6/24/2023 0 Comments Middle english time period![]() ![]() Beginning of the long process of standardization of spelling. Publishes the first printed book in England. Key Takeaways Old English and Middle English are two historical stages of the English language, with Old English predating Middle English. the Wessex dialect of southwest England).ġ474 William Caxton brings a printing press to England from Germany. Other dialects are relegated to a less prestigious position, even those that earlier served as standards (e.g. The London dialect, for the first time, begins to be recognized as the "Standard", or variety of English taken as the norm, for all England. the language shows French influence in thousands of French borrowings. ![]() 1380 Chaucer writes the Canterbury tales in Middle English. More and more authors are writing in English.Ĭa. French is taught to children as a foreign language rather than used as a medium of instruction.ġ337 Start of the Hundred Years' War between England and France.ġ362 English becomes official language of the law courts. Nobility begin to educate their children in English. 1300 Increasing feeling on the part of even noblemen that they are English, not French. England is now the only home of the Norman English.ġ205 First book in English appears since the conquest.ġ258 First royal proclamation issued in English since the conquest.Ĭa. Growth of London as a commercial center draws many from the countryside who can fill this socially intermediate role.ġ204 The English kings lose the duchy of Normandy to French kings. For all practical purposes English is no longer a written language.īilingualism gradually becomes more common, especially among those who deal with both upper and lower classes. Authors write literature in French, not English. After a while, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is no longer kept up. ![]() Churches, monasteries gradually filled with French-speaking functionaries, who use French for record-keeping. The legal system is redrawn along Norman lines and conducted in French. Norman French becomes the language of the court and propertied classes. Many of the English hereditary titles of nobility date from this period.Įnglish becomes the language of the lower classes (peasants and slaves). William distributes property and titles to Normans (and some English) who supported him. Anglo-Saxon earls and freemen deprived of property many enslaved. Baugh and Thomas Cable in their text, A History of the English Language.ġ066-1075 William crushes uprisings of Anglo-Saxon earls and peasants with a brutal hand in Mercia and Northumberland, uses (literal) scorched earth policy, decimating population and laying waste the countryside. As a result, the changes in grammar changed the English language from a “highly inflected language to an extremely analytic one, and those in vocabulary, “involved the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and the addition of thousands of words from French and Latin,” state Albert C. Because of the Norman Conquest and the circumstances afterward and the way that the language began changing during the Old English period, Middle English had changes in its grammar and its vocabulary. Was marked by significant changes in the English language. ![]()
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