A dictionary of the languages of medieval England: Issues and implications

The coexistence of three languages in England during the post-Conquest period ledto a complex multilingual situation. The fact that Middle English, Anglo-French,and Latin showed mutual borrowing and shared lexis as a result of multilingualpractices makes them difficult to handle from a lexicographic perspective. Startingfrom the assumption that “monolingual lexicography in a multilingual environ-ment does not work” (Trotter 2000a: 4), this paper illustrates the issues related tothe treatment of these languages in the three major historical dictionaries and advocates the compilation of a multilingual dictionary, which would be able to provide amore accurate perspective of the linguistic situation of the time. The problems andimplications connected to the designing of such a long-needed resource are tackled and some methodological proposals are presented by taking into considerationtwo existing databases which treat specific lexical domains related to everyday lifein medieval England from a multilingual perspective. The aim of this contributionis to urge further research on the possible ways to reproduce the fuzziness of language boundaries in the post-Conquest period in order to make the compilation ofa multilingual dictionary of the languages of medieval England an attainable goal.