Middle English

English

Proper noun

Middle English

1. The ancient or older language of Modern English, spoken in England and parts of Scotland (where it became Lowland Scots) from about 1100 AD to 1500 AD. It developed from Anglo-Saxon, also called Old English, with heavy influence from French and Latin after the Norman invasion.

Synonyms

• Medieval English

Related terms

• English:
  • Classical English
  • Standard English [StE]

  • Old English (Anglo-Saxon)
  • Middle English [ME], Medieval English
  • New English [NE] (Modern English)
    • Early New English (Early Modern English)
    • Late Modern English [LModE]

Translations

Middle English

• Arabic: إِنْجْلِيزِيَّة وُسْطَى‎ (ar) f (ʔinjlīziyya(t) wusṭā)
• Catalan: anglès mitjà (ca) m

  Valencian: anglés mitjà m

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 中古英語／中古英语 (zung¹ gu² jing¹ jyu⁵)

  Mandarin: 中古英語／中古英语 (zh) (Zhōnggǔ Yīngyǔ)

  Min Nan: 中古英語／中古英语 (Tiong-kó͘ Eng-gí, Tiong-kó͘ Eng-gú)

• Danish: middelengelsk n
• Dutch: Middelengels (nl) n
• Esperanto: Mezoangla Lingvo
• Finnish: keskienglanti (fi)
• French: moyen anglais (fr) m
• Galician: inglés medio m
• Georgian: საშუალო ინგლისური ენა (sašualo inglisuri ena), შუაინგლისური (šuainglisuri), შუაინგლისური ენა (šuainglisuri ena)
• German: Mittelenglisch (de) n; mittelenglisch (de) (adjective)
• Hindi: मध्य अंग्रेज़ी f (madhya aṅgrezī)
• Hungarian: középangol
• Icelandic: miðenska f
• Irish: Meán-Bhéarla m
• Italian: inglese media f
• Japanese: 中英語 (ja) (ちゅうえいご, chū-ēgo), 中期英語 (ちゅうきえいご, chūki-ēgo)
• Middle English: Englisch, English, Inglis
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: mellomengelsk m

  Nynorsk: mellomengelsk m

• Polish: średnioangielski (pl) m
• Portuguese: inglês médio (pt) m
• Russian: среднеангли́йский (ru) m (sredneanglíjskij)
• Spanish: inglés medio (es) m
• Swedish: medelengelska (sv) c
• Turkish: Orta İngilizce (tr)

See also

• Anglo-Saxon
• Germanic
• Wiktionary’s coverage of Middle English terms

Further reading

• ISO 639-3 code enm (SIL)

• 2005 (originally) / 2011 (Taylor & Francis e-Library edition), Philipp Strazny (ed.), Encyclopedia of Linguistics: Volume 1 & 2: A-Z, Fitzroy Dearborn (an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group), p. 688, section Middle English:

  Early Middle English usually covers the time from the mid eleventh to the mid thirteen centuries. [...] The Central Middle English period is [...] Late Middle English is the time during and after Chaucer's life (born c. 1340—1346, died 1400), up to the introduction of printing. (Caxton brought out the first printed edition of The Canterbury tales in 1478.) It was during the Late Middle English period that the pronunciation changed in a complex process commonly referred to as the Great Vowel Shift.