The History of English
Ch 6
The Reestablishment of English,
1200-1500
•
England became
trilateral
.
Latin
was the language
of the Church,
Norman French
for the government,
and
English
for the majority of population.
The Reestablishment of English,
1200-1500
After the long dominance of French
over English in England, a number of
events turned the table and gave
English the chance to rise, re-ascend
and win over French in England
.
1. Loss of Normandy
2. Separation of the French and the
English nobility
3. Feeling of rivalry between the two
countries accompanied by the
Hundred
Years War
and the growth of National
feelings
4. The rise of
the middle class
(after the
Black Death
).
The first link binding England to Normandy (and the French language) in the continent was broken in 1204. King John (of
England and Normandy) lost Normandy to the French and thus removed an important tie with France. Tension was rising between King John and the French king Philip, which
ended with a number of battles in Normandy.
The French were able to win control over Normandy, and King John lost it. When the English language was considered,
this event was advantageous. Kings and Nobles were now forced to look upon England as their first concern. They are
no-longer a bilingual nation. England is now independent, and so it needed and independent, national tongue.
After the Noman conquest, many noble families held
estates (lands) both in England and in Normandy. There was a kind of interlocking aristocracy, so that it was even
difficult for some of the English nobility to say whether they belong more to England or the continent. After Normandy
was lost, those noble families were compelled to give up one side of their lands or the other. 1) Sometimes families divided into branches and made separate terms. 2)In other
cases great nobles preferred their larger holdings in England and gave up their Norman lands. 3) A very few
chose to retain their positions in both countries, but a double allegiance was generally felt awkward.
There was a rising national feeling among the English “England is for the English” and a general resentment against the French and
the foreigners (who were holding important positions in the
government). Even though there were some French people around the English kings, the general mass of the population often
criticized the king and tried to convince him to dismiss those foreigners. The foreigners were not mere strangers, but rather England’s worst enemies. Opposition to foreigners became the
principle ground for such national feelings which brought the barons (noble classes) and the middle class together in a common mission. With time, England became conscious of its unity, and the
governmental officials are for the most part English. There was a natural result which was the spread of English among upper classes again. Therefore, some knowledge of English became
required as a proper mark of an Englishman.
During the 13th C., the upper classes continued for the most part
to speak French, merely because it is their language of inheritance which they learn first at home. Meanwhile, English made steady progress. By the middle of the century, when the separation of the
English nobles from their interests in France had been about completed , English was becoming a matter of general use among
the upper classes. It is at this time that the adoption of French words into English was in its greatest amount and activist period. The transference of words occurred when those who speak French
wanted to speak English but may not find the English word, and thus borrowed the French equivalent. With time, the knowledge of French became imperfect. There was a general attitude that the
proper language for Englishmen to know and use is English.
A clear protest against the use of French and a patriotic
espousal of English is seen in written records from
Middle English:
Conflict between England and France continued after the loss of Normandy. This was followed by a clash of interests, rivalry feelings, and growing antagonism and hostility. Because of many
complex reasons, a long series of wars between the two countries took place. The continued for a whole century and thus it was called the One Hundred War between England and
France.
During all this time, it was impossible to forget that French was the language of an enemy country. Accordingly, the Hundred years’ War was an important cause to the disuse of French in
England.
An event of some importance in helping English to
recover its former prestige is the improvement of the
condition of the mass of the people and the rise of a
substantial
middle class
. During the latter part of the
Middle English period, the conditions of the laboring
classes was rapidly improving. Among the rural
population, slavery (villeinage) was dying out. There
was more incentive to individual effort and more
opportunity for a person to make more money.
The event which helped in creating and developing the
middle class occurred in the year 1349.
In that year, the first cases of a fatal disease appeared in
England (a plague
carried by rats in ships). It spread
rapidly over the rest of the country. The illness once
contracted, ran a very rapid course. In two to three
days, the victim either died or showed signs of recovery.
Generally, they died. Immunity was slight, and the
disease spread unimpeded through a community. The
mortality rate was unbelievably high. It killed about a
third of the English population (which was around 4
million at that time). That is why it is called
“
the Black
Death
”
.
As in most epidemics, the rich suffered less than the poor, since the poor could not shut themselves up in their castles and palaces. The mortality rate was accordingly greatest among the lower social orders, and the result was serious shortage of labor.
