A History of English Language

The reestablishment of english, 1200-1500 133
Here we are told that both learned and unlearned understand English. A still more
circumstantial statement, serving to confirm the above testimony, is found in William of
Nassyngton’s Speculum Vitae or Mirror of Life (c. 1325):
In English tonge I schal telle,
wyth me so longe wil dwelle.
No Latyn wil I speke no waste,
But English, þat men vse mast, 58
can eche man vnderstande,
is born in Ingelande;
For þat langage is most chewyd, 59
Os wel among lered 60 os lewyd. 61
Latyn, as I trowe, can nane
But þo, þat haueth it in scole tane, 62
And somme can Frensche and no Latyn,
vsed han 63 cowrt and dwellen þerein,
And somme can of Latyn a party,
can of Frensche but febly;
And somme vnderstonde wel Englysch,
can noþer Latyn nor Frankys.
Boþe lered and lewed, olde and
Alle vnderstonden english tonge. 64 (11, 61–78)
Here the writer acknowledges that some people who have lived at court know French, but
he is quite specific in his statement that old and young, learned and unlearned, all
understand the English tongue. Our third quotation, although the briefest, is perhaps the
most interesting of all. It is from the opening lines of a romance called Arthur and
Merlin, written not later than the year 1325 and probably in the opening years of the
century:
58
most
59
showed, in evidence
60
learned
61
unlearned, lay
62
taken, learned
63
have
64
Englische Studien, 7 (1884), 469.
65
English people