The English language has experienced a lot of changes since the fifth century. There have been phases which marked the major transitions, and these are the Old English period, the Middle English period and the Modern English period. There are significant differences between the Old English and the Middle English periods, some of them being: differences in the times used, influencing languages and the number of dialects used, among others.
The Old English grammar was very much different from today’s English grammar. The ending “-e” has been replaced with a preposition “to” and therefore, is no longer used. This change is called grammaticalization and it accounts for analytic forms. In the Old English excerpt, line 10 uses the words (se…heom)
while the Late Middle English version use (seide…. Hem).The Early Middle English evidences grammaticalization that helps to trim grammar and language rules to a rather “chaotic” language in the Old English excerpt.
The verbs in Old English are mostly used to end sentences while in Late Middle English; the verbs are used to make a clear distinction between the subject and the object. The morphology of Old English is very different from that of Late Middle English. The verb and adverbial endings are very much different. For instance, in Old English, line 9…and to him geeaðmeddon while in the Late Middle English … and worschipiden him. The application of pronouns and their plurals also differ from the method used un-Modern English.
The Old English period begun from 450, and most of the borrowing were from the Celtic language. The phases were divided into two main parts, the first being loans from Germanic and other languages and the second one being words incorporated into Old English before and after the spread of Christianity. Some words were borrowed from Celtic directly into Germanic while others are shared both by the Germanic and the Celtic languages. An example is the word “dun” which means hill and has the similar meaning in both Celtic and Germanic contexts. For instance, in line 7 the word soðlice borrowing from the Celtic to the Germanic dialects. In Late Middle English the word schulen
representing the borrowing that took place from Old English to the Middle English.
The existence of variance in a number of dialects in the subsets of the English language was evident. The Old English incorporated four dialects: Kentish, West Saxon, Mercian and Northumbrian. On the other hand the Late Middle English had a number of dialects. Syntactic and morphological differences in Old English did not use contractions, and sæd þam wifon: Ne ondræde ge eow: compared to Late Middle English that uses contractions “and seide to the wymmen, Nyle ȝe drede..” special accusatives and rarely used relatives.
Borrowing was also done from the Latin, and this affected the language in a couple of ways. Many words were borrowed into the English language, and one could easily tell such instances due to the distinct changes in vowel fronting and breaking. The words borrowed from Latin could be identified easily since some vowels were either broken or reversed in position. For example, the Latin word “uncia” changed to ynce which means inch, and this was as a result of fronting the back vowel “u” to “y.” An instance of breaking is seen in the word “falsus” which is changed to “fals” in Old English. The final vowel was cut off in this case, leaving the word “fals”, which means false. To add onto that, reversions back to Latin, from Modern English are also not uncommon, for instance, the word “unicornus” in Latin, which was borrowed and changed to “anhorn” but is currently used as “unicorn” in Modern English. Most of these borrowings from Latin are religious, commercial and cultural and are mostly nouns, with a few adjectives and verbs.
During the Old English period, there also existed Scandinavian borrowings, most of which caused lexical changes. The meanings of words changed from their original Scandinavian form to a different form in English (Jespersen 1938: 64–5). Examples are the word dream, which means joy in Old English but becomes a vision in sleep in Middle English. The turnaround also exists in given pairs of words which previously had somewhat the same meaning but ended up having narrower meanings in modern English. The Scandinavian borrowings are the ones that have caused a lot or some slight change in the meanings of the words borrowed into English. Some English words have been replaced by the ones from the Scandinavian origins, for example, the word “weorpan” from old English has become cast, which is originally a Scandinavian word. For instance, in Old English, there is use of planatization, heom has been used from the origin of German saxophones. On the other hand in Middle English hem
in the excerpt “Jhesus mette hem, and seide” indicates southern affinity.
Borrowings from French did not affect modern English as much mainly because there was a difference between the French dialects used between the 11th and the 16th centuries. These two were Central and Norman French. However, it goes without saying that there were few words which were borrowed as the Frenchmen were learning Old English. Words such as government, jury, justice, study, and art were borrowed from them. The concept of prefixes and suffixes was also adopted, and it led to a wider branch of words with even more meaning, for example, governance, envious, majority and labor. Some prefixes and suffixes were as a result of a mixture of many different dialects, the Latin and French, to English. Other languages, for example, the Dutch and Spanish also influenced the use of English words. As a result of all these languages, a lexicon, which is English, was born.
Old English has personal pronouns but no articles while Late Middle English had articles and no personal pronouns. Changes in pronouns and the endings of verbs, adjectives, and nouns also occurred. For instance, in the excerpt of Old English line [10] Ða cwæð se Hælynd to heom: Ne ondræde ge eow: farað, and cyþað minum gebroþrum þæt hig faron on Galileam, þær hig geseoð me there is the use of personal pronouns and articles are absent. On the other hand in Late Middle English, [10] Thanne Jhesus seide to hem, Nyle ȝe drede; go ȝe, telle ȝe to my britheren, that thei go in to Galile; there thei schulen se me has incorporated articles with no personal pronouns. Other changes included how the second person was used. The plural and third person pronoun with initial “h” transformed to the initial “th.” The statement “[8] Ða ferdon hig hrædlice fram þære byrgene mid ege,...” changes to “[8] And thei wenten out soone fro the biriels,..” in the Middle English. The notable changes in the adjectives and adverbs include the reduction of forms and endings.
When comparing the two excerpts, a major change in the syntax of English is evident. Old English is synthetic and uses nominal and verbal ending as in line 9 of the Old English excerpt: [9] ” … genealæhton, and genamon hys fet, … geeaðmeddon.” In Late Middle English, the excerpt has grammatical words (ham….seide… thei …. And helden his feet, and worschipiden him). Line 9 of Late Middle English does not have articles, has auxiliaries and less nominal and adverbial endings The writings in Old English do not employ the articles “a” and “an” although the determinant “the” is used more often. The comparatives and superlatives used in the Modern English are more elaborate since more adjectives exist.
The word order between the two excerpts in Old English and Late Middle English differs in significantly. Word order used in the Late Middle English is more relevant compared to the one used in Old English. Line four of the old version excerpt writes: [4] Witodlice þa weardas wæron afyrhte, and wæron gewordene swylce hig deade wæron. While that of the new sentence states: [4] and for drede of hym the keperis weren afeerd, and thei weren maad as deede men. The word arrangement is the old version is relatively free. In Old English, objects follow verbs when in second position. When used in final position they precede the verb as written in the quote ‘weardas wæron’. In the middle age version verbs follow preposition with nouns following verbs.
In conclusion, English language is one widely used language in the globe that was formed as result of borrowing from other languages, starting from the Anglo-Frisian dialect in the 5th century, and transforming to a lexicon. With time there were new improvements made to the language, incorporating the most suitable words. The changes and improvements are mainly a result of human interaction and exchange in the early years.
Work Cited
Gelderen, Elly van.History of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Simpson, John, and Edmund SC Weiner. "Oxford English dictionary online." Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved March6 (1989): 2008.
