Chaucer's Middle English

[grigioverde]

I don't know if this is or not the the best place to ask, but I'm sure to find somebody that can help me.
As the title probably suggest, I would like to learn middle english even just to read Chaucer's works (oh sure, if everything will be okay I could even read Piers Plowman); so I ask you: Do you know any useful middle english grammar book?
Thanks in advance; I'll leave this here:


Ther n' is no werkman whatever he be,
That may both werken wel and hastily.
This wol be done at leisure parfitly.

[Jackson Richardson]

When I was at school we were expected to "do" Chaucer for our exams at 16 and again at 18. We were not taught Middle English as a foreign language but expected to pick it up by reading it. (Which is how any baby learns their mother tongue - not reading it but just experiencing it.)

You need an addition with lots of notes on the page, or just get a modern translation and read it along side the original - you should soon get the hang of it.

Good luck.

[YesNo]

I remember reading the tale about the wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales without needing too much assistance. It must have been the original rather than a translation because there were words and phrases I had to guess like those in the example provided. This particular tale was very funny and it might be one to start with and then try the others. An audio version of it may help as well, however, I have never listened to it.

[mona amon]

I was able to read Canterbury Tales with a gloss - just kept reading and after a while it became more familiar, but when I tried reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight I found I needed more help and I found this site very useful, especially for spelling and the Middle English letters yogh and thorn - http://www.amandahopkins.co.uk/metransmain.htm
I also search for Middle English audio clips online, like these - http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/noa/audio.htm
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/STELLA/briantest/readings/me-6-from-sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight.html
My latest find is John Skelton's Speke Parrott on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCckcTHWqKw#t=17

Hope this helps. Good Luck!

[Lokasenna]

I teach Chaucer at undergraduate level, and we expect our students to read him in the original Middle English - if you use an edition like The Riverside Chaucer, with its supportive glosses and extensive explanatory notes, it'll help a lot.

There's a knack to Middle English, and if you keep reading it you'll find that it suddenly 'click' one day - you'll be able to read it almost as easily as you do Modern English, with only an infrequent glance at the gloss.

My advice to all students starting with Chaucer (or MidE in general), is to read it slowly and read it aloud. You'll be amazed how much that helps. Chaucer should be savoured: the man had a brain like a corkscrew, so you've constantly got to be aware of what lies behind his speech. It's very rewarding - there are few writers who match Chaucer for density of ideas, levels of meaning, and eloquence of expression.

As for Langland, read him if you must. I can't help but think of Piers Plowan as an enormous rant... the Pearl poet would, in my opinion, be a much better writer to explore after Chaucer.

[Jackson Richardson]

Surely any poetry has to be read outloud?

Pearl is the most formally elaborate poem in English I know - I've only read it in an Everyman edition with glosses in the margin. (I can't be doing with glossaries at the back of the book. How do you know the word is there, and by the time you've turned to the back and not found it, you've lost the drift.)

I keep on meaning to read Julian of Norwich in Middle English, which I've had for years. However Julian's text is peppered with numerals ("by these iv thinges our courteous Lord did show me that therre are iii buxsome virtues which our v sensys..." I parody). And I can't read the numerals out loud in Middle English because I don't know how they were spelt.

But despite the density of Chaucer's ideas which Lokasenna mentions, his language is fairly straightforward, once you've twigged the Middle English. That's why he's an easier read I imagine than Pearl, Gawain or Langland. (I sympathise with Langland's catholic socialism, but he doesn't do irony compared to Chaucer, or indeed the Gawain poet.)

[grigioverde]

Thanks to everyone.

[mal4mac]

I agree with JB about having glosses on the same page. This edition looks interesting:

The Canterbury Tales (Wordsworth Poetry Library) Geoffrey Chaucer, Dr Lesley A. Coote (Introduction)

It's inexpensive, has glosses on the same line, with the glossed words highlighted, and footnotes on the same page for longer explanations.

[kiki1982]

We were also supposed to understand Middle Dutch at 17 and at uni. No annotations, no nothing. Although that was a little unfair for texts that were older than Chaucer or the 1350s in my case.

Indeed read aloud. Many of these words are spelled in a weird way, but they are familiar. 'Werken' = 'worken' (which gives you...?). Also remember that Middle English is more Germanic, so you have more verb endings, depending on the number. Modern English has done away with it. -en, for example, is the plural and infinitive. Once you've got the basics just by reading, it clicks. I'd just follow Loka's advice and just keep going.
Know any other languages, by any chance? That might help tremendously too. 'Parfitly' comes from 'parfait' in French, which means 'perfect'.
Negatives used to be all double, like in French. 'Je ne sais pas' = I don't know. So your 'n in the first sentence is part of the negative, although as I recall, the double negatives in Chaucer were not systematic (I think), maybe because they were fading in his day already.

[grigioverde]

.
Know any other languages, by any chance?

Italian, spanish, french and latin.
Thanks for the advice.

[kiki1982]

French will be of great help. I don't know about Latin. Maybe cases and pronouns? Or the idea of it anyway.

The main thing is that you keep your mind generally open to anything you might recognise from the linguistic corpus you have, like grammar constructions that are alien to English nnow, but might be closer to other languages you know now, i.e. that have retained them.

[grigioverde]

French will be of great help. I don't know about Latin. Maybe cases and pronouns? Or the idea of it anyway.

The main thing is that you keep your mind generally open to anything you might recognise from the linguistic corpus you have, like grammar constructions that are alien to English nnow, but might be closer to other languages you know now, i.e. that have retained them.

Yes; generally I think that learning latin is one of the best way to understand the logical functions that any element can have in the sentence.

[WICKES]

I don't know if this is or not the the best place to ask, but I'm sure to find somebody that can help me.
As the title probably suggest, I would like to learn middle english even just to read Chaucer's works (oh sure, if everything will be okay I could even read Piers Plowman); so I ask you: Do you know any useful middle english grammar book?
Thanks in advance; I'll leave this here:


Ther n' is no werkman whatever he be,
That may both werken wel and hastily.
This wol be done at leisure parfitly.

Chaucer's language is not as difficult as people claim. You certainly don't need to 'learn' middle English as you would learn Anglo-Saxon. In fact, I found the general prologue easier to read than large parts of Shakespeare and far, FAR easier to read than Milton (who is much closer to us in time).