Middle English

Middle English language is the vernacular spoken and written in England from about 1100 to about
1500. It is the descendant of the Old English language and the ancestor of Modern English.

The history of Middle English is often divided into three periods: (1) Early Middle English, from about
1100 to about 1250, during which the Old English system of writing was still in use; (2) the Central
Middle English period from about 1250 to about 1400, which was marked by the gradual formation
of literary dialects, the use of an orthography greatly influenced by the Anglo-Norman writing
system, the loss of pronunciation of final unaccented -e, and the borrowing of large numbers of
Anglo-Norman words; the period was especially marked by the rise of the London dialect, in the
hands of such writers as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer; and (3) Late Middle English, from about
1400 to about 1500, which was marked by the spread of the London literary dialect and the gradual
cleavage between the Scottish dialect and the other northern dialects. During this period the basic
lines of inflection as they appear in Modern English were first established. Among the chief
characteristic differences between Old and Middle English were the substitution of natural gender in
Middle English for grammatical gender and the loss of the old system of declensions in the noun and
adjective and, largely, in the pronoun.

The dialects of Middle English are usually divided into three large groups: (1) Southern (subdivided
into South-eastern, or Kentish, and South-western), chiefly in the counties south of the River
Thames; (2) Midland (corresponding roughly to the Mercian dialect area of Old English times) in the
area from the Thames to southern South Yorkshire and northern Lancashire; and (3) Northern, in the
Scottish Lowlands, Northumberland, Cumbria, Durham, northern Lancashire, and most of Yorkshire.

One result of the Norman Conquest of 1066 was to place all four Old English dialects more or less on
a level. West Saxon lost its supremacy, and the centre of culture and learning gradually shifted from
Winchester to London. The old Northumbrian dialect became divided into Scottish and Northern,
although little is known of either of these divisions before the end of the 13th century. The old
Mercian dialect was split into East and West Midland. West Saxon became slightly diminished in area
and was more appropriately named the South Western dialect. The Kentish dialect was considerably
extended and was called South Eastern accordingly. All five Middle English dialects (Northern, West
Midland, East Midland, South Western, and South Eastern) went their own ways and developed
their own characteristics. The so-called Katherine Group of writings (c. 1180–1210), associated with
Hereford, a town not far from the Welsh border, adhered most closely to native traditions, and there
is something to be said for regarding this West Midland dialect, least disturbed by French and
Scandinavian intrusions, as a kind of Standard English in the High Middle Ages.
After the invasion of England by the Normans in 1066, the West Saxon 'standard', which was waning
anyway due to natural language change, was dealt a death blow. Norman French became the
language of the English court and clergy. English sank to the level of a patois (an unwritten dialect).
With the loss of England for the French in 1204 English gradually emerged as a literary language
again. For the development of the later standard it is important to note (1) that it was London which
was now the centre of the country and (2) that printing was introduced into England in the late 15th
century (1476 by Caxton). This latter fact contributed more than any single factor to the
standardisation of English. It is obvious that for the production of printing fonts a standard form of
the language must be agreed upon. This applied above all to spelling, an area of English which was
quite chaotic in the pre-printing days of the Middle English period.

The dialects of Middle English

The dialectal position of Middle English is basically a continuation of that of Old English. The most
important extra linguistic fact for the development of the Middle English dialects is that the capital
of the country was moved from Winchester (in the Old English period) to London by William the
Conqueror in his attempt to diminish the political influence of the native English.

NORTHERN

This dialect is the continuation of the Northumbrian variant of Old English. Note that by Middle
English times English had spread to (Lowland) Scotland and indeed led to a certain literary tradition
developing there at the end of the Middle English period which has been continued up to the
present time (with certain breaks admittedly).

Characteristics :

Velar stops are retained (i.e. not palatalised) as can be seen in word pairs like rigg/ridge; kirk/church.
The dialects of Middle English KENTISH. This is the most direct continuation of an Old English dialect
and has more or less the same geographical distribution.

