Middle Dutch-origin lexis in the Durham Account Rolls: the Cinderella of medieval multilingual texts

Abstract

This article concentrates on the evidence for the study of Middle Dutch (MDut)-origin words in the Durham Account Rolls (DAR), a set of texts produced in Medieval Latin but deeply informed by the vernaculars (Middle English and Anglo-French). The analysis of the 47 MDut-derived lexemes present in the DAR exposes one of the intrinsic problems in the study of the mutual lexical influences between Germanic languages, which is of a typological nature: the proximity between West Germanic languages – Middle Dutch/Middle Low German and Dutch/English – and the presence of cognates and morphological and phonological similarities may obscure the etymology of words which could have potentially been borrowed or, alternatively, developed independently in English out of common Germanic roots. It also underscores how the study of MDut-origin vocabulary can advance our understanding of the lexico-semantic make-up of multilingual texts.