

ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



2925 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE 





only a small influence upon the 

 vocabulary in the Old English 

 period, except in the names of hills, 

 rivers, and other geographical fea- 

 tures, which retained their old de- 

 signations pen, avon, cumb, dun, 

 etc. The Scandinavian influence, 

 which began in the 8th century, 

 shows very slight traces in the 

 written documents before the 1 1th, 

 by which time the English and 

 the Danes in certain districts had 

 amalgamated, and having passed 

 through a bi lingual stage, had 

 settled down together, with Eng- 

 lish as the surviving language in a 

 form which retained many ele- 

 ments of the language of the once 

 hostile settlers. 



With the rise of Wessex to the 

 ruling political position among the 

 Old English states, the literary 

 labours of King Alfred made the 

 dialect of this province the chief 

 vehicle of literature. All the works 

 of literary importance, both poetry 

 and prose, which have survived, 

 are written in a form of West 

 Saxon, occasionally with traces of 

 other dialects. This form of Eng- 

 lish may be regarded as a common 

 literary standard for the whole 

 country from the beginning of the 

 10th century. 



From Old to Middle English 



The Conquest' had at h'rst little 

 effect upon the spoken language. 

 Few Englishmen learnt French for 

 several centuries, and they could 

 not boiTow words from a language 

 which they did not know ; nor 

 was there any reason why the pre- 

 sence of foreigners ignorant of the 

 native tongue of the country 

 should in any way affect its pro- 

 nunciation and inflexions. The 

 changes made apparent by the 

 spelling in the middle of the 12th 

 century are not the result of the 

 Norman Conquest, but the normal 

 development of tendencies which 

 were active before the Normans 

 came. The rather abrupt contrast 

 observable in the language of docu- 

 ments from about 1150 onwards 

 does not represent any sudden new 

 development, but implies that the 

 old literary tradition, which largely 

 concealed' the facts of speech by 

 means of an antiquated convention, 

 has almost passed away, and that 

 a new literary convention, and to 

 some extent a new scribal mode of 

 spelling, have begun which are 

 nearer to the language of everyday 

 life than was the older tradition. 



The language of the last part of 

 the Laud, or Peterborough Chron- 

 icle, written soon after 1157, is still 

 in a sense Old English, but many 

 changes are observable. The highly 

 inflected Old English definite 

 article has to a great extent given 

 way to an uninflected form", fie, 



" the," which never varies, but 

 takes prepositions before it to ex- 

 press case-relations which Old Eng- 

 lish expressed by inflexion. Such 

 constructions as be ^vreece men of 

 pe land, " the wretched men of the 

 country," betwyx fie hinges freond 

 and f>e earles freond " between the 

 king's friends and the earl's 

 friends," sound strangely modern. 

 Already in the latter part of this 

 Chronicle the unstressed vowels are 

 fairly regularly written e, as in the 

 later Middle English period, to 

 represent Old English o, a, u and e. 

 The Norman scribes have taught 

 the Englishman the useful graphic 

 distinction between/ and v. whereas 

 the latter formerly wrote / for 

 both sounds. The Old English 

 accusative singular of the third 

 personal pronoun masculine, hine, 

 has already been lost in favour of 

 the dative him, as at present, the 

 feminine pronoun scce, the ancestor 

 of she, first appears instead of the 

 old heo. 



The present-day use of a pre- 

 position at the end of a sentence 

 occurs me lihlede candles to celen 

 by "men lighted candles to eat by." 

 The case-endings of adjectives are 

 largely lost. Although most of the 

 typical Middle English changes in 

 the vowels are not yet consistently 

 expressed in the spelling, there 

 appears an uncertainty and a ten- 

 tative groping after the best way of 

 expressing a pronunciation which 

 is evidently changing. As regards 

 vocabulary, a few French words 

 are used, all more or less technical, 

 expressing new and foreign con- 

 ceptions or institutions, offices or 

 titles cancder, prisun, cuniesse, 

 emperice. The only word which 

 might be considered non-technical 

 and belonging to everyday life 

 is pais, "peace." A few new 

 Scandinavian words are used: toe 

 "took," and oc "and." The usual 

 English words niman "take" and 

 and are also used. 



The Middle English Period 



This may be held to begin about 

 1200. The process of change is 

 more rapid in the dialects of the N. 

 and those of the E. Midland than 

 in those of the S. and of the S.W. 

 Midland. In the N. especially the 

 loss and confusion of flexional 

 endings has gone very far by the 

 beginning of the 14th century. A 

 characteristic of the Middle English 

 period is the great dialectal variety 

 which finds expression in the 

 written documents. The main 

 types are the N., which includes 

 the dialect of S. Scotland ; the E. 

 Midland; the W. Midland; the 

 S.W. Midi and.in eluding the dialects 

 of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, 

 Oxfordshire, and Shropshire ; the 

 S. dialect, including all types as far 



E. as Surrey ; the S.E., including 

 the speech of Kent and Essex. The 

 London dialect, which in its earliest 

 forms shows a mixture of purely 

 S. with Kentish or S. Eastern forms, 

 becomes increasingly important 

 from the first quarter of the 14th 

 century onwards. 



The London Dialect 



Early in the 14th century the 

 London dialect is still largely pure 

 S. in type, that of Surrey and Mid- 

 dlesex, but shows certain Kentish or 

 S. E. features, and a slight tinge of E. 

 Midland. By the end of the century, 

 Chaucer and those of his contem- 

 poraries who write in this dialect 

 show an increasing number of 

 purely E. Midland features, rather 

 strong S.E. influence, and a cer- 

 tain survival of S. characters. 

 Chaucer is fairly representative of 

 the best London and court English 

 of his day. Owing to the political 

 and commercial importance of the 

 capital, the type of English there 

 spoken was naturally bound to 

 become the leading variety in the 

 country, and the prestige of 

 Chaucer and the popularity of his 

 writings led to many imitations, 

 not only of his style but of his 

 dialect, even among writers who 

 did not speak London English. 



Nevertheless, for the most part, 

 throughout the 14th century, people 

 continued to write in the dialect 

 which they spoke. The beginnings 

 of a change may be seen when 

 Chaucer's contemporary, Gower, 

 writes, not in the Kentish dialect 

 which was naturally his own, but 

 in a close approximation to that 

 of London, with but few provin- 

 cialisms to betray his native dia- 

 lect. The Middle English period 

 may be said to close with the death 

 of Chaucer, or in the first quarter 

 of the 15th century, and soon after 

 that date there are no more literary 

 works written in pure provincial 

 dialect, except in Scotland, which 

 had a standard of its own, so that 

 the history of English centres more 

 and more round that one form 

 which has become the universal 

 standard. But while the London 

 type predominates increasingly in 

 written documents of all kinds, 

 from whatever area, there are 

 plenty of traces, far into the 15th 

 century, of the provincialisms of 

 the writer's native speech. 



The vocabularyof Chauceris very 

 largely our own. He uses Norman 

 French words, not here and there, 

 like early Middle English writers, 

 but as indispensable elements of his 

 style. Norman French words are no 

 longer foreign, but hundreds have 

 penetrated into the very fibre of 

 English speech, and it is not very 

 easy to write many consecutive 

 sentences not containing words of 



