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. By this time the Northumbrian dialect spoken in south east Scotland was developing into the Scots language. The language of England as spoken after this time, up to 1650, is known as Early Modem English.
The diversity of forms in written Middle English suggests the gradual end of the role of Wessex as a focal point for scribal activity, and the emergence of more distinct local scribal styles and written dialects.
Literary and linguistic cultures
Middle English was one of the five languages current in England. 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 French. 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 mid12th century, with Anglo-Norman becoming, like Latin, a learned tongue of the court. English did not cease to be used in the court. Even during what has be en called the 'lost' period 9f English literary history (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: lyrics, saints' lives, devotional manuals, histories, encyclopedias and poems. 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 Geoffrey Chaucer (Canterbury Tales), and Malory.
History
1000
The transfer of power in 1066 represented the introduction of French as a language of polite discourse and literature and fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration.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 French origin: pig/pork, cow/beef, wood/forest, sheep/mutton, house/mansion, worthy/honourable, bold/courageous. The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen by the abundance of Modem English words for the mechanisms of government derived from Anglo-Norman: court, judge ,jury, appeal, parliament.
This period of trilingual activity developed much of the flexible triplicate synonymy of modem English. For instance, English has three words meaning rough1y "of or relating to a king": kingly from Old English, royal from French and regal from Latin.
Deeper changes occurred in the grammar. The new English did not look the same as the old. Old English had a complex system of inflectional endings. 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. In the later 14th century, Chancery Standard (or London English) itself a phenomenon produced by the increase of bureaucracy and literary production in London . introduced a greater deal of conformity in English spelling.
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). Stability only carne gradually after 1485 with the Tudor dynasty. Printing started in England in the 1470s. With a standardised, printed, English Bible and Prayer Book being read from the 1540s, a wider public became familiar with a standard language, and the era of Modem English was underway.
