Features of Chaucer’s English

1. Reduction of case inflexions for common nouns

Common nouns were no longer distinguished based on case (nominative, accusative, etc.), and only the genitive (possessive) was marked (though not with the apostrophe – this was a later development).

2. Higher proportion of ‘strong’ verbs than today

Strong verbs change their vowel values in the past-tense and past participial form (eg sing–sang–sung today). By the principle of analogy, many former strong verbs have become weak verbs. Note the following past-tense forms in Chaucer’s time: oke (ached); stope (stepped), clew (clawed), clomb (climbed), low (laughed), shove (shaved), yold (yielded).

3. Personal pronouns

	1p-sg	2p-sg	3p-sg-masc	3p-sg-fem	3p-sg-neut
Nominative	I	thou	he	she	hit
Accusative	me	thee	him	hir	hit
Dative	me	thee	him	hir	him
Genitive	my, myn	thy, thyn	his	hir	his

	1p-pl	2p-pl	3p-pl
Nominative	we	ye	they
Accusative	us	yow	hem
Dative	us	yow	hem
Genitive	oure	youre	hir

For 3p-pl, the Scandinavian they seems to have been preferred to OE hi, although the other forms (their and them) took longer to filter down from the north down to the south of England.

4. Pre-GVS pronunciations

Chaucer’s English had not yet been influenced by the Great Vowel Shift, so that the values would be the older values.

5. Range of French loan-words

A range of French loan-words will be noticeable already.

6. More Chaucer to look at

Befell that in that seson on a day

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,

Redy to wenden on my pilgrimagë

To Canterbury, with full devout coragë,

At night was come into that hostelryë

Well nine and twenty in compaignyë

Of sundry folk, by aventure y-fallë

In fellawship, and pilgrims were they allë

That toward Canterbury wolden ridë.

The chambres and the stables were widë,

And well we weren esed attë bestë.

And shortly, when the sunnë was to restë,

So had I spoken with hem everichon

That I was of hir fellawship anon,

And madë forward erly for to risë

To take our way, there as I you devisë.

20 Tabard an inn in London just south of the Thames. It actually existed. A tabard (short coat) would have been depicted on the sign outside. The building burnt down in 1676; there is a small pub on the site today, called by the same name.

21 wenden go

22 full very

24 well nine and twenty as many as 29

25 aventure chance

27 wolden would, ie intended to

28 wide capacious

29 well … beste we were well entertained in the best way

31 with … everichon with every one of them

32 anon right away

33 And … forward and (we) made an agreement

34 there … devise as I shall describe for you.

Notes taken from the Penguin Popular Classics edition of The Canterbury Tales. Words in blue are loan-words from French. The diaereses above the letter e, as in <ë>, indicate that the letters are to be pronounced.

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Features of Chaucer’s English

Nominative

Accusative

Dative

Genitive

Nominative

Accusative

Dative

Genitive