The Spoken Word challenges you on language.
People in England during the Middle Ages spoke what is known as (unsurprisingly) Middle English. It had developed from Old English (which closely resembled German) with the addition of French words brought in by the Norman invaders. By Richard III's time the language resembled Modern English much more than it did Old English and it is (mostly) understandable today.
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Before the 15th century official documents were written in either Latin or French. They began to be written in English and the Chanceries, where they were made, lent their name to the standard English used to write them
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At the time the East Midlands was the most populated and the wealthiest area of England. It also contained the scholastic cities of Oxford and Cambridge, which both influenced written English
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Caxton printed the first book in English, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, which he translated himself. He also published a further 86 titles. Caxton was a friend of Richard III's sister, Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy
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In Middle English vowels were pronounced differently than today.
The letter 'A' was pronounced as in 'Father,' The letter 'E' as in 'Fete,' The letter 'I' as in 'Receipt,' The letter 'O' as in 'To,' And the letter 'U' as in 'Doubt.' This accounts for much of the difference in spelling from Modern English. The word 'blood' was mostly spelt 'blud' and pronounced 'blowd' |
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Spelling of words was at the discretion of the writer and varied so much that the same word was often found spelt differently on the same page!
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Many Viking words entered the language after their invasions prior to the 12th century. Irish, Welsh and Dutch words also entered English due to trade and migration, but in much smaller numbers than French, Latin and Norse
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Although the words are first found written by Chaucer, they were probably already in common use and not invented by him. Some examples are; box, scissors, princess, funeral, universe and laxative
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The Old English name 'attercop' was still in use at the time, alongside 'spither'. Over the years 'spither' became 'spider' and 'attercop' was lost. Its influence can still be seen though, in the modern word 'cobweb,' which is derived from, 'copweb'
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Other words which have changed their meaning are 'brave' which meant 'braggard', 'sophisticated' which meant 'unnatural' and 'silly' which meant 'lucky'
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J was represented by a capital I and U was shown as a V. Other letters, which we do not use today were part of their alphabet, for example 'thorn', which resembled a letter P and 'eth' which resembled a letter D, were both used instead of 'th'
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