Middle English English
Spoken in:	England, Scotland
Language extinction:	developed into Early Modern English and Scots by the 16th century
Language family:	Indo-European  Germanic   West Germanic    Anglo-Frisian     Anglic      Old English       Middle English
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	enm
ISO 639-3:	enm
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. According to some definitions an extinct language is a Language which no longer has any speakers, whereas a dead language is a language which is no longer spoken Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century to 1650 Scots ( The Scots leid) refers to Anglic varieties derived from early northern Middle English spoken in parts of Scotland and Northern List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of Languages and include languages such as English The Anglo-Frisian languages (sometimes Insular Germanic) are a group of Ingvaeonic West Germanic languages consisting of Old English Anglic (from Latin Anglicus meaning English, cf Germanic) is a term for what are also known as Englishes, in for example World ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the 1470s, and slightly later by Richard Pynson. Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth thereby transferring an image England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland Richard Pynson (born 1448 in Normandy, died 1529 was one of the first printers of English books By this time the Northumbrian dialect spoken in south east Scotland was developing into the Scots language. Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. The history of the Scots language refers to how Anglic varieties spoken in parts of Scotland developed into modern Scots. The language of England as spoken after this time, up to 1650, is known as Early Modern English. England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century to 1650

Unlike Old English, which tended largely to adopt Late West Saxon scribal conventions in the immediate pre-Conquest period, Middle English as a written language displays a wide variety of scribal (and presumably dialectal) forms. However, the diversity of forms in written Middle English signifies neither greater variety of spoken forms of English than could be found in pre-Conquest England, nor a faithful representation of contemporary spoken English (though perhaps greater fidelity to this than may be found in Old English texts). Rather, this diversity suggests the gradual end of the role of Wessex as a focal point and trend-setter for scribal activity, and the emergence of more distinct local scribal styles and written dialects, and a general pattern of transition of activity over the centuries which follow, as Northumbria, East Anglia and London emerge successively as major centres of literary production, with their own generic interests. West Saxon redirects here For other meanings of Wessex or West Saxon see Wessex (disambiguation. The Kingdom of the East Angles or Kingdom of East Anglia was one of the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Contents 1 Literary and linguistic cultures 2 History 2.1 1000 2.2 c. 1400 3 Construction 3.1 Nouns 3.2 Verbs 3.3 Pronouns 4 Pronunciation 5 Archaic characters 6 Chancery Standard 6.1 History of the Chancery Standard 7 Sample text 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

Literary and linguistic cultures

Main article: Middle English literature

Middle English was one of the five languages current in England. The term English literature refers to Literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by Writers not necessarily from Though never the language of the Roman Catholic Church, which was always Latin, it lost status as a language of courtly life, literature and documentation, being largely supplanted by Anglo-Norman. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Literature is the Art of written works Literally translated the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter Documentation may refer to the process of providing evidence ("to document something" or to the communicable material used to provide such documentation (i The Anglo-Norman language is a term traditionally used to refer to the variety of French used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles following the It remained, though, the spoken language of the majority, and may be regarded as the only true vernacular language of most English people after about the mid-12th century, with Anglo-Norman becoming, like Latin, a learned tongue of the court. Vernacular refers to the Native language of a country or a locality Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Welsh and Cornish were also used as spoken vernaculars in the west, the celtic Cumbric Language spoken in the north-west had become extinct. Middle Welsh (Cymraeg Canol is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 14th centuries of which much more remains than for any earlier For the Cornish-English dialect see West Country dialects and List of Cornish dialect words. Cumbric was the Brythonic Celtic language, often considered to be a Dialect of Welsh, spoken in Northern England and southern English did not cease to be used in the court: it retained a cartulary function (being the language used in royal charters); nor did it disappear as a language of literary production. Chartulary (ˈkaɹʧʊˌlɛɹi renders two Latin words for a collection of charters viz Even during what has been called the 'lost' period of English literary history, the late 11th to mid-12th century, Old English texts, especially homilies, saints' lives and grammatical texts, continued to be copied, used and adapted by scribes. From the later 12th and 13th century there survive huge amounts of written material of various forms, from lyrics to saints' lives, devotional manuals to histories, encyclopaedias to poems of moral (and often immoral) discussion and debate, though much of this material remains unstudied, in part because it evades or defies modern, arguably quite restricted, categorisations of literature. Middle English is more familiar to us as the language of Ricardian Poetry and its followers, the 14th- and 15th-century literature cultures clustered around the West Midlands and around London and East Anglia. This includes the works of William Langland, the Gawain Poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, Malory, Caxton, and Hoccleve. William Langland (ca 1332 - ca 1386 is the conjectured Author of the 14th-century English Dream-vision Piers Plowman. The " Pearl Poet " or the " Gawain Poet " is the name given to the author of Pearl, an alliterative poem written in Middle Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – 25 October 1400? was an English author poet Philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and Diplomat. John Lydgate of Bury (c 1370 – c 1451 was a Monk and Poet, born in Lidgate Suffolk, England. John Gower (c 1330 – October 1408 was an English Poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. Sir Thomas Malory (c 1405 – 14 March 1471 was an English writer the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur. Thomas Occleve (or Hoccleve) (c 1368 &ndash 1426 English Poet, was born probably in 1368/9 for writing in 1421/2 he says he was fifty-three years Perhaps best known, of course, is Chaucer himself in his Canterbury Tales and other shorter poems, where the poet consistently revalues and reinvents older traditions while managing to avoid completely abandoning them. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in Prose, the rest in verse)

