Wiktionary:About Middle English

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Main category: Middle English language

Middle English was the form of English spoken in England and Lowland Scotland between 1150 and 1500 C.E.. The aim of this page is to standardise the layout of Middle English entries and explain the rationale behind that standardisation.

Orthography

Diacritics

Although diacritics usually appeared in many Middle English dictionaries to indicate the length and stress of vowel sounds, they were not widely used in Middle English writing to distinguish between short and long vowels. Such marks are modern additions used in dictionaries and textbooks – that is why some editors use macrons (¯), while others use acute accents (´), circumflexes (ˆ), overdots (˙), and/or breves (˘). Consequently, Middle English entries here should be without diacritical marks in the page title. Within the entry itself, optional marks can be used with the word as given under the part-of-speech heading. The custom here is to forgo using diacritics for Middle English altogether. Otherwise, in links, these marks can be piped in, e.g. [[gliden|glīden]].

Th, Þ, Ð and Y

In early Middle English, as in Old English, the letters thorn (þ) and eth (ð) were largely interchangeable: the use of one over the other being more a matter of preference than of orthography. Oftentimes it was customary to use þ at the beginning and medial positions of a word, and ð at the end. By the end of the Early Middle English period, þ began to replace ð in all positions; it is the form most often seen in Middle English dictionaries. The combination th was also in use, however, in foreign words (often borrowed from Latin or Greek), it often represented /t/. In later Middle English, the form of thorn coalesced with that of y; this can still be seen in archaic spellings such as Ye Olde Schoppe (= The Olde Schoppe). For consistency, entries here are usually given with th (except in certain function words; see below). There is no reason why entries using þ, ð and y should not exist as well; there is a lot of work waiting for someone if they want to start creating triplicate entries with thorns, eths and y's.

Ȝ

As in the case with þ and ð, Middle English yogh (ȝ) has counterparts in consonantal y (/j/), gh (velar fricatives /ɣ/ and /x/), and w. During the late Middle English period, the use of yogh increasingly fell away; where it was still in use, its form tended to coalesce with that of z. Again, for the sake of ease, entries here are usually given with y, gh and w, but there is no reason why entries using ȝ should not exist.

Æ

As with yogh, ash (æ) was used very early in the Middle English period. Words using æ usually have later counterparts with a or e.

I/J and U/V

During the Middle English period, i/j and u/v were considered variants of the same letter; the choice between them often depended on the surrounding letter, if they were even distinguished at all. At Wiktionary, the convention is to employ i and u for the vowel sounds, while using j and v for the consonant sounds, even if that is at variance with the forms which are actually found in the original text; i.e. love, not loue (an alternate-form entry for the original manuscript form can be created using {{alternative typography of}}). There are exceptions; for instance, the digraph ij for /iː/ is never written as ii at Wiktionary, so lijf is preferred over liif.

Long S (ſ) etc.

ſ (long s), r rotunda, and similar letter variants should be substituted with s, r, etc. in the names of entries, as they lack any phonetic significance and are usually absent from modern editions of Middle English texts. However, it is acceptable to include them in quotes.

Variation

Periodisation

Forms, terms or senses specific to a period can be placed in one of the following categories:

• Early Middle English: the language from 1150-1300; there is a subcategory for terms and forms exclusively found in the Ormulum.
• Late Middle English: the language from 1400-1500.

Anything from before 1150 or after 1500 is not considered Middle English on Wiktionary.

Dialects

Middle English is conventionally divided into five major dialectal groups; categories exist for forms, terms, and senses specific to them:

• East Midland Middle English (Category:East Midland Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in the East Midlands.
• Kentish Middle English (Category:Kentish Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.
• Northern Middle English (Category:Northern Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in Northern England; probably the most distinct dialectal grouping.
• Southwestern Middle English (Category:Southern Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in the remainder of southern England.
• West Midland Middle English (Category:West Midland Middle English): the variety of Middle English spoken in the West Midlands.

Additionally, categories exist for more peripheral varieties:

• Category:Cornish Middle English: for terms, forms and senses specific to Middle English spoken in Cornwall.
• Category:East Anglian Middle English: for terms, forms and senses specific to Middle English spoken in East Anglia.
• Category:Early Scots: for terms, forms and senses specific to Early Scots, the variety of Middle English spoken in Scotland and the ancestor of modern Scots.

