a quick guide to middle english

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

┊         ┊       ┊   ┊    ┊        ┊

┊         ┊       ┊   ┊   ˚✩ ⋆｡˚ ✩

┊         ┊       ┊   ✫

┊         ┊       ☪⋆

┊ ⊹

✯ ⋆      ┊ . ˚

          ˚✩

Heya! Cidney here and today we will be talking about Middle English! For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a Medieval Literature course for college, and lately we’ve been reading in Middle English. I personally find it pretty fascinating, and thought it would be cool to cover in a blog post. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and I hope you all like it. So, let’s get into it!

Back in the day, a lot of the English words today were pronounced a lot differently than they are in Modern English. So, the following is a list of sounds and their modern-day equivalent:

a — “father” (“ah” sound)

short e — “French” (“eh” sound)

long e — “great” (“aye” sound)

-e — “the” (“uh” sound)

short i — “if”

long i — “chief” (“ee” sound)

y — “beet”, “likely” (“ee” sound)

ai, ei — “height” (“i” sound)

ou, ow — “root” (“ooh” sound)

Middle English is so different from Modern English in not only pronunciation but grammar and spelling as well. There are a LOT of words that aren’t spelled the same... In fact, back in the day, there was never any sort of set spelling for most words. So, a lot of words look quite a bit different... Here are just a few of the many odd words used back then:

whylome — A while (ago)

clep — call

Ich — I

ichill — I shall

ich — each

fele (“feel”) — many

y-(word) — past tense of (word)

namore — no more

gretteste — greatest

There are a LOT more than that but these are a few common one words might see while reading a piece from Chaucer’s time.

The other main difference would be grammar. In Modern English, a normal sentence would be structured: subject, verb, object. In Middle English, however, the subject verb and object can be placed wherever the author wants them to be. A lot of times, in one sentence, they might be swapped several times in different orders.

It’s the combination of the three things mentioned above that make Middle English so hard to read. In the next section I will provide an example, as well as my own analysis of it.

The following is an excerpt from Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”:

What that Aprill with his shoures sote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne;

And smale fowles maken melodye,

That slepen al the night with open yë—

So priketh hem Nature in hir corages

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

(The Canterbury Tales, lines 1-12)

This entire age is essentially saying that when April pierces the dryness of March (droghte) to the root, people want to go on pilgrimages. The entire book of the Canterbury Tales is a ragtag group of pilgrims (characters) telling tales to each other. And in this case, it’s the narrator setting up the story.

After many discussions in class, I’ve come to the conclusion that understanding Middle English is less about understanding every single word and more about understanding the basic gist of things. While grammar and spelling might be completely different, there are still a lot of words that one can guess just from the way they’re spelled or sounded out aloud reading like one might read in Modern English today.

•~•~•~•~•

One day I would like to go a bit deeper into Middle English... maybe diagram some sentences as well as read some examples out loud.

That is going to be about it for this post! I hope you learned something new and I’ll see you all soon!

sources:

My own Medieval Literature Notes

”The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer

#curatorreview