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Middle english6/11/2023 About 10 000 new words were added to the English language by the Normans. ![]() French than became the language of the courts and the upper class and English was spoken in the native population ( ). For two centuries French was the official language of England. The Normans brought many new words to improve the English language. When the English council of elders chose Harold II as the king, the Duke attacked and defeated the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings, becoming England’s first Norman king, William I ( ). When King Edward died in 1066, the Duke of Normandy claimed to the English throne. Not only was the Battle of Hastings one of the history’s most memorable conquest it made an enormous impact on the English language during the Middle English period. One of the most popular events that occurred during the Middle English was the Battle of Hastings in 1066. At the end of the Early Middle English, English remained, after all, the language of most of the population. The complex system of endings which Old English had was gradually lost or simplified in the dialects of the spoken Middle English. The new English language did not sound the same as the Old English, undergoing changes in vocabulary. Bit by bit, the wealthy and government anglicised again, although Norman remained the dominant language of literature and law for a few centuries. The grammatical number “dual” also disappeared from the English language during the Early Middle English, further simplifying the language. To this day the Old English genitive “es” in many words – we call it now “possevive” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Paragraph 1).īut most of the other case word endings disappear in the Early Middle English period, including most of the one dozen forms of the word the. The grammatical relations that were expressed in Old English were replaced in the Early Middle English with constructions with prepositions. Early Middle English had a large Norman vocabulary, but it was greatly simplified. Also, a series of events took place in Middle English that forever changed the English language. Late Middle English was the spread of the London dialect. Central Middle English was marked by the gradual formation of literary dialects. ![]() Early Middle English still contained the Old English system of writing. Middle English can be divided into three periods: Early, Central, and Late. Middle English develops out of the late Old English in Norman England. Although, slowly, the dialect spoken in London was becoming the standard. ![]() Dialect diversity was major in this period that people from one part of England could not understand people in another part. Middle English played an important role in the history of the English language. 188-207.Role of Middle English in the History of the English Language Essays on Medieval Narrative presented to Maldwyn Mills (Cardiff, 1996), pp. Fellows et al (eds), Romance Reading on the Book.
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