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ME = Middle English (the language that Chaucer spoke) PDE = Present-Day English (the language that we speak today)
Spelling
Often the only difference between Chaucers word and its modern equivalent is the spelling. If you get used to the differences between his spelling and ours, youll be able to recognize a lot of words without having to look them up. Here are some of the most common differences. (You will also find many others. You should make notes on the ones you find.) i and y are nearly interchangeable for Chaucer, and y is a lot more common than in PDE. You will therefore find a lot of words that have y where we have i: ME PDE hym, thynke, yre, fyrst, ryght, syde, ys, thys, lytel, myght, alyve, wyt him, think, ire, first, right, side, is, this, little, might, alive, wit
There are also a few words where Chaucer has i and we have y (ME joie, PDE joy). Final -e: Chaucer often uses a final -e where we dont: ME joie, knowe, olde, beholde, longe, faste, newe, telle, sevene, whiche, melodye PDE joy, know, old, behold, long, fast, new, tell, seven, which, melody
There are also a number of words in which we have a final -e and Chaucer doesnt: ME dar, lyf, fals, mad, debat, don, ston, shap, wo PDE dare, life, false, made, debate, done, stone, shape, woe
In other final syllables as well, Chaucer sometimes sticks in an e that gets dropped in PDE: ME soules, halles, dayes, youres PDE souls, halls, days, yours
Doubling: Sometimes Chaucer has a single letter where we have a double, and vice versa. ME wel, al, ful, mater, acord, bras bok, thre, fle, stod, degre, hed, fol, grene, tok, stod noo, yee, soo, alsoo, twoo PDE well, all, full, matter, accord, brass book, three, flee, stood, degree, heed, fool, green, took, stood no, ye, so, also, two
These words can be a little tricky because they can mean more than one thing: ME to of the PDE either to or too either of or off either the (the article) or thee (the pronoun)
ea: In the words in which PDE has an ea, Chaucer uses e or ee instead (sometimes with an additional final -e). ME lerne, mene, reede, speke, ech PDE yer or yere, bek, drem, trete, hed greete, deere, apere, ese, leves learn, mean, read, speak, each, year, beak, dream, treat, head, great, dear, appear, ease, leaves
w and u can be interchangeable, especially in ow/ou, and thus you will often find w where we have u and vice versa. There are also some words in which Chaucers ow/ou is replaced by u in PDE: ME thow, yow, yowthe adoun, duelle trowthe/trouthe PDE thou, you, youth down, dwell truth
k is a little more common in ME than in PDE, appearing where we might have c or ck: ME kaughte, koude, skales, blak, thikkere PDE caught, could, scales, black, thicker
Final -(e)n: This is an aspect of the grammar rather than the spelling, and we will come back to it. For now, note that on verbs, Chaucer often uses a final -n or final -en that is omitted in PDE. In reading ME, you can thus ignore it. These examples are all taken from PF 458-74: ME do me hangen ye seen to been A man may serven PDE have me hang you see to be A man may serve
On the other hand, Chaucer also occasionally omits an -n on a verb where we expect to see it: ME What hath she doo? PDE I hadde knowe The choys is to the falle (PF 406) to been ago (PF 465) What has she done? I had known The choice is fallen to thee to be gone
The i- or y- prefix. This too is an aspect of the grammar. Chaucer occasionally uses an i- or yprefix on verbs (especially past participles) that no longer survives. You can just ignore it. ME ydoon, ifounded, ibounden, ibroke, iwrought PDE done, founded, bound, broken, wrought
It gets a little tricky when more than one of these differences occur: ME . . . to entre or flen (PF 147) My tale is not ido (PF 542) PDE to enter or flee (drop the n, double the e) My tale is not done (drop the i, add the missing n and e)
Vocabulary
Even after you have tried out all the spelling tricks, you still may not be able to recognize a word. That may mean that it no longer survives. There are also a lot of words that survive but that have changed in meaning. These are the words that you are going to have to look up, and there are three places you can check. 