Misplaced Pages

#770229

102-682: The word "bedridden" is derived from the Middle English term bedrid , the past tense form of riding a bed, which dates back to the 14th century . This is a voluntary medical treatment still used today to help cure illness. Current views regarding this treatment are that there are no benefits for most conditions studied. Though bedrest may still be prescribed for pregnant women, it is now considered dangerous. Those who are bedridden can develop complications related to feeding. Being bedridden leads to many complications such as loss of muscle strength and endurance. Contractures, osteoporosis from disuse and

204-514: A Norman development while chase is the French equivalent imported with a different meaning. Distinctions in meaning between Anglo-Norman and French have led to many faux amis (words having similar form but different meanings) in Modern English and Modern French. Although it is a Romance language, Norman contains a significant amount of lexical material from Old Norse . Because of this, some of

306-732: A demonstrative ( þis , þat ), after a possessive pronoun (e.g., hir , our ), or with a name or in a form of address. This derives from the Old English "weak" declension of adjectives. This inflexion continued to be used in writing even after final -e had ceased to be pronounced. In earlier texts, multisyllable adjectives also receive a final -e in these situations, but this occurs less regularly in later Middle English texts. Otherwise, adjectives have no ending and adjectives already ending in -e etymologically receive no ending as well. Earlier texts sometimes inflect adjectives for case as well. Layamon's Brut inflects adjectives for

408-524: A hush sibilant not recorded in French mousseron , as does cushion for coussin . Conversely, the pronunciation of the word sugar resembles Norman chucre even if the spelling is closer to French sucre . It is possible that the original sound was an apical sibilant, like the Basque s , which is halfway between a hissing sibilant and a hushing sibilant. The doublets catch and chase are both derived from Low Latin *captiare . Catch demonstrates

510-571: A language of business communication, especially when it traded with the continent, and several churches used French to communicate with lay people. A small but important number of documents survive associated with the Jews of medieval England, some featuring Anglo-French written in Hebrew script, typically in the form of glosses to the Hebrew scriptures. As a langue d'oïl , Anglo-Norman developed collaterally to

612-493: A largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary (with many Norse borrowings in the northern parts of the country) but a greatly simplified inflectional system. The grammatical relations that were expressed in Old English by the dative and instrumental cases were replaced in Early Middle English with prepositional constructions. The Old English genitive - es survives in the -'s of the modern English possessive , but most of

714-486: A lengthened – and later also modified – pronunciation of a preceding vowel. For example, in name , originally pronounced as two syllables, the /a/ in the first syllable (originally an open syllable) lengthened, the final weak vowel was later dropped, and the remaining long vowel was modified in the Great Vowel Shift (for these sound changes, see Phonology , above). The final ⟨e⟩ , now silent, thus became

816-488: A lesser extent), and, therefore, it cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population: English did, after all, remain the vernacular . It is also argued that Norse immigrants to England had a great impact on the loss of inflectional endings in Middle English. One argument is that, although Norse and English speakers were somewhat comprehensible to each other due to similar morphology,

918-533: A lesser extent, other places in Great Britain and Ireland during the Anglo-Norman period. According to some linguists, the name Insular French might be more suitable, because "Anglo-Norman" is constantly associated with the notion of a mixed language based on English and Norman. According to some, such a mixed language never existed. Other sources, however, indicate that such a language did exist, and that it

1020-441: A person spends most or all of the day in bed without changing position Being confined to bed may result in a person remaining passive and withdrawn. The ability to transfer to a chair and the negative attitudes of caregivers is associated with continued confinement to bed and reduction of such requests. Those who are confined to bed have risks related to falls. Falling from a bed can result in injury. One recommendation for preventing

1122-515: A process called apophony ), as in Modern English. With the discontinuation of the Late West Saxon standard used for the writing of Old English in the period prior to the Norman Conquest, Middle English came to be written in a wide variety of scribal forms, reflecting different regional dialects and orthographic conventions. Later in the Middle English period, however, and particularly with

SECTION 10

#1732858354771

1224-533: A second language among the upper classes. Moreover, with the Hundred Years' War and the growing spirit of English and French nationalism, the status of French diminished. French (specifically Old French ) was the mother tongue of every English king from William the Conqueror (1066–1087) until Henry IV (1399–1413). Henry IV was the first to take the oath in ( Middle ) English, and his son, Henry V (1413–1422),

