Middle English Essay

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Middle English (1100 AD to 1500 AD)

The year 1066 is one of the most important years in the history of the English language. This is the year that the Normans invaded England. The Normans were a group of people who lived on the other side of the English Channel. Though the people of the area originally spoke a variation of the Scandinavian languages, eventually, the group learned French as Edward the Confessor brought French language into his court in Normandy. In January 1066, the English king died without an heir, so the Norman king at the time, William the Conqueror decided to invade England and by December of the same year, he was crowned King of England. Within 30 years of his crowning, most of the land was owned by the Normans as William …show more content…

These towns usually had wealthy landowners living in lesser populated areas between the larger towns. By the end of the 14th Century, French was the language of the educated, especially lawyers, the churches, and the courts, but English was the language of the people. By the 1500s, when another shift occurred, Middle English was an amalgam of French and English, with French as the language of style, substance, and education, but English was the language of the people and of the written word. There are several interesting texts that display Middle English in all of its glory. They include The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Piers …show more content…

The factors included the printing press, education, desire and means of communication, language awareness, and specialized skills and knowledge. As these educated, well-read people who wanted to communicate realized that there needed to be consistency in the language, so in the mid-1500’s, the Elizabethans developed a common spelling practice (with some variations). One of the first rules of spelling was the role of the final e in words like made, fine, and hope. One of the most influential people in the standardization of the English language was Richard Mulcaster who argued that phonetic spelling would not work for English, so he developed many of the rules that we continue to use today. He dropped unnecessary letters in words like ledd, grubb, or putt. He also developed the difference between words that ended in -ie or -y. While over 7,000 of his spelling suggestions were adopted, there were others that were

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