MIDDLE-ENGLISH

PERIOD

(1100-1500)

After the death without issue of Edward the confessor the last king in

the direct male l ine of descent from Alfred the great ,Harold, son of

the powerful Earl Godwin was elected to the kingship. Almost

immediately his possession of the crown was challenged by Will iam

the seventh duke of Normandy, who was distantly related to Edward

the Confessor and who felt that he had a better claim to the throne

for a number of tenuous reasons. The Norman conquest for tunately

for Anglo American culture and civil ization the last invasion of

England - was l ike the earl ier harassments carried by Northmen who

under the leadership of Wil l iam the conqueror defeated the English

under the hapless king Harold at the battle of Hastings in 1066.

Those Scandinavians who settled in France are commonly designated

by an Old French from of Northmen that is Normans

, and the section of France that they settled and governed was called

Normandy .

THE BACKGROUND OF THE NORMAN

CONQUEST

For a long time after Norman Congest French was the language

of the governing classes in England.

The loss of Normandy in 1204 by king John, a descendant of the

conqueror removed an important tie with France, and

subsequent events were to loosen those that remained.

The Hundred years War :

Beginning in 1337, saw England and France bitter enemies in a

long drawn-out conflict though it actually fell somewhat short of

a hundred years which gave the death blow to the already

moribund use of France in England.

THE DECLINE OF FRENCH IN ENGLISH

The impact of the Notman Conquest on the English language,

l ike that made by earlier Norse –speaking invaders, was to a

large extent confined to the word stock , though Middle English

also showed some instances of the influence of French.

A huge body of French words were ultimately become part of

the English vocabulary, many of them replacing English words

that would have done for us just as well.

THE LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE OF THE

CONQUEST

OE F ME

æhta catel Property

Burhsittende man Citeseyn citizen

Consonants :

1-The digraph (th) had been used in some of the earl iest English texts

those written before 900, but was replaced in later Old English written

by( Þ).

2- The( ųų) used for (w) in the early manuscripts was supplanted by

the runic wynn, but was brought back to England by Norman scribes in

a l igatured from as ( w)

3- The OE symbol( ३ ) was in an Ir ish form ;g entered English writing

later from the continent in the middle English the (३ ) had three values

as we have seen (p.105) in middle English it acquired a somewhat dif ferent from (३ ) called yogh and was used for two sounds that came

to be spelled( y) and( gh)

MIDDLE ENGLISH SPELLING

Goose Yield Draw

OE ३õs(g) ३eldan(y) dra३an

ME goos ३elden(y) Drawen(w)

4- The consonant sound (v) did not occur initially in OE which used( ƒ) for the (v) that developed internally, as in drifen

‘driven’ haefde had ;and scofl ‘shovel’ . Except for a very few

words that have entered standard English from southern English

dialects in which initial (f) became (v) for insurance vixen thr

feminine of vox- ’fox’ no standrad English words of native origin

begin with (v).

Vowels:

-To indicate vowel length, Middle English writing frequently

employed double letters , particularly (ee) and (oo) thr practice

becoming general in the east Midland dialect late in the period

As a matter of fact both ee and oo were ambiguous in the

Middle English period , as every student of Chaucer must learn.

-Double o came to be commonly used in later Middle English times for the long low back rounded vowel (३ ) the vowel that

developed out of OE long (a).

-Final unstressed (e) following a single consonant also indicated

vowel length in Middle English as in fode ‘food ’ and fede ‘to

feed ’ this corresponds to the ‘silent e ’ of Modern English as in

case ,mete ,bite , rote , and rule .

By : Abdul Rahman Malek AL-Khalaf

THE END