1326-518: A variant of the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in northern England and spoken in southeast Scotland ). During the Middle English period, many Old English grammatical features either became simplified or disappeared altogether. Noun, adjective, and verb inflections were simplified by the reduction (and eventual elimination) of most grammatical case distinctions. Middle English also saw considerable adoption of Anglo-Norman vocabulary, especially in

1428-562: A velar plosive where French has a fricative : Some loans were palatalised later in English, as in the case of challenge (< Old Norman calonge , Middle English kalange, kalenge , later chalange ; Old French challenge, chalonge ). There were also vowel differences: Compare Anglo-Norman profound with Parisian French profond , soun sound with son , round with rond . The former words were originally pronounced something like 'profoond', 'soon', 'roond' respectively (compare

1530-717: A very high level of development. The important Benedictine monasteries both wrote chronicles and guarded other works in Old English . However, with the arrival of the Normans, Anglo-Saxon literature came to an end and literature written in Britain was in Latin or Anglo-Norman. The Plantagenet kings encouraged this Anglo-Norman literature . Nevertheless, from the beginning of the 14th century, some authors chose to write in English, such as Geoffrey Chaucer . The authors of that period were influenced by

1632-655: A written and literary language probably owes something to this history of bilingualism in writing. Around the same time, as a shift took place in France towards using French as a language of record in the mid-13th century, Anglo-Norman also became a language of record in England, although Latin retained its pre-eminence for matters of permanent record (as in written chronicles ). From around this point onwards, considerable variation begins to be apparent in Anglo-Norman, which ranges from

1734-617: Is Buttevant (from the motto of the Barry family: Boutez en avant , "Push to the Fore"), the village of Brittas (from the Norman bretesche , "boarding, planking") and the element Pallas (Irish pailís , from Norman paleis , "boundary fence": compare palisade , The Pale ). Others exist with English or Irish roots, such as Castletownroche , which combines the English Castletown and

1836-459: Is evidence, too, that foreign words ( Latin , Greek , Italian , Arabic , Spanish ) often entered English via Anglo-Norman. The language of later documents adopted some of the changes ongoing in continental French and lost many of its original dialectal characteristics, so Anglo-French remained (in at least some respects and at least at some social levels) part of the dialect continuum of modern French, often with distinctive spellings. Over time,

1938-433: Is now rare and used only in oxen and as part of a double plural , in children and brethren . Some dialects still have forms such as eyen (for eyes ), shoon (for shoes ), hosen (for hose(s) ), kine (for cows ), and been (for bees ). Grammatical gender survived to a limited extent in early Middle English before being replaced by natural gender in the course of the Middle English period. Grammatical gender

2040-521: Is still evident in official and legal terms where the ordinary sequence of noun and adjective is reversed , as seen in phrases such as Blood Royal, attorney general, heir apparent, court martial, envoy extraordinary and body politic. The royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom still features in French the mottos of both the British Monarch , Dieu et mon droit ("God and my right"), and

2142-513: The Augustinian canon Orrm wrote the Ormulum , one of the oldest surviving texts in Middle English. The influence of Old Norse aided the development of English from a synthetic language with relatively free word order to a more analytic language with a stricter word order. Both Old English and Old Norse were synthetic languages with complicated inflections. Communication between Vikings in

SECTION 20

#1732858354771

2244-592: The Danelaw and their Anglo-Saxon neighbours resulted in the erosion of inflection in both languages. Old Norse may have had a more profound impact on Middle and Modern English development than any other language. The effect of Old Norse on Old English was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Like close cousins, Old Norse and Old English resembled each other, and with some words and grammatical structures in common, speakers of each language roughly understood each other, but according to historian Simeon Potler

2346-600: The Early Modern English and Modern English eras. Middle English generally did not have silent letters . For example, knight was pronounced [ˈkniçt] (with both the ⟨k⟩ and the ⟨gh⟩ pronounced, the latter sounding as the ⟨ch⟩ in German Knecht ). The major exception was the silent ⟨e⟩ – originally pronounced but lost in normal speech by Chaucer's time. This letter, however, came to indicate

2448-524: The Norman Conquest , had normally been written in French. Like Chaucer's work, this new standard was based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Clerks using this standard were usually familiar with French and Latin , influencing the forms they chose. The Chancery Standard, which was adopted slowly, was used in England by bureaucrats for most official purposes, excluding those of

