#Middle english word translation how to#

Thanks for sharing your work and such an interesting thread.MIDDLE ENGLISH Short forms ME, M.E. Three and an extract out of about 20 I’ve had published so far – it isn’t much of a hit rate.ĭo you read (or recite) Chaucer in an accent? I tend to have a yokelly Somerset accent in my head and when I read, though to my ear a softened Geordie accent is the perfect accent. I originally wrote them as an introduction to Chaucer’s style. I must see about getting some of my other ‘Lost’ Canterbury Tales published. Same with swimming and the last 18 lengths (laps in the US, I believe?) of 50 in a 25m pool. I used to jog three times round a park with a steep incline on one side and to take my mind off the sore legs, I’d recite those 18 lines. I learned them some years back (though with somewhat dodgy pronunciation). It seems to be an American, badge-of-honour thing to learn the first 18 lines of The Canterbury Tales by heart. I remember at school the abject fear felt of Middle English passed down from senior students to those about to embark on Chaucer. ReplyĪ translation / transcription of the first 18 lines, keeping the iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets in tact is indeed a feat, Evan, and would indeed help school students. Your version seems admirably suited to an introduction to Chaucer and to Middle English in general. Just as important, I think you manage to retain a real sense of the Middle English - the syntax, the word-choice, the musicality of it. That you have managed to create a translation which respects the original and which preserves the couplets is a marvelous achievement.

The original language is not actually that difficult (once you get used to the spelling, the old pronunciation, words that have shifted meaning and a few lost words) so I’ve always been disappointed by translations in which blank verse is substituted for Chaucer’s couplets and the language loses its archaic charm.

#Middle english word translation how to#

When I studied Chaucer I learned how to properly pronounce the Germanic sounding pre-vowel shift language of The Canterbury Tales and, in doing so, actually memorized these first 18 lines. Reading in Original Middle English and TextĮvan, I think this is an extremely fine translation of Chaucer’s Middle English into Modern English. Becket’s shrine was associated with miraculous healings. Palmer: a pilgrim implying a pilgrim who once traveled all the way from England to the Holy Land (where Jesus lived and taught, in and around present day Israel), which was a significant distance at the time, and brought back a palm leaf.Ĭanterbury: the site of Canterbury Cathedral and the Archbishop of Canterbury (the priest with the highest position in England), and the site of the holy shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, who was a martyr (a person killed for his faith). Pilgrimage: a traveler, usually on a holy journey. Who helped them out when once they had been sick. The palmers seek to make their travel plansįor far-off shrines renowned in sundry lands. On pilgrimage then folks desire to start. (For Nature pricks them in each little heart), Who sleep all night eyes open in the trees

His second half course through the Ram now run, The tender crops, and there’s a youthful sun, When Zephyrus too exhales his breath so sweet Through every vein with liquid of such power

The drought of March is pierced right to the root When April’s sweetest showers downward shoot, The Canterbury Tales-General Prologue, Lines 1-18