§ 3. VOCABULARY. The readiness of English speakers to adopt words from foreign languages becomes marked in fourteenth-century writings. But the classical element which is so pronounced in modern literary English is still unimportant. There are few direct borrowings from Latin, and these, like obitte XVI 269, are for the most part taken from the technical language of the Church. The chief sources of foreign words are Norse and French.
(a) Norse. Although many Norse words first appear in English in late texts, they must have come into the spoken language before the end of the eleventh century, because the Scandinavian settlements ceased after the Norman Conquest. The invaders spoke a dialect near enough to OE. to be intelligible to the Angles; and they had little to teach of literature or civilization. Hence the borrowings from Norse are all popular; they appear chiefly in the Midlands and North, where the invaders settled; and they witness the intimate fusion of two kindred languages. From Norse we get such common words as anger, both, call, egg, hit, husband, ill, law, loose, low, meek, take, till (prep.), want, weak, wing, wrong, and even the plural forms of the 3rd personal pronoun (§ 12).
It is not always easy to distinguish Norse from native words, because the two languages were so similar during the period of borrowing, and Norse words were adopted early enough to be affected by all ME. sound changes. But there were some dialectal differences between ON. and OE. in the ninth and tenth centuries, and these afford the best criteria of borrowing. For instance in ME. we have þouȝ, þof (ON. þō̆h for *þauh) beside þei(h) (OE. þē(a)h) II 433; ay (ON. ei) 'ever' XVI 293 beside oo (OE. ā) XV b 7; waik (ON. veik-r) VIII b 23, where OE. wāc would yield wǭk; the forms wǭre XVI 17 (note) and wāpin XIV b 15 are from ON. várum, vápn, whereas wēre(n) and wĕppen V 154 represent OE. (Anglian) wēron, wēpn. So we have the pairs awe (ON. agi) I 83 and ay (OE. ege) II 571; neuen (ON. nefna) 'to name' XVII 12 and nem(p)ne (OE. nemnan) II 600; rot (ON. rót) II 256 and wort (OE. wyrt) VIII a 303; sterne, starne (ON. stjarna) XVII 8, 423 and native sterre, starre (OE. steorra); systyr (ON. systir) I 112 and soster (OE. sweostor) XV g 10; werre, warre (ON. verri) XVI 154 (note), 334 and native werse, wars (OE. wyrsa) XVI 200, XVII 191; wylle (ON. vill-r) V 16 and native wylde (OE. wilde) XV b 19.
Note that in Norse borrowings the consonants g, k remain stops where they are palatalized in English words: garn XVII 298, giue, gete (ON. garn, gefa, geta) beside ȝarn, ȝiue, for-ȝete (OE. gearn, giefan, for-gietan); kirke (ON. kirkja) beside chirche (OE. cirice). Similarly OE. initial sc- regularly becomes ME. sh-, so that most words beginning with sk-, like sky, skin, skyfte VI 209 (English shift), skirte (English shirt), are Norse; see the alliterating words in V 99.
There is an excellent monograph by E. Björkman: Scandinavian Loan-Words in Middle English, 1900.
(b) French. Most early borrowings from French were again due to invasion and settlement. But the conditions of contact were very different. Some were unfavourable to borrowing: the Normans, who were relatively few, were dispersed throughout the country, and not, like the Scandinavians, massed in colonies; and their language had little in common with English. So the number of French words in English texts is small before the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. Other conditions made borrowing inevitable: the French speakers were the governing class; they gradually introduced a new system of administration and new standards of culture; and they had an important literature to which English writers turned for their subject-matter and their models of form. Fourteenth-century translators adopt words from their French originals so freely (see note at p. 234, foot), that written Middle English must give a rather exaggerated impression of the extent of French influence on the spoken language. But a few examples will show how many common words are early borrowings from French: nouns like country, face, place, river, courtesy, honour, joy, justice, mercy, pity, reason, religion, war; adjectives like close, large, poor; and verbs cry, pay, please, save, serve, use.
Anglo-French was never completely homogeneous, and it was constantly supplemented as a result of direct political, commercial, and literary relations with France. Hence words were sometimes adopted into ME. in more than one French dialectal form. For instance, Late Latin ca- became cha- in most French dialects, but remained ca- in the North of France: hence ME. catch and (pur)chase, catel and chatel, kanel 'neck' V 230 and chanel 'channel' XIII a 57. So Northern French preserves initial w-, for which other French dialects substitute g(u): hence Wowayn V 121 beside Gawayn V 4, &c. (see note to V 121). Again, in Anglo-French, a before nasal + consonant alternates with au:—dance : daunce; chance : chaunce; change : chaunge; chambre XVII 281 : chaumber II 100. English still has the verbs launch and lance, which are ultimately identical.
As borrowing extended over several centuries, the ME. form sometimes depends on the date of adoption. Thus Latin fidem becomes early French feið, later fei, and later still foi. ME. has both feiþ and fay, and by Spenser's time foy appears.
The best study of the French element in ME. is still that of D. Behrens: Beiträge zur Geschichte der französischen Sprache in England, 1886. A valuable supplement, dealing chiefly with Anglo-French as the language of the law, is the chapter by F. W. Maitland in The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. i.
§ 4. HANDWRITING. In the ME. period two varieties of script were in use, both developed from the Caroline minuscule which has proved to be the most permanent contribution of the schools of Charlemagne. The one, cursive and flourished, is common in charters, records, and memoranda; see C. H. Jenkinson and C. Johnson, Court Hand, 2 vols., Oxford 1915. The other, in which the letters are separately written, with few flourishes or adaptations of form in combination, is the 'book hand', so called because it is regularly used for literary texts. Between the extreme types there are many gradations; and fifteenth-century copies, such as the Cambridge MS. of Barbour's Bruce, show an increasing use of cursive forms, which facilitate rapid writing.