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Middle English (1100 - 1500)
The transition from Old English to Middle English began due to the Norman Conquest in 1066 when William the Conqueror (William I of England) invaded and conquered England, so the Norman language was brought to the territory of England.
The word Norman means Norseman. The Normans descended from Vikings (who had settled in Northern France about 200 years before).
The Normans
Those Norsemen completely stopped using their Old Norse and adopted French (which has its origins in Latin).
However, the Normans didn't speak standard French, but it was a rural dialect that had great Germanic influences. It was usually called Anglo-Norman or Norman French.
Anglo-Norman turned into the language of the nobility of England for more than 300 years. However, the peasantry and just lower classes (and that's more than 90% of the English population in that era) spoke English. The Normans considered English to be a vulgar and low-class language. Exactly this mixture of Anglo-Norman and Old English is said to be Middle English.
The Domesday Book
The Anglo-Norman was used at court, and it was a language of administration, but as a written language people used Latin, especially the Church.
For example, the Domesday Book created by William the Conqueror was written in Latin.
It is incredible how many words the Normans gifted to English - about 10.000! A huge number of them are abstract nouns that end with the suffices "-age", "-ant / -ent","-ment", "-ity", "-tion", "-ance/ -ence" or start with the prefixes "con-", "de-", "ex-", "trans-", and "pre-".
But some new words were appearing alongside with already existing native English words of similar meaning.
e.g. the animals that were kept in the fields had English names (sheep, cow, deer, ox, etc.), but when they were already cooked and served, their names became French (beef, mutton, pork, veal, etc.)
Many words that came to English are related to nobility: court, government, fashion, art: crown, castle, parliament, city, authority, battle, beauty, literature, poet, language, etc.
And such things happened really often: the French word maternity in addition to the Old English motherhood, infant - child, labour - work, pardon - forgive, desire - wish, forest - wood, demand - ask, battle - fight, aid - help, and so on. Over time, these synonyms started to get some differences in meaning.
The pronunciation became softer, more likely it is today. Many words got the same shape as today:
hwaer - where
hwaenne - when
hwil - while
hwo - who
During the Middle English period, the universities of Oxford (1167) and Cambridge (1209) were founded. The literacy was increasing, but due to the fact that the books were still written by hand and were very expensive, it was increasing pretty slowly.
The most famous texts in Middle English are the poem "the Owl and the Nightingale" (around 1200) and the historical poem "Brut" (composed around the same period of time). The authors are unknown.
And perhaps the most famous literature work of that period is the "Canterbury Tales" written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1380s. He is said to have introduced lots of words into the English language (up to 2000!) - wildness, vulgar, desk, accident, Valentine, vacation, examination, utility, universe, theatre, etc.
The Owl and the Nightingale
Introduction of the printing press
Another great change that happened during the Middle English period was the introduction of the printing press, which was brought to England by William Caxton in 1476 (but originally the printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany around 1440).
This new machine did something amazing! It made books much cheaper to produce and to buy as it was much faster than doing all the process by hand. Therefore, levels of literacy rose a lot among the English people and it helped to standardize the spelling and grammar of the language.
Already at that time readers of Middle English could find it difficult to read something in Old English! After the period of Middle English, next in turn was the Early Modern English with its first dictionaries and big changes in life. Click here to check this out!
Films about Normans in England!
Check out some of the films about this interesting period in English history!
1066: A Year to Conquer England
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The Normans
1. 1066: A Year to Conquer England
2017 BBC documentary-drama series in which Dan Snow talks about the Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and Normans.
2. William the Conqueror (2015)
A French historical film about William the Conqueror who tries to conquer England in 1066.
3. The Normans (2010)
British documentary series that explains the life of the Normans between the 10th and 13th centuries.
You know more films about Normans in England? Watched something mentioned in the list? Share in the comments!
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