What is the language of everyday speech in the middle ages?

Answer 1

It depends where you were. I'm assuming you're referring to England as you don't specify otherwise. Put simply: in the earlier Middle Ages, they spoke Old English. After the Norman Conquest, they spoke Middle English. After about 1470 and the introduction of the printing press, it's early modern English.

In the early Middle Ages, from the mid-5th century onwards, forms of Old English were the most common language throughout England. It was likely very subject to regional variation. Pockets of other languages remained, especially in remote areas largely uncolonized by Germanic speakers. These are the Celtic languages of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, that survive to a degree even today.

Norse dialects were at times common in areas such as the Danelaw, and the north-west of England. This is reflected in Scandinavian elements in place names.

From the Norman Conquest onwards, Old English developed into Middle English. This is more recognizable as English to the modern eye than Old English, and manuscripts in Middle English can be deciphered to a certain extent even by those wholly untrained in palaeography.

Middle English was still subject to regional dialect variation, as there was no uniform spelling or even vocabulary. Caxton (the first printer in England) tells a story of how a merchant asked a farmer's wife for egges, but she couldn't understand her as she called eggs eyren. These dialectal variations help palaeographers determine where manuscripts were written. After Caxton (and later, Pynson) introduced the printing press to England in the mid-to-late 15th century, a more uniform English became the standard. This is known as Chancery Standard. Based on a bureaucratic form used in London, it helped make official documents clearly understandable throughout England. Throughout the entire period, Latin was used by men of the Church and in official and ceremonial proceedings. For example, the Domesday Book was written in Latin, as were great works produced by ecclesiastical historians like the Venerable Bede, Gildas and Nennius.

Answer 2

Forget everything you have ever seen and heard in American movies - people did not speak that way in real life.

Language very much depends on the precise location and exact time period. Language, like everything else, changed considerably during the very long medieval period.

People in Germany spoke Old High German to about 1100, then Middle High German, people in Normandy and the Channel Islands spoke Norman French, people in Italy spoke Italian and people in Flanders spoke Flemish.

In England, language depended on a person's social class as well as the location and specific time period; throughout the period, people in Cornwall only spoke Kernowek and it was said the "crossing the river Tamar was like entering Another Country". The aristocracy after 1066 spoke Anglo-Norman French (not the same as Norman French or even French); up to about 1150 the language of the ordinary people was Old English, but after that date it had evolved into Middle English which simplified the grammar considerably.

In law courts, in monasteries, in church services and in schools, the language was Latin - not the classical Latin of Cicero or Ovid but an evolved Latin called Low Latin, Church Latin or Medieval Latin.

Other languages included Manx Gaelic on the Isle of Man, Occitan in southern France, Basque in north-eastern Spain and south-western France - there were very many more.

Saying hello in some of these languages looks like:

Old English.......................Ic grete þe (I greet you)

Old English..........................Wes ðu hal (greetings)

Latin.................................Salve

Manx Gaelic......................Hoi bhoy

Occitan.............................Bonjorn

Kernowek.........................Dydh da

Answer 3

if by middle ages you mean 1400s or 1500s, it varies by area. Germans talked German, English talked English, etc.

Answer 4

Around 90% of English medieval books were written in Latin. The remainder were written in Anglo-Norman French, Greek, Middle English and other languages.

Answer 5

That depends very much on the country. People in Flanders, for example, spoke Flemish, a dialect of Middle High German.