Changes in the Language to the Days of Chaucer.
§ 8. Middle English Spelling.
The striking change in the written language of England during the twelfth century was, to a considerable extent, a matter of mere spelling. As was pointed out in the preceding section, soon after the Norman conquest children ceased to be regularly taught to read and write English, and were taught to read and write French instead. When, therefore, the mass of the new generation tried to write English, they had no orthographical traditions to guide them, and had to spell the words phonetically according to French rules. They used ch instead of the old c, when it was pronounced as in cirice church. The sound of the Old English sc in sceamu shame, which did not exist at that time in French, was rendered by ss, ssh, sch, or sh. The French qu took the place of cp. The f between vowels (pronounced v) was replaced by u or v (these being still, as long afterwards, treated as forms of one and the same letter, used indifferently for vowel and consonant). The Old English symbol $$ was dropped, its place being taken by a or e. The sound of the Old English y, in the dialects where it survived, was expressed by u; and that of the Old English long u was written ou, as in French. 24
Of course these changes did not take place all at once. It is not to be supposed that no one ever read an Old English MS., and there was, for a long time, some mixture of the traditional spelling with the new one. Some few English sounds admitted of no tolerable representation in the French alphabet; and for the expression of these the native characters were retained in use. The letters, [char], [char] and [char] were used, though often blunderingly, even by scribes who, in other respects, were thoroughly French in their spelling; though often we find their sounds awkwardly rendered by t, th, ht, or d, and u. And in the twelfth century, though the continental variety of the Roman alphabet was generally used for writing English, it was found convenient to retain the native form [char] of the letter g for those two of its sounds that the French g lacked, namely, those of gh and y (as in year). A new letter was thus added to the alphabet, and, though it came to be written [char], exactly like the contemporary form of z, it preserved its name “yok” until the fourteenth century. It may be remarked in passing that the ambiguity of pronunciation of this letter has misled modern writers into calling the author of the Brut “Layamon” instead of “Laghamon”; the incorrect form, however, has become too well known to be displaced. In addition to the two original values of the “yok,” it very early obtained a third use, being employed (without indicating any change of pronunciation) instead of the Old English h in certain positions, as in kni[char]t, ibro[char]t, rou[char], for which the older spelling was cniht, gebroht, ruh. But, in the fourteenth century many writers substituted y or i for [char], when pronounced as in [char]eer (year), and gh in all other cases. In the thirteenth century, the letters [char] and [char] went out of use, the former being replaced by the northern French w. The letter p was retained; but, although it was still called “thorn” in the fourteenth century, it seems in Chaucer’s time to have been regarded as a mere compendium for th, which generally took its place except initially. It may be noted that Thomas Usk, in the acrostic sentence of his Testament of Love (1387) spells pin (thine) with the four letters THIN. The adoption of a number of French words like ioie (joy), in which i was pronounced like the modern English j, introduced the consonantal use of this letter into English orthography. 25
The Old English initial combination hl survived (written lh) in some dialects down to the fourteenth century; but hr was very early reduced to r. For the Old English hw, Middle English writers substituted wh, though the h was, at first, often omitted in this combination, as in other positions, by scribes of French education. The northern spelling qua, quilk for Wha, whilk (who, which) arose from a dialectal pronunciation of qu as wh, which still survives locally in a few words. 26
From the twelfth century onwards, the letter y, when used as a vowel, was treated as a mere alternative form of i 27
The Ormulum is written in a peculiar phonetic spelling devised by the author himself. This is based, to a considerable extent, on native tradition, though the handwriting is of the continental type. There are, however, some of the new features. Orm uses ch and sh as we do now, and retains the Old English form of g for the two sounds which the French g had not. A device peculiar to himself is the appropriation of different shapes of the letter g to the two sounds in god (good) and egge (edge). But the most noteworthy characteristic of his orthography is the method of indicating the quantity of the vowels. The shortness of a vowel, in a syllable ending with a consonant, is shown by doubling the following consonant, as in Crisstenndom. When the short vowel ended a syllable in the middle of a word, Orm marked it as in t[char]kenn, and very often (though not always) indicated a long vowel by one, two, or even three “acute accents” over the letter. This elaborate and cumbrous system found no imitators, but, as preserved in the author’s autograph MS., it is one of the most important aids that we possess for ascertaining the English pronunciation of the time.
Changes in the Language to the Days of Chaucer.
§ 9. Development of Sounds.
