What were the Changing Conditions after 1200 that helped English re-establish itself?

the language among the governing class and English language became the language of the lower class of people. But shortly after 1200 conditions changed. French gradually lost its influence and English language once again became the dominant language in England.  England lost an important part of its possessions in France. A feeling of rivalry developed between the two countries, accompanied by an antiforeign movement in England and culminating in the Hundred Years’ War. In the fourteenth century English won its way back into universal use, and in the fifteenth century French all but disappeared. We must now examine in detail the steps by which this situation came about.

 The Loss of Normandy

The first link in the chain binding England to the continent was broken in 1204 when King John lost Normandy. John, seeing the beautiful Isabel of Angouleme, fell violently in love with her and, no doubt having certain political advantages in mind, married her in great haste (1200), notwithstanding the fact that she was at the time formally betrothed to Hugh of Lusignan, the head of a powerful and ambitious family. The consequence of this marriage was that finally John lost his vast French possessions in Normandy. But this loss of Normandy was wholly advantageous. King and nobles were now forced to look upon England as their first concern. Although England still retained large continental possessions, they were in the south of France and had never been so intimately connected by ties of language, blood, and property interests as had Normandy. It gradually became apparent that the island kingdom had its own political and economic ends and that these were not the same as those of France. England was on the way to becoming not merely a geographical term but once more a nation.

Separation of the French and English Nobility

The loss of the Normandy raised a question of whether many of the nobility owed their allegiance to England or to France. After the Norman Conquest a large number held lands in both countries. A kind of interlocking aristocracy existed, so that it might be difficult for some of the English nobility to say whether they belonged more to England or to the continent. Some steps toward a separation of their interests had been taken from time to time. The example of the Conqueror, who left Normandy to his son Robert and England to William Rufus, was occasionally followed by his companions.

But in 1204 the process of separation was greatly accelerated, for by a decree of 1204–1205 the king of France announced that he had confiscated the lands of several great barons, including the earls of Warenne, Arundel, Leicester, and Clare, and of all those knights who had their abode in England. For the most part the families that had estates on both sides of the Channel were compelled to give up one or the other. Sometimes they divided into branches and made separate terms; in other cases great nobles preferred their larger holdings in England and gave up their Norman lands. John’s efforts at retaliation came to the same  effect. It is true that the separation was by no means complete. In one way or another some nobles succeeded in retaining their positions in both countries. But double allegiance was generally felt to be awkward, and the voluntary division of estates went on. The result of this separation was that  after 1250 there was no reason for the nobility of England to consider itself anything but English. The most valid reason for its use of French was gone from England.

The Hundred Years’ War

In the course of the centuries following the Norman Conquest the connection of England with the continent, as we have seen, had been broken. It was succeeded by a conflict of interests and a growing feeling of antagonism that culminated in a long period of open hostility with France (1337–1453) ,which is known as the Hundred years war.  During this long period of  time it was impossible to forget that French was the language of an enemy country, and the Hundred Years’ War is probably to be reckoned as one of the causes contributing to the disuse of French. So, following the 100 Years War, many people regarded French as the language of the enemy. The status of English rose.

The Black Death and The Rise of the Middle Class

The next event that helped English re-establish itself is the Black Death and the rise of the Middle Class. During the latter part of the Middle English period the condition of the laboring classes was rapidly improving. Among the rural population villeinage was dying out. Fixed money payments were gradually substituted for the days’ work due the lord of the manor, and the status of the villein more nearly resembled that of the free tenants. The latter class was itself increasing; there was more incentive to individual effort and more opportunity for a person to reap the rewards of enterprise. The process by which these changes were being brought about was greatly accelerated by an event that occurred in the year 1349.

In the summer of 1348 there appeared the plague the Black Death in the southwest of England. It spread rapidly over the rest of the country, reaching its height in 1349 but continuing in the north into the early months of 1350. Nearly one third of English people, most of whom were from the lower class, died. 