The two most notable features of Kentish are

(1)the existence of /e:/ for Middle English /i:/ and

(2) so-called "initial softening" which caused fricatives in word-initial position to be

pronounced voiced as in vat, vane and vixen (female fox).

SOUTHERN

West Saxon is the forerunner of this dialect of Middle English. Note that the area covered in the
Middle English period is greater than in the Old English period as inroads were made into Celtic-
speaking Cornwall. This area becomes linguistically uninteresting in the Middle English period. It
shares some features of both Kentish and West Midland dialects.

WEST MIDLAND

This is the most conservative of the dialect areas in the Middle English period and is fairly well-
documented in literary works. It is the western half of the Old English dialect area Mercia.

Characteristics :

The retention of the Old English rounded vowels /y:/ and /ø:/ which in the East had been unrounded
to /i:/ and /e:/ respectively.

EAST MIDLAND

This is the dialect out of which the later standard developed. To be precise the standard arose out of
the London dialect of the late Middle English period. Note that the London dialect naturally
developed into what is called Cockney today while the standard became less and less characteristic
of a certain area and finally (after the 19th century) became the sociolect which is termed Received
Pronunciation.

Characteristics :

In general those of the late embryonic Middle English standard.

Following are the opening lines of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer read by an actor in an
accent which is assumed to be that used at Chaucer‘s time (late 14th century).
Printing was introduced to England in 1476 by William Caxton. This led to an increasing
regularisation of orthography and morphology.

The Great Vowel Shift

The major change to affect the sound system of Middle English is that which resulted in a re-
alignment of the system of long vowels and diphthongs which is traditionally known as the Great
Vowel Shift. Essentially long vowels are raised one level and the two high vowels are diphthongised.
The shift took several centuries to complete and is still continuing in Cockney (popular London
speech). The shift of short /u/ to a lower vowel as in present-day southern English but, which began
in the mid 17th century, is not part of the vowel shift.
STILL ON DIALECTS OF ENGLISH

The dialects of present-day English can be seen as the continuation of the dialect areas which
established themselves in the Old English period.

The dialectal division of the narrower region of England into 1) a northern, 2) a central and 3) a
(subdivided) southern region has been retained to the present-day. The linguistic study of the
dialects of English goes back to the 19th century when, as an offspring of Indo-European studies,
research into (rural) dialects of the major European languages was considerably developed. The first
prominent figure in English dialectology is Alexander Ellis (mid-19th century), followed somewhat
later by Joseph Wright (late 19th and early 20th century). The former published a study of English
dialects and the latter a still used grammar of English dialects at the beginning of the present
century. It was not until the Survey of English Dialects, first under the auspices of Eugen Dieth and
later of Harald Orton, that such intensive study of (rural) dialects was carried out (the results
appeared in a series of publications in the 1950's and 1960's).

Dialect features

The main divide between north and south can be drawn by using the pronunciation of the word but.
Either it has a /u/ sound (in the north) or the lowered and unrounded realisation typical of Received
Pronunciation in the centre and south. An additional isogloss is the use of a dark /l/ in the south
versus a clear /l/ in the north. The south can be divided by the use of syllable-final /r/ which is to be
found in the south western dialects but not in those of the south east. The latter show 'initial
softening' as in single, father, think with the voiced initial sounds /z-, v-, 'eth'/ respectively.
Sources and Resources

Barber, Charles, Joan C. Beal and Philip A. Shaw 2009. The English language. A historical introduction.
Second edition of Barber (1993). Cambridge: University Press.

Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable 1993 A history of the English language. 4th edition. (Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice Hall).

Crystal, David 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge: University
Press

Crystal, David 2004. The Stories of English. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Fennell, Barbara 1998. A history of English. A sociolinguistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hogg, Richard M. and David Denison (ed.) 2006. A history of the English language. Cambridge:
University Press.

Mugglestone, Lynda (ed.) 2006. The Oxford History of English. Oxford: University Press.

Pyles, Thomas and John Algeo 1993. Origins and development of the English language. 4th edition.
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich).