Учебное пособие для специальностей «Переводческое дело» и«Иностранный язык: два иностранных языка»
жүктеу/скачать 1,38 Mb. Pdf көрінісі
|
New ÐоÑгÑÐ»Ñ Ð.Ð. ÐоÑобие по оÑновам ÑеоÑии изÑÑаемого ÑзÑка
| § 2. Middle English writing
After undergoing numerous innovations introduced by the French scribes (most of the changes were described in unit 7) ME spelling system differed greatly from that of the OE period. On the whole, ME spelling was far from being uniform. Purely phonetic spellings mixed with the French spelling habits and also with the traditions inherited from OE. So very often ME writing is characterized as „chaotic‟. This attribution „chaotic‟ arises also from the varieties of the dialects and the absence of a standard dialect with standardized spelling. 35 Despite the fact that the main language of writing in ME was French, written records have been preserved in all ME dialects. As literary works they are not of a great interest, but they are of a great linguistic value. Mainly they are sermons or religious poems. One of the most well-known records in East Midland is “Ormulum”. About 1200, Orm, a monk, compiled a digest of biblical and ecclesiastical lore, which he called “Ormulum”. He must have invented his own system of spelling, which he considered the only right one. “Ormulum” consists of unrhymed metrical paraphrases of the Gospels. The text is rich in Scandinavianisms and lacks French borrowings. Its most outstanding feature is the spelling system devised by the author. He doubled the consonants after short vowels in closed syllables and used special semicircular marks over short vowels in open syllables. Among written records in the West Midland dialect we should mention such works as “William of Palerne” (a verse romance, early 13 th c) and “Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight”, poems written in alliterative verse by unknown authors. There were also preserved many samples of the records written in the South- Western (Southern) and Northern dialects. Among records written in the so-called Scottish dialect we may mention “Bruce” as one of the most outstanding. “Bruce” was written by John Barbour between 1373 and 1378; it is a national epic which describes the true history of Robert Bruce, a hero and military chief who defeated the army of Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314 and secured the independence of Scotland. Written records of ME give us an opportunity to see that writing in ME continued to be mostly phonetic, as it had been in OE, but had many dialectal variations. However, in late ME the rise of the London dialect somewhat standardized the ME writing. жүктеу/скачать 1,38 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
|