The effects of so great a calamity were naturally serious, and in one direction at least are fully demonstrable. As in most epidemics, the rich suffered less than the poor. The poor could not shut themselves up in their castles or retreat to a secluded manor. The mortality was accordingly greatest among the lower social orders, and the result was a serious shortage of labor. This is evident in the immediate rise in wages, a rise which the Statute of Laborers was insufficient to control or prevent. Nor was this result merely temporary if we may judge from the thirteen reenactments of the statute in the course of the next hundred years. Villeins frequently made their escape, and many cotters left the land in search of the high wages commanded by independent workers. Those who were left behind felt more acutely the burden of their condition, and a general spirit of discontent arose, which culminated in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

By and large, the effect of the Black Death was to increase the economic importance of the laboring class and with it the importance of the English language which they spoke.

Thus, the above mentioned factors helped English language got back its position during the Middle Ages and the later Middle Ages.

Reference:

A History of the English Language. Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993.

 

What were the new factors during the Renaissance (1500-1650) that helped English language enrich as well as expand itself ?

In the development of languages particular events often have recognizable and at times far-reaching effects. The Norman Conquest and the Black Death are typical instances that we have already seen. But there are also more general conditions that come into being and are no less influential. In the Modern English period, the beginning of which is conveniently placed at 1500, a number of factors greatly influenced English language. The new factors were the printing press, the rapid spread of popular education, the increased communication and means of communication, the growth of specialized knowledge, and the emergence of various forms of self-consciousness about language.

The printing press

The introducing of the printing press into England about 1476 by William Caxton made a rapid progress in the spread of printed books. In England over 20,000 titles in English had appeared by 1640, ranging all the way from mere pamphlets to massive folios. The result was to bring books, which had formerly been the expensive luxury of the few, within the reach of many. More important, however, was the fact, so obvious today, that it was possible to reproduce a book in a thousand copies or a hundred thousand, every one exactly like the other. A powerful force thus existed for promoting a standard, uniform language, and the means were now available for spreading that language throughout the territory in which it was understood.

The rapid spread of popular education

Another factor that helped spread of English language was the increase of the readers. Education was making rapid progress among the people and literacy was becoming much more common. In the later Middle Ages a surprising number of people of the middle class could read and write, as the Paston Letters abundantly show. In Shakespeare’s London, though we have no accurate means of measurement, it is probable that not less than a third and probably as many as half of the people could at least read. As a result of popular education the printing press was able to exert its influence upon language as upon thought.

The increased communication and means of communication

A third factor of great importance to language in modern times is the way in which the different parts of the world have been brought together through commerce, transportation, and the rapid means of communication we have developed. The exchange of commodities and the exchange of ideas are both stimulating to language. The expansion of the British Empire and the extension of trade enlarged the English vocabulary by words drawn from every part of the world, besides spreading the language over vast areas whose existence was undreamed of in the Middle Ages. But while diversification has been one of the results of transportation, unification has also resulted from ease of travel and communication. The steamship and the railroad, the automobile, and the airplane have brought people into contact with one another and joined communities hitherto isolated, while the post office sand the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the movies, television, and electronic data transmission have been influential in the intermingling of language and the lessening of the more easily altered local idiosyncrasies.

The growth of specialized knowledge

The fourth factor, the growth of specialized knowledge, has been important not only because new knowledge often requires new vocabulary but also because, in the early centuries of the modern period, Latin became less and less the vehicle for learned discourse. Both trends accelerated strongly during the seventeenth century. The rapid accumulation of new knowledge was matched by a rapid trend away from publishing specialized and learned works in Latin.

