Over time, the different languages combined to result in what English experts call Middle English. While Middle English still sounds similar to German, it also begins to sound like Modern English.
Here Warren Scheer reads the very beginning of Geoffrey Chaucer’s great poem, “The Canterbury Tales” as it was written in Middle English.
Chaucer wrote that poem in the late thirteen hundreds. It was written in the language of the people. The rulers of Britain at that time still spoke the Norman French they brought with them in ten sixty-six.
The kings of Britain did not speak the language of the people until the early fourteen hundreds. Slowly, Norman French was used less and less until it disappeared.
The English language was strongly influenced by an event that took place more than one thousand four hundred years ago. In the year five ninety-seven, the Roman Catholic Church began its attempt to make Christianity the religion of Britain.
The language of the Catholic Church was Latin. Latin was not spoken as a language in any country at that time. But it was still used by some people.
