200s.
English became Franglish because the movers and shakers knew French as well as English. Doctors, lawyers, priests and professors knew Latin too. So tons of French and Latin words poured into English. It was a linguistic tsunami: only 15% of Old English words lived through it!
Even those Old English words that did live sometimes:
- Took on French meanings, like: have, give, take, make, do.
- Became limited in meaning, like: cow and apple lost part of their meaning to beef and fruit.
- Live alongside their French and Latin counterparts, like:
- motherhood/maternity
- love/charity
- fit/proper
- wed/marry
- foe/enemy
- lead/rule
- kind/sort
- far/distant
- work/labour
- heal/cure
- sight/vision
- deadly/mortal
- kingly/royal, regal
- freedom/liberty
- fair/just
- hoard/treasure
- folk/people
Sources: Mainly: “Inventing English” (2012) by Seth Lerer, “The Oxford History of English” (2008) by Lynda Mugglestone, “The Stories of English” (2005) by David Crystal, Online Etymology Dictionary (2013).
See also:
Abagond 
Insightful, so we are speaking french & old english words now to?
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I love the sound of Old English and Middle English.
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“Even those Old English words that did live sometimes:
Took on French meanings, like: have, give, take, make, do.”
Hmmm what? Have and Take are from Proto-Germanic, and they mean just about the same now as they did a thousand years ago; like the Nordic equivalents of those words. How do you think they took on French meaning? Give would also have gotten it’s meaning & current pronounciation largely from Old Norse
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@ naishee
My source on that is “Inventing English” (2012) by Seth Lerer:
http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-English-Portable-History-Language/dp/023113794X/
It is not about where the words come from or how they are pronounced but how they are used, the meanings given.
Lerer says:
The French thought of “put” as “metre”, “have” as “avoir” and “do” and “make” as “faire”. So you get expressions like:
put to death
do battle
give offence
have mercy
make peace
take pains
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@ classoffitness
In very rough numbers, about a fourth of the words in the dictionary come from Latin, a fourth from French, a fourth from Germanic (mainly Old English with some Old Norse) and a fourth from all other languages (Greek, Italian, Hindi, etc).
That is the dictionary. In terms of usage the 1000 most frequently used words are 57% Germanic and 36% Italic (French, Latin, Italian, etc) and 7% everything else.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Word_origins
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“It is not about where the words come from or how they are pronounced but how they are used, the meanings given.”
I understand that. However, the Nordic equivalents, which come from the same source (and in one case directly influenced the English one) are used that way too, and have for a long long long time. My sources, besides some knowledge of old Norse and knowing several modern germanic languages is some etymology lexicons online, plus the linguistics classes I’ve taken.
“Became limited in meaning, like: cow and apple lost part of their meaning to beef and fruit.”
Also this one… Cow, and variations of it, are very common in many languages, and I can’t find an etymology which includes anything other than cow (or cow + bull). On the OTHER hand, Beef is from a French word meaning beef, ox etc. So in this case it definitly seems the FRENCH word lost somemeaning, to mean beef solely, losing the bull meaning, while the original English one retained it’s original meaning.
I’m not a super-expert or anything, but I do have well beyond normal knowledge of germanic languages, old Norse, et cetera.
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@ naishee
1. True, beef meant the animal and the meat in French, or did back then at least. But I wrote the sentence from the point of view of Old English.
2. So Old Norse has “make peace”, “have mercy”, “take pains”, “put to death”, etc?
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Brings back the nightmare of reading “Beowulf” in college.
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“2. So Old Norse has “make peace”, “have mercy”, “take pains”, “put to death”, etc?”
I admit, I made that comment a bit hastily. Because I may have misread how you said “Took on French meaning”. I read that as erasing the original meaning, but English has a dual meaning for those words. You used “have mercy” as an example there too, and that way of using “have” is very old in germanic languages. Some of the other words have both the French and the Germanic meaning in English, still. Additionally, some of those words I can’t quite connect to old norse, like “make” and “put”, so I am not sure how those came to be. I didn’t object to all the words, and didn’t mention the ones I really had no good idea where they came from.
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Delwin I agree put I will throw in “Everyman” and tell you not a single person in my class could read either.
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I am non native English speaker.I can read and write English but can’t speak perfect English.I want to know what is middle English please help me in understanding English.Also i started learning English http://www.youtube.com/user/twominenglish If anyone have tips please share with me.
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Nikitha Roy if you are an ESL learner you never need to know Middle English. It has historical value but almost no one uses straight middle English. If you can read I here is a site that has Everyman which is written in Middle English.
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/everytext.htm
If you are working on your English through speaking I recommend skyping. Plus listening to some English radio shows and news. Depending on what style of English you are considering your second home. I like the BBC but I am American so my accent is of the mid-western style.
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Oh, yeah If forgot I teach English in Japan and have for the last twelve years. So if there is a question you have I will if I have the time try to answer it. Most second language learners have problems with phrasal verbs, and idioms. Now my idioms usage has gone down but I can explain their usage still.
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