# Why did Middle English change so quickly? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 9, 2004, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864 "2004-11-09T17:55:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2004, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/21 "2004-11-10T18:01:38Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > While spoken ME is very difficult for a modern speaker to understand, I don’t think the written form is too difficult: > > 1 Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, > 2 The droghte of March hath perced to the roote > 3 And bathed every veyne in swich licour, > 4 Of which vertu engendred is the flour; > 5 Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth > 6 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth > 7 The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne > 8 Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, > 9 And smale foweles maken melodye, > 10 That slepen al the nyght with open eye- > 11 So priketh hem Nature in hir corages- > 12 Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages > 13 And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes > 14 To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; > 15 And specially, from every shires ende > > There certainly are a few strange spellings but spelling conventions weren’t standardized until much later. Otherwise, you surely get the message of this poetic passage: It’s springtime and this is when folks make pilgrimages. I can handle ME fairly well, but that’s largely because I am fairly fluent in German. I also took a course in ME grammar as an undergraduate. The _-en_ endings on plural verbs, the _y-_ prefixes on past participles sound much less strange when you know another Germanic language. Knowledge of sound shifts is also helpful; ME _-lwe_ --\> NE _llow_, so I suspect that _ferne halwes_ probably means _hallows_, i.e. “distant sacred places”. _Ferne_ I know from German _fern_, meaning far. And _eek_? What is that? I don’t see anything about mice here, nor women standing on chairs in 1960s sitcoms. Well, of course, I know what _eek_ means, but only as part of something I learned during years at the university, when I ought to have been majoring in business or computer scienced, or some other practical endeavor. No, I’d say absent extensive preparation, the average reader can get only the vaguest notion of what’s happening here. Yes, it’s springtime, and folks are down with the pilgrimage thing, but most of the details in this passage would escape such a reader. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2004, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/22 "2004-11-10T23:11:29Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > I can handle ME fairly well, but that’s largely because I am fairly fluent in German. I also took a course in ME grammar as an undergraduate. The _-en_ endings on plural verbs, the _y-_ prefixes on past participles sound much less strange when you know another Germanic language. Knowledge of sound shifts is also helpful; ME _-lwe_ --\> NE _llow_, so I suspect that _ferne halwes_ probably means _hallows_, i.e. “distant sacred places”. _Ferne_ I know from German _fern_, meaning far. > > And _eek_? What is that? I don’t see anything about mice here, nor women standing on chairs in 1960s sitcoms. Well, of course, I know what _eek_ means, but only as part of something I learned during years at the university, when I ought to have been majoring in business or computer scienced, or some other practical endeavor. > > No, I’d say absent extensive preparation, the average reader can get only the vaguest notion of what’s happening here. Yes, it’s springtime, and folks are down with the pilgrimage thing, but most of the details in this passage would escape such a reader. In learning German, I noticed that German, like ME retains the use of reflexive pronouns. In modern english, this is quaint and old-fashioned and used only to prevent confusion. In German: Ich badete mich. [I bathed myself.] In Modern English: I bathed. ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/23 "2004-11-11T00:41:19Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > The fact that he’s not credited, when it seems like he ought to have been involved and most of his contemporaries were, is one of the weak pieces of evidence the Shakespeare Does Not Exist crowd uses. But the KJV, it’s important to note, was written to imitate an already obsolete style - so it’s not necessarily directly comparable to Shakespeare, who was pop culture at the time. Which is probably why he wasn’t involved in the composition of the KJV (which was published in 1611, at the tail end of Shakespeare’s career). Shakespeare, after all (though he’d certainly done some “respectable” narrative poetry) was a playwright and actor, and this wasn’t really a highly-regarded field at the turn of the seventeenth