2550-575: The Order of the Garter , Honi soit qui mal y pense ("Shamed be he who thinks evil of it"). Dieu et mon droit was first used by Richard I (who spoke Anglo-Norman, but cannot be proved to have been able to speak English) in 1198 and adopted as the royal motto of England in the time of Henry VI . The motto appears below the shield of the Royal Coat of Arms. Though in regular use at the royal court, Anglo-French

2652-621: The 12th century, incorporating a unique phonetic spelling system; and the Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group , religious texts written for anchoresses , apparently in the West Midlands in the early 13th century. The language found in the last two works is sometimes called the AB language . Additional literary sources of the 12th and 13th centuries include Layamon's Brut and The Owl and

2754-422: The 13th century and was replaced by thorn. Thorn mostly fell out of use during the 14th century and was replaced by ⟨th⟩ . Anachronistic usage of the scribal abbreviation [REDACTED] ( þe , "the") has led to the modern mispronunciation of thorn as ⟨ y ⟩ in this context; see ye olde . Wynn, which represented the phoneme /w/ , was replaced by ⟨ w ⟩ during

2856-409: The 13th century. Due to its similarity to the letter ⟨p⟩ , it is mostly represented by ⟨w⟩ in modern editions of Old and Middle English texts even when the manuscript has wynn. Under Norman influence, the continental Carolingian minuscule replaced the insular script that had been used for Old English. However, because of the significant difference in appearance between

2958-516: The 14th century, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy . In the aftermath of the Black Death of the 14th century, there was significant migration into London , of people to the counties of the southeast of England and from the east and central Midlands of England, and a new prestige London dialect began to develop as a result of this clash of

3060-597: The 1540s after the printing and wide distribution of the English Bible and Prayer Book , which made the new standard of English publicly recognizable and lasted until about 1650. The main changes between the Old English sound system and that of Middle English include: The combination of the last three processes listed above led to the spelling conventions associated with silent ⟨e⟩ and doubled consonants (see under Orthography , below). Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from

3162-514: The 19th century, but these words are probably linguistic traces of Saxon or Anglo-Scandinavian settlements between the 4th and the 10th centuries in Normandy. Otherwise the direct influence of English in mainland Norman (such as smogler "to smuggle") is from direct contact with English in later centuries, rather than Anglo-Norman. When the Normans conquered England, Anglo-Saxon literature had reached

Bedridden - Misplaced Pages Continue

3264-659: The Anglo-Norman of medieval England. Many of the earliest documents in Old French are found in England. In medieval France , it was not usual to write in the vernacular : Because Latin was the language of the Church , education , and historiography , it was also used for records. In medieval England, Latin also remained in use by the Church, the royal government, and much local administration in parallel with Middle English , as it had been before 1066. The early adoption of Anglo-Norman as

3366-519: The Church and legalities, which used Latin and Law French respectively. The Chancery Standard's influence on later forms of written English is disputed, but it did undoubtedly provide the core around which Early Modern English formed. Early Modern English emerged with the help of William Caxton 's printing press, developed during the 1470s. The press stabilized English through a push towards standardization, led by Chancery Standard enthusiast and writer Richard Pynson . Early Modern English began in

3468-419: The French language used in England changed from the end of the 15th century into Law French , that was used since the 13th century. This variety of French was a technical language, with a specific vocabulary, where English words were used to describe everyday experience, and French grammatical rules and morphology gradually declined, with confusion of genders and the adding of -s to form all plurals. Law French

3570-619: The House of Commons to endorse them during their progress to becoming law, or spoken aloud by the Clerk of the Parliaments during a gathering of the Lords Commissioners , to indicate the granting of Royal Assent to legislation. The exact spelling of these phrases has varied over the years; for example, s'avisera has been spelled as s'uvisera and s'advisera , and Reyne as Raine . Though

3672-545: The Nightingale . Some scholars have defined "Early Middle English" as encompassing English texts up to 1350. This longer time frame would extend the corpus to include many Middle English Romances (especially those of the Auchinleck manuscript c.  1330 ). Gradually, the wealthy and the government Anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French ) remained the dominant language of literature and law until

3774-453: The Norman or French word supplanted the original English term, or both words would co-exist but with slightly different nuances. In other cases, the Norman or French word was adopted to signify a new reality, such as judge , castle , warranty . In general, the Norman and French borrowings concerned the fields of culture, aristocratic life, politics and religion, and war whereas the English words were used to describe everyday experience. When

