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90-426: Middle English dromond and Old French dromont are derived from the dromon, and described any particularly large medieval ship. The appearance and evolution of medieval warships is a matter of debate and conjecture; until recently, no remains of an oared warship from either ancient or early medieval times had been found and information had to be gathered by analyzing literary evidence, crude artistic depictions and

180-485: A Bermudan boat with this form of counter, using the term "square tuck stern" to describe it. The term "tuck" is used in the northwest of England for this area of the hull at the sternpost, and for the bulkhead across the counter if one is fitted. The fantail stern widens from the waterline as it goes upwards. It was found on many 19th century tea clippers and the ill-fated RMS Titanic . A bustle stern refers to any kind of stern (transom, elliptical, etc.) that has

270-732: 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

360-426: A dromon of 120 rowers. The length of these ships was probably about 32 meters. Most contemporary vessels had a single mast ( histos or katartion ), the larger bireme dromons probably needed at least two masts to maneuver, assuming that a lateen sail for a ship this size would have reached unmanageable dimensions. The ship was steered by means of two quarter rudders at the stern ( prymnē ), which also housed

450-412: A flat panel or a gentle curve, and the counter reached from the sternpost all the way to the taffrail in a continuous arch. It was soon discovered that vessels with cruiser sterns experienced less water resistance when under way than those with elliptical sterns, and between World War I and World War II most merchant ship designs soon followed suit. None of these three main types of stern has vanished from

540-408: A kind of stern with a low rounded shape that is nearly flat at the waterline, but which then slopes upward in a conical fashion towards the deck (practical for small high-speed power boats with very shallow drafts). A Costanzi stern is a type of stern designed for use on ocean-going vessels. Its hard- chined design is a compromise between the 'spoon-shaped' stern usually found on ocean liners , and

630-493: 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

720-486: 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

810-488: 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,

900-479: A non-watertight counter which is boarded across the fashion timbers curving outward aft from the transom. Some working boats and modern replicas have a similar form of counter, built to be water tight as described in the "transom stern" section above. These are being confused with lute sterns but as a lute is not watertight, a better term is needed. Chappelle in American Small Sailing Craft refers to

990-572: 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

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1080-415: A tent ( skēnē ) that covered the captain's berth ( krab[b]at[t]os ). The prow ( prōra ) featured an elevated forecastle ( pseudopation ), below which the siphon for the discharge of Greek fire projected; secondary siphons could also be carried amidships on either side. A pavesade ( kastellōma ), on which marines could hang their shields, ran around the sides of the ship, providing protection to

1170-518: 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

1260-696: 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 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

1350-433: 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

1440-404: The chelandion and the dromōn proper, terms which otherwise are often used indiscriminately in literary sources. While the dromōn was developed exclusively as a war galley, the chelandion would have had to have a special compartment amidships to accommodate a row of horses, increasing its beam and hold depth. Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME )

1530-410: The dromōn proper, crewed by two ousiai . In Constantine VII 's De Ceremoniis , the heavy dromōn is said to have an even larger crew of 230 rowers and 70 marines; the naval expert John H. Pryor considers them as supernumerary crews being carried aboard, while Makrypoulias suggests that the extra men correspond to a second rower on each of the upper-bank oars. A smaller, single-bank ship,

1620-440: The monērēs ( μονήρης , 'single-banked') or galea ( γαλέα , from which the term "galley" derives), with c.  60 men as crew, was used for scouting missions but also in the wings of the battle line. Three-banked ('trireme') dromons are described in a 10th-century work dedicated to the parakoimōmenos Basil Lekapenos . However, this treatise, which survives only in fragments, draws heavily upon references on

1710-513: 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

1800-592: 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

1890-600: 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

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1980-453: The Emirate of Crete in 911 and 949: the [chelandion] ousiakon ( [χελάνδιον] οὑσιακόν ), so named because it was manned by an ousia of 108 men; the [chelandion] pamphylon ( [χελάνδιον] πάμφυλον ), crewed with up to 120–160 men, its name either implying an origin in the region of Pamphylia as a transport ship or its crewing with "picked crews" (from πᾶν+φῦλον , 'all tribes'); and

2070-472: 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

2160-566: 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

2250-562: The Vandalic War , as described by Procopius of Caesarea , was apparently at least partly fitted with lateen sails, making it probable that by that time the lateen had become the standard rig for the dromon, with the traditional square sail gradually falling from use in medieval navigation. These 6th-century dromons were single-banked (' monoreme ') ships of probably 50 oars, arranged with 25 oars on each side. Again unlike Hellenistic vessels , which used an outrigger , these extended directly from

2340-496: The galea type. The accepted view is that the main developments which differentiated the early dromons from the liburnians and that henceforth characterized Mediterranean galleys, were the adoption of a full deck ( katastrōma ), the abandonment of the rams on the bow in favor of an above-water spur and the gradual introduction of lateen sails. The reasons for the abandonment of the ram ( Latin : rostrum , Greek : ἔμβολος ) are unclear. Depictions of upward-pointing beaks in