History

1000

Syððan wæs geworden þæt he ferde þurh þa ceastre and þæt castel: godes rice prediciende and bodiende. and hi twelfe mid. And sume wif þe wæron gehælede of awyrgdum gastum: and untrumnessum: seo magdalenisce maria ofþære seofan deoflu uteodon: and iohanna chuzan wif herodes gerefan: and susanna and manega oðre þe him of hyra spedum þenedon.

"And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance. "

— Translation of Luke 8. The Gospel of Luke (Gk Κατά Λουκάν Ευαγγέλιον) is a synoptic Gospel, and is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels of the 1–3 from the New Testament

Although it is possible to overestimate the degree of culture shock which the transfer of power in 1066 represented, the removal from the top levels of an English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their replacement with a Norman-speaking one, both opened the way for the introduction of Norman as a language of polite discourse and literature and fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration. Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. The northern Norman can be classified in the septentrional Oil languages with Picard and Although Old English was by no means as standardised as modern English, its written forms were less subject to broad dialect variations than post-Conquest English.

Even now, after a thousand years, the Norman influence on the English language is still visible.

Consider these pairs of Modern English words. The first of each pair is derived from Old English and the second is of Anglo-Norman origin: pig/pork, cow/beef, wood/forest, sheep/mutton, house/mansion, worthy/honourable, bold/courageous. Pigs, also called hogs or' swine', are Ungulates which have been domesticated as sources of food leather and similar products since ancient times Pork' is the Culinary name for Meat from the domestic Pig ( Sus scrofa) often specifically the fresh meat but can be used as an all-inclusive Cattle, colloquially referred to as cows, are domesticated Ungulates a member of the Subfamily Bovinae of the family Beef is the Culinary name for Meat from Bovines especially domestic Cattle (cows Wood is hard fibrous lignified structural tissue produced as secondary Xylem in the stems of Woody plants notably trees but also shrubs A forest is an area with a high density of Trees There are many definitions of a forest based on various criteria Lamb, hogget, and mutton are the meat of Domestic sheep. The meat of an animal in its first year is lamb; that of an older sheep is hogget House generally refers to a Shelter or Building that is a Dwelling or place for Habitation by Human beings. A mansion is a large dwelling House. The word itself derives (through Old French) from the Latin word mansus (the perfect passive participle The prefix The Honourable or The Honorable (abbreviated to " The Hon In Typography, emphasis is the exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text&mdashto emphasise them Several ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Courageous or Courageux (the French spelling