3876-647: The Normans (Norsemen) and was then brought over after the Conquest and established firstly in southern English dialects. It is, therefore, argued that the word mug in English shows some of the complicated Germanic heritage of Anglo-Norman. Many expressions used in English today have their origin in Anglo-Norman (such as the expression before-hand , which derives from Anglo-Norman avaunt-main ), as do many modern words with interesting etymologies. Mortgage , for example, literally meant death-wage in Anglo-Norman. Curfew (fr. couvre-feu ) meant cover-fire , referring to

3978-407: The Normans arrived in England, their copyists wrote English as they heard it, without realising the peculiarities of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon pronunciation and spelling and so the spelling changed. There appeared different regional Modern-English written dialects, the one that the king chose in the 15th century becoming the standard variety. In some remote areas, agricultural terms used by

4080-571: The Norse speakers' inability to reproduce the ending sounds of English words influenced Middle English's loss of inflectional endings. Important texts for the reconstruction of the evolution of Middle English out of Old English are the Peterborough Chronicle , which continued to be compiled up to 1154; the Ormulum , a biblical commentary probably composed in Lincolnshire in the second half of

4182-544: The Old English -eþ , Midland dialects showing -en from about 1200, and Northern forms using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural. The past tense of weak verbs was formed by adding an -ed(e) , -d(e) , or -t(e) ending. The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, also served as past participles with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i- , y- , and sometimes bi- . Strong verbs , by contrast, formed their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g., binden became bound ,

Bedridden - Misplaced Pages Continue

4284-680: The Old Norse influence was strongest in the dialects under Danish control that composed the southern part of the Northern England (corresponding to the Scandinavian Kingdom of Jórvík ), the East Midlands and the East of England , words in the spoken language emerged in the 10th and 11th centuries near the transition from Old to Middle English. Influence on the written languages only appeared from

4386-710: The abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government that are derived from Anglo-Norman, such as court , judge , jury , appeal , and parliament . There are also many Norman-derived terms relating to the chivalric cultures that arose in the 12th century, an era of feudalism , seigneurialism , and crusading . Words were often taken from Latin, usually through French transmission. This gave rise to various synonyms, including kingly (inherited from Old English), royal (from French, inherited from Vulgar Latin), and regal (from French, which borrowed it from Classical Latin). Later French appropriations were derived from standard, rather than Norman, French. Examples of

4488-494: The areas of politics, law, the arts, and religion, as well as poetic and emotive diction. Conventional English vocabulary remained primarily Germanic in its sources, with Old Norse influences becoming more apparent. Significant changes in pronunciation took place, particularly involving long vowels and diphthongs, which in the later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift . Little survives of early Middle English literature , due in part to Norman domination and

4590-567: The beginning of the 13th century, this delay in Scandinavian lexical influence in English has been attributed to the lack of written evidence from the areas of Danish control, as the majority of written sources from Old English were produced in the West Saxon dialect spoken in Wessex , the heart of Anglo-Saxon political power at the time. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 saw the replacement of

4692-549: The central Old French dialects which would eventually become Parisian French in terms of grammar , pronunciation and vocabulary . Before the signature of the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539, French was not standardised as an administrative language throughout the kingdom of France. Middle English was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman and, later, Anglo-French. W. Rothwell has called Anglo-French 'the missing link ' because many etymological dictionaries seem to ignore

4794-479: The central langue d'oïl dialects that developed into French. English therefore, for example, has fashion from Norman féchoun as opposed to Modern French façon (both developing from Latin factio, factiōnem ). In contrast, the palatalization of velar consonants before /a/ that affected the development of French did not occur in Norman dialects north of the Joret line . English has therefore inherited words that retain

4896-414: The clergy for written communication and record-keeping. A significant number of Norman words were borrowed into English and used alongside native Germanic words with similar meanings. Examples of Norman/Germanic pairs in Modern English include pig and pork , calf and veal , wood and forest , and freedom and liberty . The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen in

4998-507: The comparative and superlative (e.g., greet , great; gretter , greater). Adjectives ending in -ly or -lich formed comparatives either with -lier , -liest or -loker , -lokest . A few adjectives also displayed Germanic umlaut in their comparatives and superlatives, such as long , lenger . Other irregular forms were mostly the same as in modern English. Middle English personal pronouns were mostly developed from those of Old English , with

