 Welcome back to this course on English language and literature. As you are aware, we come to you with a series of lectures. In fact, four modules comprising 40 lectures in total on English language and literature. You have already seen the scope of this course and we are in module 2 of this course. As you are well aware, module 2 is devoted to an exploration of the history of English language. These courses are being brought to you by NPTEL, the National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning. The courses are by faculty mainly from the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science. Let me remind you once again that the target audience of this course comprises students in now do a quick recap of Old English, which was our topic of discussion in the last lecture. Well, you would remember that whenever we talk about the history of the English language, we need to refer to three marauding tribes from Europe, the Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles. The Jutes are supposed to have come to England from Jutland, Saxons from Holstein and Angles from Schleswig. In fact, here you sign this in this just a moment please. Well, you will find here that the word English had other you know variations from for instance you can see that it comes from the word Angles from the tribe of the Angles and we have these names for instance England was initially called England and English had this particular spelling. So, the Old English replaces as we saw in the last lecture, replaces the largely Celtic language and that was there in Britain and we also know that you know after the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons settled in Britain, the Celtic language moved really to places in Cornwall, in Wales and parts of Scotland. So, Old English is the English that came about after the use of the language that came along with the Jutes, Saxons and the Angles and we call this period is also known as the Anglo-Saxon period. Then we found that some of the characteristics of Old English are as follows that definitely the pronunciation of Old English words differs hugely if we may use the word from that of the modern equivalence. You only need to go to Google images you know you can look for the Old English script and you can look at some of the manuscripts from Google images and for copyright reasons I have not brought them here those here, but you can have a look at you know some of the recordings, the readings of from the Old English scripts that are there on YouTube for instance and you can then have an idea of how different the pronunciation is, how different the vocabulary you know the words are from you know the kind of English that we use today. Then there is also a difference in grammar of course, Old English is called Synthetic while Modern English is that in analytical language and this is what we have analytical language sorry, this is what we are going to look at in the R lecture on Modern English later on. For grammar also there was a distinction of number, singular and plural and case and grammatical gender was not dependent upon considerations of sex. For example, Mona moon is masculine, sun is feminine, make them girl, with and child are a neuter while with man, woman is masculine because the second element of the compound is masculine. So, you can knew we saw in the last lecture how these you know how Old English differs tremendously from Modern English. There was also the twofold declension if you remember of the adjective, we have strong declensions used with nouns were not accompanied by definite article and we this declension used when the noun is preceded by an article. Next we also look briefly at Old English literature and following AC Bohr who says, who said that the literature of the Anglo-Saxons is fortunately one of the richest and most significant of any preserved among the early two tones. One of the most well known texts is of course, Beowulf which is a folk epic and many of you have at least heard of the name Beowulf, the Dior poem and the Seafarer. So, these are some of the examples we are not going into the literature part of Old English, this module being devoted only to language. Then when we talk about literature, most in a module on literature and the various age is of literature, you know for instance age of Chaucer beginning with I think the age of Chaucer, we would have occasion to look through Professor Krishna Bora more into detail, where she also begins by talking about Beowulf. So, then also we found that there were war poems and the tragedies like the wanderer and translations under the famous king Alfred in that period. So, well let us now talk about Middle English and let me again say that whatever we discuss here in this lecture is by no means or is by no means going to cover everything that may be said about Middle English. I will be just pointing to some important characteristics of Middle English and some important political events that led to the rights of Middle English and ending with talking about the importance of writers like Geoffrey Chaucer for instance. So, this really is let me warn you are the elementary in content, but this is just an introduction to a phase of in the history of the English language namely Middle English. So, as with the previous lecture, A. C. Bohr's book the history of a history of the English language features prominently in you know as a source text for my lecture. So, thus Charles Barber's the English language historical introduction published by Cambridge University Press and Inrani Ghosh's edited volume history of English language a critical companion. Now, in talking about the Middle English period this is one of the I would say the rare times really when we can you know pinpoint a certain date. We will look at a certain date as far as the beginning or how an event can really change the trajectory of a nation can change the trajectory of the development of the language of a nation. Middle English is generally here you know it is really not it is not really you know one long homogeneous period. You have early Middle English you have late Middle English, but this being this lecture being an elementary one what I have done is simply referred to Middle English as one of the important periods of the English language in the history of the English language. And I have gone by the usually accepted dates of 1150 to 1500 it is a long period of time if you notice 1150 to 1500. So, well I have said just a while ago that one can at times when one is speaking about the history of a nation or the history of the development of a language though