1. The marginal glosses, or the notes at the bottom of the page The editors provide you with a great deal of vocabulary help, concentrating on the trickiest and the least common words. Lynch is particularly generous with the marginal glosses in The Parliament of Fowls and The Book of the Duchess. A little less help is given by the editors of Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales, because they assume a little bit more knowledge of Middle English, but once you get familiar with Middle English, the notes at the bottom of the page will be all you normally need. Using the notes can be a little irritating, though, because the editors dont give you any indication in the text of which words have explanations. In my book, before I even start reading I go through and mark with a little accent mark all the words that have footnotes so that I know when to look at the bottom of the page and when Im going to have to check the glossary. 2. The glossary In Troilus and The Canterbury Tales, if you cant figure out the word and there isnt a note, youll have to look it up in the glossary. The glossaries are fairly complete, but they dont include words that are so similar to modern English that you shouldnt have to look them up. Because the same words can often be spelled in more than one way in Middle English, sometimes you have to do a little bit of searching to find where the word youre looking for is listed. (In particular, keep in mind the interchangeability of i and y.) 3. The list of most common words If you use the glossary faithfully, you will soon realize that you spend a lot of time looking up the same words. Some of the least familiar words in Chaucer are very common. Your editors dont provide you with footnotes for these because they expect you to know them. So you might as well learn them. In the long run, it will save you a lot of time. I have put together the attached list of the words that I think it pays to memorize. These are the words that I will hold you responsible for on the quiz.
These are the typical present tense endings in Chaucer. The final -e was a real ending, and it was often pronounced as a separate syllable. Together with the -est, -eth, and -e(n), it no longer survives. The plural could appear either with or without the -n: they daunce or they dauncen, we singe or we singen. (When -n appears as an ending on Chaucers verbs, it was almost always optional.) 2. the past tense Dance and sing are actually two different kinds of verbs. Dance is an example of what we call a weak verb. It forms its past tense by adding a suffix (in this case -ed): I dance, I danced. Sing is an example of a strong verb. It forms its past tense by means of a vowel change instead of a suffix: I sing, I sang. The same distinction existed in ME, but in contrast to PDE, in ME, they used personal endings in the past tense as well as in the present. Here are the typical endings on regular weak verbs:
PDE danced loved (doesnt survive) he/she/it danced loved we/you/they danced loved
You can get confused if you dont recognize that the endings are just endings. This is especially true in the plural when the optional -n occurs: just ignore it when you are trying to figure out what the word means. Be alert for some slight spelling variations too: the past tense plural form that I have spelled here daunceden, for instance, shows up in one edition (not the one were using) as daunsedyn in PF 232. Both spellings just mean danced. Here are the typical endings on past tense strong verbs (note that theyre a little simpler than on the weak verbs): ME I sang thou songe he/she/it sang we/ye/they songe(n) wrot write wrot write(n) I PDE sang wrote (doesnt survive) he/she/it sang wrote we/you/they sang wrote
The two main differences from PDE here are (1) strong verbs in ME often have two different vowels in the past tense, one for the 1st and 3rd person singular, the other for the 2nd person singular and the plural, and therefore in some forms the vowel is likely to be different from the one that survives; and (2) the plural (as we have already seen elsewhere) can end in an optional -n, which you have to learn to ignore. Generally, the verbs that are weak in ME remained weak in PDE, but there are a few cases in which a strong verb in ME is no longer strong: in other words, there are some verbs that marked the past tense in ME with a vowel change but that now use the -(e)d suffix instead. An example is walke(n), which could have either weak or strong past tense forms. We have already seen an example of the strong form: Forth welk I tho myselven to solace. (PF 297) You will also find a couple of others. There are also a few instances in which Chaucer uses a weak verb form where we now customarily use a strong. 3. the past participle The past participle is not mysterious: it is just the form of the verb that is used after the helping verb to have: I have danced, I have loved, I have sung, I have written. It can also be used in some other contexts, for instance in the passive voice: she was much loved, the song was sung, the poem was written. In ME as in PDE, weak verbs form their past participles by adding -(e)d. Strong verbs form their past participles with a vowel change and with a suffix, either -e or -en. In PDE, some verbs have
