In Modern English the final - e has become the 'silent e' (so Modern English 'tale' has but one syllable, whereas in Chaucer's English tale usually had two syllables). In Chaucer's language, the inflectional endings (- e, - ed, - en, - es) were pronounced in almost all cases. Those changes are apparent in the following chart, which also provides a guide to the pronunciation of Chaucer's 'long vowels':įor Chaucer's poetry, the most important difference between Chaucer's language and our own is due to the fact that in the change from Middle to Modern English the language lost the inflectional or 'final e'.

Between Middle English times and our own day, all of the long vowels changed in pronunciation in a regular manner, called The Great Vowel Shift. These changes in the pronunciation of the 'long vowels' are due to what is called The Great Vowel Shift. And the Middle English short vowels are very similar to those in Modern English (Chaucer's 'short a' was more like the sound in 'rot' than in modern 'rat.') But the the Middle English 'long' vowels are regularly and strikingly different from our modern forms. The consonants remain generally the same, though Chaucer rolled his Rs, sometimes dropped his Hs, and pronounced both elements of consonant combinations (such as in 'knight'or in 'write') that were later simplified ( and ). The main difference between Chaucer's language and our own is in the pronunciation of the 'long' vowels. English was once again becoming the language of the royal court and of the new literature produced by Chaucer and his contemporaries.

In Chaucer's time this was changing, and in his generation English regained the status it had enjoyed in Anglo-Saxon times, before the Normans came. After the conquest, French largely displaced English as the language of the upper classes and of sophisticated literature. Middle English is the form of English used in England from roughly the time of the Norman conquest (1066) until about 1500.

The silent age ipa