The Root Of English – English In The Middle Ages

English was like a river that suddenly vanishes underground and seems to be lost for ever – until, with a great roar, its waters burst out of the ground in some far-off place.
Even in the early days of the Norman domination, the ordinary people of England had stuck doggedly to the language of their fathers, making little attempt to speak like their masters. Rievaulx Abbey, in North Yorkshire, was founded by Cistercian monks in 1131, and is usually pronounced today in the French fashion / reevo /. But there are still local people who insist that the proper pronunciation is the one their ancestors used.
Then, in the latter half of the 14th century, English came into its own once more. The now Anglicised aristocracy started using English in preference to French on all occasions, and English again became the all-purpose language – though in the courts Norman French Persisted for longer. Modern legal English retains such expressions as feme sole (an unmarried woman).
The newly invigorated language found its greuatest exponent in the poet Chaucer, writing an English that was exuberant, vigorous , as full of colour as a stained-glass window. But Chaucer’s English had changed almost beyond recognition from Old English. Most of the Old English symbols had gone, and the vocabulary had changed even more. French and Latin influence was all-pervasive – Chaucer’s writing teem with words borrowed or adapted from French or Latin sources.
English between about 1150 and 1450 is called Middle English. Here is a passage from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It describes a parson unspoilt by the clerical abuses of his day.
A good man was ther of religioun,
And was a povre person of a toun,
But riche he was of hooly thought and werk.
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche;
His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche.
Benygne he was, and wonder diligent,
And in adversitee ful pacient.
This looks fairly straightforward to the modern reader. But there are some qualifications.
First, the pronunciation has changed considerably since Chaucer’s time, though in fact his spelling is closer to his way of speaking than modern spelling is to modern pronunciation. When Chaucer writes night it ought to be read in the Scottish manner, / nikht /, as if in a Burns poem. Where he has line you ought to pronounce it rather like leaner. Wolde in the passage rhymes with the modern English solder rather than with good.
Secondly, some of the words may look familiar but their meaning has changed in the last 600 years. One obvious example here is clerk, which in Chaucerian English still has its original meaning of a ‘cleric’. Another of Chaucer’s characters was a verray parfit gentil knight – this does not mean that he was ‘very perfect and gentle’, but ‘truly perfect and well-born’.
Bear in mind that Chaucer, writing in cosmopolitan London, was using the most up-to-date dialect of his age, and the one from which modern Standard English descends.
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