rarely one can point to specific a specific date or a specific event that holds tremendous influence or is really the core starting point when we begin to talk about a certain period. And in that there are many scholars who in fact say that if you are to point to the single most important event in this discourse then that would be 1066. Let us look at this here please 1066 is the date when William who was a duke of Normandy the duke of Normandy. Normandy is a place in you know the part of modern France and William was then the duke of Normandy. In fact the people in that part of France preferred to call themselves the Normans. The historians say that they basically they were part of an earlier Scandinavian sorry Scandinavian intrusion if I may use the word intrusion into France and people in that area chose to call themselves the Normans. So in 1066 there was an important event known as the Battle of Hastings when William the duke of Normandy became King William the first of England. So this was this is known as a Norman conquest of England and this is extremely important to us because it brings in you know in a very important way the French element into not only the language but also into various aspects of even the culture of Britain. It was a time when French language and culture held tremendous you know political power in the lives of the people and most of this lecture here today would be would take off from this important event that is 1066 the Battle of Hastings and the conquest by you know King William who we in turn to became King William the first while duke of Normandy. So we are now and you know that is why we call this a separate phase a very important separate phase called the Middle English phase of the one reason why we divide Middle English into two phases Middle English into early Middle English and late Middle English is because of this event the beginning sorry the Battle of Hastings and the you know subsequent very you could say a very rapid growth of prestige of the French language and for late Middle English is really something else is the growth of nationalist feeling etcetera we should talk about later and ending with Geoffrey Chaucer and you know the rise of early national language. So in the early period however it so happened that once the French began to have political power what happens is French becomes the language of the royal court language of the royal court. Now once it becomes the language of the royal court it is quickly you know taken up by the three most most important and you know apart from the royalty the important sections for instance this would be the time when there would be a sort of the first beginnings of class as far as language was concerned many scholars are of the opinion that old English did not have at least as compared to Middle English the division of language on language based on class I mean there was a marked very discernible division of you know the people of the populace of Britain based on class for instance we would you know it is quite logical for us to you know to imagine that the business class the business class would want to learn the French language why because French was as we know the language of the royal courts and because of the need to be connected to you know to the royal courts to for instance to people in you know to the ministers to the royalty to people in power it was important for business class to learn French. So, basically you have the ruling class and the business class you know speaking French and what happens to English? English is then spoken by a class which begins to be recognized as a lower class. So, you have the upper classes speaking you know the powerful classes and the rich classes speaking French and English being spoken by the lower classes. This is again let us remember this is more far more pronounced with the beginning of the middle sorry the of middle English than it was before if at all it was there before. The next important point that is related to this division of classes or you know on the basis of language is another phenomenon the phenomenon phenomenon of now you have to realize that they are two they are two languages side by side one was you know the old English old English that was extant during the time of you know when William of Normandy finally became King William of Britain and the old English was used by as we know the so called common people the common populace and also also the nobility and the people in power. Now, what happens is we know that in middle English French becomes the language of power and self. Obviously, old English is or English is not replaced by French altogether. So, we would have the phenomenon of people using two languages and of you know two languages running side by side though in different class or different stratifications of class. So, this was an important phenomenon which is a of course, we found is a replacement of the existing language by a foreign language that is French and b the simultaneous use if not by the same person. However, the simultaneous use of two languages and really you know the middle the middle English period could also you know could be viewed in two ways you can view it as the you know the acculturation of French and English and you could also view it as a constant contest with sometimes you know in the earlier period at least the French language being dominant and towards the end of the middle English period you know the attempts at kind of reviving English or having English as one's national language. So, you had the juxtaposition of two languages during this time. So, fine the middle English dialects some many scholars say there are five dialects and some scholars say there are four dialects but at least the important dialects were the northern dialect sorry the northern dialect the east middle in dialect the west middle in dialect and the southern dialect. You remember that the Northumbrian, Mercian etcetera were the dialects that were the chief dialects in the time of old English. So, here in middle English the dialects are northern east middle and west middle and the southern dialects. So, let us read then from Barber from Charles Barber whose text is one of our source text here. He says Barber says old English did not disappear overnight. This is a point which I had mentioned just a while ago old English did not disappear overnight at the Norman conquest nor did it immediately stop being written. Obviously, you know it is common sense to think that you know a language fills up disappear just because power has been taken over by somebody else. So, old English did not disappear