kept the -en ending (written) and some have dropped it (sung). In ME, both options still existed for every verb (sunge and sungen; write and writen). In addition there was an optional i- or yprefix that could be used on any past participle, so in theory (counting the i- or y- as interchangeable), there were two possible past participle forms for every weak verb and four possible forms for every strong verb: daunced idaunced loved yloved sunge isunge sungen ysungen write ywrite writen iwriten
The weak past participles will pose no problem as long as you remember to ignore the prefix when it occurs. With the strong verbs, you have to remember to ignore the prefix and to add or omit the -n, as necessary, to figure out what the verb means. The hardest ones to recognize are the ones with the prefix but without the -n where we are accustomed to seeing it: ydo, for instance (PDE done), or yfalle (PDE fallen). 4. the present participle The last two forms are easy. The present participle in ME is formed by adding -ing(e) or -yng(e): daunsynge, loving, syngyng, wrytinge. 5. the infinitive The infinitive in ME is formed with to plus the present tense form of the verb plus -e(n): to daunce(n), to love(n), to singe(n), to write(n). Remember that you have to ignore the -n. In some cases, Chaucer used for to instead of simply to: for to dauncen, for to synge. Cf. PF 18, It happede me for to beholde, and 217, Some for to slee, and some to wounde and kerve. As in PDE, the infinitive form of the verb without the to is used after certain helping verbs: y wyl dauncen, he shal love, we mot singe, they kan writen, I dar nat seyn (PF 13). (The -n is optional in all cases.)
Some weak verbs have a -t- instead of a -d-. This usually (but not always) happens when the verb stem ends in what we call a voiceless consonant. (Compare PDE keep/kept, feel/felt.) kepe(n) fele(n) kepte (instead of kepede) felte (though feelede also occurs)
Some weak verbs have a vowel change in addition to a past tense suffix. These wont cause too much of a problem because most of them survive in PDE. (Despite the vowel change, these are still considered weak verbs because of the -d- or -t-.) techen(n) thinke(n) selle(n) 2. an irregularity in the present tense The -eth ending of the 3rd person singular of the present tense can sometimes be absorbed into the verb stem and in effect disappear. This happens when the stem ends in d, t, or th, the three consonant sounds that are most like the -eth. The result is a form that ends in either -t or -th. This is called assimilation. slide(n) blende(n) hyde(n) frete(n) worthe(n) it slit (instead of it slideth; PF 3) it blent (PF 600; blendith also occurs) he hit (though he hideth also occurs) he fret (instead of he freteth) he worth (instead of he wortheth) taughte thoughte solde
Most (but not all) of these get footnotes in our text when they occur. 3. other irregular verbs There are many other irregular verbs and irregular verb forms that you will run across in Chaucer. Many of these will be familiar because the irregularities still survive. The most common verbs (such as be and go) are the ones that are most likely to be irregular in any language and also the
ones that are least likely to disappear. The glossary will help you recognize these irregular forms when you are puzzled. One particular type of irregular verb is worth mentioning here. It is represented by the very common ME verb wite(n), which means to know. As you can see, some of its forms are a little unpredictable: present tense I wo(o)t thou wo(o)st he/she/it wo(o)t I wiste thou wistest he/she/it wiste we wite(n) ye wo(o)t, wite(n) they wite(n)
past tense
we/ye/they wiste(n)
Note that there are two different possible vowels in the present tense (as in strong verbs in the past tense), that the endings also look more like the past tense than like present tense, and that the past tense is not formed in any regular way. Other similar verbs include: durre (to dare) kunne (to know) mowe(n) (to be able) pres. dar pres. kan, konne(n) pres. may, mowe(n) past durste, dorste past coude past myghte
You will run across a couple of other verbs that resemble these.
You should become familiar with these. The trickiest word here is not. Whenever you see it, remember that it can be either not (the negative word that means not) or not (the verb ne wot, which means dont know or doesnt know).
