Middle English (redirected from Middle English language)

Middle English

Vernacular spoken and written in England c. 1100–1500, the descendant of Old English and the ancestor of Modern English. It can be divided into three periods: Early, Central, and Late. The Central period was marked by the borrowing of many Anglo-Norman words and the rise of the London dialect, used by such poets as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer in a 14th-century flowering of English literature. The dialects of Middle English are usually divided into four groups: Southern, East Midland, West Midland, and Northern.

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Middle English

the English language from about 1100 to about 1450: main dialects are Kentish, Southwestern (West Saxon), East Midland (which replaced West Saxon as the chief literary form and developed into Modern English), West Midland, and Northern (from which the Scots of Lowland Scotland and other modern dialects developed)