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Audio downloads

From this page, you can download and listen to readings of a range of texts featured in the book.

You can listen to the audio files through your PC or by downloading them to another device. To listen to the audio files through your PC use your mouse to left-click on the MP3 or WMA links below. To download the files, right-click, select ‘Save as’ or ‘Save link as’ and specify the destination to which you would like to save the file. MP3 files can be downloaded to your MP3 player or your iPod. For more help, click here

Download the readings below:

• Texts 4 & 5a Peterborough Chronicle Old English
• Text 14 Cædmon’s Hymn West Saxon & Northumbrian Old English
• Text 33 Peterborough Chronicle, 1140 Early Middle English
• Text 35 Ormulum, late 12th C. Early East Midlands Middle English
• Text 53 Ayebite of Inwyt, 1340 Kentish Middle English
• Text 59 Barbour’s The Brace, c.1375 Scots Middle English
• Text 62 York Pentecost Play, c.1470 Northern Middle English
• Text 66 Sir Gawayn and þ e Grene Knygt West Midland Middle English
• Text 68 Piers Plowman, c.1370 West Midland Middle English
• Text 82 The Friar’s Tale, late 14th C. East Midland/London Middle English
• Text 85 Boke of Margery Kempe East Midland Early Modern English, c.1420
• Text 89 Paston Letters East Midland Early Modern English, c.1480
• Text 110 John Hart’s An Orthographie, London Early Modern 1569 English
• Text 120 Sir Thomas Browne, On the Early Modern English Badger, 1646
• Text 146 Rhymes in John Dryden’s Early Modern English Aeneis, 1697 Versions of ‘Peter’s denial’ - St Matthew’s Gospel, Ch xxvi, vv.69-75:
• Text 174 Late West Saxon Old English
• Text 175 14th-century South Midland Middle English
• Text 176 Early 16th-century Scots Middle English
• Text 177 Early Modern English late 16th century
• Text 178 Early Modern English early 17th century
• Text 179 20th-century Scots
• Text 180 20th-century Modern English
• Text 181 20th-century Bislama (Vanuatu Pidgin English)
• Copyright warning

Text Commentary Book

This section contains the worked examples and textual analyses of many Activities from the book. It also provides additional material on Old English pronunciation and Old English grammar, as well as additional chapters on English spelling today and the development of English spelling.

Activities

• Activity 1.1 Texts 1-3
• Activity 1.4 Original word meanings
• Activity 5.1 Peterborough Chronicle for 1140
• Activity 7.1 Commentary, The Fox & the Wolf
• Activity 10.3 York Lay Folk’s Catechism
• Activity 10.4 Northern dialect in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale
• Activity 11.3 Piers Plowman
• Activity 13.3 Text 82, Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale/Reeve’s Tale
• Activity 14.1 Margery Kempe, Texts 84-7, linguistic features
• Activity 14.3 Caxton’s spelling
• Activity 14.4 Malory, scribal spelling Text 95
• Activity 14.5 Cely letters
• Activity 16.2 16 th century national dialects in Henry V
• Activity 16.3 thou/thee and ye/you in Much Adoe About Nothing
• Activities 17.1 & 17.2 Evidence of pronunciation changes from 17 th C occasional spellings
• Activity 17.4 Sir Thomas Browne, formal syntax
• Activity 17.6 George Fox’s Journal, grammatical structure of oral narrative
• Activity 17.7 Milton Areopagitica, Text 130, stylistic analysis
• Activity 17.8 John Evelyn’s Diary & the Publick Inelligencer, 1657
• Activity 18.1 John Bunyan, the language of The Pilgrims Progress
• Activity 18.2 Fox & Hookes Instructions for Right Spelling, 1673
• Activity 18.3 Christopher Cooper The English Teacher, 1687
• Activity 18.7 John Dryden on Chaucer
• Activity 18.8 George Meriton’s A Yorkshire Dialogue, 1683
• Activity 19.5 Samuel Johnson, “The advantages of mediocrity”, The Rambler, July 1750
• Activity 21.1 Grammar of conversational English

Additional topics

• Ch 3 Old English pronunciation & spelling
• Ch 4 Old English grammar
• Ch 6 Transcription & translation, remainder of facsimile of La Jamon’s Brut
• Ch 6 Transcription & translation, facsimile of The Owl & the Nightingale
• Ch 7 Facsimile & transcription, folio of MS of South English Legendary
• Ch 11 Spelling & pronunciation in Sir Gawayn
• Chaucer’s rhymes as evidence of changes in pronunciation
• English spelling today - a summary
• The development of present-day English spelling – a summary

Word Book

The Word Book contains a complete word-list in alphabetical order for each Old and Middle English text and for selected Early Modern English texts. It also contains lists of loan-words from the early 13 th to the 20 th centuries.

• Introduction to the Word Book
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16 
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 21
• Sources of English vocabulary
• Selected loan-words
• Celtic
• Latin
• Old Norse & Scandinavian
• French
• Low German
• Arabic
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Spanish
• Russian
• German
• Urdu & Hindi
• Japanese
• Chinese