Grammar

With its simplified case-ending system, the grammar of Middle English is much closer to that of modern English than that of Old English. Compared with other Germanic languages, it is probably the most similar to that of modern West Frisian, one of English's closest relatives.

Nouns

Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from the more complex system of inflection in Old English. The early Modern English words engel (angel) and name (name) demonstrate the two patterns:

Some nouns of the engel type have an -e in the nominative/accusative singular, like the weak declension, but otherwise strong endings. Often these are the same nouns that had an -e in the nominative/accusative singular of Old English. (These in turn inherited from Proto-Germanic ja -stem and i -stem nouns.)

The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form is now rare in the standard language, used only in oxen, children, brethren; and it is slightly less rare in some dialects, used in eyen for eyes, shoon for shoes, hosen for hose(s), kine for cows, and been for bees.

Verbs

As a general rule (and all these rules are general), the indicative first person singular of verbs in the present tense ends in -e ("ich here" — "I hear"), the second person in -(e)st ("þouspekest" — "thou speakest"), and the third person in -eþ ("he comeþ" — "he cometh/he comes"). (þ (the letter ‘thorn’) is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think").

Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with southern dialects preserving the Old English -eþ, Midland dialects showing -en from about 1200 onward and northern forms using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural.

The past tense of weak verbs is formed by adding an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending. The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, also serve as past participles, together with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i-, y- and sometimes bi-.

Strong verbs, by contrast, form their past tense by changing their stem vowel (binden → bound), as in Modern English.