The English Language: A Guided Tour of the Language

by David Crystal

  There are several important grammatical developments shown in the extract. The system of Old English word endings is beginning to die away. Several of the old endings are still present, especially on verbs, but they are not used with as much consistency, and they no longer seem to play an important role in conveying meaning. The word order is now critical, and in most respects is very similar to that in use today. There is no sign in the extract of the Old English tendency to put the object before the verb, which was such an important feature of the Caedmon text. On the other hand, there are still several places where the grammar continues to show the older pattern, including a number of instances where the subject follows the verb:

  The Peterborough Chronicle, 1137

  ræueden hi they robbed

  forbaren hi they spared

  man in tune sittende anyone sitting in (i.e. ‘inhabiting’) a village

  was corn dære corn was dear

  werse ne diden did not worse (i.e. ‘didn’t do worse things’)

  There are also a number of phrases where the tight style of the writer makes the immediate sense unclear:

  and æuric man other þe ouermyhte and every man who had the power

  (literally, ‘over-might’) robbed another

  And this particular extract makes a lot of use of ‘double negatives’ (and even triple negatives), another link with Old English. These need to be correctly interpreted, to follow the sense of the passage. There should be no temptation to ‘cancel out’ – using the mathematical rule that ‘two negatives make a positive’. That is not how negative words worked in early English (nor, for that matter, in most of modern English, p. 31). The principle is simple: the extra negative words increase the emphasis, making the negative meaning stronger. So, the multi-negative phrases should be interpreted as follows:

  I ne can ne I ne mai tellen I don’t know how to, nor am I able to tell of…

  þa þe uureccemen ne hadden nan more to gyuen when the wretched people had no more to give

  for nan ne wæs o þe land for there was none in the land

  ne næure hethen men werse ne diden nor did heathen men ever do worse

  ne hi ne forbaren neither did they spare

  The spelling is a curious mixture. There are some special features, such as the use of g for a sound that most other texts of the time were spelling with the symbol Ʒ (‘yogh’). The old English runic symbols are still being used, but there is inconsistency. The th spelling is occasionally used (though this doesn’t become widespread until the fourteenth century). The word for was is sometimes spelled with a and sometimes with æ. The runic symbol ρ is used in the manuscript, and is here shown as w (as is usual in modern editions of these texts), but uu is also a common spelling for this sound; the word for ‘wretched people’, for example, is spelled both ways in the extract. In addition, u is used where we would now find v, in such words as æure ‘ever’ and gyuen ‘give’.

  There are still many words which need to be glossed for their meaning to be clear. Several words have since dropped from the language. We no longer use pines (‘cruelties’), gæildes (‘forced payments’), tenserie (‘protection money’), fare (‘journey’), sturuen (‘died’), ieden (‘went’), sithon (‘experience, custom’), or namen (‘took, seized’). And of the words which are still found today, several have altered meanings. The best examples in the extract are wunder (‘wonder’), which could mean ‘atrocities’ as well as ‘marvels’, flesc (‘flesh’) meaning ‘meat’, and tunes (‘villages’), which developed into towns. Words like these are always a problem when reading a Middle English text. Because they look the same as the modern English equivalents, we can be fooled into thinking that they mean the same, whereas the meaning is in fact different. This problem of ‘false friends’ does not happen so often in reading Old English, where the vocabulary looks less familiar (see p. 168).

  At the same time, because of the spelling, several words look stranger than they really are. The odd-looking word wreccemen, for instance, would have been pronounced very like wretch-man (but with the w sounded) and is thus very close to modern wretched. Cyrceiærd likewise would have been close to the modern pronunciation of churchyard, because the two c spellings represented the ch sound, and the i stood for the same sound as modern y. The same ch sound turns up in cæse (‘cheese’). And altegædere is not far from altogether, nor læiden from laid.

  Perhaps the most important point about the vocabulary of this text is the absence of French words. It is almost a century since the French arrived, but you would never guess from the language of this Chronicle.

  *

  The Peterborough Chronicle looks back towards Old English and ahead towards Middle English. In fact, scholars have argued at length about whether it is best to call it ‘late Old English’ or ‘early Middle English’. Some stress the archaic features of the text, pointing to similarities with Old English; others stress the differences. The text illustrates very clearly the difficulty of drawing a sharp boundary between different stages in the development of a language – which is why I have chosen it. But it does not take much longer before the ambiguity is resolved. Other texts from the twelfth century confirm the new direction in which the language was moving. When we look at manuscripts 100 years later, there is no doubt that a major change has taken place in the structure of English.

