3 words from middle english, who can help me, please?
By yangcg
@yangcg (19)
China
August 5, 2012 9:09pm CST
There are 3 words. i tried to look them up in some dictionaries, but failed. Just 3 words, who can interpret them for me, please? thanks.
they are:therupõ meruaile foloweth
1 response
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
6 Aug 12
therupõ: a shortend, scribal form of 'thereupon'. Placing a mark over the vowel to indicate a final letter was a common practice. Usually, when books were transcribed to print, the word was written in full.
meruaile: 'u' and 'v' were interchangeable with 'u' being the common miniscule version and 'V' being the majuscule. The word should be understood as 'mervaile' or, in modern English spelling, 'marvel'
foloweth: 3rd person singular present tense of the verb 'to follow'. Modern English would be 'follows'.
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
6 Aug 12
The letter 'y' was often printed (and sometimes written) as a substitute for the Anglo-Saxon letter 'thorn' which represents the sound 'th'. In mediaeval script, the thorn is written in such a way as to be nearly indistinguishable from the letter 'y'.
The definite article often appears as 'ye', and 'yt' (with the 't' superscript) is a common contraction for 'that'. The words were always pronounced with the 'th' sound as they are today.
Another letter (again, Anglo-Saxon in origin) which became confused with the letter 'y' was one which looked something like the numeral '3'. It may have representd several sounds from 'yi-' to 'ge-', depending on the dialect, and was used as a verb prefix. This form is retained in some German verbs (where it is pronounced as 'ge-') but was disappearing in English and where it occured, it was often pronounced as a short 'i' sound or as an unaccented 'a'. It still exists in some words as the initial 'a' in 'ado', 'ago', 'aloft' and 'afloat' and in some dialects ("What be you a-doin' of?" meaning "What are you doing?").
