The Charles Translation Project Transcribed!

It's been a while since I've made an update. Work has kept me busy for the last few months, but I've had some time in between jobs to work on transcribing the text of BL Harley MS 682, the English poetry of Charles d'Orleans. It's been my goal for several years now to produce a modern English edition, and making my own transcription wasn't possible until the British Library got the manuscript digitized and up on their site. I've been working on the transcription in Transkribus (I talked a little about using Transkribus in this post last year) and thanks to some encouragement on Twitter, I've finally had the confidence to post it on my Charles website, Strangeness On the Ground. The site is a mess and some of the links pages are in need of a massive overhaul, but it's a start. I was paralyzed by it not being presentable and I didn't want to even start thinking about posting the transcription til it was complete and I had a nice site to put it on, but hey, the manuscript itself is messy and not ready for presentation 580 years later, so what am I worried about?

You can see the transcription in progress here: https://sites.google.com/site/charlesdukeoforleans/harley-682

Anne and Louis: Rulers and Lovers - A Review

I received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Title: Anne and Louis: Rulers and Lovers
Series: Anne of Brittany, book 3
Author: Rozsa Gaston
Rating: 2/5

I intended to have this read and reviewed much earlier in the year. Unfortunately everything that's happened in the last few months, coupled with school and work has put me very behind in reading and reviewing.

This book, like its predecessors Anne and Charles and Anne and Louis: Passion and Politics in Early Renaissance France: The First Years of Anne of Brittany's Marriage to Louis XII, follows the life of Anne of Brittany, the last fully independent Duke of Brittany. Rulers and Lovers begins in 1501, with the proceedings for the engagement of Claude of France and Charles of Luxembourg and ends, leaving us in suspense, with Anne pregnant in January 1508. It focuses on Anne's marriage to Louis XII of France, their daughter Claude, and Anne's struggles to secure the independence of her people of Brittany.

This book frustrated me a great deal. It has a great deal of potential, and there were several parts I enjoyed-- Anne's tour of her duchy was done well and I especially liked the conversation between her and Philippe de Montauban about the bond between father and daughter-- what she is frustrated with, Claude's adoration of her father, is the same thing she had for her own father Francis. I also liked the acknowledgement of the heartbreak of loss- Anne losing so many babies and Louis seeing his men die in combat. Louis seeing the similarities and differences of the two was moving-- it made me think how both have to suffer and see people they love be lost for them to do their duties. Little Claude was adorable and I accept her as my queen already. If I were a romance fan (kind of the target audience, people who like historical romance), I probably would have enjoyed Anne and Louis's relationship.
Despite these strengths, there was a great deal in it that disappointed me and prevents me from rating it higher-- which I really wanted to do. I had two main issues with this book.

First, the exposition. Exposition is admittedly difficult to avoid when writing historical fiction, and in fact impossible when writing historical fiction that covers long periods of time. The first few chapters were strong from a narrative standpoint and I hoped that would continue throughout the book, and it did intermittently, but so much of it was expository, especially Louis's campaigns in Italy. I got the feeling that I was reading an essay on the war, not a novel (or I was having quarantine-induced flashbacks to when I taught history, that may also be a possibility). My mind wandered frequently during these sections, and I would have enjoyed more of them had there been actual scenes of the wars-- battles, Louis planning, anything more than just telling me where the troops moved. However, these parts are, as far as I know, accurate. I confess I don't know a lot about Louis XII, I know far more about his father, but nothing seemed hugely amiss. This holds true for the whole book, and the ones before it. Gaston studied history and she does a great job of getting the facts down, which is far more than I can say for most historical novels I've read. As I'm a historian by trade, I read a lot of nonfictional treatments of things like these, and I would have enjoyed a break from that and had more story to go with the history.

The other issue, and probably the most serious, was Anne herself. I found myself several times asking myself "Why do I like Anne again?" which is a terrifying question. Gaston is kind to Anne, and one of the overarching themes of her writing is, as her biography says, is "women getting what they want out of life." Anne had a very rough life, and to her credit Gaston does not make it worse, and she seeks to find happy moments for the queen. However, while she's portrayed positively, I didn't enjoy Anne as a character. The narration tells us that she's feisty and smart, but most of that comes out just with her arguing with Louis. She rarely actually works with Louis, since the central issues are his campaigns in Italy (which she thinks are stupid) and the question of Claude's betrothal to Charles of Luxembourg or Francis the Dauphin, on which they disagree to say the least. I think this missed out on what makes them an interesting paring historically-- they worked well together, despite their disagreements about Claude's future, and I had looked forward to seeing that in story form. Anne also never seems to take any part in ruling, all she does is order works of art made, make matches for her cordelières, and try to make babies. Historically she served as regent for Louis twice when he was away at war or sick, but that never comes into the story. She also doesn't do any administrative work for Brittany, except fight against Claude being married into France. I forgot what it was that made Anne such a fascinating figure and was sorely disappointed with that part.

There were parts I enjoyed, as I say above, and Gaston has a strong footing in the history of the era, which as a historian I greatly appreciate. You can also tell she very much cares about Anne and wants to tell her story, which is also very important in historical fiction. This book is perhaps best suited to readers who just want an overview of the era without having to read a 700 page nonfiction book, and readers looking for a light romance with a historical setting. My impressions of Anne in this book will probably be completely different than those of the next person to read it. I hope Gaston continues to write about this era, each successive book in the series has improved on the last. This book as a whole just didn't work for me.

Talk Like a Hoosier - The Hoosier Dialect(s)

“You guys want me to git you anything when I’m at the groshry store? I’m gonna run real quick into Meijer’s and git some pop and melk and mangoes.”

—      A stereotypical sentence in the Hoosier dialect 

Indiana occupies an unusual place in American linguistics. While geographically part of the North and the Midwest, much of the state is considered to speak a dialect similar to that of the Southern United States. The extreme Northwestern corner of the state, including Gary and Hammond, is part of the Northern Inland region, along with its neighbor Chicago. Northern and Southern Indiana have been noted for their differences in dialect, especially in pronunciation. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) places Indiana in ten different dialect regions.[1]

Indiana was a frontier state that entered the union in 1816. White settlers in the 19^th century largely came from other parts of the United States, bringing their dialects with them. The state can, for our purposes, be divided into Northern and Southern portions, with the dividing line roughly drawn at the capital, Indianapolis, in the center of the state. Settlers from the South arrived relatively early in the 1800s, with settlers from Northern states coming largely after the 1840s.[2] The Southern influence on the Hoosier dialect has continued into the present day and has possibly spread as far north as Indianapolis. This part of Indiana that appears to be linguistically part of the American South is often termed the Hoosier Apex.[3]

As a result, the “Hoosier dialect” is actually a combination of multiple dialects, roughly fitting into three major dialectical regions: the Inland North (Gary, Hammond, and the Indiana section of Chicagoland), the Northern Midlands (Northern Indiana including South Bend, Fort Wayne, and extending as far south as Indianapolis) and the Southern Midlands (the Indianapolis area and Southern Indiana, Including Bloomington, Terre Haute, and Evansville).

 

A very rough division of Indiana’s dialectical regions: 1. The Inland North, 2. The Northern Midlands, 3. The Southern Midlands. Map from Google Maps, notation by the author of this blog.

Phonology[4]

When asked if they have an accent, many Hoosiers, especially from the northern part of the state, say they don’t—they in fact consider themselves to sound like the people heard on national broadcasting. Northern Hoosiers often consider their Southern counterparts to have an accent.[5] While Hoosiers may not have an accent as iconic and recognizable as those found in New York or Chicago, they have a wide phonological range within their state.

Notable sound changes

A merger is when the difference between sounds disappears. Certain dialects of American English are currently undergoing a series of vowel mergers, including some forms of the Hoosier dialect. The Low-Back merger, which causes the vowel sounds in “cot” and “caught” to be the same, is ongoing throughout Indiana, though this change appears to have largely missed Fort Wayne and Gary in the north, Indianapolis in Central Indiana, and Evansville in the South.

 

 

A map (based on W. Labov, S. Ash, and C. Boberg, Atlas of North American English (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006)) showing the /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ merger’s prevalence in Indiana. Yellow dots represent places where the merger is ongoing, blue dots where the merger has not occurred, and green where the merger is complete.[6]

There's a chance that if you ask for something to write with in Southern Indiana, you might be given a "pin" rather than a "pen." This is the result of the pen/pin merger of the Southern vowel shift, the progress of which is visualized to the right. Beginning in the American South, it has crept north into Southern Indiana. The vowel in "set" /ɛ/ becomes the vowel in "sit" /ɪ/. This especially occurs before the nasal consonants /m/, /n/, /ŋ/.

Diagram of the Southern Shift. Chart from the University of Pennsylvania.[7]

Purple represents the pen/pin merger caused by the Southern Shift. Note that the merger extends as far north as Indianapolis but misses the southeastern Ohio River Valley and Northern Indiana. Map based on W. Labov, S. Ash & C. Boberg, The Atlas of North American English (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006).[8]

Indiana’s northern border is geographically part of the Great Lakes region, one of the locations currently experiencing the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. This shift has produced the distinct “Chic-aaago” accent, where the cot/caught vowel, usually /ɑ/ becomes /æ/ like in “cat.” This shifts the standard English /æ/ up to /ɛ/ or /ɪ/. This sound change is only heard in the small section of Northern Indiana considered part of the Northern Inland, which includes Gary. The whole change can be seen below. 

 

The Northern Cities Shift. Chart from the University of Pennsylvania. [9]

Other Hoosier phonetic phenomenon

Coalescence

Coalescence is the phonetic process by which consonants fuse together. This is common in all parts of Indiana. Common Hoosier coalescences include:

• “Going” [goɪŋ] becomes “gonna” [gʌnʌ]
• “Caramel” is pronounced [karmʌl]
• “Ordinary” is pronounced [ornari], with an almost, if not totally nonexistent /d/
• The state bird, the cardinal, is pronounced [kardnʌl]
• Hoosier children color with crayons, pronounced [krænz]

The [ɛ] and [ɪ] vowel switch

One common phonological change is a switch between [ɛ] and [ɪ], best illustrated by the Hoosier pronunciations, heard throughout the state, of “get” and “milk.”

• [gɛt] becomes [gɪt], rendering “get” as “git.”
• [mɪlk] becomes [mɛlk], meaning Hoosiers go to the store to buy “melk” rather than “milk.”

For a historical example, this switch appears in James Witcomb Riley’s poem “Little Orphant Annie,” where the final lines of each stanza are “An' the Gobble-uns 'at git you / Ef you / Don't / Watch / Out!”[10]

• [gɛt] > [gɪt]
• [ɪf] > [ɛf]

The /ɪ/ > /ɛ/ merger that comes from this change is often observed in front of the nasal consonants (/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/). This is especially prevalent in Southern Indiana.

• Bring [brɪŋ] > “breng” [brɛŋ]
• Rinse [rɪns] > “rense” [rɛns]
• Hinder [hɪndər] > “hender” [hɛndər][11]

The epenthetic (or intrusive) /r/

An epenthetic sound is inserted into a word where the sound technically does not exist. A pronunciation that was once common in the Midlands, Indiana included, was the epenthetic /r/ after /ɑ/ in some words, meaning you “warsh” ([wɑrʃ]) your hands and the first president of the United States was George Warshington ([wɑrʃɪŋtən]). This pronunciation become less common in Indiana and today appears to be largely limited to the older population.

The /s/ > /ʃ/ merger

Some Hoosiers have been observed to merge certain instances of /s/ with /ʃ/:

• “Grocery” [grosəri] > “groshry” [groʃri] (note the coalescence)
• “Anniversary” [ænɪvɜrsəri] > “annivershery” [ænɪvɜrʃəri]
• “Nursery” [nɜrsəri] > “nurshary” [nɜrʃəri]

Hoosier Lexicon 

Most non-academic descriptions of the Hoosier dialect focus on the words and phrases common to Indiana. These are used in other parts of the country but are especially prevalent in Indiana.

• Pop – Like most of the Midwest, Northern Indiana calls carbonated beverages “pop.” The exception is Southern Indiana and the Indianapolis area, which more frequently uses “coke” regardless of brand. 
• Mango – Green pepper
• Sweeper – Vacuum sweeper
• Davenport – A genericized trademark for sofa (like “Kleenex” as a generic name for “tissue”), this was especially prevalent in the 20^th century.

Indiana is well-known for having unusual town names. Some of them are merely odd (like Santa Claus) and others are interesting from a linguistic perspective. The earliest European inhabitants were the French. The main French influence on the language of Indiana is in place names, which Hoosiers pronounce differently from the original French.

• Terre Haute – Pronounced [ˌtɛrəˈhoʊt] in Hoosier, [tɛʁ ot] in French
• Versailles – Pronounced [vərˈseɪlz] in Hoosier, [vɛərˈsaɪ] or [vɜːrˈsaɪ] in French
• Vincennes - Pronounced [vɪnˈsɛnz] in Hoosier, ​[vɛ̃sɛn] in French

Morphology and syntax

Many Hoosier speech patterns are often unfortunately considered uneducated, though this is usually the influence of classism.[12] Hoosiers, like speakers of any other dialect, simply have their own way of talking, regardless of education level. Much like the vocabulary mentioned above, these formations occur in other dialects of American English, but are especially prevalent in Indiana:

• “Where are you at?” meaning “Where are you?”
• “Anymore” to mean “nowadays,” as in “Mangoes are expensive anymore.”
• “Real quick” to mean “quickly,” as in the sentence “I need to run into Meijer’s real quick.”
• The formation “X thing actions Y action” in place of “X actions to be Y action.” for example “The floor needs sweeping” rather than “The floor needs to be swept” or “The cat wants out” rather than “The cat wants to go out."
• “You guys” is the most common form of the second person plural, regardless of the gender being addressed. This construction often results in the possessive “you guys’s,” pronounced [ju gɑɪzˈəz]. Despite the influence of the American Southern dialect, “y’all” is rarely if ever heard in Indiana.

 

Everyone's favorite Midwestern groshry store

The Unnecessary Possessive Attached to a Business

An unusual morphological phenomenon, often seen in Indiana and Michigan, is the addition of the possessive “-‘s” to names of businesses, especially stores. The grocery stores Meijer and Kroger, both major businesses in Indiana, are often called “Meijer’s” and “Kroger’s,” despite there being no apostrophe in their proper names.

“How To Speak Hoosier”

The video series on YouTube entitled “How to Speak Hoosier” is a humorous yet accurate depiction of the Hoosier dialect. [13]

---

[1] “Dictionary of American Regional English | DARE,” Dictionary of American Regional English, accessed April 28, 2020, https://www.daredictionary.com/regions?rcode=region.IN.

[2] James M. Bergquist, “Tracing the Origins of a Midwestern Culture: The Case of Central Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 77, no. 1 (1981), 2.

[3] Dennis Richard Preston, “Presidential Address: Where Are the Dialects of American English At Anyhow?,” American Speech 78, no. 3 (September 17, 2003), 240.

[4] All IPA transcription has been made by the author, a native speaker of the Northern Hoosier dialect and as such reflect NHD perceived pronunciation.

[5] Devon Haynie, “Hoosiers Weigh in: Do We Have an Accent?,” The Journal Gazette, March 15, 2009, sec. D.

[6] User:Angr, English: Map Showing the Distribution of the Cot–Caught Merger in North American English. Green Dots: /Ɑ/ = /ɔ/ in Perception and Production. Dark Blue Dots: /Ɑ/ ≠ /ɔ/ in Perception and Production. Pale Blue Dots: /Ɑ/ ≠ /ɔ/ in Perception or Production. Yellow Dots: Merger in Transition., June 4, 2006, June 4, 2006, Made by User:Angr. Based on W. Labov, S. Ash, and C. Boberg, Atlas of North American English (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006: p. 122). Base map is Image:BlankMap-USA-states-Canada-provinces.png by User:Astrokey44, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cot-caught_merger.png.

[7] William Labov, “The Organization of Dialect Diversity in North America,” accessed April 29, 2020, https://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html.

[8] Angr, Areas of the U.S. Where “Pin” and “Pen” Are Pronounced the Same., September 11, 2006, September 11, 2006, Own work; base map is modified from Image:Map of USA with state names.svg; data from W. Labov, S. Ash & C. Boberg, The Atlas of North American English (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006), p. 68., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pin-pen.svg.

[9] William Labov, “The Organization of Dialect Diversity in North America.”

[10] James Whitcomb Riley, “Little Orphant Annie,” Poetry Archive, 1885, http://www.poetry-archive.com/r/little_orphant_annie.html.

[11] Marvin D. Carmony, “Hoosier Dialect Studies and the Teacher of English,” Teachers’ College Journal; Terre Haute, Ind. 38, no. 5 (March 1, 1967), 210.

[12] Carmony, “Hoosier Dialect Studies and the Teacher of English.” This article focuses on the speech of Terre Haute, in Southwest Indiana, and addresses some of the classist assumptions related to dialect.

[13] Brad Bryan, How to Speak Hoosier, Episode 1 - “There’s Lots of Uses of 'S,” accessed April 30, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swqaM4TiX2I.
Indiana

That's So Gay: The Prescriptivist's Nightmare

"Not a Homosexual or somehing [sic] that you find stupid, dumb, idiotic, pointless, and or annoying.
It is simply a term to describe a happy mood or expression."

—      Urbandictionary.com user Tyler Turner, March 22, 2008[1]

Mr. Turner’s definition of the word “gay,” posted on Urbandictionary.com reveals a linguistic and cultural sore spot among many English speakers: the semantic drift that inevitably has given a word a meaning he does not like. Gay has, since at least the 1970s, almost exclusively meant “homosexual,” replacing the supposed original definition of “happy.” However, Mr. Turner is incorrect in saying “gay” only has one definition. The OED lists 72 senses (32 main senses, 40 subentry senses) of the word, beginning with “bright or lively-looking, esp. in colour; brilliant, showy” in the late Middle Ages. The word has a far more complicated legacy than the amateur lexicographer quoted above realizes.

The etymology of “gay” is difficult to trace. The OED is itself unsure of its origins, pointing to both Old High German and Occitan as possible originators. The word entered Middle English through French. Where the French got it from is debated. Both the OED and the DEAF, the Dictionnaire Étymologique de l'Ancien Français[2] suggest the French gai and its variants was descended from Old High German gāhi[3] (sometimes spelt gæhe) meaning quick and impetuous.[4] According to the OED's 2^nd edition in 1989, this theory "is now generally abandoned."[5] The 3^rd  edition seems less sure about it being abandoned, instead discussing at some length its possible Germanic origins. In my opinion, a more likely origin for the French word is from Old Occitan, also spelled gai or jai, meaning “joyful” as an adjective and “joy” as a noun.[6] This is analogous to the medieval French spellings gai, gae, gaye, gay, guai; wai, and way; which survives in modern French’s “gai,” which means happy, joyful, always in good humor,[7] identical to its meaning in the Middle Ages.[8] The Occitan word would be applied to the region’s troubadour poetry as “gai saber”: “gay knowledge,”[9] which Thomas Rymer would introduce to English as a name for poetry in 1693 as “the gay science.”[10]

“Gay” has several meanings in Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Old French spoken in England after the Norman Conquest. It could mean “frolicsome,” “happy,” and “lighthearted,” but it could also mean “fickle,” “impetuous,” “rash,” and “lascivious, lewd.”[11] These meanings were carried over to Middle English. The earliest use of “gay” attested to in the OED is in a Middle English manuscript dated to around 1200-1225, Cotton MS Cleopatra C.vi, part of the Ancrene Riwle, a book of instructions for anchoresses. A marginal note reads, in a very archaic dialect, "Hwi þe Gay world is to fleon," though the exact sense of gay is unclear. It is not clear when the first sense of gay—"Bright or lively-looking, esp. in colour; brilliant, showy” is attested to, as medieval books were rarely the first version of their contents. The earliest possible date for an attestation in the popular poem Kyng Alisaunderis 1300, though the manuscript is probably from around 1425. Other earlier uses are in a 1338 chronicle by Robert Mannyng; and The Romance of William of Palerne in 1350.[12]

The earliest uses of “gay” in English were relatively neutral and indeed, often positive. It soon came to mean “finely or showily dressed,” as used by Chaucer in his Parlement of Foules; “noble and excellent” as early as 1350 and often used poetically as an epithet for a noble woman, notably in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The familiar definition of "cheerful, lighthearted, merry" also dates to the 1380s, with the Pearl Poet in Cleanness and Chaucer in Troilus & Crisyde. Somehow a regional expression developed along the lines of "to have a gay mind," meaning "to be inclined to," like the modern "I have a good mind to...", first attested to by William of Palerne around 1350. This would be used as late as 1932 but is now considered obsolete. The noble definition became ironic, especially when employed by the Scots, beginning in the 1580s. “Gay” in modern English is both an adjective and a noun. This study will focus on its adjectival use.

Like its Anglo-Norman predecessor, the Middle English “gay” had negative connotations. Chaucer uses it in “The Miller’s Tale,” when the smith asks Absalom “What eyleth yow? Som gay gerl, God it woot, / Hath broght yow thus upon the viritoot.” (Mil.l.3769-3770).[13] Here, “gay” means lewd and wanton, like one of the earlier Anglo-Norman definitions. The late sixteenth century introduced “dedicated to social pleasures; dissolute, promiscuous; frivolous, hedonistic” to the definitions, and this would be popular through the nineteenth century, appearing in terms such as “gay blade,” “gay deceiver,” and “gay lothario.” At this point, the word indicated someone who may not have been always moral but also wasn’t depraved.[14] By the 1790s, a “gay lady” could be a prostitute and a “gay house” a brothel, extending the definitions of dissolution and promiscuity. It is probably the combined senses of frivolity, hedonism, and ultimately immorality that led to “gay” being applied to homosexual men.

“Gay” as slang for “homosexual” is usually dated to the early twentieth century, with the OED suggesting a 1922 short story by Gertrude Stein, “Miss Furr & Miss Skeene,” as the first written attestation. Geoffrey Hughes in An Encyclopedia of Swearing reports that the 1972 OED Supplement traces it back even further to 1889 in England, with the Cleveland Street Scandal, in which a homosexual brothel frequented by some of London’s elite was uncovered, though the use of “gay” appears to be the then-current sense of promiscuous rather than anything specific to homosexuality. More certain uses date to the 1930s.[15] “Gay” became the accepted, non-medical and non-derogatory term for homosexual men and women (along with their own term “lesbian”) by the 1970s, and it remains in common use today. A new sense of “lame, stupid” appeared in the 1980s and was popular among children in the mid-2000s, possibly arising from the negative associations of attraction to the same gender, including weakness. This usage has been rejected by members of the LGBT community. The “homosexual” sense of the word is now considered the most prevalent use, and is listed first in most dictionaries organized logically, including The American Heritage Dictionary’s current 5^th edition, The New Oxford American Dictionary, and Dictionary.com. 

Zits, July 25, 2006. Jeremy encounters the ambiguity of "gay." [16]

“Gay” has become a controversial word, with many people objecting to its use by “the gays.” “[The] special-interest use of gay,” fumes John Simon, “undermines the correct use of a legitimate and needed English word. It now becomes ambiguous to call a cheerful person or thing gay; to wish someone a gay journey or holiday, for example, may have totally uncalled-for over- and undertones and, in conservative circles, may even be considered insulting. The insulting aspect we can eventually get rid of; the ambiguous, never. What do we do about it? If we energetically reject gay as a legitimate synonym for homosexual, it may not be too late to bury this linguistic abomination.”[17] This ambiguity is apparently too much for some people. Historian Paul Johnson agrees, saying “There is no historical case for homosexual ownership of ‘gay.’ So can we have our word back, please.”[18]

Johnson is appealing to an etymological fallacy—“gay” doesn’t mean homosexual, that use dates back to only the early twentieth century and the word has been stolen from normal usage! This controversy is, says Fowler’s Dictionary of English Modern Usage, “a cloak for much darker sociological concerns.”[19] Wayne R. Dynes calls this in his Encyclopedia of Homosexuality "a particularly ludicrous complaint… advanced by some heterosexual writers, that the 'innocent' word gay has been 'kidnapped' by homosexuals in their insouciant willingness to subvert the canons of language as well as morals." This complaint ignores that "gay" was applied by an ostensibly heterosexual society to people deemed immoral long before it was supposedly stolen.[20]

The changing definition of “gay” is controversial both for its connection to a controversial topic and the challenge it poses to prescriptivism. The most prevalent definition in the twenty-first century is not what it was in medieval France and England. To prescriptivists, homophobic or not, this is a terrifying thing—someone took a perfectly good, innocent word and changed its meaning, so much that one can no longer employ its “correct use” without people thinking of the evil linguistic thief that is the modern homosexual. Feelings on sexual orientation aside, this represents the apparently arbitrary change of language that prescriptivists abhor—a word changing meaning entirely in a very short time, on the whim of non-experts, and the subsequent ruining of a word. If it happened with “gay” it can happen with anything.

Life in Hell, 1986.[21] The idea that words can be "ruined" is representative of prescriptivist complaints.

There are two problems with this. First, there is no single authority of the English language who tells all English speakers how they can and cannot use words. No one is telling you that you cannot use “gay” to mean happy or bright. Second, “gay” has never had only one meaning. Even the Anglo-Norman predecessor and the Middle English forms had multiple definitions. Geoffrey Chaucer, inarguably the standard of Middle English, used it to mean "showily dressed" in Parlement of Foules, "joyful" in Troilus & Crisyde and "wanton" in The Canterbury Tales. Nor has it always been “innocent.” “Gay” had pejorative senses in both Anglo-Norman and Middle English, and in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries denoted prostitutes, rakes, and an overall sense of being frivolous and too given to pleasure, hardly innocent subjects.

The semantic drift of “gay” and the subsequent debates over its use reveals the shortcomings of prescriptivism and its underlying social fears. The existence of a polysemous word with an ambiguous origin is bad enough—that its definition has changed almost entirely within living memory is linguistic anarchy. The language of “stealing” and “ruining” is especially indicative of the social dimension of this anxiety. In a way, Paul Johnson is correct, there is no proof of homosexual “ownership” of the word. However, there is no proof of heterosexual ownership. Language develops according to the needs of its users, and “gay” simply managed to fill multiple roles.

Special thanks to my research assistant N.

---

[1] Tyler Turner, “Urban Dictionary: Gay,” Urban Dictionary, accessed February 25, 2020, https://www.urbandictionary.com/author.php?author=Tyler%20Turner.
[2] “DEAF Électronique,” accessed March 5, 2020, https://deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/?type=image&letter=g&column=35.
[3] "Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online. March 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.library.pfw.edu/view/Entry/77207?isAdvanced=false&result=1&rskey=BAxG22& (accessed March 04, 2020).
[4] “Gâhe Bis Vergâhe (Bd. I, Sp. 454a Bis 455b),” Wörterbuchnetz - Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch von Benecke, Müller, Zarncke, accessed March 5, 2020, http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=BMZ&lemid=BG00015&mode=Vernetzung&hitlist=&patternlist=&mainmode=.
[5] “Gay, a., Adv., and n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, https://www.oed.com/oed2/00093147;jsessionid=42AAD765EE4AFB8EAEADAFE1CC85B909.
[6] “Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online.
[7] Éditions Larousse, “Définitions : gai - Dictionnaire de français Larousse,” accessed March 5, 2020, https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/gai/35802.
[8] ATILF - CNRS & Université de Lorraine, “GAI, Adj.,” Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330-1500), accessed March 5, 2020, http://atilf.atilf.fr/scripts/dmfAAA.exe?LEM=gai;XMODE=STELLa;FERMER;;AFFICHAGE=0;MENU=menu_dmf;;ISIS=isis_dmf2015.txt;MENU=menu_recherche_dictionnaire;OUVRIR_MENU=1;ONGLET=dmf2015;OO1=2;OO2=1;OO3=-1;s=s126320ac;LANGUE=FR;.
[9] Wayne R. Dynes, “Gay,” in Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, vol. 1 (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1990), 455.
[10] “Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online.
[11] The Anglo-Norman Dictionary, “Gai,” The Anglo-Norman Dictionary, accessed March 5, 2020, http://www.anglo-norman.net/D/gai1.
[12] OED Online.
[13] “1.3 The Miller’s Prologue and Tale,” Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website, accessed March 5, 2020, https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-tale.
[14] Dynes, 455.
[15] Geoffrey Hughes, “Homosexuals,” in An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 327.
[16] Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, Zits, comic strip, July 25, 2006.
[17] John Simon, Paradigms Lost 27 (1980): cited in Geoffrey Hughes, “Homosexuals,” in An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 314.
[18] Paul Johnson (1995): cited in “Gay,” in Fowler’s Dictionary of English Modern Usage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 338.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Dynes, Homosexuality, 456.
[21] Matt Groening, Life In Hell, comic strip, 1986.