The English language

                            

The main task for this lesson was to explore the development of the English language.

We started this lesson by discussing about what types of social states would be involved in the telling of the Canterbury tales.

The types of examples that we came up with were:

Knights

Miller

Pardoner

Wife of bath   

What we learnt in this lesson was that there were a lot of people taking part in the Canterbury tales and that they all had their own stories to tell. (Examples of these people are as shown above)

In every tale told there would be a host, the host would always introduce the tale. As well as the host introducing the tale, the host would also be able to make interruptions and comment on a tale; after a tale was finished he would then introduce the next tale.

We discussed what types of reasons they would tell tales in the middle of their journeys.

The main reasons that we came up with were:

To pass on time

To close the gap on their status

As well as those two reasons, they would also tell their own stories as a competition to see who has the best tale, because they were all in competition to see who has the bets tale, potential problems could surface such as jealousy and ignorance hence this will lead to disagreements of who has the best tale.

After discussing about the reason of why would they tell tales on their journey to Canterbury. We were given a short text which showed how people used to write in the past centuries.

The text was as follows: (Note: I am writing this from the sheet that we were given in our English lesson)

Whan That Aprille, with hise shoures soote

The droghte of march hat perced to the roote

And bather every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendered is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heath

The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with opne eye-

So preketh hem Nature in hir corages-

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sundry londes;

And specially, from every shires end

Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for the seke

That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke

We were given three colours

The first colour should say: words that are spelt and mean the same as they do now.

The second colour should say: words that sound the same but are spelt differently.

The last colour should say: word that we do not recognize.

The colours were used to highlight the themes that I stated previously.

We were also asked to try and translate the text into modern English

       As you can see from mine example, this is how your text should look like.

               (Sorry about the quality of the picture, I took it with my phone)

For the final part of the lesson we were given a list of important names that we came across everyday in our lives and names that are very important in terms of the people that play an important role in our society.

The names that we were given are as follow:

Bus drivers

Sales assistant

Actor

Plumber

Chef

Hairdresser

Teacher

Judge

Doctor

Vicar

We were then asked to put numbers from 1 to 10 in our exercise book. (1 being the most important and ten being the least important), then we placed the names in the order that we think is the most important.

This was my list

1. Vicar
2. Doctor
3. Judge
4. Teacher
5. Chef
6. Bus drivers
7. Plumber
8. Sales assistance
9. Actor
10. Hairdresser