what are some differences between old english and middle english?

Answer 1

since english evolves continually & it's hard to find neat dividing lines, & clear differences. there are new words enters d language, words change in meaning, old words disappear & sometimes re-emerge. so, there will be a flow.
however, most people agree that Old English gradually became Middle English from d Norman Conquest (1066) to about 1200. William d Conqueror plugged in a lot of his French-speaking people into positions of power, & words of French origin entered d vocabulary of d aristocracy. meantime, d peasants continued speaking Anglo-Saxon. for this explains why (for example) there's often a separation in d names of foods & d animals they came from ..."cow" comes from d Middle English cou, as spoken by d people who tend d cows, but "beef" is from d French, as spoken by d well-fed upper classes dining on d stuff.

Answer 2

It's not really difficult to read Middle English (Chaucer) but Old English (Beowulf) is practically a foreign language.

In 1066, William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings. After that, French was the language of the ruling class of England. Middle English reflects this. A great influx of French words (and French pronunciation) influenced the development of Old English into Middle English.

Answer 3

Beowolf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are in old English.

The Canterbury Tales hit Middle English.

English became an official language in the late seventeenth century. That's the point where spellings were firmly decided upon, and definitions created.

Have fun. To note the real differences all you need to do is read a page of each...you'll figure it out quickly from there. My father can still recite Beowulf....it's so creepy sounding but fascinating.

Answer 4

Look at a page of untranslated Chaucer and a page of Shakespeare. Then look at the Chaucer translations, and all the differences will jump out at you. Lots of inflections changed between the two; lots of differences in spelling. The old Welsh and Norman verbiage drops away in favor of a more streamlined mode of speech. Most profound difference. The ending letter 'e' was often sounded in Old English as soft 'u'; and became silent in Middle English. EG: Aprille becomes April; Shoote becomes comes. B.

Answer 5

properly, right here is one rather basic generalization approximately previous/middle/cutting-edge English sentence shape: In previous English, words tended to have inflectional endings that defined their function interior the sentence. working example, a noun could have a distinctive ending if it replaced into the difficulty or merchandise of a sentence, if replaced into possessive, and so on. The be conscious order in an previous English sentence wasn't as mandatory to be certain what the sentence meant because it rather is now. In middle English, lots of those endings have been lost, and the function a be conscious performed interior the sentence replaced into desperate with the help of be conscious order, like it rather is straight away. The be conscious order in middle English is fantastically comparable in maximum circumstances to well known English. (There are variations of direction, yet often a center English sentence is nearly a well known English sentence.) previous English additionally had grammatical aspects that middle and cutting-edge English lost, consisting of a twin individual (now we purely have singular and plural), stable/vulnerable adjectives, and a distinction between masculine and female (like French nevertheless has).