2. impersonal verbs An impersonal verb in PDE has a subject it that is just a filler; it doesnt refer to anything. It is raining. It seems to me . . . . There are more impersonal verbs in ME than in PDE. When they occur, the it is usually omitted, and the object typically comes before the verb, without a to. thinken = to seem liken = to please liste = to please me thinketh or me thenketh = it seems to me; me thoughte = it seemed to me him liketh = it pleases him hire list = it pleases her
Sometimes the impersonal verb in ME has to be translated with a personal verb in PDE: hire mette = she dreamed (it dreamed to her) us nedeth = we need (it needs to us) us lakketh noght (T&C 3.531) = we lack nothing (it lacks nothing to us) it remembreth me = I remember (it remembers to me)
3. two unfamiliar auxiliaries doo(n) can be used as an auxiliary before an infinitive to mean cause or make: do hit goon (BD 145) = make it go to don by force a wyght to don folye (PF 219) = to cause by force a creature to do folly to do me lyve or sterve (PF 420) = to make me live or die ginne(n) (past tense gan, gonne(n)) can be used to mean begin, but it can also be used as a nearly meaningless auxiliary, rather like PDE do: hit gan me so delite (PF 27) = it did so delight me or it so delighted me [they] gonne hire to hem calle (PF 577) = [they] did call her to them or they called her to them Ech of hem gan other in wynges take (PF 670) = each of them did take another in [his] wings or each of them took another in [his] wings
4. an unfamiliar contraction When thow or thou occurs after the verb (which usually happens in questions), it often gets elided and appears as a -tow or -tou suffix: wostow = wost thou (do you know?) thinkestow = thinkest thow (do you think?) hastow = hast thou ( do you have?) wiltou = wilt thou (will you?) artow = art thou (are you?)
Chaucers pronouns
Here are the personal pronouns in ME with their PDE equivalents. The forms that you need to concentrate on and memorize are in bold: ME I, y, ich me my, myn(e) PDE I me my
In addition to the different ways of spelling I, there are two forms of the possessive in ME. The difference between them is like the difference between a and an in PDE: my is used before consonants and myn before vowels (and also before h). Thus you find expressions such as myn eyen and myn herte. 2nd person singular subject object possessive thow, thou the, thee thy, thyn(e) (thou) (thee) (thy)
These forms dont really exist in English anymore, but you have seen them in older texts, for instance in Shakespeare. In ME they were used exclusively in the singular and usually indicated intimacy or informality. (Ye and yow were used in the singular in more formal situations; see below.) The difference between thy and thyn is like the difference between my and myn. 3rd person singular Both ME and PDE have different forms for the masculine, feminine, and neuter: masc subj obj poss he him his fem she hir(e), her(e) hir(e), her(e) neut it, hit it, hit his masc he him his fem she her her neut it it its
The biggest difference here is the use of his where in PDE we use its. Note also that hir(e) and her(e) are identical to the ME words for their (on the next page). 1st person plural subject object possessive subject object possessive we us our(e) ye yow, you your(e) we us our you you your
Ye and yow were used in all situations for the 2nd person plural. They were also used in the singular to indicate respect or formality, a significance that they no longer have since we no longer use thou. Note also that Chaucer uses ye as the subject form and you as the object form, another distinction that we have lost.
The difference is like the difference between I and me or between we and us. 3rd person plural subject object possesive they hem hir(e), her(e) they them their
Note that Chaucers forms for the object and possessive pronouns began with h, not th. Note also that the possessive form (the word for their) was identical to the objective and possessive forms in the 3rd person singular feminine (the word for her).