East Midland Middle English is the dialect typically used for main entries at Wiktionary.

Alternative forms

To avoid duplication of content, information about a word (pronunciation, meanings, declension) should be centralised at one entry (lemma); alternate forms should be connected to it with a template like {{alternative form of}}. While some Middle English words have a single form that clearly predominates, oftentimes it is not clear what form should be the primary form. There are no hard and fast rules; instead, a decision must be made based on the following criteria (in rough order of priority):

• Convention: Ideally, words should use th, gh, y rather than þ, ð and ȝ. Infinitives should end with -en rather than -e, and forms like hevy are preferred to heuy.
• Consistency: Spellings should match those of related words as closely as possible; suffixes and prefixes should ideally only be spelled in one way.
• Frequency: common spellings should be prioritised over rare ones. The more common spelling should be chosen if multiple spellings are otherwise equally suitable.
• Standardisation: the spellings used should be typical of London Middle English of the late 1300s and the early 1400s; i.e. the forms that Chaucer would use.

Note that some sources (such as the MED) tend to replace vocalic y with i; this should be avoided unless the form with i is the form which best fulfills the above criteria. Exceptionally, pronouns, conjunctions, and certain prepositions are given with þ rather than th, as for these words, forms with þ are vastly more common in actual usage.

Pronunciation

See also: Appendix:Middle English pronunciation

Guidelines for adding IPA to Middle English words are located at Appendix:Middle English pronunciation; it may also useful to look at Middle English entries that already have IPA may be so one can acquire familiarity with the conventions used. The orthographic form of a word often does not suffice for determining the pronunciation of a word, so one must have recourse to Old English, (modern) English, and a word's alternative forms.

Audios are not given for Middle English, due to it being a dead language.

The noun

Templates

{{enm-noun}} is the headword-line template for Middle English nouns; because of its insufficiency, constructing a custom headword line with {{head}} may sometimes be preferable. There is a declension template ({{enm-decl-noun}}), but it is rarely needed, due to the breakdown of the declensional system in Middle English.

Grammatical gender

The normal progression of Middle English was toward simplification. This was especially true for the grammatical gender of nouns. Although grammatical gender continued for some time into the Middle English period, surviving longest in Southern dialects, entries here should be given without reference to grammatical gender. This helps in cases where there are conflicting genders for the same word, and for words where the gender is not precisely known.

Noun declension

During the Middle English period, we see the coalescence of the majority of Old English noun classes into just two: a strong class with plurals in -(e)s and weak class with plurals in -(e)n. Additionally, Middle English retains a small number of irregular plurals: i-mutation plurals (mous, mice), plurals in -ere (child, childere), static plurals (swine, swine) and double plurals (lamb, lambren).

Strong declension

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	ston	stones
accusative	ston	stones
genitive	stones	stone
dative	stone	stonen

Weak declension

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	name	namen
accusative	name	namen
genitive	namen	namene
dative	name(n)	namen

In the latter part of the Middle English period, the paradigm above degrades further, resulting in a mere dialectal preference of one plural form over the other, with -s plurals predominating in the North and Midlands, and -n plurals in the South. We also see the complete abandonment of the case system leading to a situation quite similar to what we have in Modern English today.

The verb

See also: Appendix:Middle English verbs

The headword form of a verb should be the infinitive (even if no infinitive is attested for that verb). Because the conjugation of Middle English verbs is highly variable, it is wise to consult a dictionary rather than blindly inserting templates. Extrapolating from earlier or later forms of the language is also not recommended.

Templates

The headword-line template used for Middle English verbs is {{enm-verb}}; unless the verb is totally regular, it must be manually filled out with the requisite forms.

Because of the complexity of Middle English conjugation, it is conventional to use a conjugation template on verb entries. There are three Middle English conjugation templates:

• {{enm-conj-wk}}: for weak verbs (verbs with a past in -d- or -t-). Most Middle English verbs are weak.
• {{enm-conj-st}}: for strong verbs (verbs that form their past by modifying their stem vowel)
• {{enm-conj-irr}}: for irregular and preterite-present verbs.

