A multilingual context

Medieval Britain had many languages. English continued to be in contact with Celtic languages on many of the internal frontiers within the British Isles. Until the use of Scandinavian languages in mainland Britain died out (the precise date of which is a matter of uncertainty), it continued to be in contact with these also. And, crucially, it was in contact with Latin and with French.

After the Norman Conquest, the ruling elite in England (in church as well as state) were French speakers. Before the Conquest, England had been relatively ?advanced? in the extent to which the vernacular language, rather than Latin, was used in writing. After the Conquest, English became pushed out of these functions almost entirely. Latin predominates in most types of writing in the immediately post-Conquest period. When, quite soon afterwards, we find a flowering of vernacular writing in a number of different text types and genres, this is in French, not English. Likewise it was French, not English, that generally vied with Latin in a wide range of technical and official functions until very near the end of the Middle English period. (What to call the French used in Britain in this period is a difficult scholarly question. Traditionally the term ?Anglo-Norman? has been used, notably in the title of The Anglo-Norman Dictionary. In fact, the present-day editors of that dictionary note that in many ways ?Anglo-French? is a more appropriate term, since it better reflects the wide variety of inputs shown by the French used in medieval Britain. OED3 retains the term ?Anglo-Norman? largely to maintain consistency with the title of The Anglo-Norman Dictionary.)

Up until about the middle of the fourteenth century, our surviving written records for Middle English of any variety are patchy, and can be characterized as a number of more or less isolated ?islands? of usage, reflecting the English of particular communities or even individuals who felt motivated, for various different reasons, to write something down in English. We have some substantial literary texts, such as the Ormulum or the Ancrene Wisse (both of which we will look at more closely below); in a very few cases, like the Ancrene Wisse and a small group of texts in a very similar language apparently from a very similar milieu, we can identify mini-traditions of English writing; but what we do not have are clear, well-established, persistent traditions of writing in English (whether for literary or non-literary purposes) from which any sort of standard written variety could grow.

From the later fourteenth century our records become more plentiful, especially for London, as the use of English increased in literary contexts and in a variety of different technical and official functions. English began more and more to be the default choice for major (broadly metropolitan) literary writers such as, in the late fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower (who still also wrote major poems in French and Latin), and (although his milieu was rather different) William Langland. We also continue to find substantial literary works from parts of the country far removed from London, and reflecting very distinct local varieties of English, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

In this same period religious writings in English become more and more common; these include the first complete English translation of the Bible, the Wycliffite Bible, which emerged from the circle of followers of the reformer John Wyclif. We also find increasing numbers of scientific and medical texts written in English.

As it came to share and, eventually, take over various functions from Latin and French, English was hugely influenced by these languages, in its stock of word forms, in the meanings these words showed, and in the phrases and structures in which they were used. Thus the vocabulary of such fields as law, government, business, and religion (among many others) became filled with words of Latin or French origin, as people began using English to express technical matters which had previously been the domain of Latin or French.

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 7