5100-573: The complications of being bedridden is to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet that contains enough calories and protein needed for optimum health. If someone is confined to a bed, changing position at least every two hours can help prevent complications in addition to changing sheeting and bedclothes immediately if they are soiled, and using items that can help reduce pressure, such as pillows or foam padding. One Indian study of care given to bedridden individuals at home found that family members made up 82% of caregivers . A high rate of medical complications

5202-556: The continent, English sometimes preserves earlier pronunciations. For example, ch used to be /tʃ/ in Medieval French, where Modern French has /ʃ/ , but English has preserved the older sound (in words like chamber, chain, chase and exchequer ). Similarly, j had an older /dʒ/ sound, which it still has in English and some dialects of modern Norman, but it has developed into /ʒ/ in Modern French. The word mushroom preserves

SECTION 50

#1732858354771

5304-503: The continued influence of continental French during the Plantagenet period . Though it is difficult to know much about what was actually spoken, as what is known about the dialect is restricted to what was written, it is clear that Anglo-Norman was, to a large extent, the spoken language of the higher social strata in medieval England. It was spoken in the law courts, schools, and universities and, in due course, in at least some sections of

5406-542: The contribution of that language in English and because Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French can explain the transmission of words from French into English and fill the void left by the absence of documentary records of English (in the main) between 1066 and c.  1380 . Anglo-Norman continued to evolve significantly during the Middle Ages by reflecting some of the changes undergone by the northern dialects of mainland French. For example, early Anglo-Norman legal documents used

5508-413: The degeneration of joints can occur. Being confined to bed can add to the likelihood of developing an increased heart rate, decreased cardiac output, hypertension , and thromboembolism . People with disabilities who are bedridden are at risk for developing pressure sores. Those who are bedridden are at risk in a house fire due to their lack of mobility. Showering can become impossible. Bedsores develop if

5610-478: The development of the Chancery Standard in the 15th century, orthography became relatively standardised in a form based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Spelling at the time was mostly quite regular . (There was a fairly consistent correspondence between letters and sounds.) The irregularity of present-day English orthography is largely due to pronunciation changes that have taken place over

5712-488: The different dialects, that was based chiefly on the speech of the East Midlands but also influenced by that of other regions. The writing of this period, however, continues to reflect a variety of regional forms of English. The Ayenbite of Inwyt , a translation of a French confessional prose work, completed in 1340, is written in a Kentish dialect . The best known writer of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer , wrote in

5814-531: The double consonant represented a sound that was (or had previously been) geminated (i.e., had genuinely been "doubled" and would thus have regularly blocked the lengthening of the preceding vowel). In other cases, by analogy, the consonant was written double merely to indicate the lack of lengthening. The basic Old English Latin alphabet consisted of 20 standard letters plus four additional letters: ash ⟨æ⟩ , eth ⟨ð⟩ , thorn ⟨þ⟩ , and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ . There

5916-468: The end of the Middle English period only the strong -'s ending (variously spelled) was in use. Some formerly feminine nouns, as well as some weak nouns, continued to make their genitive forms with -e or no ending (e.g., fole hoves , horses' hooves), and nouns of relationship ending in -er frequently have no genitive ending (e.g., fader bone , "father's bane"). The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form

6018-418: The exception of the third person plural, a borrowing from Old Norse (the original Old English form clashed with the third person singular and was eventually dropped). Also, the nominative form of the feminine third person singular was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into sche (modern she ), but the alternative heyr remained in some areas for a long time. As with nouns, there

6120-408: The gentry and the growing bourgeoisie. Private and commercial correspondence was carried out in Anglo-Norman or Anglo-French from the 13th to the 15th century though its spelling forms were often displaced by continental French spellings. Social classes other than the nobility became keen to learn French: manuscripts containing materials for instructing non-native speakers still exist, dating mostly from

6222-417: The great mass of ordinary people spoke forms of English, French spread as a second language due to its prestige, encouraged by its long-standing use in the school system as a medium of instruction through which Latin was taught. In the courts, the members of the jury , who represented the population, had to know French in order to understand the plea of the lawyer. French was used by the merchant middle class as

SECTION 60

#1732858354771

6324-412: The indicator of the longer and changed pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ . In fact, vowels could have this lengthened and modified pronunciation in various positions, particularly before a single consonant letter and another vowel or before certain pairs of consonants. A related convention involved the doubling of consonant letters to show that the preceding vowel was not to be lengthened. In some cases,

