中英語ってこんな感じ

　25日は、英詩の祖と言われるジェフリー・チョーサーの命日だそうです(1400年)。当時はグレゴリオ暦じゃないから、若干、ズレているのかもしれませんが、とにかく今日らしい。
　
　チョーサーの生きた時代は英語史上では「中英語」と呼ばれる時期であり、チョーサーの書いた英語は綴りの古さをのぞけば現代英語にかなり近いものとも言われています。とはいえ…チョーサーの書いた作品でもっともよく知られている『カンタベリー物語』の原文(↓)を見ればわかるように、見た目も用語法もだいぶちがう。手許の本によれば、たとえば'my dear sister' となるところが'my sister dear' と後置修飾だったり、'to have his rest' となるところで'for to have his rest' と余計な(?)forまでくっついていたり、反対に複数形なのにそれを示す接辞がなかったりとか。以下、グーテンベルク・プロジェクトおよびこちらの解説サイトから冒頭部分を引用しておきます(下線は引用者)。
　

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
(That slepen al the nyght with open eye)
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.


　チョーサー時代の英語の発音って基本的にはローマ字読み、綴り読みらしいですが、なんだか英語じゃなくてどこかほかの地域の言語みたいに聞こえる箇所も多い(汗)。↓
　

　ついでながら比較のために、印刷業者のカクストンが底本にしたという英語で書かれた最古の『聖ブレンダンの航海』(c.1300)の冒頭部分も引いておきます(下が現代英語文、拙訳はこちらで)。

Seyn Brendan, þe holi mon, was ʒend of Irlonde.
Monek he was of harde lyue, as ich vnderstronde,
Of vastynge and penaunce inou; abbot he was þere
Of a þousend monekes þat vnder him alle were.

So þat it byuel in a day, as our Lordes wille was,
Þat Barynt, anoþer abbod, to him com bi cas.
Seyn Brendan him bisoʒte anon þat he scholde him vnderstronde
And telle of þat he hadde iseie, aboute in oþer londe. ...


The Blessed Saint Brendan came from Ireland. He was, so I understand, a monk leading a strict life of much fasting and self-denial ; he was abbot there over thousand monks who were all under his authority.

It so happened one day, as was the will of our Lord, that another abbot, Barynt, chanced to come to him. Saint Brendan presently requested him that he would recollect and recount what he had seen here and there in other lands.

from W.R.J. Barron and Glyn S. Burgess, The Voyage Of Saint Brendan: Representative Versions Of The Legend In English Translation, With Indexes of Themes and Motifs from the Stories, pp. 284-5.