Medievalist Professor Answers Medieval Questions | Tech Support | WIRED

- I'm medievalist professor Dorsey Armstrong.

Let's take some questions from the internet.

This is Medieval Support.

[industrial music]

@JohnnyV45385760 asks,

"What did medieval English sound like?"

A good shorthand way

to figure out what medieval English sounds like

is to take all vowels

and pronounce them as you would in French,

and pronounce every letter.

The word for wife would be pronounced "weef".

The word for house would be pronounced "hus".

The word knight, "k'nigt".

Here is what the Lord's Prayer would've sounded like

in Middle English, probably sometime in the 14th century.

"Oor father that art in have-nuss,

hallow-ed bay thee nam-eh.

Thee ray-um oor kingdom come to bay

and led us not into temp-tass-ee-one,

but deliver us from ay-vil."

@caffeinateddayes asks, "why was it called the Middle Ages?

How did they know when the end was?"

The name Middle Ages was given to that period

by people who came much later

and the middle that they were thinking of

was the period roughly from about 500 to 1500,

after the fall of the Roman Empire

and before the Renaissance.

Around 1000, there is an increase in population,

and so we call this period in between

say, about 1000 and 1300, the High Middle Ages.

This is when the university system comes into existence.

This is when those beautiful cathedrals are all being built.

It really is a golden age in the medieval period.

@B4wekiss asks, "wait?!

The Game of Thrones Red Wedding really happened?"

It's well known that George R.R. Martin borrowed liberally

from medieval history.