century. Granted, actors (and other theater people) were by this point an upwardly mobile class, and during the Stuart period the ties between court and theater became fairly strong, but it would have been highly unusual to include a playwright in the group you’ve got translating the Bible. In re Middle English pronunciation, I’ve heard that listening to it actually makes it _easier_ to understand (and I heard a conference paper this weekend making the same point). To that end, here’s what the bit of Chaucer posted by **John Mace** (plus a bit more) sounds like: [_Canterbury Tales_ opening lines](http://www.dsproductions.org/io/iochaucer.mp3) Obviously this is just approximated pronunciation, but it’s how they teach you to do it if you study ME. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/24 "2004-11-11T02:28:30Z")
> [@Katisha](#): > > To that end, here’s what the bit of Chaucer posted by **John Mace** (plus a bit more) sounds like: [_Canterbury Tales_ opening lines](http://www.dsproductions.org/io/iochaucer.mp3) > > Obviously this is just approximated pronunciation, but it’s how they teach you to do it if you study ME. 😉 Good lord. That just sounds like German with a few English words thrown in, to me. Like some German-English pidgin. (What’s the G-E equivalent word for Spanglish? Gerglish?) ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/25 "2004-11-11T14:42:53Z")
There certainly were many words that were like standard German today. Even Shakespeare still wrote _nim_ (steal or take, like Ger. _nehmen_). Chaucer has _a shipman woning fer by weste_; ME _woning_ (living [in a place]) is much like Ger. _wohnen_. Presumably it was distinguished from _live_ meaning “to be alive”. Interestingly, both these ME words were supplanted not by French expressions, but by other words of Germanic origin; Scandinavian in the case of _take_, and another AS word in the case of _live_. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/26 "2004-11-11T19:20:39Z")
This is one of the most fascinating things I’ve read in a long while, especially **Muffin’s** link. ---
**Author:** ![rackensack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/27 "2004-11-11T19:44:17Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > And _eek_? What is that? I don’t see anything about mice here, nor women standing on chairs in 1960s sitcoms. Well, of course, I know what _eek_ means, but only as part of something I learned during years at the university, when I ought to have been majoring in business or computer scienced, or some other practical endeavor. I’ve always assumed, though I never bothered to follow up and confirm it, that ME “eek” is a cognate of modern German “auch”. Do you know if that’s the case, or if it’s just own pet folk etymology? ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/28 "2004-11-11T21:48:27Z")
Yes, I’ve found it fascinating too. Thank you all so much for contributing! ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/29 "2004-11-11T23:04:32Z")
> [@rackensack](#): > > I’ve always assumed, though I never bothered to follow up and confirm it, that ME “eek” is a cognate of modern German “auch”. Do you know if that’s the case, or if it’s just own pet folk etymology? I’m reasonably sure that ‘eek’ is a cognate of German ‘auch’. Interestingly, German also has a word _also_, but it doesn’t mean the same thing. Instead, means roughly ‘so’, in the sense of ‘thus’. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/30 "2004-11-11T23:09:59Z")
> [@toadspittle](#): > > Unfortunately, I’m not aware that much written prose from Chaucer’s time exists. At least one of the Canterbury Tales is written in prose, as is Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe, dedicated to his son Lewis. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/31 "2004-11-11T23:43:01Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > I’m reasonably sure that ‘eek’ is a cognate of German ‘auch’. Interestingly, German also has a word _also_, but it doesn’t mean the same thing. Instead, means roughly ‘so’, in the sense of ‘thus’. eke [as in eke out a living] is cognate to the German “auch” ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864/32 "2004-11-11T23:49:33Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > At least one of the Canterbury Tales is written in prose, as is Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe, dedicated to his son Lewis. Two of the Tales – Chaucer’s own tale of Melibee, and the Parson’s Tale (which is really more of a sermon). These are the ones that nobody ever reads – my undergrad Chaucer course was unusual in that we had to read Melibee in its entirety, an experience which made it clear to me why it’s not taught much. 😉 Chaucer also did a translation of Boethius’ _Consolation of Philosophy,_ which is likewise in prose. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-middle-english-change-so-quickly/273864.md?page=1)