Wiktionary talk:About Middle English

U, V, I, J

The version of The Canterbury Tales I'm currently reading doesn't use serven, it uses seruen. However I'd argue that this is a typographical difference, not a spelling difference. Simply the u and v appear to be the same, much like the Latin o, the Greek ο and the Cyrillic о. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:27, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I would agree. At this time there was no clear distinction between u and v/i and j, and we can see either in place of the other. Leasnam 00:14, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

RFC discussion: August 2010

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Nonstandard Middle English verbs

Should end in -en, right, should be accounten, not "to account". Mglovesfun (talk) 17:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Adding swyfe, there may be more. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:27, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

There seem to be quite a few of these, I won't list them all here but withing looks hard to fix, unless it's easily citable as a verb, it'd want to delete it as unattestable and/or wrong. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Verb conjugations

Is there any plan to give verb conjugations for Middle English verbs? I feel this could be useful. JimKillock (talk) 13:59, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. Leasnam (talk) 16:16, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

@JimKillock: I've added a section for the Verb, as well as for the Noun. Feel free to edit or add anything as you deem necessary. Leasnam (talk) 19:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you @Leasnam: that is tremendously helpful. I am no expert at all, I was looking at this page for an overview so I could compare ME with German and Latin both of which I am studying currently. If I were to suggest one other topic, it would be a quick overview of personal pronouns. That said, the page is not meant to be a guide to the whole language but to how it is handled within Wiktionary so no problem if that seems like overkill. JimKillock (talk) 10:06, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree, this page is designed to help those interested in adding ME content to Wiktionary, and should be a guideline of how to do so. I can add a brief section for the personal pronouns. I also plan to add something about the development of the future tense construction as well. Leasnam (talk) 14:55, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Status of inflected infinitives

Thanks for adding stuff to this page, @Leasnam. However, I noticed one problem with your ME verbal inflection; the inflected infinitive wasn't really used for most of the ME period; by 1200 it had almost died out (though the infinitive should have an optional (to) before it). That's why it isn't featured in the ME conjugation template. Is it alright if I go ahead and remove it from the ME verbal inflection table on this page? --Hazarasp (talk) 06:38, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Let's leave it. The inflected infinitive is still distinct at the beginning of the Middle English period (1175, Cristes ansyne is to lufiȝenne ofer alle oðre) and surfaces periodically as -ene (1385, Emelye..fairer was to sene Than is the lilie; a1450, To opene my mouþ y ne dar ne may.). This is the reason why it's shown in parentheses as an alternative to -en. It should be added to the Middle English template, if only as -en even though it's identical with that of the bare infinitive. Leasnam (talk) 15:16, 31 October 2018 (UTC)