by C.M. Owens
Medieval Dialogue
I’ve been fascinated by medieval languages since I was quite young. I grew up studying Spanish, English, and Latin, and loved the sound of reading Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales in their original languages. I adore the richness of medieval languages. How did medieval English people speak?
There are three aspects to this. The first is the difference between written records and spoken language. The second is the rich, multi-cultural aspect of medieval life. And the third is how to convey this to a modern-language audience.
Let’s take the first. Sometimes modern people equate the way medieval folk would talk, hanging around a rustic tavern, with the way Chaucer wrote his famous Canterbury Tales. Something along the lines of this (note this is a modern translation, not the original Middle English version):
“Of weeping and wailing, care and other sorrow
I know enough, at eventide and morrow,”
The merchant said, “and so do many more
Of married folk, I think, who this deplore,
For well I know that it is so with me.
I have a wife, the worst one that can be;
For though the foul Fiend to her wedded were,
She’d overmatch him, this I dare to swear.”
Sure, it seems elegant and rich. But did worn-down farmers sitting around a fireplace with mugs of ale really talk like this?
Do we think the London street-dwellers in the 1600s skulked down the dark alleys emoting like Shakespeare –
Two households, both alike in dignity
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
And, in the 1920s in Vermont, did farmers really wander down their snowy lanes murmuring to their farming friends, a la Robert Frost:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
As someone who lives in New England, I can pretty resolutely say “no” to that last one. And, given my research, I’m equally content saying “no” to the previous two. There is a big difference between poetry written with deliberate effort and the way “normal people” talked, flirted, cajoled, and laughed day in and day out. People simply did not talk in iambic pentameter. I’m a poet and even I don’t talk in iambic pentameter :).
Modern people sometimes think of the medieval period in terms of the plays we see. We imagine actors on a stage, speaking in formal, stilted language, carefully moving from scene to scene. But medieval life wasn’t like that. It was a rich cacophony of people struggling hard to survive amongst plagues and crusades, with strong pagan influences and the church trying to instill order. People fought off robbers and drove away wolves. They laughed and loved in multi-generational homes. It was a time of great flux.
England - A Melting Pot
England wasn’t an isolated, walled-off island. It was continually experiencing influxes of new words and sounds. The Romans came and went. The Vikings came and went. The French invaded. Nearly all of the English men headed off to the Crusades, leaving behind women to gain strength and position. The men returned with even more languages. Pilgrims went to Jerusalem. Merchants arrived from all over. This was a true melting pot.
So, in part because of this, Middle English was a rich, fascinating language. People in this time period had a wealth of contractions, nicknames, abbreviations, and combinations of words they used. Often people could speak multiple languages - their old English, the incoming Norman language, Latin from church, and random other words from tinkers, merchants, and pilgrims they encountered. Medieval people had all sorts of words for drinking, for fighting, for prostitutes, you name it. They had slang and shortcuts just like any other language does. After all, these are the people who turned “forecastle” (on a ship) to “foc’s’le” and who pronounce the word “Worcester” as “Woostah.”
But, here’s the trick. With the medieval language being so rich, varied, intricate, and full of fascinating words, how can we bring that to life for a modern audience?
Centuries of Change
Let’s start with a basic issue - most modern readers simply cannot understand authentic medieval dialogue. They don’t have the grounding in Middle English, French, and Latin that would be required. Even the fairly straightforward, basic Chaucer works look like this:
And Saluces this noble contree highte.
Modern readers generally wouldn’t know that “highte” meant “was called” as in “And Saluces this noble country was called.”
This happens over and over again. Words change meaning. In the Middle Ages, if you abandoned your wife it means you subjugated her. You got her under your thumb. It didn’t mean you left her - quite the opposite. Awful meant awe-ful - as in stunning and wonderful. It had a positive connotation. Fantastic wasn’t great - it was a fantasy; something that didn’t exist. Nervous didn’t mean worried or agitated - it meant strong and full of energy. Nice meant silly, and so on.
If a book was written with proper medieval words and meanings, first, even if the words are reasonably close to what we use now, modern readers would have to struggle with the spelling -
By that the Maunciple hadde his tale al ended,
The sonne fro the south lyne was descended
So lowe, that he nas nat to my sighte
Degrees nyne and twenty as in highte.
But, again, that is just the tip of the issue with medieval language. The word “bracelet” didn’t exist until the 1400s. Necklace wasn’t a word until 1590. The word “hug” wasn’t around until the mid-1500s. We also didn’t have the words tragedy, crisis, area, explain, fact, illicit, rogue, or even disagree! Shakespeare invented the words “baseless” and “dwindle” in the 1600s. Staircase is from 1620. A story written solely with words that existed in the year 1200 - and that still retain their modern meaning so modern readers could understand them - would be fairly basic.
(Speaking of which, the word “basic” didn’t exist until the mid 1800s.)
Conversely, some words we might think of as thoroughly modern, like “puke”, were also used in Shakespeare’s time. “Booze” traces back to the 1500s. And these are just the proofs we have. While “shiner” for a black eye can be traced definitively to the 1700s, it could easily have been used for centuries before then and we just don’t happen to have a letter or newspaper article which mentions it.
It’s fair to say that people in medieval days did get black eyes and had a wealth of interesting terms for that situation. After all, it could be a rough life back then. Was one of the terms used “shiner”? Maybe, maybe not. Out of the ten fun phrases they used, probably nine of them would make zero sense to a modern reading audience. So authors strive to find phrases that provide meaning to a modern audience without being too l33t and techno-speak. It doesn’t make sense to completely avoid the word “bracelet” simply because it technically didn’t exist in the 1200s. Surely people in the 1200s had several words for “bracelet” and we are simply using the word modern readers understand. Similarly, people in medieval times hugged! They just called that action something else.
Medieval people loved playing with words. They called their kids “dillydowns” and “mitings” (little mites). They called sweethearts “my sweeting” and “my honey. They loved snapping out insults, from “dunce” to “idiot” to “pig filth” and “maggot pie.” And, again, these are just the ones that happened to get recorded.
Medieval people loved contractions. There’s a phrase “ne woot,” meaning knows not. They’d simply say “noot”. They did this with all sorts of words.
So writing in modern English should have this same sort of loose, fun sense to the writing. It’s important to remember that even the kings, in this era, were rough fighters. They were out with soldiers, crossing multiple countries, and experiencing a range of
languages. They weren’t necessarily concerned about speaking in iambic pentameter. They were more concerned about breaking down their enemy’s walls to plunder what lay within and then drinking themselves under the table to celebrate.
So, certainly, treasure the poetry and prose of the time. As a poet, I appreciate that immensely. But also keep in mind that people did not talk in poetry. They did not speak in fantasy-speak of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. They talked and laughed, flirted and cursed, gossiped and cajoled in a rich, multi-lingual, contraction-filled, sobriquet-laden dialogue which mirrors how we talk in modern times.
