How did the English language evolve during the middle ages?

Answer 1

Britain did not exist as a unified location - Wales was split into different principalities, Scotland had its own kings and Ireland was only partially under the control of English kings.

In the area today called Britain many different languages were spoken, some changing over the very long medieval period:

In most of England, Old English was used up to about 1150; it gradually evolved into Middle English. In Cornwall in the far south-west of England, the language was Kernowek but some people must have been bilingual (administrators, lawyers, merchants and so on). On the Isle of Man, Manx Gaelic was spoken (again some people must have been bilingual). The nobility and some others spoke Anglo-Norman French, while Latin was the language of the Church, of schools, books and educated people.

In Wales dialects of Old Welsh were spoken.

In different parts of Scotland people spoke Gaelic, Old Norse, Middle English (Scots dialect) and Anglo-Norman French.

In Ireland a form of Gaelic was used.

Answer 2

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, Old English was a language that had a typically Germanic grammar and vocabulary. During the Middle Ages, the most important thing that happened to the English language was a set of changes, mostly to the vocabulary, resulting from the Norman Conquest, and causing the incorporation of words from French. The English Language subsequently became recognizable as such to modern readers with the Middle English of Geoffrey Chaucer.

There is a link below to a more comprehensive discussion.

Answer 3

Medieval languages were very different over time and in each country or region.

In Cornwall, in the far south-west of England, everyone spoke Kernowek, which is related to southern Welsh. In the Channel Islands (Sark, Alderney, Jersey and Guernsey) the common language was Norman French; in Germany between 1050 and 1350 everyone spoke Middle High German - after 1350 they spoke Early New High German; in Italy there were many Romance dialects such as Occitan, Tuscan, Venetian and Ligurian; in what is today France people spoke Breton in Brittany, Norman French in Normandy, Old French and many other regional dialects.

In England before 1150 the common language was Late Old English. This evolved gradually into Middle English. In Scotland various populations spoke Middle English, Gaelic, Old Norse, Pictish and other languages. In Wales people spoke Old Welsh up to about 1100, followed by Middle Welsh.

Scandinavian countries had their own languages, as did Spain, Flanders and so on.

When Church Synods were called by the Pope, when European bishops, abbots and other Church officials gathered in one place for an important meeting, they all spoke different languages; this was no problem, since they all also spoke Latin and Church meetings were always conducted in that language.

Answer 4

The medieval period lasted for such a long time that everything gradually changed, including money, language, fashions, arms and armour and much more. Language also depended on social class:

In England up to about 1150, Old English was spoken by the majority of the population. This was the language brought to England from the 5th century onwards by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Friesians, Wends, Franks and other immigrants from north Germany and south Denmark. It is therefore a Germanic dialect and is fairly close to modern Dutch.

From 1066 the Norman invaders spoke Anglo-Norman French, which continued to be the everyday language of the aristocracy and royalty for hundreds of years. This is not the same thing as French - anyone who thinks that Norman knights spoke French is mistaken.

After about 1150, Old English gradually changed into Middle English, which remained the language of the masses until the end of the medieval period.

Answer 5

In the book Mother Tongue author Bill Bryson writes "In the country inns of a small corner of northern Germany you can sometimes hear people talking in what sounds eerily like a lost dialect of English. According to Professor Hubertus Menke the language is very close to the way people spoke in Britain more than a 1,000 years ago." This area of Germany was once called Angeln and the Germanic tribes that lived there crossed the North Sea to Britain where they displaced the native Celts and gave us English.

Another group of people in an area of northern Holland and Western Germany also have a dialect close to English. In about 450 AD when the Romans left Britain these two groups of people and two other related groups from the same area of northern Europe, the Saxons and the Jutes began their trip to Britain. These tribes settled in different parts and each brought with it its own variations in speech. Some of those still exist today in Britain and may even have been carried from the old world to the new world. After time the tribes merged and subdivided until they established 7 small kingdoms and dominated the island except for Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall which were Celtic. Although the Saxons were the dominate group, the new nation gradually came to be known as England and its language English. No one knows why or really how this happened, but that they simply disappeared. The people couldn't read or write so they left nothing for us to read. They had a runic alphabet that was used on ceremonial stones called runes, but they never used it as a means to communicate. The first sentence in English was found in 1982 in a field in Suffolk, England. It is a small gold medallion about the size of a quarter and made sometime between 450-480 AD. It has the runic inscription "This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman"

None can say at what point English became a separate language, but almost as soon as this was getting going a new attack came to change the new language. The Viking raiders added to the mix. The Danish influence was enormous and there are more than 1,400 place names in northern England that are of Scandinavian origin today. For many years some people only spoke old English while others only spoke old Norse. In some places this lasted years, but eventually the two mixed. The use of pronouns they, them, and their are Norse.

The next phase came when the Normans invaded in 1066. The Normans were Vikings that had settled 2 hundred years before in northern France, but in those years the Norse language had been replaced by French. Not a single Norse word has survived in Normandy. This is really something when you consider that the Normans gave about 10,000 words to English. No king spoke English for the next 300 years. It wasn't until 1399 with Henry IV that there was a ruler whose language was English. One by one the English earls were replaced by Normans. French speaking craftsmen, cooks, scholars and scribes were brought to England. The Norman society had two tiers; the French speaking aristocracy and the English speaking peasant. Because English had no official status for 3 centuries it changed and drifted. Without someone setting a standard difference developed by region and yet it survived.

Answer 6

It depends which country you are referring to.

Answer 7

Latin in Europe