Middle English

Middle English is the language spoken in England, Scotland, and Ireland during the Middle Ages. The marker of the beginning of the Middle English era is The Battle of Hastings and the marker of the end of it is the Great Vowel Shift.

Stages

English has had 4 primary stages:

• Anglo-Saxon also known as Old English
• Middle English
• Early Modern English
• Modern English

The separation of Anglo-Saxon from Middle English is marked by The Battle of Hastings in 1066. The separation of Middle English and the Modern English stages is the Great Vowel Shift.

Modern English words have many different origins, but a majority come from Anglo-Saxon, Old Norman French, and a little Old Norse. However in the global world today, many words from many other languages have entered the English language.

Middle English also has different stages, with earlier texts such as Brut, which has a heavy Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, to Geoffrey Chaucer, who helped to standardise English (do to the early printers such as William Caxton).

Dialects

For more, try Middle English Dialects.

Middle English Dialects

There are five major dialects of Middle English. Those are:
West Midlands
East Midlands
Northern Middle English
Southern Middle English
Kentish Middle English
Often the West Midlands and East Midlands dialects are put together and are called Midlands. The Northern dialect is often called Northumbrian dialect.
The most famous Middle English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in the London dialect, which was a part of the Midlands dialect. The Northern Dialect has a heavy influence from Old Norse. The two primary texts in which dialect appears are the Reeve's Tale and The Second Shepard's Play. In the Reeve's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer, two Northern students have a run-in with a Midlands Miller. Chaucer uses the dialect for humourous effect. In the Second Shepard's Play which is written in the Northern dialect, a messenger tries to trick the shepards by using a Midlands or Southern accent, to no avail.

Phonology

It should be noted that the pronunciation does differ by dialect.

Consonants

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.		Inter-dental		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m					n̯	n						(ŋ)
Plosive	p	b					t	d					k	g
Fricative			f	v	θ	ð	s	z	ʃ	ʒ		ç	x		h
Affricate							ʦ	ʣ	ʧ	ʤ
Approximants & glides	ʍ	w										j
Trill								r
Flap								ɾ
Lateral Approximant							ɬ	l

Notes:

• Đ,ð and Þ,þ were still commonly used for /ð/ or /θ/, although th was beginning to be used.
• Ʒ,ʒ were used to represent gh in Older texts, later it was replaced with gh. It also was used for the sound /j/ which g had sometimes been.
• Occasionally Æ, æis seen for /æ/.
• The Middle English r was likely trilled or flapped.
• The sound /ʧ/ was represented by tch, cch, and in some cases ch.
• The diagraph gh represented /ç/ when next to front vowels (i, e), and /x/ when next to back vowels (a, o, u). In older texts such as Brut this might be represented by h such as is seen in Anglo-Saxon texts.
• The diagraphs hw, hl, and hn (the latter two are rare, but exist) are pronounced /ʍ/, /ɬ/ and /n̯/ respectively.
• All letters are pronounced, and the combination kn is thusly pronounced /kn/.
• ci and ce are often pronounced was a /s/ sound.
• gi and ge, as well as j, were often pronounced /ʒ/ although sometimes it was /ʤ/.
• In most cases, the fricatives /s/, /f/, and /θ/ become voiced in the case of being between vowels or intervocalic (much like those in Anglo-Saxon). This means they become /z/, /v/, and /ð/ respectively. An example that was carried to Modern English might be irregular nouns such as wif vs. wives.