Middle English | Post-Norman ConquestThe era of Middle English began shortly after the conquest of Britain by William the Conqueror, Middle English is believed to have been spoken between the late 12th Century and the late 15th Century.
The influence of the Normans is still noticed today with some of the words that we use for various types of food. pig/pork, chicken/poultry, calf/veal, cow/beef, wood/forest, sheep/mutton, house/mansion, worthy/honourable, bold/courageous and freedom/liberty. These words all came from the Normans and are mainly of a higher order. The words that are now used to describe different meats came to get these meanings because of the French nobility only saw the animals in their meat form and the peasant farmers only saw the animals as the animals and never as the meat. So overtime the words morphed into what they are today. Middle English became mostly famous because of poets like Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland. |