Reflexive pronouns. Occasionally you will find a form like himself (e.g. in PF 73, Know thyself first immortal, or 339-40: that payneth himself). But more often Chaucer didnt use the -self form and just used the regular personal pronoun instead. So when the object refers to the same person as the subject, you have to add the -self in you translation: I gan me for to dresse (PF 88) = I did direct myself And but I bere me (PF 459) = And unless I bear myself som besyede hem (PF 192) = some busied themselves
Chaucers nouns
Forget the definition of a noun that you learned in elementary school (a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing . . .). Its much easier than that. A noun is simply a word that can be made into a plural or a possessive. In PDE we usually do this by adding an -s or an s: PDE singular plural possessive apple book apples books apples books
Chaucers regular nouns are very much like ours, except (1) he didnt use an apostrophe for the possessive; and (2) with short words ending in a consonant, the ending was usually -es rather than just -s, and sometimes the consonant doubled: ME singular plural possessive tree trees trees arwe arwes arwes foul foules foules bok bokes kynnes bokes kynnes kyn
We also have a certain number of irregular nouns in PDE. One type forms the plural by changing the vowel instead of adding an -s; another type has no change of form in the plural: PDE singular plural possessive man men mans tooth teeth tooths deer sheep deer sheep deers sheeps
All these nouns were also irregular in ME. In addition, Chaucer had a few more nouns that had no change of form in the plural: ME singular plural possessive man tooth deer sheep hors thing men teeth deer sheep hors thing or thinges mannes toothes deeres sheepes horses thinges
A third type of irregular noun in PDE adds an -en for the plural: ox/oxen, child/children, and brother/brothers or brethren. Chaucer had all these, plus a few more, some of which could have either an -en or -(e)s plural ending: ME singular plural (e)ye eyen doghter doghtren or doghtres doghtres too (= PDE toe) toon or toos toos
possessive
eyes
2. the short vowels The short vowels in ME were pretty much the same as in PDE except that Chaucers language did not have the vowel sound in PDE pat.
vowel sound typical ME spelling pronounced as in: ME examples
a e i, y o u
whan, that, and, hath, ram, half, smale, al tendre, ferne, ende, hem, wenden in, swich, which, nyght,blisful, bifil, with of, holt, croppes, strondes, longen, on, for ful, but yonge, sone, yronne, sondry, come, love
o before v, m, or n
Most of the long vowels of PDE are very different from those of ME, and indeed from almost every other language in the world, because of a change that occurred in the century after Chaucers death that we refer to as the Great Vowel Shift. To find modern words to illustrate Chaucers sounds we sometimes turn to other languages. Modern Hawaiian will often do. To complicate matters a bit, however, there were two different long es in ME and two different long os. (Well talk about how you tell them apart later.)
vowel sound typical ME spelling pronounced as in: ME examples
long a
a, aa, a + e
Makaha father a longer short e Pele egg Piikoi machine bought pono uku soup few or Fr. lune
long open e
e, ee, e + e
long close e
e, ee, e + e
long i
i, y, i + e, y + e
o, oo o, oo ou, ow
open, so, goon, hooly, o, brode, woot to, roote, who, moote, good, blood flour, cours, foweles, kowthe, devout
u, eu, ew
vertu, muwe
4. unstressed final -e The unstressed e in final syllables (whether it was followed by a consonant or not) was pronounced like the lazy, neutral uh sound in the word but.
