7.Middle English dialects and the formation of the National Literary English Language.

Middle English (ME) refers to the varieties of the English language spoken after the Norman Conquest (1066) until the late 15th century; scholarly opinion varies but the Oxford English Dictionary specifies the period of 1150 to 1500.[2] This stage of the development of the English language roughly followed the High to the Late Middle Ages.

The dialectal position of Middle English is basically a continuation of that of Old English. The most important extralinguistic fact for the development of the Middle English dialects is that the capital of the country was moved from Winchester (in the Old English period) to London by William the Conqueror in his attempt to diminish the political influence of the native English.

NORTHERN This dialect is the continuation of the Northumbrian variant of Old English. Note that by Middle English times English had spread to (Lowland) Scotland and indeed led to a certain literary tradition developing there at the end of the Middle English period which has been continued up to the present time (with certain breaks, admittedly).

Characteristics. Velar stops are retained (i.e. not palatalised) as can be seen in word pairs like rigg/ridge; kirk/church.

KENTISH This is the most direct continuation of an Old English dialect and has more or less the same geographical distribution.

Characteristics. The two most notable features of Kentish are (1) the existence of /e:/ for Middle English /i:/ and (2) so-called "initial softening" which caused fricatives in word-initial position to be pronounced voiced as in vat, vane and vixen (female fox).

SOUTHERN West Saxon is the forerunner of this dialect of Middle English. Note that the area covered in the Middle English period is greater than in the Old English period as inroads were made into Celtic-speaking Cornwall. This area becomes linguistically uninteresting in the Middle English period. It shares some features of both Kentish and West Midland dialects.

WEST MIDLAND This is the most conservative of the dialect areas in the Middle English period and is fairly well-documented in literary works. It is the western half of the Old English dialect area Mercia.

Characteristics. The retention of the Old English rounded vowels /y:/ and /ø:/ which in the East had been unrounded to /i:/ and /e:/ respectively.

EAST MIDLAND This is the dialect out of which the later standard developed. To be precise the standard arose out of the London dialect of the late Middle English period. Note that the London dialect naturally developed into what is called Cockney today while the standard became less and less characteristic of a certain area and finally (after the 19th century) became the sociolect which is termed Received Pronunciation.

The formation of the national English language, or Standard English, is considered to date from the period between the 15th and the 17th centuries. After that time the language continued to change, so one can speak of the evolution of Standard English instead of tracing the similar or different trends in the history of its dialects. We must mention at least two of the external factors that led to this development: the unification of the country and the progress of culture. Other historical events, such as the increased foreign contacts, produced a more specific kind of influence on the language: they affected the wordstock. The changes in the economic and social conditions were accompanied by the intermixture of people coming from different regions, the growth of towns with a mixed population, and the strengthening of social ties between the various regions. All these processes played an important role in the unification of the English language. All over the world the victory of capitalism over feudalism was linked up with the consolidation of people into nations and the unification of the regional dialects into a nation language or rather the formation of a superdialect form of language used as a standard form of speech by the nation. These conditions were formed in Britain in the 15th and 16th centuries. England needed a uniform standard language, for linguistic disunity stood in the way of further progress. The making of the English nation went hand in hand with the formation of the national English language.

^ Some effects of the Renaissance. The introduction of printing and the fixation of the written standard.

The 15th and 16th centuries are marked by a renewed interest in classical art and literature and by a general efflorescence of culture in Western Europe. The rise of a new social class – the bourgeoisie – proved an enormous stimulus to the progress of learning, science, literature and art. The universities at Oxford and Cambridge (founded as early as the 12th century) became the centres of new learning in England. Henry VII assembled at his court a group of brilliant scholars and artists. Education ceased to be the privilege of the clergy; it spread to laymen and people of lower social ranks: the lower nobility, merchants and artisans. After the reformation (1534) teachers and tutors could be laymen as well as clergymen. The main subject in schools was Latin; the English language labelled as “a rude and barren tongue” merely served as an instrument in teaching Latin. Scientific and philosophical treatises all over Europe were written in Latin, which had become an international language. The influence of classical languages on English grew and was soon reflected in the enrichment of the vocabulary. Of all the outstanding achievements of this great age the invention of printing had the most immediate effect on the development of the language, its written form in particular. The art of “artificial writing”, as printing was then called, was invented in Germany in 1438; the first book in the English language was printed in the year 1476 by the first English printer William Caxton. The first English book Caxton issued from his printing press was his own translation of the story of Troy. The total circulation of the books is believed to have been about 10 000. Among the earliest publications were the poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, still the most popular poet in England.