The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen by the abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government derived from Anglo-Norman: court, judge, jury, appeal, parliament. A court is a forum used by a power base to adjudicate disputes and dispense civil, labour administrative and criminal Justice under its A judge, or justice, is an Official who presides over a Court of law A jury a sworn body of persons convened to render a rational, impartial Verdict (a finding of fact on a question officially submitted to them In Law, an appeal is a process for requesting a formal change to an official decision TalkParliament#Screen-size. -->A  parliament is a Legislature, especially in those Also prevalent are terms relating to the chivalric cultures which arose in the 12th century as a response to the requirements of feudalism and crusading activity. Chivalric order Chivalry is a term related to the Medieval institution of Knighthood. Feudalism, a term first used in the early modern period (17th century in its most classic sense refers to a Medieval Europe Political system composed The Crusades were a series of military campaigns of a religious character waged by much of Christian Europe against external and internal opponents Early on, this vocabulary of refined behaviour begins to work its way into English: the word 'debonaire' appears in the 1137 Peterborough Chronicle, but so too does 'castel', another Norman import that makes its mark on the territory of the English language as much as on the territory of England itself. The Peterborough Chronicle (also called the Laud Manuscript) one of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles ' contains unique information about the A castle is a defensive structure seen as one of the main symbols of the Middle Ages. The Normans were the people who gave their names to Normandy, a region in northern France.

This period of trilingual activity developed much of the flexible triplicate synonymy of modern English. For instance, English has three words meaning roughly "of or relating to a king":

• kingly from Old English,
• royal from French and
• regal from Latin.

Likewise, Norman, and later French, influence led to some interesting word pairs in English, such as the following, which both mean "someone who defends":

• Warden from Norman, and
• Guardian from French (itself of Germanic origin).

Deeper changes occurred in the grammar. Bit by bit, as we have seen, the wealthy and the government anglicised again, though Norman, and then French, remained the dominant language of literature and law for several centuries, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy. Anglicisation or anglicization (see -ise vs -ize) is a process of conversion of verbal or written elements of any other language into a more comprehensible English The Kings of Wessex, who conquered Kent and Sussex from Mercia in 825 became increasingly dominant over the other kingdoms of England during The new English did not look the same as the old: as well as undergoing changes in vocabulary, the complex system of inflectional endings which Old English had was gradually lost and simplified in the dialects of spoken English. Many words that existed in Old English did not survive into Modern English. Gradually the change spread to be reflected in its increasingly diverse written forms. This loss of case-endings was part of a general trend from inflectional to fixed-order words which occurred in other Germanic languages, and cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking layers of the population. English remained, after all, the language of the majority. It certainly was a literary language in England, alongside Anglo-Norman and Latin from the 12th to the 14th centuries. In the later 14th century, Chancery Standard (or London English) — itself a phenomenon produced by the increase of bureaucracy in London, and a concomitant increase in London literary production — introduced a greater deal of conformity in English spelling. While the fame of Middle English literary productions tends to begin in the later fourteenth century, with the works of Chaucer and Gower, an immense corpus of literature survives from throughout the Middle English period. Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – 25 October 1400? was an English author poet Philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and Diplomat.

c. 1400

The Establishment is using English increasingly around this time. The Parliament of England used English increasingly from around the 1360s, and the king's court used mainly English from the time of King Henry V (acceded 1413). The Parliament of England was the Legislature of the Kingdom of England. Henry V (16 September 1386 &ndash 31 August 1422 was one of the most significant English warrior kings of the 15th century Accession (from Lat accedere, to go to to approach in Law, a method of acquiring Property adopted from Roman law (see Accessio The oldest surviving correspondence in English, by Sir John Hawkwood, dates from the 1390s. Sir John Hawkwood (1320 &ndash 1394 was an English Mercenary or condottiero in 14th century Italy. With some standardization of the language, English begins to exhibit the more recognisable forms of grammar and syntax that will form the basis of future standard dialects:

And it is don, aftirward Jesus made iourne bi cites & castelis prechende & euangelisende þe rewme of god, & twelue wiþ hym & summe wymmen þat weren helid of wicke spiritis & sicnesses, marie þat is clepid maudeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis wenten out & Jone þe wif off chusi procuratour of eroude, & susanne & manye oþere þat mynystreden to hym of her facultes

— Luke 8. 1–3

"And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance. "

— Translation of Luke 8. The Gospel of Luke (Gk Κατά Λουκάν Ευαγγέλιον) is a synoptic Gospel, and is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels of the 1–3 from the New Testament

A text from 1391: Geoffrey Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe. Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – 25 October 1400? was an English author poet Philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and Diplomat.

