Middle english vocabulary

Abstract

The vocabulary of Middle English is considerably more varied in its origins than that of Old English. This variety has two main causes: the influence of Scandinavian languages, and the combined influence of Latin and its vernacular derivative, French. These influences operated in different ways. French or Latin words might be adopted or ‘borrowed' wherever English people used those languages, which could be anywhere in the country; but Scandinavian loan-words appeared at first only in those northern and eastern regions where Danish or Norwegian was spoken. Although many such borrowings from Scandinavia eventually came into general use, they had, to begin with, a distinctively regional distribution.