ME spelling. You can usually tell them apart on the basis of the PDE spelling, however, for the words with ME long open e are now usually spelled with ea, and the words with ME long close e are now spelled with either a double e or e plus a final silent e. Look at the ME words given as examples on the previous handout, and compare PDE breath, heath, season, ready, and speak with sweet, sleep, seek, and cheer. 3. telling apart the two different long os Again the ME spelling wont help. The PDE spelling wont either. But the PDE pronunciation will. The words that were pronounced with a long open o in ME (the awe sound) are usually pronounced with the long closed o sound (oh) in PDE, and the words that had long close o in ME are usually pronounced, with a long u, a short u, or an uh sound in PDE. Compare these words by saying them out loud: ME long open o: open, so, goon, hooly ME long close o: to, roote, who, good, blood PDE: open, so, go, holy PDE: to, root, who, good, blood
Try to remember: if you are pronouncing an ME word with a long o the same way that it is pronounced in PDE, you are almost certainly wrong. 4. ME diphthongs In addition to the simple vowels, ME had some diphthongs, that is, some combinations of two vowel sounds in one syllable. These are the most common ones:
spelling sound examples
ah + oo (ow) the vowel in cat + ee the sound in few eh + short u the sound in boy aw + short u
newe, knewe lewed, fewe boye, assoille growen, soule, thoght, foughte
Finally, how to do tell if an ou or ow represents a long u or this diphthong? The words that had long u in ME are generally pronounced with the ow sound in PDE; the ME words that had the diphthong are not: long u the diphthong how, hous, now, fowles soule, foughte
Chaucers metrics
The Book of the Duchess is written in a line with four stresses: I have gret wonder, be this lyght, How that I lyve, for day ne nyght I may nat slepe wel nygh noght; . . . (BD 1-3) The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, and most of The Canterbury Tales are written in a line of five stresses: Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; . . . (GP 1-4) When you read this out loud, you want to pay attention to the rhythm, but that does not mean that you have to sound like a metronome: some lines will be read more slowly or more quickly than others; some will require a pause to mark the punctuation. Nor are you required to give all of the stressed syllables the same amount of stress. The words that are more important will receive a heavier stress, the words that are less important (like the with in GP 1 or the to in GP 2) will be stressed more lightly, just as in ordinary speech. In the five-stress line, in fact, you will usually find that one of the stressed syllables is stressed much more lightly than the other four. You usually wont have any trouble deciding where the stresses go because in this respect the language hasnt changed that much. There were some words in ME, however, in which the accent fell on a different syllable from PDE. Words borrowed recently from French, for instance, could keep the accent on the last syllable, as in French, rather than putting it on the first syllable, the more normal English pattern. When this happened, you can often use the metrics of the line to guide you. In the second passage above, for instance, both licour and vertu are stressed on the second syllable. If you try to read those lines with the accent on the first syllable of these words, you will see how awkward they sound. The normal pattern is for the stressed syllables to alternate with unstressed syllables. The last line is a good example: it consists of ten syllables in five pairs, each pair consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Of which tu gen is flour.
Sometimes the initial unstressed syllable is missing, however, as in the first line of that passage: Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The result could be a line of only nine syllables. This one happens to have ten, however, because it has an extra unstressed syllable at the end, the -e on soote. Final unstressed syllables at the end of a line are not that uncommon. The evidence that the -e at the end of the line was actually pronounced (a very light uh sound) is summarized in your textbook on pp. xliii-xliv. When there was an unstressed syllable both at the beginning of the line and at the end, the line could consist
of eleven syllables. When a final -e occurs in the middle of a line, the general rule is that it is pronounced if it comes before a consonant but it is not pronounced if it comes before a vowel. Thus the -e in slepe is pronounced because it comes before a consonant: I may nat slepe wel nygh noght but the es in droghte and veyne are not because they come before vowels: The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Note that the -e in slepe is needed to provide a suitable number of syllables and the es in droghte and veyne are not. There will be exceptions to this rule, however. It would sound quite odd, for instance, to pronounce the -e on lyve, so it is better to leave it out: How that I lyve, for day ne nyght In cases like this, you can use your own judgment on what sounds most musical and most natural. Going back to the lines about the droghte of March, however, note that an -ed ending (in perced and bathed) is almost always a separate syllable in Chaucers English, even though it is not pronounced as a separate syllable in PDE. There is room for some variation in the middle of the line. Sometimes, for instance, an expected unstressed syllable is missing. Heres an example: Hire gretteste ooth was but by Seinte Loy On the other hand, it sometimes happens that you get two unstressed syllables in a row, as in the second line of our first example: How that I lyve, for day ne nyght Variations like this can be used for emphasis or merely to create a pleasing naturalness in the verse by avoiding too great a regularity Your goal is to produce a recitation that is both metrical and natural. The most important aspect of a metrical reading is finding the right number of stressed syllables in each line. If you do, the unstressed syllables, which is where most of the variations occur, will generally fall into place by themselves. The best way to produce a natural reading is to pay attention to the meaning: let the meaning determine how much stress to give to the stressed syllables; try to place the emphasis on the most important words; find the tone that is most appropriate to the meaning; and allow your recitation to express what the passage is trying to say.