2430-399: The square or transom stern and the elliptical , fantail , or merchant stern, and were developed in that order. The hull sections of a sailing ship located before the stern were composed of a series of U-shaped rib-like frames set in a sloped or "cant" arrangement, with the last frame before the stern being called the fashion timber(s) or fashion piece(s) , so called for "fashioning"

2520-621: 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

2610-422: 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

2700-409: 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

2790-467: 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

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2880-597: 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

2970-451: The 20th century); the vertical transom stern or plumb stern is raked neither forward nor back, but falls directly from the taffrail down to the wing transom. The rocket ship stern is a term for an extremely angled retroussé stern. A double ended ship with a very narrow square counter formed from the bulwarks or upper deck above the head of the rudder is said to have a pink stern or pinky stern. The torpedo stern or torpedo-boat stern describes

3060-403: The 4th-century Vatican Vergil manuscript may well illustrate that the ram had already been replaced by a spur in late-Roman galleys. Byzantinists John Pryor and Elizabeth Jeffreys argue that the purpose of the spur was to allow the dromon to ride up on an enemy's oars and crush them, destroying its propulsion, and point out that one of the medieval Latin terms for spur, "calcar", is derived from

3150-564: The Byzantines usually commandeered ordinary merchantmen as transport ships ( phortēgoi ) or supply ships ( skeuophora ). These appear to have been mostly sailing vessels, rather than oared. The Byzantines and Arabs also employed horse-transports ( hippagōga ), which were either sailing ships or galleys, the latter certainly modified to accommodate the horses. Given that the chelandia appear originally to have been oared horse-transports, this would imply differences in construction between

3240-568: 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

3330-545: 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

3420-571: 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

3510-544: 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 ,

3600-680: 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

3690-466: The Yenikapi excavations, dating to the 10th–11th centuries, are of uniform design and construction, suggesting centralized manufacturing. They have a length of about 30 metres (98 ft), and are built of European Black Pine and Oriental plane . By the 10th century, there were three main classes of bireme warships of the general dromon type, as detailed in the inventories for the expeditions sent against

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3780-710: 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

3870-527: The after part of the ship. This frame is designed to support the various beams that make up the stern. In 1817 the British naval architect Sir Robert Seppings introduced the concept of a rounded stern. The square stern had been an easy target for enemy cannon, and could not support the weight of heavy stern chase guns . But Seppings' design left the rudder head exposed, and was regarded by many as simply ugly—no American warships were designed with such sterns, and

3960-458: The appearance and construction of a classical Greek trireme , and must therefore be used with care when trying to apply it to the warships of the middle Byzantine period. The existence of trireme vessels is, however, attested in the Fatimid navy in the 11th and 12th centuries, and references made by Leo VI to large Arab ships in the 10th century may also indicate trireme galleys. For cargo transport,

4050-494: 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

4140-567: 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

4230-414: 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

4320-507: 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

4410-399: The counter rail to the taffrail . The stern lies opposite the bow , the foremost part of a ship. Originally, the term only referred to the aft port section of the ship, but eventually came to refer to the entire back of a vessel. The stern end of a ship is indicated with a white navigation light at night. Sterns on European and American wooden sailing ships began with two principal forms:

4500-407: The cruiser stern—another design without transoms and known variously as the canoe stern, parabolic stern, and the double-ended stern—became the next prominent development in ship stern design, particularly in warships of the earlier half of the 20th century. The intent of this re-design was to protect the steering gear by bringing it below the armor deck. The stern now came to a point rather than

4590-405: The curvature is complete. The finished stern has a continuous curved edge around the outside and is raked aft. Other names for the elliptical stern include a "counter stern", in reference to its very long counter, and a "cutaway stern". The elliptical stern began use during the age of sail , but remained very popular for both merchant and warships well into the nautical age of steam and through

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4680-447: The deck crew. Larger ships also had wooden castles ( xylokastra ) on either side between the masts, similar to those attested for the Roman liburnians, providing archers with elevated firing platforms. The bow spur ( peronion ) was intended to ride over an enemy ship's oars, breaking them and rendering it helpless against missile fire and boarding. The four galeai ships uncovered in

4770-403: The decoration overboard rather than be burdened with its useless weight. Until a new form of stern appeared in the 19th century, the transom stern was a floating house—and required just as many timbers, walls, windows, and frames. The stern frame provided the foundational structure of the transom stern, and was composed of the sternpost, wing transom, and fashion piece. Abaft the fashion timber,

4860-478: 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

4950-488: 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

5040-531: 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

5130-468: 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

5220-418: 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

5310-489: The first eight decades of steamship construction (roughly 1840–1920). Despite the design's leaving the rudder exposed and vulnerable in combat situations, many counter-sterned warships survived both World Wars, and stylish high-end vessels sporting them were coming off the ways into the 1950s, including the US-flagged sisters SS Constitution and SS Independence . As ships of wooden construction gave way to iron and steel,

