Formation of the National English Language Lecture 5

Formation of the National English Language Lecture 5

1. Aim to study the dialects of Middle English; to consider the ways the national English language formed.

2. Three Languages Spoken in England Latin was the language of the church and of intellectual and philosophical inquiry; French was the language of the court, the government, and high culture; English belonged to the street and the farm—the language of personal expression and intimate communication. Vernacular (found in works of G. Chaucer)

3. To the Middle English West Saxon dialect (the dialect of King Alfred’s time and place) • translation of the Latin classics into Old English; • methods of schooling the young in the study of the English language and the Latin classics; • the notion of West Saxon as a prestige dialect in late-10 th-century schools; • some manuscripts of Old English in the West Saxon dialect; • the dialect of the teachers of the area (Winchester) where schools were established.

4. 1. Middle English Dialects The Northern dialect (north of the Humber River, in Northumbria): rich Scandinavian vocabulary; a set of sounds keyed to certain Scandinavian habits of pronunciation: The predominance of “sk-” and “k-” sounds in Scandinavian (“sh-” and “ch-” in Old English) became distinctions between Northern and Southern English. NE: kirk and skirt SE: church and shirt.

4. 2. Middle English Dialects The East Midland dialect (to the east of the old Roman north-south road that linked York and London): many Londoners came from the area; the major literary language of England at the close of the Middle Ages; much of Chaucer is written in the East Midland dialect.

4. 3. Middle English Dialects The West Midland dialect (to the west of the old Roman road and to the east of the border with the Celtic-speaking area of Wales): Intellectual and literary activities centered in Chester, near modernday Liverpool, and the Wirral Peninsula. different sounds and different morphology. it used the Old English form for ‘she’ as ‘ha’ or ‘heo’.

4. 4. Middle English Dialects The Southern dialect (in the southwestern part of England): certain sound changes that pass into standard Modern English pronunciation. the pronunciation of any initial “s-” and “f-” as “z-” and “v-” , respectively. ME: vox, vixen NE: fox

4. 5. Middle English Dialects The Kentish dialect (in the southeast of England): a distinctive form of speech well into the early Renaissance; preserved many Old English forms, sounds, and words; preserved the Old English case endings

5. To the National English Language The end of the war between the White and the Red Rose (1455 -1485) The establishment of an absolute monarchy on the British soil with Henry Tudor as the first absolute monarch The introduction of printing in 1477 by William Caxton the English language as the language of the English nation

6. The London Dialect as a Basis of the English National Language the London dialect: uppermost among Middle English dialects due to the political, geographical, economic and "linguistic" position of London (capital of England since the 11 th century); many of the best writers of the 14 th — 15 th centuries were Londoners or used the London dialect in their writings (Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and, finally, William Shakespeare)

Thank you for attention!

Check Yourself! 1. Write a list of words (30 -40) used in one of the Middle English dialects (with their Modern English equivalents). 2. Write an essay (450 -600 words) on “The development of the modern norms of English through the changes in the dialects”. (submission date is Tuesday, October, 8)