A History of English Language

Middle english 179
148. The Rise of Standard English.
Out of this variety of local dialects there emerged toward the end of the fourteenth
century a written language that in the course of the fifteenth won general recognition and
has since become the recognized standard in both speech and writing. The part of
England that contributed most to the formation of this standard was the East Midland
district, and it was the East Midland type of English that became its basis, particularly the
dialect of the metropolis, London. Several causes contributed to the attainment of this
result.
In the first place, as a Midland dialect the English of this region occupied a middle
position between the extreme divergences of the north and south. It was less conservative
than the Southern dialect, less radical than the Northern. In its sounds and inflections it
represents a kind of compromise, sharing some of the characteristics of both its
neighbors. Its intermediate position was recognized in the fourteenth century by Ranulph
Higden. A well-known passage in Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychronicon (c.
1385) reads:
for men of þe est wiþ men of þe west, as it were vnder þe same partie of
heuene, acordeþ more in sownynge of speche þan men of þe norþ wiþ
men of þe souþ; þerfore it is þat Mercii, þat beeþ men of myddel
Engelond, as it were parteners of þe endes, vnderstondeþ bettre þe side
langages, Norþerne and Souþerne, þan Norþerne and Souþerne
vnderstondeþ eiþer oþer.
In the second place, the East Midland district was the largest and most populous of the
major dialect areas. The land was more valuable than the hilly country to the north and
west, and in an agricultural age this advantage was reflected in both the number and the
prosperity of the inhabitants. As Maitland remarks, “If we leave Lincolnshire, Norfolk
and Suffolk out of account we are to all appearances leaving out of account not much less
than a quarter of the whole nation…. No doubt all inferences drawn from medieval
statistics are exceedingly precarious; but, unless a good many figures have conspired to
deceive us, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk were at the time of the Conquest and for
three centuries afterwards vastly richer and more populous than any tract of equal area in
the West.” 44 Only the southern counties pos-
43
For further illustration see Appendix A.
44
Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 20–22.