This is evident in the immediate rise of wages and workers’ salaries. Many slaves made their escape, and many workers ran
away in search for higher wages. Accordingly, the Black death has the effect of increasing the economic importance of the
laboring class and with it the English language they spoke. In addition, there was a growing number of craftsmen and merchants who together created a powerful class between the rural peasants and the hereditary noble classes. Such changes in
the social and economic life benefited the English speaking part of the population.
At this stage in the English history, English is back
almost known and spoken by most people in England. A
few government agencies and law courts continued to
use French a little later, but those who spoke French
then were definitely bilingual (such as Chaucer, the
great Middle English poet who wrote both in English
and French). Even among the governing class, English
was the language best understood. English was the
basic and French was the addition.
There can be no
doubt in the light of all these events that English is again
the principal tongue of all England
.
• the domination of the French language in England came to an end in the source of the 14th c. The victory of English was predetermined and prepared for by the previously mentioned events and historical conditions .Therefore, in Late Middle English period, English had been reestablished as the main language of administration and writing.
• Literature (mainly poetry and drama) began to be written in English again. The greatest poet of Middle English Geoffrey Chaucer (died in 1400) wrote both in French and English, but his significant works such as the Canterbury Tales are in English.
• By the end of the 14th century public documents and records were
written in English, and Henry IV used English to claim the throne.
• 111. Middle English period was marked by fundamental changes in the English language, changes which are more extensive and important than any other in the course of its history. These changes affected English both in its grammar
and its vocabulary. Those in the grammar reduced English from a highly inflected language to an extremely analytic one. Those in vocabulary involved the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and additions of thousands
words from French and Latin.
The changes in English grammar may be described as a general
reduction of inflections. Endings of the noun and adjective marking distinctions of number and case and often gender were so altered in pronunciation as to lose their distinctive form and hence their usefulness. To some extent, the same thing is true about the verb. The ‘leveling’ of inflectional endings (making them all the same) was due partly to phonetic changes, partly to the operation of
analogy. The phonetic changes involves a process called “leveling of unstressed vowels”. The vowels a, o, u, e in inflectional endings
were all reduced to one unstressed vowel “the schwa”. It was
spelled “e” and that is why many English words nowadays end with an “e” in spelling. Therefore, the distinction between various
endings was lost.
The dative singular marker –e was extended by analogy to the nominative and accusative singular. The only distinctive inflection was the –s for the possessive and the nominative and accusative plural. Because the
nominative and accusative were the most common inflections, the –s occurred frequently and was thought of as a general marker of plurality. Accordingly, the various forms for the singular and the plural of nouns were lost, and the inflections which were used in Middle English are similar to the ones we use today.
In early Middle English, two forms of the plural were preserved: the –s (or
–es) from the strong masculine declension and –en from the weak. The –
en plural enjoyed a great favor and was popular as in (housen). There were dialectal differences in the plural, too. Yet, with time, the –s plural became the standard plural in English, other forms were exceptional.
The leveling of vowel endings had a great effect on the
adjective declension. According to it, the nominative singular declension was extended to all cases of the singular, and the nominative plural to all cases of the plural. Thus, in the weak declension, there was not any distinction between the
singular and the plural. The same applied to the strong declension if the noun ends with –e.
In addition to the leveling of inflections and the weakening of endings, the principle changes in the verb during the Middle English period were the serious losses suffered by the strong verbs. At the same time, there was a large and growing body of weak verbs. The new verbs added the word stock by
coinage or borrowing were regularly weak. Even some verbs which were strong in Old English changed into weak verbs by analogy.
One of the consequences of the decay of inflections was the elimination of that troublesome feature of language,
grammatical gender. As it was discussed before, grammatical gender was sometimes illogical, and even in direct
contradiction of the meaning of the word as woman ( wif-mann) was masculine because the second element in the compound was masculine. Wif and cild were neuter. The
gender of the noun was known through agreement (concord) with the verb. Since the agreement inflections were lost,
grammatical distinctions of gender were lost in accordance. Gradually, the language adopted the natural gender for its nouns.
