Midland. Thei knelen alle, and with o vois The King thei thonken of this chois. (Gower, A.D. 1393.) We hauen shep, and we hauen swin. (Havelok the Dane, before 1300.)

Northern. Tharfor maysters soom tyme uses the wand that has childer to lere under thair hand. (Hampole, 1340.)

Thir twa heuens ay obout-rynnes

Both day and nyght, and neuer blynnes.

(Ib.)

MODERN ENGLISH HAS SPRUNG FROM THE EASTMIDLAND DIALECT.

50. The Midland dialect between the Thames and the Humber covered a very large area and had various local varieties.

The most important of these was the East-Midland spoken in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, which had many words and grammatical forms in common with the Northern dialects.

As early as the beginning of the thirteenth century it had thrown off most of the older inflexions (preserved by the Southern dialects) and was almost as flexionless as our own. It had an extensive literature and numbered among its writers, Ormin, Robert of Brunne, Wicliffe, Gower and Chaucer. Of all these, Chaucer was the author whose works were most popular and widely diffused. Successive writers, as Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Heywood, took him for their model, and thus his influence did not die out till a great change caused by the revival of learning, and

other important circumstances in the reigns of the Tudors had brought about a new era in the language and literature.

It was Chaucer's influence then that caused the East Midland speech to supersede the other dialects and to assume the position of the standard literary English, from which has come in a direct line with but few flexional changes the language spoken and written by educated Englishmen in all parts of the British Empire.

50a. Periods of the English Language.A language is said to be dead when it is no longer spoken. Such a language cannot be altered; but a living language is always undergoing some change or other. We do not always take note of it, because it is so very gradual; but when we compare the writers of one period with those of another, we have plain evidence of the fact. The farther we go back in this comparison the greater the changes appear, and our language in its earliest period looks very much like a foreign tongue.

In referring to the earlier periods or stages of growth through which our language has passed, we shall distinguish the following divisions :

(1) Old English (A.D. 450-1100). The language of this period is inflexional. Its vocabulary contains few or no foreign elements. Its poetry is alliterative. To this period belong the writings of Cadmon, Alfred, and Elfric.

(2) Early English (A.D. 1100-1250). - The language in this period shows many changes both in orthography and grammar. In the first part of this

D

period the modifications were chiefly orthographical, but they affected the endings of words, and thus led the way to the grammatical changes which took place in the latter part of the thirteenth century.

To the earlier part of this period belong the following works: the Brut, written by Layamon; the Ormulum, by Ormin; the Ancren Riwle, &c. To the latter half belong the Story of Genesis and Exodus, the Owl and Nightingale, &c.

(3) Middle English (A.D. 1250-1485).—Most of the older inflexions of nouns and adjectives have now disappeared. The verbal inflexions are much altered, and many strong verbs have been replaced by weak ones. To the first half of this period belong a Metrical Chronicle, and Lives of Saints, attributed to Robert of Gloucester; Langtoft's Metrical Chronicle, translated by Robert of Brunne, and the Handlyng Synne, by the same writer; the Pricke of Conscience, by Hampole; the Ayenbite of Inwyt, by Dan Michel of Northgate, Kent. To the second half belong the works of Wicliffe, William Langley (or Langland), Gower, and Chaucer, &c.

(4) Modern English, from A.D. 1485 to the present time. We might subdivide this period into two parts, calling the language in the earlier period from 1485 to 1600 Tudor English.

CHAPTER IV.

Sounds and Letters.

(1) LETTERS.

51. Letters are conventional signs employed to represent sounds. They have grown out of the old pictorial mode of writing, and were at first abbreviated pictures.1

In the oldest alphabets, a letter does not represent an indivisible sound (consonant or vowel), but a syllable (consonant and vowel).

After a time the consonants were looked upon as the most important part, and consequently they alone were written, or written in full, while the vowel was either omitted or represented by some less conspicuous symbol.

Such was the character of the old Phoenician alphabet, from which have come the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Greek alphabets.

The Latin alphabet, derived from one of the older forms of the Greek, is the parent of our Own symbols.

I Cp. the names of the letters in Hebrew and Greek, b (house), Beta: g = gimel (camel), Gamma; d Delta.

beth

daleth (door),

I

=

The oldest English alphabet consisted of twentyfour letters, all except three being Roman characters : Þ, (thorn = th); and p (wên w), are Runic letters; Đ, is merely a crossed d used instead of the thorn. j is another form of i, and v of u. w is a doubling of u.

(2) SOUNDS.

52. The spoken alphabet is composed of sounds produced by the articulating organs (or organs of speech), throat, tongue, palate, lips, &c., which serve to modify the breath as it issues from the larynx.

There are two great divisions of Sounds :

Vowels and Consonants.

The Vowels are the open sounds of a language. In a vowel sound the emission of the breath is modified by the organs of speech, but is not interrupted or stopped by the actual contact of any of these organs. In the Indo-European speech there were only three original short vowels a, i, u (far, bit, full), from which have sprung the long vowels a (father), i (machine), u (fool).

The dipthongs are formed in passing from one vowel sound to another: the oldest are e = a + i (fête), o = a + u (note). All the varieties of vowel sounds,

See Whitney, "Language and the study of Language," p. 465 (1867).