The changes in spelling that we have thus far noticed are merely changes in the manner of representing sound. There were others that were the result of altered pronunciation. It very often happens that very considerable changes take place in the sounds of a language without affecting the spelling, even when (as was apparently, the case in Middle English) there is no general prejudice against deviations from traditional correctness of orthography. Pronunciation, as a general rule, is not altered deliberately, but unconsciously. In the utterance of what is intended and believed to be one and the same vowel or consonant sound, each generation may very to an almost imperceptible extent from that which preceded it; and, if these slight changes are all in the same direction, the difference may, in the end, become indefinitely great. The normal result in such cases is that the letter comes to have a new phonetic value, and the spelling is not effected. The reason why there are exceptions to this normal course of things in Middle English was partly that sometimes two originally distinct sounds so developed as to become identical, and party that the orthography of French supplied a kind of external standard. 29
The history of the changes in English pronunciation down to the time of Chaucer is far too intricate to be treated here with any approach to completeness; but a few of its salient points may be briefly indicated. 30
The first remark to be made is that the course of development of several of the Old English sounds was quite different in different parts of the country. When we compare the modern English pronunciation of home, stone, with the Scotch and northern hame, stane, we see the last term of a divergent development (which began very early) of the Old English long a (pronounced as a in father). While the northern dialect progressively altered the sound in one direction, the midland and southern dialects progressively altered it in the opposite direction. We cannot precisely tell how far the change in the northern pronunciation had proceeded in the fourteenth century, because the spelling was not affected. But, in other dialects, as we know from various kinds of evidence, the sound was that of the “open [char]” as in lord, and it was expressed in writing by o or oo. The words “goad” (Old English g[char]d) and “good” (Old English g[char]d) are both written good in Chaucer’s spelling, but they were not pronounced alike; if the sounds had been confused they would not have been separated again in later pronunciation; and Chaucer never rimes a word that has the “open o” with one containing the “close o.” The latter retained its old pronunciation (that of the French o in rose), perhaps a little modified in the direction of its modern equivalent, the oo in cool. 31
The long e, like the long o, had an “open” and a “close” pronunciation, which Chaucer also keeps apart in his rimes. The open [char] comes from the Old English (Anglian) [char], [char]a, and the close [char] from Old English [char], [char]o. A word like chepe to buy (from Old English c[char]apian) which had the open [char], could not correctly rime with a word like kepe to keep (from c[char]pan) which had the close [char]. In northern dialects, the distinction was so slight that poets freely allowed the two sounds to rime with one another. 32
In all the dialects of Middle English, the short vowels [char], [char], [char], when ending an accented syllable, were lengthened, [char] and [char] becoming open [char] and open [char]. In Chaucer’s pronunciation, mete meat (Old English m[char]te) was an exact rime to grete, the plural of the adjective great (Old English gr[char]ate), but not to grete to greet (Old English gr[char]tan); [char]rote throat (Old English [char]rotu) rimed with hote to command (Old English h[char]tan), but not with b[char]te benefit (Old English b[char]t). 33
The Old English y (pronounced ü) kept its original sound in the south-west, and, perhaps, in parts of the west midland, being written u when short, and ui or uy when long; in Kent, it had become e before the Conquest; elsewhere, it was sounded exactly like i, and written, like that sound, indifferently i or y. The words “fire” “sin,” “knit,” have, accordingly, in the different localities the three types of form fuir, ver, fir; sunne, zenne, sinne; knutte, knette, knitte. Chaucer, whose London English was mainly east midland, uses occasionally a Kentish form like knette. 34
With regard to the pronunciation of consonants, there is little that needs to be said, as, for the most part, the Old English sounds not only continued unchanged down to the end of the fourteenth century, but remain so to the present day. The pronunciation of initial f and s as v and z (“vather came vrom Zummerzet”), which sounds so strange to visitors to the south-western counties, was, in the fourteenth century, current all over the south; in fact, the Kentish Ayenbite of Inwyt, of 1340, exhibits this pronunciation in the orthography with greater regularity than any other extant book. The gh sound of the letter [char] gradually changed into that of w, and this change was represented in the spelling. In the earlier of the two MSS. of the poetical chronicle called the Brut, written at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the author’s name appears as “La[char]amon,” but, in the later MS., written before 1300, it is turned into “Laweman.” On the other hand, in 1340, the Kentish Ayenbite has still forms like zor[char]e (sorrow) instead of Chaucer’s sorwe
. Changes in Vocabulary.
If the Norman conquest had little influence on the development of English grammer, its effects on the vocabulary of the language were profound. It introduced, as we have already observed, an age in which all educated Englishmen spoken French in addition to their native tongue, and, for the most part, wrote nothing but French and Latin. French became the language of law and government, of war and of all that pertained to the life of the wealthier classes. Of the vernacular literature from the Conquest to the middle of the fourteenth century, by far the greater part consisted of translations from French and Latin. It is true that, down to the end of the thirteenth century, nearly all that was written in English was intended for readers who were comparatively unlearned; but even these readers could be reasonably supposed to have some degree of acquaintance with the fashionable language, for, as a rule, the man who absolutely knew nothing but English probably could not read at all. And when, once more, it became customary to write in English for highly educated people, authors could venture, without any fear of not being understood, to borrow freely from the literary, as well as from the popular, vocabulary of the French language.
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