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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Middle English
Geoffrey
Chaucer (ca. 1343–1400)
whose body of literary work is
universally regarded as representing
the zenith of Middle English
Language
information:
English is currently the most important language in the world, its origin,
however, is highly complex. It began as a mixture of Anglish, Old Saxon, Old
Jutish, Old Frisian and possibly other Old Germanic varieties imported from
the Continental Lowlands, as well as numerous Medieval Latin loans. The resulting
Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) language came to supplant most Celtic language
varieties of Britain. Viking and Norman invasions resulted in layers of Scandinavian
and Norman French influences. English morphology underwent radical simplification,
and this caused the syntax to lose much of its earlier flexibility. Dialectical
diversity is considerable, the most densely occurring diversity being
in the British Isles and Ireland, followed closely by the North American East
Coast, especially New England and Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Having changed
little since the fourteenth century, today’s English orthography is one of the
most historical systems and takes much time and effort to master.
Middle English,
used from about
the 12th to the 16th century, is the ancestor of Modern English dialects. Compared
with the Old English period, Middle English shows massive French influences (as
a legacy of Norman French occupation) and vastly simplified morphology. This
translation roughly aims at a southern dialect group of the turn of the 14th
to the 15th
century.
Genealogy: Indo-European > Germanic > Western > Anglo-Scots > English
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