For much of the medieval period, English was fragmented into a number of dialects, many of which seem like foreign languages to us today. Geoffrey Chaucer spoke and wrote in one of these dialects, and his dialect, by virtue of being the one spoken in the capital, became the modern English we speak today. What's interesting about Chaucer's Middle English is that, while we mainly understand the words when we see them on the page and can "hear" them in our heads, it is still a difficult language for us to recite aloud. Let's see how some of our modern English speakers do with the first eighteen lines of The Canterbury Tales.______________________________________________
Excerpt from "The General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400)
Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flowr;
Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye
That sleepen all the night with open ye --
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages --
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seeken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Canterbury they wende
The holy blisful martyr for to seeke
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.
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Reader 1
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Reader 2
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Reader 3
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Reader 4
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Reader 5