  The story of Middle English

  The period we call Middle English runs from the beginning of the twelfth century until the middle of the fifteenth, with the manuscripts at either end of this period showing the language in a state of change. The main influence on English was, of course, French – the language introduced to Britain by the Normans. Following the accession of William of Normandy, French was rapidly established in the corridors of power. William appointed French-speaking barons, and this was rapidly followed up by the appointment of French-speaking abbots and bishops. The links remained strong with Normandy, where the nobles retained their estates, and many of the kings spent long periods of time there. The written records show that there was very little use of English among the hierarchy. We are told that William himself tried to learn English at one point, but without success. Most of the Anglo-Norman kings were unable to communicate in the language – though it is said that some used it for swearing!

  In 1204, the situation changed. King John of England came into conflict with King Philip of France, and was obliged to give up control of Normandy. The English nobility lost their estates in France, and antagonism grew between the two countries (leading ultimately to the Hundred Years War, which began in 1337). The status of French diminished as a spirit of English nationalism grew. During the twelfth century, English became more widely used among the upper classes. There was an enormous amount of intermarriage with English people. Scaccario, a chronicler writing in 1177, has this to say:

  Now that the English and Normans have been dwelling together, marrying and giving in marriage, the two nations have become so mixed that it is scarcely possible today, speaking of free men, to tell who is English, who of Norman race.

  By the end of the twelfth century, contemporary accounts suggest that some children of the nobility spoke English as a mother tongue, and had to be taught French in school. French continued to be used in Parliament, the courts, and in public proceedings, but translations into English increased in frequency through the period, as did the number of handbooks written for the teaching of French. In 1362 English was used for the first time at the opening of Parliament. By the end of the century, when Richard II was deposed, Henry IV’s speeches at the proceedings were made in English. By about 1425 it appears that English was universally used in England, in writing as well as in speech.

  How had the language managed to survive the French invasion? After all, Celtic in England had not survived the Anglo-Saxon invasions 500 years before (see Chapter 10). Evidently the English language in the eleventh century was too well established for it to be supplanted by another language. Unlike Celtic, it had a consid
erable literature and a strong oral tradition. It would have taken several hundred years of French immigration to have changed things – but the good relations between England and France lasted for only 150 years.

  This 150 years, none the less, is something of a ‘dark age’ in the history of the language. There is hardly any written evidence of English, and we can thus only speculate about what happened to the language during that period. Judging by the documents which have survived, it seems that French was the language of government, law, administration, and the church, with Latin also used as a medium of education and worship. The situation becomes clearer in the thirteenth century, when we find an increasing number of sermons, prayers, romances, songs, letters, wills, and other documents in English. And then in the fourteenth century, we have the main achievements of Middle English literature, culminating in the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer (?1340–1400).

  Vocabulary

  The linguistic influence of this period of French rule took time to make itself felt, but it becomes increasingly evident in the English manuscripts of the thirteenth century. The main effect was the enormous number of French words which came into the language – around 10,000, according to one estimate. The words were largely to do with the mechanisms of law and administration, but they also included words from such fields as medicine, art, and fashion. Many of the new words are quite ordinary, everyday terms. Most have stood the test of time, about three-quarters of them still being in use today. A general impression of the great range covered by this new vocabulary can be obtained from the selection below (though this is only about a fiftieth of the French borrowings made during the Middle English period).

  Some French loan words in Middle English

  Administration

  bailiff, baron, chancellor, coroner, council, court, duke, exchequer, government, liberty, majesty, manor, mayor, minister, noble, parliament, peasant, prince, realm, revenue, royal, sir, sovereign, squire, tax, traitor, treasurer, treaty, tyrant

  Religion

  abbey, baptism, cardinal, cathedral, chant, charity, clergy, communion, confess, convent, creator, crucifix, friar, heresy, immortality, mercy, miracle, novice, ordain, pity, prayer, religion, saint, salvation, sermon, solemn, trinity, vicar, virgin, virtue

  Law

  accuse, adultery, arrest, arson, assize, attorney, bail, blame, convict, crime, decree, depose, evidence, felon, fine, gaol, heir, inquest, judge, jury, justice, larceny, legacy, pardon, plaintiff, plea, prison, punishment, sue, summons, verdict, warrant

  Military

  ambush, archer, army, battle, besiege, captain, combat, defend, enemy, garrison, guard, lance, lieutenant, moat, navy, peace, portcullis, retreat, sergeant, siege, soldier, spy, vanquish

  Fashion

  brooch, button, cloak, collar, diamond, dress, embroidery, emerald, fashion, gown, jewel, ornament, pearl, petticoat, robe

  Food and drink

  appetite, bacon, beef, biscuit, cruet, date, dinner, feast, fry, grape, gravy, jelly, lettuce, mackerel, mustard, mutton, orange, oyster, plate, pork, roast, salad, salmon, saucer, sausage, spice, supper, tart, taste, toast, treacle, veal, venison, vinegar

  Learning and art

  art, beauty, geometry, grammar, image, medicine, music, noun, painting, paper, pen, poet, romance, sculpture, story, surgeon