overnight at the Norman conquest nor did it immediately stop being written. For the west Saxon literary tradition was continued for a long time in some of the great monasteries right. So, the you know that the west Saxon dialect of old English was alive and it was you know maintained sustained by the great monasteries even though you know elsewhere as far as business was concerned as far as power was concerned the court was concerned the language may have been French. So, we are not to think you know in an erroneous way that with the coming in of the Duke of Normandy as King William and you know along with him so many of the French nobility it does not mean that old English disappeared. And it is for you know it is for simply for convenience in into to which is one of you know the hazards are really dividing you know time according you know historical time into different periods. So, these are some of the hazards that we have to bear in mind. Therefore, old English did not disappear overnight at the Norman conquest nor did it immediately stop being written nor the way for the west Saxon literary tradition was continued for a time in some of the great monasteries. But in the years following the conquest changes which had already begun to show themselves and in the less in less than a century we can say this is important in less than a century it did not even take 100 years for the old English period to be declared over and the for the middle English period to have considered to have begun. So, further also scholars call this a period of great change. For instance, they were more extensive and fundamental changes because of the Norman conquest and the conditions that followed more about this in a while. Continuation of tendencies that had begun to manifest themselves in the earlier period in old English and changes affected that affected the grammar and the vocabulary of the English language. This being most important at least for our lecture here I am going to spend some time speaking about the changes particularly in vocabulary with the coming in of you know the French language. You know for about close to close to 200 years but close to 200 years we see this we see that you know the language of the people the language of the common people. So, to speak remained English though there were attempts at you know at a certain fusion English at that time was not exactly a language that was despised by the French. There were elements of some sort of a culture that I said between French and English and for instance the merchant class merchants would speak both English and French and this continued for you know continued for quite some time till the conscious development of nationalist feelings which again happened because of political reasons and if I am going to talk about talk about in a while. Now, as I said we are going to talk about and let us look at this page here we are going to talk about the influence of vocabulary the coming and it is very interesting to notice the patterns. For instance if you know if I ask you know if you knew that French was the language of the court French was the language being learned by the business class then which what kind of words are going to be borrowed there was we know a lot of borrowing from the French language. So, what kind of words are going to be borrowed and made part of the English language many of those words remain with us today. So, now in this list let us look at the words that are going to come in with you know what we call the French impact on the vocabulary. Now, for instance the church right the church being the third important you know third component of power for instance you have said we had we talked about political power we talked about business power and the third is the church and apparently the number the largest number of words that came in during this period were from the church and for instance ecclesiastical words like religion prayer words of vocation like pastor then chaplain. These are some of the words that as you see has become part of modern the modern English vocabulary it has stayed with us and also in the church for instance things that are associated right for here for instance you have words that have come in based on vocation or you could say based on status regarding to vocation in the church and we also or say general words like prayer we also have words that are associated let us see here words that are associated with the service church service the words that are associated that are that have were borrowed from French and associated with church service are for instance in sense in sense lectern lectern now it is from this religious you know religious background that today we use the word lectern also in academia for instance when a person gives a lecture right from a podium we also refer to it as a lectern then abbey convent these are some of the words that are to do with service with church service then the important next important domain is in the domain of law right obviously now with the coming of the Normans with the Duke of Normandy you would have a number of words that are borrowed from the French language into the legal you know into legalese or you know the language that we use in the legal system and now let us look at some of the words here and these are crime arrest depose innocent decree decree felon from which we have felony proof complaint fine all these words you will realize are important words even in you know the legal language use even in our country so these are words that were borrowed from the French after with the coming in of the Normans next we can look at say words to do with culture or and cultural artifacts music image prose romance ok tragedy sorry tragedy palace palace paper pen ok so this is another domain in which we find a number of borrowings from the French language further we will also talk about fashion ok fashion or social artifacts right social artifacts apparel embroidery emerald sapphire right these are some of the words that come from the word dress for instance ok these are words that are that belong to the domain of fashion next food there are several food you know words in the vocabulary that were borrowed from French and these among these are appetite sugar trickle blanche mince gravy etcetera ok now when we look at you know these borrowings when you look at the number of French words that have in what are the domains that we looked at we looked at culture or an intellectual production we looked at food we looked at fashion we looked at dress we looked at law for instance ok and you know you I am for a person who knows this for