The Middle English Ormulum: a unique dialect revealed by “semi-phonetic” orthography

The Ormulum (c. 1175) is a collection of verse homilies written in early Middle English, whose religious content has been described as “pedantic” and verse structure as “soporific.” However, the only surviving manuscript is written with a remarkably rigorous orthography which reveals much about the phonology of its otherwise unattested dialect. This dialect, unlike others of its period, has significant influence from Old Norse and very little from French. While the Ormulum has always been viewed as a vital text in the history of the English language, the complexity of the manuscript and the lack of a serviceable edition has repelled critical interest for over a century.

With the release of our new edition (Johannesson & Cooper, 2023), there has been a resurgence of research interest in the Ormulum, and my work for the last year has been focusing on those aspects of the phonology which have been revealed by the precision of our edition. This talk introduces the consonant phonology of the Ormulum in the context of early Middle English. The main purpose of the talk is to focus on reflexes of Germanic /k/, /ɡ/ and /h/, a full understanding of which contributes to a complete phonological description of this dialect with reference to all extant orthographic conventions in the manuscript text. This focus is the topic of an article which I am currently revising after peer review for Transactions of the Philological Society.

Andrew Thomas Cooper