Editing English language (section)

=== Middle English ===
{{Main|Middle English|Influence of French on English}}

{{Quote box |width=300px |align=right |quoted=true |
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|quote={{lang|enm|Englischmen þeyz hy hadde fram þe bygynnyng þre manner speche, Souþeron, Northeron, and Myddel speche in þe myddel of þe lond, ... Noþeles by comyxstion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes, and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys asperyed, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbytting.}}<br/><br/>Although, from the beginning, Englishmen had three manners of speaking, southern, northern and midlands speech in the middle of the country, ... Nevertheless, through intermingling and mixing, first with Danes and then with Normans, amongst many the country language has arisen, and some use strange stammering, chattering, snarling, and grating gnashing.
|source= [[John of Trevisa]], ca. 1385{{sfn|Hogg|2006|pp=360–361}}
}}

From the 8th to the 12th century, Old English gradually transformed through [[language contact]] into [[Middle English]]. Middle English is often arbitrarily defined as beginning with the [[Norman conquest of England|conquest of England]] by [[William the Conqueror]] in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1200 to 1450.

First, the waves of Norse colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with [[Old Norse]], a [[North Germanic]] language. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in the [[Danelaw]] area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in [[Scots language|Scots]] and [[Northern England English|Northern English]]. However the centre of norsified English seems to have been in [[the Midlands]] around [[Kingdom of Lindsey|Lindsey]], and after 920 CE when Lindsey was reincorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, Norse features spread from there into English varieties that had not been in direct contact with Norse speakers. An element of Norse influence that persists in all English varieties today is the group of pronouns beginning with ''th-'' (''they, them, their'') which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with {{lang|ang|h-}} ({{lang|ang|hie, him, hera}}).{{sfn|Thomason|Kaufman|1988|pp=284–290}}

With the [[Norman conquest of England]] in 1066, the now norsified Old English language was subject to contact with [[Old French]], in particular with the [[Old Norman]] dialect. The [[Norman language]] in England eventually developed into [[Anglo-Norman language|Anglo-Norman]].<ref name="Ian Short 2007. p. 193"/> Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking Anglo-Saxon (English), the main influence of Norman was the introduction of a wide range of [[loanwords]] related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains.{{sfn|Svartvik|Leech|2006|p=39}} Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating [[Possession (linguistics)|possession]]. The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms,{{sfn|Lass|1992|pp=103–123}} and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible.{{sfn|Fischer|van der Wurff|2006|pages=111–13}} In the [[Wycliffe Bible]] of the 1380s, the verse Matthew 8:20 was written: {{lang|enm|Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis}}<ref>{{cite web | last = Wycliffe | first = John | url = http://wesley.nnu.edu/fileadmin/imported_site/wycliffe/wycbible-all.pdf | publisher = Wesley NNU | title = Bible | access-date = 9 April 2015 | archive-date = 2 February 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170202202047/http://wesley.nnu.edu/fileadmin/imported_site/wycliffe/wycbible-all.pdf | url-status = live }}</ref> Here the plural suffix {{lang|enm|-n}} on the verb ''have'' is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present. By the 12th century Middle English was fully developed, integrating both Norse and French features; it continued to be spoken until the transition to early Modern English around 1500. Middle English literature includes [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'', and [[Thomas Malory|Malory's]] ''[[Le Morte d'Arthur]]''. In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by authors such as Chaucer.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Horobin |first1=Simon |title=Chaucer's Middle English |url=https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/refmideng/ |website=The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales |publisher=Louisiana State University |access-date=24 November 2019 |quote=The only appearances of their and them in Chaucer's works are in the Reeve's Tale, where they form part of the Northern dialect spoken by the two Cambridge students, Aleyn and John, demonstrating that at this time they were still perceived to be Northernisms |archive-date=3 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191203092713/https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/refmideng/ |url-status=live }}</ref>