the first time and you would find she would find it find it tremendously you know interesting that so many of the words that we call English words appetite trickle or the words in law for instance church words for instance laws of government ok that is something that I missed out and talk about that in a while words of government for instance all these words are words that were actually not English these are words that have been borrowed from French following you know following the Norman conquest right so next if we look at at grammar right the most important points that are to be noted here is that in English grammar the changes they mostly general reduction the general reduction of inflections or endings right let us read from here in English grammar the changes were mostly general reduction of inflections endings of the noun adjective and to some extent verb of the verb were altered in pronunciation in a way that these almost lost their distinctive form and hence their usefulness the grammar of the English language was reduced from a high this is most important the grammar of the English language following the Norman conquest was reduced from a highly inflected language to an to an extremely almost extremely analytical one when you compare the scripts of old English and middle English this is one of the first things that that is going to strike you and as I said go to you know look it up in Google images look it up in you know YouTube and you will find that one of the first things that strikes you is that you know there is a certain levelling there is a certain levelling out and it removes or it does away with the inflectional system so as a result of this what happens is prepositions become very important prepositions become important word order becomes important and there is a replacement of grammatical gender with natural gender we looked at you know gender just a while ago strong verbs become regularized right and the strong weak adjective disappears as a result of the loss of inflectional endings this you know image shows you how there was the loss of inflections and here you will find there was reduction of these endings a u e and to a uniform e right so it is perhaps from this you know period from middle English that the the characteristic of English as being member I think we will be talking about this in one of the lectures is the simplicity of the language. So, we may even use a word from agriculture and gardening here which is pruning pruning of the inflectional endings and reducing it to simplicity this is one of the most important characteristics of change from old English to middle English. Now, Bob AC Bob whose text a history of the English language is a seminal text here it is it was published long ago, but still remains one of the most important words here he says that in early middle English only two methods of indicating the plural remained fairly distinctive the ending s or e s from the strong declension and the e n from the week by the by 1200 and the early 1250s the ending s was accepted as the standard plural ending in the north and the middle ends and by the 14th century it had become the normal sign of the plural in English nouns. So, the with the loss of other inflections finally, things were streamlined for instance the s ending for plural is one of the most common and one of the most important you know replacements of other inflections right. Also for instance here you will see the adjective also you know getting the e ending from their previous forms also with the pronoun you just skip this here the verb. Now, Bob further says that with the disappearance of grammatical gender the idea of sex became the only factor in determining the gender of English nouns if you recall because of the ending you know in in movement in movement in movement because of the because the ending was masculine it was considered masculine, but now in you know with the disappearance of grammatical gender now comes in the idea of sex as the only factor in determining the gender of English nouns where woman becomes feminine right not masculine as it was in old English. So, Bob says further by making English the language mainly of uneducated people the Norman conquest made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward unchecked this is also an important aspect. Now, we talked a while ago ago on the French inference on the vocabulary and we would look here at what war has to say his comments on French inference on the vocabulary. English presented an inferior culture and this was one of the factors involved for the inference of French words upon the English language. Why was English considered an inferior culture why because the culture of royalty the culture of business and eventually the culture of the church began to be dominated by French culture which led on to the ready acceptance of borrowed words borrowed from the French language. So, we saw a while ago that English was used by the so called common man while the French language people were you know for reasons of you know social climbing people would learn French and particularly people who were moving from you know the say the lower middle classes to you know to the merchant business class who had to sort of you know who had to have nob so to speak with people in the court the church and the royalty had to learn the French language. So, in English as Bob says represented an inferior culture and this was one of the factors involved for the inference of French words upon the English language and he says a stream of French words poured into English with a momentum that continued until toward the end of the middle English period right. He too is making this difference between early middle English and later middle English. Now, a stream of French words excuse me poured into English with a momentum that continued until toward the end of the middle English period. In this movement two stages can be observed and earlier and later with the year 1250 as the approximate dividing line and you shall see you know why why particularly early 13th century was an important water shed dividing line between early modern sorry middle English and later or late middle English. So, earlier borrowings that is Bob says prior to 1250 were words like Baron, Noble, Dame, Servant, Messenger and the usually scholars agree that the number is roughly around 900 and later borrowings were borrowings that were governmental and administrative at least statistical legal military and familiar words of sorry fashion belonging to the realm of fashion food art learning and medicine this is something we have seen earlier