Middle English Summary Flashcards
When was the Norman conquest?
1066
what happened at the norman conquest?
William (the Conqueror) of Normandy defeated Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings.
The Normans spoke _____
Norman (not Parisian) French.
The Normans were originally _____ (Northmen, Norse), who had settled in northern France in the____ century.
Vikings, ninth
By 1066, they had integrated and no longer spoke _____
Norse
Which English kind died in 1066 so there were battles for succession to the English throne?
Edward the Confessor
Edward was ________; his mother was _____.
half-Norman, Norman
Although the English Norse had integrated with the English population, they did not forget their ______ and still maintained contact with their _______ ______
heritage, Norse relatives
- Three claimants to the throne in 1066:
- Harald Hardrada, King of Norway
- Harald Godwinson, Earl of Wessex and powerful nobleman with ties to the Norse.
- William of Normandy
who was Harald Godwinson?
Earl of Wessex and powerful nobleman with ties to the Norse
who was Harald Hardrada?
King of Norway
- Edward (allegedly) named _____ as his successor to the throne, but he retracted this proclamation on his
deathbed and named _____ ______ instead.
William, Harald Godwinson
who did the Witenagemot select as king?
Harald Godwinson
Who invaded England in the northeast.?
Harald Hardrada
Who sent his forces and defeated Harald Hardrada and what was that battle called?
Harald Godwinson, the Battle of Stamford Bridge.
what was happening at the same time as Harald H and Harald G were fighting the battle of Stamford Bridge?
William attacked from the south. Harald G. and his troops, weary from battle, had
to hustle back to the south to fend off William
what did William do?
managed to capture the high ground and prevailed
what happened to Harald?
was killed by an arrow which pierced his eye.
Bayeux Tapestry?
was killed by an arrow which pierced his eye.
what happened after William became King of England (actually the Anglo-Norman Kingdom)?
- French became the language of government, administration, military, and the judicial system for roughly the next 200 years.
English administrators and nobility were replaced by :
normans
- The status of English and French:
French was spoken and used by the aristocracy
- small but powerful minority
- The common people (the vast majority) continued to use English with each other.
- It had no power or prestige
The English had to use French in dealing with the :
government
Was French imposed on the population, and English prohibited?
NO!
The early Norman kings spoke :
No English!
Some Norman kings spent all or most of their lives in :
Normandy
There was certainly some bilingualism from the beginning via intermarriage and work relationships, as
suggested by loanwords such as:
table, boil, roast, serve, dine, tax, estate, trouble, duty, pay
Was The impact of the Norman Invasion on the English language gradual or abrupt?
gradual
what was abandoned in 1131?
- The Peterborough Chronicle
______ replaced Wessex as the centre of power?
London
Initially there was much ________ _______ since there was no longer an English centre of power.
dialect variation
how many ways were there to spell “through”?
500
with the norman conquest, in English there was the Loss of many what?
grammar inflections
Eventual rise of a new standard:
Chancery English (based on the English of London and environs)
- Spellings were introduced by who?
Norman scribes (French speakers writing English!)
some spelling changes from OE to ME:
- The use of capital letters to begin a sentence and for proper names
- þ and ð were replaced in some cases by th.
- a replaced æ.
- wh replaced hw.
- ū became ou.
- Introduction of h following the Old French convention of
adding h to signal a modified consonant - The doubling of vowels to signal long vowels: see, food
- The doubling of consonants to signal short vowels
- The retention of final -e (no longer pronounced) to signal a preceding long vowel
were there glides in middle english pronunciation?
NO!
how was time pronounced in ME?
TEAM
in ME grammar, what happened with pronouns?
- Norse they / them / their replaced hie / him / hira
- The feminine pronoun heo was replaced by she.
The number of cases was reduced to how many?; the ____ gradually disappeared. Its function was
assumed by the _______.
3, dative, accusative
the 3 cases?
- Nominative (subject)
- Accusative (direct & indirect object, object of preposition)
- Genitive (possessive)
With the loss of grammatical markings, grammatical gender was replaced by:
biological, or natural gender
The number of declensions (groups of nouns that follow different patterns) was reduced to how many?
2
The –as plural (stan - stanas) declension:
hūs – hūs => hūs – hūses, scip – scipu => ship - shipes
The –an plural declension:
(ox – oxen, eye – eyen, child - children)
The –as declension became dominant in the ____, the –an declension in the _____, but then what happened?
north, south, the –as declension gradually spread south and replaced –an in most words by Shakespeare’s time.
- Old habits are hard to change. A number of commonly-used nouns retained their original plural forms. They are relics of other declensions and of i-mutation (examples):
foot – feet; mouse – mice; tooth – teeth, deer – deer; sheep – sheep
what happened when The weakening and loss of inflections required another mechanism for identifying sentences
functions (subjects, objects, agents, others)?
Prepositions and word order took on a more important role in signalling sentence functions
The Anglo-Norman Kingdom included :
England and Normandy.
King John lost Normandy to the French in :
1204
what happened when - King John lost Normandy to the French in 1204?
- The nobility had to choose England or Normandy.
- Many chose England because they had estates there and because many of them spoke English by
this time.
- Many chose England because they had estates there and because many of them spoke English by
what were Two reasons for the decline of English according to John of Trevisa?
- Children are required to learn French
- Upper class children are taught to speak French from birth.
- The situation has changed.
- Children are now taught English (grammar).
- They have an advantage on the one hand:
- They learn grammar more quickly.
- But they also have a disadvantage:
- They can’t speak French when they go abroad.
who was the first English king since the Norman
Conquest to speak English?
- Edward I (1272)
what brought speakers of various English dialects together?
the Crusades
what happened in the Late Middle Ages (13th, 14th centuries)?
French declined; (Middle) English re-emerged
in the late middle ages, what had become the capital, the centre of government, wealth, & power?
London
what became the main centres of learning?
Oxford (1167) & Cambridge (1209)
which became the most influential dialect in
many aspects of life?
Southeast Midland (London, Oxford, Cambridge triangle)
what killed 30 - 50% of the population and when?
the Plague, 14th century
what were the results of the plague?
- shortage of bodies for production
- labour was in high demand.
- the breakdown of feudalism, where peasants were tied to the land under an overlord
- Urbanization: more people moved to the cities (mainly from the East Midlands to London)
- Trades people were needed.
- The common people gained in economic power.
- In the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, they demanded higher wages and better working conditions.
- Urbanization: more people moved to the cities (mainly from the East Midlands to London)
- This increasingly influential middle class spoke English.
what was the Chancery standard?
- Spelling and grammar were to a large extent normalized in government writings.
what was one of the main factors leading to an eventual English standard language?
the Chancery Standard
Three distinct periods of Middle English:
- Decline after the Norman invasion (1066-1204)
- Resurgence of English (1204-1350)
- Toward a new standard (1350-1500)