However, this was a time of upheaval in England. Five kings were deposed between 1399 and 1500, and one of them was deposed twice. New men came into positions of power, some of them from other parts of the country or lower levels in society. Stability only came gradually after 1485 with the Tudor dynasty. The language changed too — there was much change during the 15th century. But towards the end of that century, a more modern English was starting to emerge. Printing started in England in the 1470s. With a standardised, printed, English Bible and Prayer Book being read to church congregations from the 1540s, a wider public became familiar with a standard language, and the era of Modern English was underway. The efforts of translating the Bible from its original languages into over 2000 others have spanned more than two millennia.

Construction

With its simplified case-ending system, Middle English is much closer to modern English than its pre-Conquest equivalent.

Nouns

Despite losing the slightly more complex system of inflectional endings, Middle English retains two separate noun-ending patterns from Old English. Compare, for example, the early Modern English words engel (angel) and nome (name):

	singular		plural
nom/acc	engel	nome	engles	nomen
gen	engles*	nome	engle(ne)**	nomen
dat	engle	nome	engle(s)	nomen

The strong -s plural form has survived into Modern English, while the weak -n form is rare (oxen, children, brethren and in some dialects eyen (instead of eyes) shoon (instead of shoes) and kine (instead of cows)).

Verbs

As a general rule (and all these rules are general), the first person singular of present tense verbs ends in -e (ich here - "I hear"), the second person in -(e)st (þou spekest - "thou speakest"), and the third person in -eþ (he comeþ - "he cometh/he comes"). (þ is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think"). Thorn, or þorn (Þ þ is a letter in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic Alphabets It was also used in Medieval Scandinavia In the past tense, weak verbs are formed by an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. These, without their personal endings, also form past participles, together with past-participle prefixes derived from the old English ge-: i-, y- and sometimes bi-. Strong verbs form their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e. g. binden -> bound), as in Modern English.

Pronouns

Post-Conquest English inherits its pronouns from Old English:

Personal pronouns in Middle English

		Singular			Plural
		Subject	Object	Possessive	Subject	Object	Possessive
First		I	me	mi(n)	we	us	ure
Second		thou	thee	thy	ye	you	your
Third	Impersonal	hit	it/him	his	he they	hem them	hir their
	Masculine	he	him	his
	Feminine	sche	hire	hir

And here are the Old English pronouns. Below is a list of Middle English Personal pronouns. I (aɪ is the first-person, singular Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. We (wiː is the first-person, plural Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. The word thou ( in most dialects is a second person singular Pronoun in English. Ye ( IPA: /jiː/ or traditionally /ðiː/ was the second-person, plural, Personal pronoun ( Nominative) in Old English They (ðeɪ is a third-person, Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. He (hiː is a third-person, singular Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. Sche (ʃiː was the feminine, third-person, singular, Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Middle English. Middle English pronouns derived from these.

First and Second Person

	First Person		Second Person
	singular	plural	singular	plural
nom.	ic, ih	wē	þū	gē
acc.	mec, mē	ūsic, ūs	þec, þē	ēowic, ēow
gen.	min	ūser, ūre	þin	ēower
dat.	me	us	þe	eow

Third Person

	masc.	fem.	neut.	pl.
nom.	hē	hēo	hit	hīe
acc.	hine	hīe	hit	hīe
gen.	his, sīn	hiere	his, sīn	heora
dat.	him	hiere	him	heom

First and second pronouns survive largely unchanged, with only minor spelling variations. In the third person, the masculine accusative singular became 'him'. The feminine form was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into 'she', but unsteadily — 'ho' remains in some areas for a long time. The lack of a strong standard written form between the eleventh and the fifteenth century makes these changes hard to map.

Pronunciation

Generally, all letters in Middle English words were pronounced. (Silent letters in Modern English come from pronunciation shifts but continued spelling conventions. In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that in a particular word does not correspond to any sound in the word's Pronunciation. ) Therefore 'knight' was pronounced /ˈknɪçt/ (with a pronounced K and a 'gh' as the 'ch' in German 'Knecht'), not /ˈnaɪt/ as in Modern English.