The template {{enm-conj}} should not be used, as it is deprecated.

Unlike with Old English, the convention for Middle English is to leave alternative forms without templates (so quaken should have a conjugation template, but quakiȝen should not). Instead, alternate forms of non-lemma forms should ideally be linked from the page of each verbal non-lemma form; as many lemmas still await creation, this is but a distant ideal.

Infinitives

The standard verbal infinitive marker used for the Middle English verb is -en (e.g. singen), or -n for verbs with monosyllablic infinitives (e.g. don). Verb entries should be lemmatised at the infinitive even if the infinitive is not attested for that verb. Similarly, verb lemmas should end in -en or -n even if that specific form of the infinitive is not attested, unless it is clear that the infinitive wouldn't have taken that form (e.g. if the verb is only found in Northern Middle English, where the -n was dropped at an early stage).

Present participles

Several endings were utilised to mark the present participles of verbs; they varied according to location and date. The most common were -ende (Midlands), -and (Northern), and -inde (Southern). These later developed into -inge/-ynge in the Midlands and South, giving rise to our Modern English present participle in -ing (Northern -and survives in altered form in a few words like blatant, flippant, and wanion). Consequently, -ynge is the default used by the {{enm-verb|stem=}} template.

Typesetting

Many browsers’ default fonts render Middle English diacritics and other special characters poorly. {{lang}} tags text as Middle English, and applies script formatting to aid with this. It can be as a wrapper around Middle English text:

#* 1340, Dan Michel, ''Ayenbyte of Inwit'':
#*: {{lang|enm|Nou ich wille þet ye ywite hou hit is ywent}}
#*: {{lang|enm|þet þis boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.}}
#*: {{lang|enm|Þis boc is ymad vor lewede men}}
#*: {{lang|enm|Vor vader and vor moder and vor oþer ken}}
#*: {{lang|enm|ham vor to berȝe vram alle manyere zen}}
#*: {{lang|enm|þet ine hare inwytte ne bleve no voul wen.}}
#*: {{lang|enm|'Huo ase god' in his name yzed,}}
#*: {{lang|enm|Þet þis boc made god him yeve þet bread,}}
#*: {{lang|enm|Of angles of hevene, and þerto his red,}}
#*: {{lang|enm|And ondervonge his zaule huanne þet he is dyad. Amen.}}
#*:: Now I will have you know how it has come about,
#*:: That this book is written in the English of Kent,
#*:: This book is made for laymen,
#*:: For father and for mother and for other kin,
#*:: To save them from all manner of sin,
#*:: So that in their consciences would remain no foul blemish,
#*:: 'Who like God' in His name said,
#*:: That this book made God give him that bread,
#*:: By angels of heaven, and also his council,
#*:: And to receive his soul up once he has died. Amen 

1. • 1340, Dan Michel, Ayenbyte of Inwit:

     Nou ich wille þet ye ywite hou hit is ywent

     þet þis boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.

     Þis boc is ymad vor lewede men

     Vor vader and vor moder and vor oþer ken

     ham vor to berȝe vram alle manyere zen

     þet ine hare inwytte ne bleve no voul wen.

     'Huo ase god' in his name yzed,

     Þet þis boc made god him yeve þet bread,

     Of angles of hevene, and þerto his red,

     And ondervonge his zaule huanne þet he is dyad. Amen.

     Now I will have you know how it has come about,

     That this book is written in the English of Kent,

     This book is made for laymen,

     For father and for mother and for other kin,

     To save them from all manner of sin,

     So that in their consciences would remain no foul blemish,

     'Who like God' in His name said,

     That this book made God give him that bread,

     By angels of heaven, and also his council,

     And to receive his soul up once he has died. Amen

Any template that requires a language code will apply the appropriate formatting to the text given to it automatically. This includes basic and widely-used templates like {{l}}, {{m}}, {{t}}, {{head}} and so on.

{{m|enm|theode}}

theode

* Middle English: {{t|enm|forbusne}}

• Middle English: forbusne

See also

• Wiktionary:About Old English
• Wiktionary:English entry guidelines

External links

• Middle English Dictionary (Wikipedia article)