Finally, there is the factor which we have referred to as self-consciousness about language. This has two aspects, one individual, one public. At the individual level we may observe a phenomenon that has become intensely important in modern times: as people lift themselves into a different economic or intellectual or social level, they are likely to make an effort to adopt the standards of grammar and pronunciation of the people with whom they have identified. At the public level a similar self-consciousness has driven issues of language policy over the past four centuries, long before “language policy” acquired its modern meaning. The beginnings of this public discussion are evident in the sixteenth-century defense of English and debates about orthography and the enrichment of the vocabulary.

Thus, the avobe mentioned five factors greatly influenced the rise and spread of English language during the Renaissace period. 

Reference:

A History of the English Language. Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993.

 

What do you know about the Dialectal Diversity of the Middle English?

One of the striking characteristics of Middle English is its great variety in the different parts of England. This variety was not confined to the forms of the spoken language, as it is to a great extent today, but appears equally in the written literature. In the absence of any recognized literary standard before the close of the period, writers naturally wrote in the dialect of that part of the country to which they belonged.

The Middle English Dialects

The language differed almost from county to county, and noticeable variations are sometimes observable between different parts of the same county. The features characteristic of a given dialect do not all cover the same territory; some extend into adjoining districts or may be characteristic also of another dialect. Consequently it is rather difficult to decide how many dialectal divisions should be recognized and to mark

off with any exactness their respective boundaries. In a rough way, however, it is customary to distinguish four principal dialects of Middle English:

1-Northern,

2-East Midland,

3-West Midland,

 4-and Southern.

Generally speaking, the Northern dialect extends as far south as the Humber; East Mid-land and West Midland together cover the area  between the Humber and the Thames; and Southern occupies the district south of the Thames, together with Gloucestershire and parts of the counties of Worcester and Hereford, thus taking in the West Saxon and Kentish districts of Old English. Throughout the Middle English period and later, Kentish preserves individual features marking it off as a distinct variety of Southern English.

The peculiarities that distinguish these dialects are of such a character that their adequate enumeration would carry us beyond our present purpose. They are partly matters of pronunciation, partly of vocabulary, partly of inflection. A few illustrations will give some idea of the nature and extent of the differences. The feature most easily recognized is the ending of the plural, present indicative, of verbs. In Old English this form always ended in -th with some variation of the preceding vowel. In Middle English this ending was preserved as -eth in the Southern dialect. In the Midland district, however, it was replaced by -en, probably taken over from the corresponding forms of the subjunctive or from preterite-present verbs and the verb to be, while in the north it was altered to -es, an ending that makes its appearance in Old English times. Thus we have loves in the north, loven in the Midlands, and loveth in the south.

Another fairly distinctive form is the present participle before the spread of the ending -ing. In the north we have lovande, in the Midlands lovende, and in the south lovinde. In later Middle English the ending -ing appears in the Midlands and the south, thus obscuring the dialectal distinction. Dialectal differences are more noticeable between Northern and Southern; the Midland dialect often occupies an intermediate position, tending toward the one or the other in those districts lying nearer to the adjacent dialects. Thus the characteristic forms of the pronoun they in the south were hi, here (hire, hure), hem,

while in the north forms with th- (modern they, their, them) early became predominant.

 In matters of pronunciation the Northern and Southern dialects sometimes presented notable differences. Thus OE ā, which developed into an south of the Humber, was retained in the north, giving us such characteristic forms as Southern stone and home, beside stane and hame in Scotland today. Initial f and s were often voiced in the south to v and z. In Southern Middle English we find vor, vrom, vox, vorzoþe instead of for, from, fox, forsope (forsooth).

This dialectal difference is preserved in Modern English fox and vixen, where the former represents the Northern and Midland pro- nunciation and the latter the Southern. Similarly ch in the south often orresponds to a k in the north: bench beside benk, or church beside kirk. Such variety was fortunately lessened toward the end of the Middle English period by the general adoption of a standard written (and later spoken) English.

Thus, we see that during the middle English period English language was divided into a number of dialects on the basis of grammar and pronunciation. 

Reference:

A History of the English Language. Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993.