6426-426: The judge, the lawyer, the complainant or the witnesses. The judge gave his sentence orally in Norman, which was then written in Latin. Only in the lowest level of the manorial courts were trials entirely in English. During the late 14th century, English became the main spoken language, but Latin and French continued to be exclusively used in official legal documents until the beginning of the 18th century. Nevertheless,

6528-461: The king in 1275. With effect from the 13th century, Anglo-Norman therefore became used in official documents, such as those that were marked by the private seal of the king whereas the documents sealed by the Lord Chancellor were written in Latin until the end of the Middle Ages. English became the language of Parliament and of legislation in the 15th century, half a century after it had become

6630-468: The language of the king and most of the English nobility. During the 11th century, development of the administrative and judicial institutions took place. Because the king and the lawyers at the time normally used French, it also became the language of these institutions. From the 11th century until the 14th century, the courts used three languages: Latin for writing, French as the main oral language during trials, and English in less formal exchanges between

6732-568: The late 14th century onwards. Although Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French were eventually eclipsed by modern English , they had been used widely enough to influence English vocabulary permanently. This means that many original Germanic words, cognates of which can still be found in Nordic , German , and Dutch , have been lost or, as is more often the case, exist alongside synonyms of Anglo-Norman French origin. Anglo-Norman had little lasting influence on English grammar, as opposed to vocabulary, although it

6834-556: The main difference lied on their inflectional endings, which led to much confusion within the mixed population that existed in the Danelaw, this endings tended gradually to become obscured and finally lost, "simplifying English grammar" in the process. In time, the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. Viking influence on Old English is most apparent in pronouns , modals, comparatives, pronominal adverbs (like hence and together ), conjunctions, and prepositions show

6936-417: The masculine accusative, genitive, and dative, the feminine dative, and the plural genitive. The Owl and the Nightingale adds a final -e to all adjectives not in the nominative, here only inflecting adjectives in the weak declension (as described above). Comparatives and superlatives were usually formed by adding -er and -est . Adjectives with long vowels sometimes shortened these vowels in

7038-427: The more complex system of inflection in Old English : Nouns of the weak declension are primarily inherited from Old English n -stem nouns but also from ō -stem, wō -stem, and u -stem nouns, which did not inflect in the same way as n -stem nouns in Old English, but joined the weak declension in Middle English. Nouns of the strong declension are inherited from the other Old English noun stem classes. Some nouns of

7140-484: The most marked Danish influence. The best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in extensive word borrowings; however, texts from the period in Scandinavia and Northern England do not provide certain evidence of an influence on syntax. However, at least one scholarly study of this influence shows that Old English may have been replaced entirely by Norse, by virtue of the change from Old English to Norse syntax. While

7242-547: The most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, a standard based on the London dialects (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely formed the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by Early Modern English , which lasted until about 1650. Scots developed concurrently from

7344-681: The old insular g and the Carolingian g (modern g ), the former continued in use as a separate letter, known as yogh , written ⟨ȝ⟩ . This was adopted for use to represent a variety of sounds: [ɣ], [j], [dʒ], [x], [ç] , while the Carolingian g was normally used for [g]. Instances of yogh were eventually replaced by ⟨j⟩ or ⟨y⟩ and by ⟨gh⟩ in words like night and laugh . In Middle Scots , yogh became indistinguishable from cursive z , and printers tended to use ⟨z⟩ when yogh

7446-423: The other case endings disappeared in the Early Middle English period, including most of the roughly one dozen forms of the definite article ("the"). The dual personal pronouns (denoting exactly two) also disappeared from English during this period. The loss of case endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages (though more slowly and to

7548-620: The period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with the High and Late Middle Ages . Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography . Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for

7650-442: The phrase "del roy" (of the king), whereas by about 1330 it had become "du roi" as in modern French. Anglo-Norman morphology and phonology can be deduced from its heritage in English. Mostly, it is done in comparison with continental Central French. English has many doublets as a result of this contrast: Compare also: The palatalization of velar consonants before the front vowel produced different results in Norman to

7752-403: The prestige that came with writing in French rather than English. During the 14th century, a new style of literature emerged with the works of writers including John Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer , whose Canterbury Tales remains the most studied and read work of the period. The transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English had taken place by the 1150s to 1180s, the period when

7854-513: The resulting doublet pairs include warden (from Norman) and guardian (from later French; both share a common ancestor loaned from Germanic). The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not result in immediate changes to the language. The general population would have spoken the same dialects as they had before the Conquest. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Middle English had no standard language, only dialects that evolved individually from Old English. Early Middle English (1150–1350) has