  General

  action, adventure, age, blue, brown, bucket, carol, carry, ceiling, certain, chair, chess, chimney, city, conversation, curtain, cushion, dance, debt, easy, flower, forest, foreign, gay, hour, joy, kennel, lamp, leisure, mountain, move, nice, ocean, ointment, pain, pantry, people, piece, please, real, reason, river, scarlet, spaniel, special, square, stomach, terrier, towel, use, usual, wait, wardrobe

  As the new vocabulary arrived, there were many cases where it duplicated a word that existed already in English from Anglo-Saxon times. In such cases, there were two main outcomes. Either one word would supplant the other; or both would co-exist in the language, but with slightly different meanings. The first outcome was very common, in most cases the French word replacing an Old English equivalent. For example, Old English leod gave way to people, wlitig to beautiful, stow to place, and herian to praise. Hundreds of Old English words were lost in this way. But at the same time, Old English and French words often both survived, and when this happened, their meanings would begin to differ. Thus, Old English doom and French judgement no longer mean the same thing, nor do hearty and cordial, house and mansion, wish and desire.

  The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were also a time when several thousand words came into the language directly from Latin (though it is often difficult to exclude an arrival route via French). The 1384 translation of the Bible initiated by John Wyclif, for example, contained over 1,000 Latin words not previously known in English. Most of these words were professional or technical terms, belonging to such fields as religion, medicine, law and literature – a selection is given below. They also include many words which were borrowed by a writer in a deliberate attempt to produce a high-flown style. Only a very small number of these ‘aureate terms’ entered the language (e.g. mediation, oriental, prolixity); the vast majority died almost as soon as they were born (e.g. abusion, sempitern, tenebrous).

  Some Latin borrowings in Middle English

  abject, adjacent, conspiracy, contempt, distract, genius, gesture, history, incarnate, include, incredible, incumbent, index, infancy, inferior, infinite, intellect, interrupt, legal, lucrative, lunatic, magnify, mechanical, missal, moderate, necessary, nervous, ornate, picture, polite, popular, private, prosecute, pulpit, quiet, reject, rosary, scripture, solar, spacious, subjugate, substitute, temperate, testimony, ulcer

  The result of the simultaneous borrowing of French and Latin words led to a highly distinctive feature of modern English vocabulary – sets of three words which all express the same fundamental meaning, but which differ slightly in meaning or stylistic effect.

  Old English French Latin

  kingly royal regal

  ask question interrogate

  fast firm secure

  rise mount ascend

  holy sacred consecrated

  time age epoch

  The Old English word is often the more popular one, with the French word being literary, and the Latin word more learned. But more important than this, there are distinctions in the way the words are used. Thus we talk about royal blue, a royal flush, and the Royal Navy, but a regal manner and a regal expression. There is no Kingly Navy or Regal Navy! English has thousands of words which are almost synonymous, thanks to the co-existence of these parallel items, and it is because of this that English is said to have a larger core vocabulary than that of other modern languages.

  Grammar

  Vocabulary was only one of the major changes affecting the language in the Middle English period. Less noticeable, but just as important, were the changes in grammar, some of which were becoming apparent in the Peterborough Chronicle. All but a few of the Old English noun endings finally died away during the period, and the corresponding ‘modern’ ways of expressing grammatical relationships, using prepositions and fixed patterns of word order, became established along the lines familiar to us today. Thus where Old English would have said þæm scipum, with a ‘dative’ ending on both the words for ‘the’ and ‘ship’, Middle English would have said to the shippes, using a preposition and the common plural ending only. The only noun case ending to survive into modern English was the genitive (’s or s’ in writing). Some of the personal pronouns also kept the old accusative form: he v. him, she v. her, etc.

  The endings of the verbs, however, remained close to those of Old English during this period. A typical verb playe(n) (play) would have the following forms (ignoring certain dialect differences, such as the northern use of -es instead of -eth);

  Present tense Past tense

  (1) play(e) played(e)

  (thou) playest playedest

  (he/she) playeth played(e)

  (we/you/they) playe(n) played(en)


  The final simplification to the modern system, where we have only play and plays in the present tense, and played throughout in the past, took place after the Middle English period.

  Also at this time, new verb constructions began to appear, such as hadde maked (had made), and shal be (shall be) – the latter being a new way of expressing future time. The use of to to mark the infinitive form of the verb, instead of the -an ending found in Old English, was also current by the end of the period: cuman became to come.

  One other important change at this time was the way many of the irregular forms of Old English lost their irregularity and began to follow the pattern of the regularly constructed words. For example, in Old English the plural of boc (book) was bec, and broc (breeches) was brec. These and several other forms adopted the regular -s ending during the early Middle English period, leaving just a handful of irregular plurals in modern English (men, mice, oxen, etc.). Similarly, many verbs which were irregular in Old English became regular: Old English help had a past tense healp and a past participle form holpen, but in Middle English we find the use of helped, which ultimately replaced the other forms.