While the French influence was indirectly related to the loss of inflection and the simplification of the English grammar, that influence was directly related to the changes in vocabulary. Since the two languages exited side by side for a long time, a considerable transference of words from one language to the other is inevitable. Both languages affected each other, but English, representing a language that was regarded as inferior, had more to gain from French. The number of French words that poured into English was unbelievably great. Borrowings began slowly and continued for a long time. It can hardly be said to have ever stopped.
This influence ban be divided into two stages, an earlier and a later. The borrowings of the first stage differ from those of the second in being much less numerous, in being more likely to show
peculiarities of the Anglo-Norman phonology, and in the
circumstances which brought about their introduction. When we study the French words appearing in English before 1250, they were roughly 900 in number, and we find many of them were as the
lower classes would become familiar with a French-speaking nobility (baron, noble, servant, messenger, etc). Others such as
story, rime, etc obviously owed their introduction to English through literary channels. A large group of words borrowed from French
came from French Churches and Cathedrals.
After the year 1250, the condition under which borrowing took place changed. During this second stage, borrowings happened because those who spoke French wanted to use and interact in English. As they were turning increasingly to the use of English, they borrowed French words either to 1) supply deficiency in the English vocabulary or 2) because of their ignorance and imperfect knowledge of the English vocabulary, or 3) as a natural impulse to use a word which was long familiar to them . In changing from French to English, they transferred much of their
governmental and administrative vocabulary (e.g. government, administer, tax, royal, authority, office, prince, slave) their ecclesiastical (religion,
sermon, baptism), legal (justice, crime, equity, judgement), military terms (Army, navy, enemy), their familiar words of fashion (robe, garment,
button, boots), food (beef, bacon, salad, appetite), and social life (music, dance, couch, curtain, etc), the vocabulary of art (romance, tragedy), medicine (remedy, ointment), and learning .
A rough calculation shows that the total number of French words adopted during the Middle English period was slightly over 10,000 words, of these about 75% are still in current use. This led to some loss of Native Old English words which were replaced with French equivalents.
Foreign influences on vocabulary
• Middle English ad a diversity of dialects:
• Northern dialect: corresponding to OE
Northumbrian.
• Midland dialects (East
Midland and West Midland) corresponding to OE Mercian.
• Southern dialect
(corresponding to West-Saxon with a Kentish
subdivision)
Out of this variety of local dialects, there emerged toward the end of the 14th century a written language that during the 15th c. won
general recognition and has since become the recognized standard in both speech and writing. It was the London speech or the London standard. Several causes contributed to this result:
1. As a midland dialect, it occupied a middle position between the extreme divergences of the north and the south. It was less
conservative than the Southern dialect and less radical than the northern. In its sounds and inflections, it represents a kind of
compromise, sharing some characteristics of both of its neighbors.
2. The East midland district, at which London is located, was the largest and most populous of the major dialect areas. The land was more valuable than the hilly country of the north and the west. And this was reflected in both the number and the prosperity of the
inhabitants.
3. The presence of the universities, Oxford and Cambridge in this region. These two universities were playing an important role as intellectual centers.
4. The influence of the great Middle English poet Chaucer is one of the factors to bring about the adoption of a written standard.
Chaucer wrote in the East Midland dialect, specifically the London variety.
By far the most influential factor in the rise of standard English was the importance of London as the capital of England.
London was, and still is, the political and commercial center of England. It was the focus of the social, intellectual, economical and governmental activities of the country. Clearly, London
attracted many migrants from other parts of England. They
brought to it traits of their local speech, here to mingle and mix with London’s idioms and standards. In addition, they took
back home some aspect of London speech, and thus the effect is reciprocal. London English took as well as gave.
In the latter part of the 15th century, the London standard had been accepted, at least in writing, in most parts of the country. There was a widespread tendency to conform in matters of language to the London
standard. By the middle of the century, a fairly consistent variety of written English in both spelling and grammar had developed.
With the introduction of printing in 1476, a new influence of great
importance in the dissemination of London English came into play. Caxton, the first English printer, used the current speech of London in his numerous translations, and the books that issued from his press and from his
successors gave importance to London English more than anything else in its rapid adoption. London had been the center of book publishing in England. The history of Standard English is almost a history of London English.
Standard Modern English –both American and British- is a development of the speech of London.