7956-943: The rural workers may have been derived from Norman French. An example is the Cumbrian term sturdy for diseased sheep that walk in circles, derived from étourdi meaning dizzy. The Norman invasion of Ireland began in 1169, on the first of May in Bannow Bay , and led to Anglo-Norman control of much of the island. Norman-speaking administrators arrived to rule over the Angevin Empire 's new territory. Several Norman words became Gaelic words, including household terms: garsún (from Norman garçun , "boy"); cóta ( cote , "cloak"); hata ( hatte , "hat"); gairdín ( gardin , "garden"); and terms relating to justice (Irish giúistís , bardas (corporation), cúirt (court)). Place-names in Norman are few, but there

8058-795: The second half of the 14th century in the emerging London dialect, although he also portrays some of his characters as speaking in northern dialects, as in " The Reeve's Tale ". In the English-speaking areas of lowland Scotland , an independent standard was developing, based on the Northumbrian dialect . This would develop into what came to be known as the Scots language . A large number of terms for abstract concepts were adopted directly from scholastic philosophical Latin (rather than via French). Examples are "absolute", "act", "demonstration", and "probable". The Chancery Standard of written English emerged c.  1430 in official documents that, since

8160-458: The second person singular in -(e)st (e.g., þou spekest , "thou speakest"), and the third person singular in -eþ (e.g., he comeþ , "he cometh/he comes"). ( þ (the letter "thorn") is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think", but under certain circumstances, it may be like the voiced th in "that"). The following table illustrates a typical conjugation pattern: Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with Southern dialects preserving

8262-423: The similarly denasalised vowels of modern Norman), but later developed their modern pronunciation in English. The word veil retains the /ei/ (as does modern Norman in vaile and laîsi ) that in French has been replaced by /wa/ voile , loisir . Since many words established in Anglo-Norman from French via the intermediary of Norman were not subject to the processes of sound change that continued in parts of

8364-409: The strong type have an -e in the nominative/accusative singular, like the weak declension, but otherwise strong endings. Often, these are the same nouns that had an -e in the nominative/accusative singular of Old English (they, in turn, were inherited from Proto-Germanic ja -stem and i -stem nouns). The distinct dative case was lost in early Middle English, and although the genitive survived, by

8466-453: The time in the evening when all fires had to be covered to prevent the spread of fire within communities with timber buildings. The word glamour is derived from Anglo-Norman grammeire , the same word which gives us modern grammar ; glamour meant first "book learning" and then the most glamorous form of book learning, "magic" or "magic spell" in Medieval times. The influence of Anglo-Norman

8568-440: The top levels of the English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies by Norman rulers who spoke a dialect of Old French , now known as Old Norman , which developed in England into Anglo-Norman . The use of Norman as the preferred language of literature and polite discourse fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration, even though many Normans of this period were illiterate and depended on

8670-437: The use of Anglo-French expanded into the fields of law, administration, commerce, and science, in all of which a rich documentary legacy survives, indicative of the vitality and importance of the language. By the late 15th century, however, what remained of insular French had become heavily anglicised: see Law French . It continued to be known as "Norman French" until the end of the 19th century even though, philologically, there

8772-477: The very local (and most anglicised ) to a level of language which approximates to and is sometimes indistinguishable from varieties of continental French. Typically, therefore, local records are rather different from continental French, with diplomatic and international trade documents closest to the emerging continental norm. English remained the vernacular of the common people throughout this period. The resulting virtual trilingualism in spoken and written language

8874-610: The words introduced to England as part of Anglo-Norman were of Germanic origin. Indeed, sometimes one can identify cognates such as flock (Germanic in English existing prior to the Conquest) and floquet (Germanic in Norman). The case of the word mug demonstrates that in instances, Anglo-Norman may have reinforced certain Scandinavian elements already present in English. Mug had been introduced into northern English dialects by Viking settlement. The same word had been established in Normandy by

8976-471: The works of contemporary French writers whose language was prestigious. Chaucer - himself of Norman origin - is considered to be the father of the English language and the creator of English as a literary language. The major Norman-French influence on English can still be seen in today's vocabulary. An enormous number of Norman-French and other medieval French loanwords came into the language, and about three-quarters of them are still used today. Very often,

