art in heuenes halwid be † i name;
† i reume or kyngdom come to be. † i wille don in her † e as it is doun in heuene.to us today oure eche dayes bred.foryeue to us oure dettis † at is oure synnys as we foryeuen to oure † at is to men † at han synned in us.lede us not into temptacion but delyuere us from euyl.the prayer is quite understandable to a Modern English speaker, and almost all of its the words exist in Modern English. The biggest difference lies in the pronunciation of vowels is somewhat different. It is the result of enormous changes in vowel pronunciation that come at the end of the Middle English period. The change from Old to Middle English mostly didn t affect consonants. Only W was lost in position when it was followed by an o and preceded by another consonant. So the Old English swa became so, hwa - who, and sc - sh. pronunciation changes were not so significant but they affected greatly the Middle English grammar. In +1204, English was no longer a synthetic language, it became analytic. The system of inflections was almost completely eliminated, as well as the declensions of nouns and adjectives and the need for case agreement among nouns and adjectives. For example: e ending, became a part of the forms of the noun, resulting spellings like stone, robe. In a couple of centuries the final e stopped being pronounced, and the pronunciation became as it is today. plural ending of nouns -s remained in Modern English, but for a while it was balanced between another Old English plural form, -en (oxen, brethren). English lost grammatical gender. In the Old English period there were contradictions between grammatical and natural genders. So, the noun wif-mann (woman) had a masculine gender. pronouns were reduced. There remained only the and that, though the group was larger initially (se, seo † at), and another group of demonstratives was compressed to this, those, these. Dual forms of personal pronouns were lost, and the Old Englishalso suffered some changes, and the biggest one was the decay of the strong verb system. Some strong verbs disappeared, others were transformed into weak verbs. Middle English is grammatically almost the same as Modern English
THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT
major event that affected greatly the English language was the Great Vowel Shift. Its simplest description is that the seven long Middle English vowel shifted higher (it is are called high front vowel) with greater closing of the mouth. That now became diphthong. So, in the Great Vowel Shift, fif (pronounced feef) becomes five (with the iy diphthong). The mid front vowel moved to the now vacant high front vowel space, and became high front vowel, so: mede (pronounced maid - eh) became meed. The low front vowel in its turn moved to slot left by the mid front vowels breke (pronounced bray - keh) became break. The next vowel from the back of the mouth moved to this spot: name (pronounced nahm - he) became name. The high back vowel inEnglish mus (pronounced moose, (mouse)) became a diphthong, mouse. The sound that had been a mid back vowel jumped into that vacant high back vowel place: roote (pronounced row - teh) became root. A mid back vowel in tis turn moved to the slot of the previous low back vowel moved: goote (pronounced gaw - teh) becomes goat. one can see, this shift is only applicable to the long vowels. The short vowels were not affected and almost didn t change at all. Word elements that were not stressed did not undergo vowel changes.explanation of the Great Vowel Shift is rather controversial and sound as follows: at the time of the Shift England experienced a major demographic change. There was mass immigration from the north to the south of England after the Black Death and a shift from rural to urban living patterns.suppose that the sudden arrival in the south of many individuals with northern accents or the arrival of many rural dwellers in urban areas triggered, a major pronunciation change.Great Vowel Shift was the most significant factor in changing Middle English into the language that we now speak, but not the only one. following grammatical changes happened: plural ending -n continued to lose ground and finally -s won the battle. apostrophe s (s) appeared as the genitive ending. The genitive case was the Old English method of indicating possession. For strong nouns, the genitive singular ending was -es, stan (stone) - stanes (pronounced stahn - ehs) of the stone. In Middle English the genitive ending was unaccented it ends up being spelled with a variety of vowels, such as -is or -ys. Thus the apostrophe marks the missing e in the -es ending.significant grammar changes occurred in the pronouns and the verbs. In Old English, ge (pronounced ye) and † u (pronounced thoo) indicated different numbers in the second person (ge - plural, † u - singular). In the thirteenth century, the forms thou,...