these this is important why because these are markers of class division. Look at the word like servant right as compared to noble or Baron right look at the word messenger. These are words that are indicative of class division and I said it is to middle English that we have to look if we really have to look at the beginnings or at least part of the beginnings of the class system in Britain. So, what are the these governmental and administrative words this is something that left out we talked about ecclesiastical food fashion etcetera. The government and governmental and administrative words are the word government itself governor, administer, crown, state, empire, subject, rebel, tax, alliance, prince, princes, duke, minister, noble, manners, slave, servant, peasant etcetera so these are now for a person studying this from a political angle would find this a most interesting data again I said the division of the people into slave, servant, peasant words like manner and it is said that you know many of. So, these were some of the words that were borrowed from the French language and you find this really infuse into so many different domains. I would like to quickly end by you know talking about the rise of standard English and you know this again happened with the loss you know of Normandy the loss of Normandy which led to interestingly the re-establishment of English. In around 1204 or 5 Normandy was lost by the you know by the royalty in Britain and with the loss of Normandy came about subsequently a feeling of nationalism. Evens like the loss of holdings which we find happen in you know by the end of the 13th century in England would lead to the gradual you know loss of prestige of a language right. Then there are many other you know reasons why finally a person like Chaucer Jeffrey Chaucer could determine the growth and establishment of a kind of language of English which was known as the national language. More about this in Professor Borra's lecture on you know the age of Chaucer and finally we will end with the importance of London English. By far as mentioned by Bob by far the most influential factor in the rise of standard English was the importance as London as the capital of England. London English took as well as gave it began as a sudden and ended as a Midland dialect. The London standard had been accepted in most parts of the country inviting in the latter part of the 15th century. So by the time just before Shakespeare we already have a language in place right with a standardized dialect which enable the flowering of the English language so to speak in the hands of great writers like Shakespeare, like Ben Johnson, like Christopher Marlowe for instance. The background to the flowering of that language is this you know in late middle English the growth of nationalist feeling the so you know if you may call it the separation of the English nobility from the French nobility around 1200, 1200, 4, 5 and by 1250 really as said French being almost regarded as a foreign language a language that was so important now regarded as a foreign language. This is the historical background to the great works and the person who is you know who figures most prominently here is Geoffrey Chaucer and you are aware of the famous Canterbury tales. These are the works you know that finally went on to bring back the English language. However it was sort of already infused with French vocabulary and however it is earlier inflectional system being diminished a lot. This is the new language so to speak or the London standard of language that was established and forms a backdrop to the next age which is modern English right. So we end here today and you know one of the most important things which will you know important questions which may be posed here is you know about the battle of Hastings and the coming sorry the Norman conquest and what happened with the coming of the Norman French right. What changes happened and you should always mention the importance of the class factor that even as far as language is concerned they will find new terms being borrowed from the French terms that are indicators of class status, the terms like noble for instance like servant like peasant. Apart from that you may want to learn up some of the words that came. So if you get a you know came with the Norman conquest for instance if you get a question like the Norman conquest led to the borrowing of several words from French in various domains. So name those domains and give examples of you know those words then you would talk about important domains like government and administrative domain like ecclesiastical domain of the church then of the business class right. Then terms leading to cultural life in general for instance fashion food right terms leading to again as said class. So these are some of the domains that you you know can build up like an inventory and learn up the respective words that fall into these and show how you know all these law was another important thing you know domain that we talked about and show how these words continue to be some of the most important words. So how do you have words in law without using the word crime for instance without using the word plaintiff for instance or you know complaint or complainant for instance. So that English by now is truly you know language that has that is what linguists call a borrowing language. By now it was you know it is a language which is borrowed heavily from the French language and the middle English period now remember we are talking at an elementary level the middle English period is largely the tale of story of two things. One is the Norman conquest and the importance and prestige of French language, French culture. Second part is the diminished prestige of French with the coming in of the spirit of French of sorry English nationalism following the laws of Normandy by the royalty in Britain with I also forgot to mention the black death which were which led to the death of many people in Britain and with the labour class working force becoming important because of the lack of the paucity of labour and what kind of words were what language you know was used by the working class the language used was English. So again now more than the business class you have following the black death the language of the working class being important and finally the establishment of a standard London dialect finally to Geoffrey Chaucer and through literature the final establishment and re-instantiation of the English language. So let us end here in the next lecture we would we shall be talking about early modern English thank you.