Jump to content
Main menu
Main menu
move to sidebar
hide
Navigation
Main page
Recent changes
Random page
Help about MediaWiki
Special pages
Niidae Wiki
Search
Search
Appearance
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Create account
Log in
Pages for logged out editors
learn more
Contributions
Talk
Editing
The Canterbury Tales
(section)
Page
Discussion
English
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Tools
move to sidebar
hide
Actions
Read
Edit
View history
General
What links here
Related changes
Page information
Appearance
move to sidebar
hide
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Language== {{Listen | filename = Enm-Merchant Prologue.ogg | type = speech | title = The Merchant's Prologue | description = Recording in reconstructed Middle English pronunciation | pos = right }} Chaucer mainly wrote in a London dialect of late [[Middle English]], which has clear differences from Modern English. From philological research, some facts are known about the pronunciation of English during the time of Chaucer. Chaucer pronounced ''-e'' at the end of many words, so that ''care'' (except when followed by a vowel sound) was {{IPA|enm|ˈkaːrə|}}, not {{IPAc-en|k|ɛər}} as in Modern English. Other nowadays silent letters were also pronounced, so that the word ''knight'' was {{IPA|[kniçt]}}, with both the ''k'' and the ''gh'' pronounced, not {{IPAc-en|n|aɪ|t}}. In some cases, vowel letters in Middle English were pronounced very differently from Modern English, because the [[Great Vowel Shift]] had not yet happened. For instance, the long ''e'' in ''wepyng'' "weeping" was pronounced as {{IPA|enm|eː|}}, as in modern German or Italian, not as {{IPAc-en|iː}}. Below is an [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] transcription of the opening lines of ''The Merchant's Prologue'': {{clear|right}} <div class="notice spoilerbox"><div class="toccolours spoilercontents"> {{col-begin}} {{col-3}} :{{lang|enm|'Wepyng and waylyng, care and oother sorwe}} :{{lang|enm|I knowe ynogh, on even and a-morwe,'}} :{{lang|enm|Quod the Marchant, 'and so doon oother mo}} :{{lang|enm|That wedded been.'}}<ref>Text from ''The Riverside Chaucer'', ed. by Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]], 1987), p. 153.</ref> {{col-3}} :{{IPA|ˈweːpiŋɡ and ˈwailiŋɡ ‖ ˈkaːr‿and ˈoːðər ˈsɔrwə ‖}} :{{IPA|iː ˈknɔu iˈnoːx ‖ ɔn ˈɛːvən and aˈmɔrwə ‖}} :{{IPA|ˈkwɔd ðə ˈmartʃant ‖ and ˈsɔː ˈdoːn ˈoːðər ˈmɔː ‖}} :{{IPA|ðat ˈwɛddəd ˈbeːn ‖}}<ref>Based on the information in Norman Davies, "Language and Versification", in ''The Riverside Chaucer'', ed. by Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. xxv–xli.</ref> {{col-3}} :'Weeping and wailing, care and other sorrow :I know enough, in the evening and in the morning,' :quoth the Merchant, 'and so do many others :who have been married.' {{col-end}} </div></div> No manuscript exists in Chaucer's own hand; all extant copies were made by scribes. Because the final ''-e'' sound was lost soon after Chaucer's time, scribes did not accurately copy it, and this gave scholars the impression that Chaucer himself was inconsistent in using it.<ref>e.g. Ian Robinson, ''Chaucer's Prosody: A Study of the Middle English Verse Tradition'' (London: [[Cambridge University Press]], 1971).</ref> It has now been established, however, that ''-e'' was an important part of Chaucer's grammar, and helped to distinguish singular adjectives from plural and subjunctive verbs from indicative.<ref>See M. L. Samuels, "Chaucerian Final '-e{{'"}}, ''Notes and Queries'', 19 (1972), 445–48, and D. Burnley, "Inflection in Chaucer's Adjectives", ''Neuphilologische Mitteilungen'', 83 (1982), 169–77.</ref>
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to Niidae Wiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Encyclopedia:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)
Search
Search
Editing
The Canterbury Tales
(section)
Add topic