5400-474: The flat transom, often required for fitting azimuth thrusters . The design allows for improved seagoing characteristics. It is the stern design on Queen Mary 2 , and was originally proposed for SS Oceanic and Eugenio C , both constructed in the 1960s. A lute stern is to be found on inshore craft on the Sussex, England, shore. It comprises a watertight transom with the topside planking extended aft to form

5490-416: The hull. In the later two-banked (' bireme ') dromons of the 9th and 10th centuries, the two oar banks ( elasiai ) were divided by the deck, with the first oar bank below and the second oar bank above deck; these rowers were expected to fight with the ship's marines in boarding operations. The historian Christos Makrypoulias suggests an arrangement of 25 oarsmen beneath and 35 on the deck on either side for

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5580-412: 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,

5670-499: The keel diagonally aft and upward. It rests on the top of the sternpost and runs on either side of the rudder post (thus creating the "helm port" through which the rudder passes) to a point well above the vessel's waterline. Whereas the timbers of the transom stern all heeled on the wing transom, the timbers of the elliptical stern all heel on the whiskers, to which they are affixed at a 45° angle (i.e., "canted") when viewed from overhead and decrease in length as they are installed aft until

5760-556: 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

5850-417: 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

5940-437: The modern naval architectural repertoire, and all three continue to be used in one form or another by designers for many uses. Variations on these basic designs have resulted in an outflow of "new" stern types and names, only some of which are itemized here. The reverse stern, reverse transom stern, sugar-scoop, or retroussé stern is a kind of transom stern that is raked backwards (common on modern yachts, rare on vessels before

6030-427: 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

6120-484: 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

6210-547: 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

6300-401: The next major stern development—the iron-hulled cruiser stern—addressed far better and with significantly different materials. In naval architecture, the term transom has two meanings. First, it can be any of the individual beams that run side-to-side or "athwart" the hull at any point abaft the fashion timber; second, it can refer specifically to the flat or slightly curved surface that is

6390-681: 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

6480-423: 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

6570-403: 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

6660-502: The remains of a few merchant vessels (such as the 7th-century Pantano Longarini wreck from Sicily , the 7th-century Yassi Ada ship and the 11th-century Serçe Limanı wreck ). Only in 2005–2006 did archaeological digs for the Marmaray project in the Harbor of Theodosius (modern Yenikapi) uncover the remains of over 36 Byzantine ships from the 6th to 10th centuries, including four light galleys of

6750-564: 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

6840-407: The round stern was quickly superseded by the elliptical stern. The United States began building the first elliptical stern warship in 1820, a decade before the British. USS  Brandywine became the first sailing ship to sport such a stern. Though a great improvement over the transom stern in terms of its vulnerability to attack when under fire, elliptical sterns still had obvious weaknesses which

6930-795: 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

7020-458: 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

7110-409: 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

7200-440: 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

7290-418: The transom stern was composed of two different kinds of timbers: The flat surface of any transom stern may begin either at or above the waterline of the vessel. The geometric line which stretches from the wing transom to the archboard is called the counter ; a large vessel may have two such counters, called a lower counter and a second or upper counter. The lower counter stretches from directly above

7380-549: The verb "to trample". One possibility is that the change occurred because of the gradual evolution of the ancient shell-first mortise and tenon hull construction method, against which rams had been designed, into the skeleton-first method, which produced a stronger and more flexible hull, less susceptible to ramming. By the early 7th century, the ram's original function had been forgotten, if we judge by Isidore of Seville 's comments that they were used to protect against collision with underwater rocks. Authors have suggested that it

7470-422: The very back panel of a transom stern. In this sense, a transom stern is the product of the use of a series of transoms, and hence the two terms have blended. The stern of a traditional sailing ship housed the captain's quarters and became increasingly large and elaborate between the 15th and 18th centuries, especially in the baroque era, when wedding-cake-like structures became so heavy that crews sometimes threw

7560-456: The wing transom to the lower counter rail, and the upper counter from the lower counter rail to the upper counter rail, immediately under the stern's lowest set of windows (which in naval parlance were called "lights" ). The visual unpopularity of Seppings 's rounded stern was soon rectified by Sir William Symonds . In this revised stern, a set of straight post timbers (also called "whiskers", "horn timbers", or "fan tail timbers" ) stretches from

7650-425: 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

7740-623: Was introduced into the Mediterranean by Arabs, possibly with an ultimate origin in India . The discovery of new depictions and literary references in recent decades has led scholars to antedate the appearance of the lateen sail in the Levant to the late Hellenistic or early Roman period. Not only the triangular, but also the quadrilateral version were known, used for centuries (mostly on smaller craft) in parallel with square sails. Belisarius 's fleet during

7830-469: 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/ . Stern This is an accepted version of this page The stern is the back or aft -most part of a ship or boat , technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost , extending upwards from

7920-520: 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

8010-417: 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"),

8100-469: 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

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