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

(Chaucer, Canterbury Tales)

Words like 'straunge' are disyllabic. Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – 25 October 1400? was an English author poet Philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and Diplomat. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in Prose, the rest in verse) 'Palmeres' is trisyllabic. Comparison with Old English has led some to claim Middle English (and therefore Modern English) developed as a sort of creole. A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable Language that originates seemingly as a nativized Pidgin.

Archaic characters

The following characters which may be unfamilar to modern readers are found in Middle English texts.

letter	name	pronunciation
Æ	Ash	[æ]
ð	Eth	[ð]
þ	Thorn	[θ]
ȝ	Yogh	[ʒ] [g] [ʎ]

These were direct hold-overs from the Old English alphabet (a Roman alphabet variant, which drew some additional letters from Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) Runes). Æ ( minuscule: æ) is a Grapheme formed from the letters A and E. Eth ( Ð, ð; also spelled edh or eð) is a letter used in Old English, Icelandic, Faroese (in Thorn, or þorn (Þ þ is a letter in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic Alphabets It was also used in Medieval Scandinavia Not to be confused with the unrelated ʒ. For the rune transcribed as ȝ, see Gyfu.

Chancery Standard

Chancery Standard was a written form of English used by government bureaucracy and for other official purposes from the late 14th century. It is believed to have contributed in a significant way to the development of the English language as spoken and written today. Because of the differing dialects of English spoken and written across the country at the time, the government required a clear and unambiguous form for use in its official documents. Chancery Standard was developed to meet this need.

History of the Chancery Standard

The Chancery Standard (CS) was developed during the reign of King Henry V (1413 to 1422) in response to his order for his chancery (government officials) to use, like himself, English rather than Anglo-Norman or Latin. The Anglo-Norman language is a term traditionally used to refer to the variety of French used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles following the Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It had become broadly standardized by about the 1430s.

It was largely based on the London and East Midland dialects, for those areas were the political and demographic centres of gravity. However, it used other dialectical forms where they made meanings more clear; for example, the northern "they", "their" and "them" (derived from Scandinavian forms) were used rather than the London "hi/they", "hir" and "hem. " This was perhaps because the London forms could be confused with words such as he, her, him. (However, the colloquial form written as "'em", as in "up and at 'em", may well represent a spoken survival of "hem" rather than a shortening of the Norse-derived "them". )

In its early stages of development, the clerks that used CS would have been familiar with French and Latin. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The strict grammars of those languages influenced the construction of the standard. It was not the only influence on later forms of English — its level of influence is disputed and a variety of spoken dialects continued to exist — but it provided a core around which Early Modern English could crystallise.

By the mid-15th century, CS was used for most official purposes except the Church (which used Latin) and some legal matters (which used French and some Latin). Law French is an archaic language originally based on Old Norman and Anglo-Norman, but increasingly influenced by Parisian French and later English It was disseminated around England by bureaucrats on official business, and slowly gained prestige.

CS provided a widely-intelligible form of English for the first English printers, from the 1470s onwards.

Sample text

The following is from the first sentence of the Prologue from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Prologue ( Greek πρόλογος prologos, from προ~ pro~ - fore~, and lógos word) or prolog, is a prefatory The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in Prose, the rest in verse) Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – 25 October 1400? was an English author poet Philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and Diplomat.

In modern prose:

When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, bathing every vein in such liquid by which virtue the flower is engendered, and when Zephyrus (Greek god of the west wind) with his sweet breath has also inspired the tender plants in every wood and field, and the young sun is halfway through Aries (first sign of the zodiac), and small birds that sleep all night with an open eye make melodies, their hearts pricked by nature, then people long to go on pilgrimages, and pilgrims seek foreign shores and distant shrines known in sundry lands, and especially they wend their way to Canterbury from every shire of England to seek the holy blessed martyr who has helped them when they were sick. ^[1]

See also

• Middle English Dictionary
• Middle English creole hypothesis

References

External links

• A. L. Mayhew and Walter William Skeat. A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580
• Middle English Glossary

© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic