Seven Obscure Languages in Seven Weeks

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.

Geoffrey Chaucer, English poet, author, and civil servant

Introduction

The epigraph to this Introduction is taken from The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer around 1387. At first glance, it’s written in English. At a second glance, it’s not, for the number of misspelled words is enormous, and the grammar looks weird too. Indeed, the Tales are composed in Middle English, a language spoken and written in England in the fourteenth century but that gradually transitioned into Modern English from the late fifteenth century onward, joining the ranks of largely forgotten, ...