9078-628: Was banished from the courts of the common law in 1731, almost three centuries after the king ceased speaking primarily French. French was used on moots in the Inner Temple until 1779. Anglo-Norman has survived in the political system in the use of certain Anglo-French set phrases in the Parliament of the United Kingdom , where they are written by hand on bills by the Clerk of the Parliaments or Clerk of

9180-406: Was commonly used for literary and eventually administrative purposes from the 11th until the 14th century. The term "Anglo-Norman" harks back to the time when the language was regarded as being primarily the regional dialect of the Norman settlers. Today the generic term "Anglo-French" is used instead to reflect not only the broader origin of the settlers who came with William the Conqueror, but also

9282-425: Was indicated by agreement of articles and pronouns (e.g., þo ule "the feminine owl") or using the pronoun he to refer to masculine nouns such as helm ("helmet"), or phrases such as scaft stærcne (strong shaft), with the masculine accusative adjective ending -ne . Single-syllable adjectives added -e when modifying a noun in the plural and when used after the definite article ( þe ), after

9384-515: Was not available in their fonts; this led to new spellings (often giving rise to new pronunciations), as in McKenzie , where the ⟨z⟩ replaced a yogh, which had the pronunciation /j/ . Anglo-Norman language Anglo-Norman ( Norman : Anglo-Normaund ; French : Anglo-normand ), also known as Anglo-Norman French , was a dialect of Old Norman that was used in England and, to

9486-457: Was not the main administrative language of England: Latin was the major language of record in legal and other official documents for most of the medieval period. However, from the late 12th century to the early 15th century, Anglo-French was much used in law reports, charters, ordinances, official correspondence, and trade at all levels; it was the language of the King, his court and the upper class. There

9588-520: Was not yet a distinct j , v , or w , and Old English scribes did not generally use k , q , or z . Ash was no longer required in Middle English, as the Old English vowel /æ/ that it represented had merged into /a/ . The symbol nonetheless came to be used as a ligature for the digraph ⟨ae⟩ in many words of Greek or Latin origin, as did ⟨œ⟩ for ⟨oe⟩ . Eth and thorn both represented /θ/ or its allophone / ð / in Old English. Eth fell out of use during

9690-473: Was nothing Norman about it. Among important writers of the Anglo-Norman cultural commonwealth is Marie de France . The languages and literature of the Channel Islands are sometimes referred to as Anglo-Norman, but that usage is derived from the French name for the islands: les îles anglo-normandes . The variety of French spoken in the islands is related to the modern Norman language , and distinct from

9792-428: Was one of medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English. From the time of the Norman Conquest (1066) until the end of the 14th century, French was the language of the king and his court. During this period, marriages with French princesses reinforced the royal family's ties to French culture. Nevertheless, during the 13th century, intermarriages with English nobility became more frequent. French became progressively

9894-417: Was ousted by it in most dialects by the 15th. The following table shows some of the various Middle English pronouns. Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources because of differences in spellings and pronunciations at different times and in different dialects. As a general rule, the indicative first person singular of verbs in the present tense ended in -e (e.g., ich here , "I hear"),

9996-483: Was reported, including pressure ulcers and urinary tract infections . Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME ) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states

10098-469: Was some inflectional simplification (the distinct Old English dual forms were lost), but pronouns, unlike nouns, retained distinct nominative and accusative forms. Third person pronouns also retained a distinction between accusative and dative forms, but that was gradually lost: The masculine hine was replaced by him south of the River Thames by the early 14th century, and the neuter dative him

10200-411: Was the first to write in English. By the end of the 15th century, French became the second language of a cultivated elite. Until the end of the 13th century, Latin was the language of all official written documents. Nevertheless, some important documents had their official Norman translation, such as Magna Carta of 1215. The first official document written in Anglo-Norman was a statute promulgated by

10302-561: Was the language descended from the Norman French originally established in England after the Conquest. When William the Conqueror led the Norman conquest of England in 1066, he, his nobles, and many of his followers from Normandy , but also those from northern and western France, spoke a range of langues d'oïl (northern varieties of Old French ). This amalgam developed into the unique insular dialect now known as Anglo-Norman French, which

10404-483: Was very asymmetrical: very little influence from English was carried over into the continental possessions of the Anglo-Norman kings. Some administrative terms survived in some parts of mainland Normandy: forlenc (from furrow , compare furlong ) in the Cotentin Peninsula and Bessin , and a general use of the word acre (instead of French arpent ) for land measurement in Normandy until metrication in

#770229