The transposed elements do not have to be adjacent. The Middle English period is roughly 1100 - 1500. It is noted mainly for the large numbers of French loanwords which entered English in the centuries after the Norman Conquest in 1066. The language of Chaucer and the English of the 15th century is less difficult for modern readers to comprehend than earlier periods of ME, although it is easy to make the mistake that a word in ME has the same meaning in Modern English. Obstruents Obstruents are the class of consonants which comprises stops, aspirates, affricates, and fricatives.
Obstruents are one of the two major classes of consonants, the other being sonorants .
The earlist period of English is called Old English. Its dates are AD 449 - 1100. 449 is the year in which the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded Britain, although they were still speaking mutually intelligible dialects of West Germanic when they arrived. The earliest written records probably date from the 7th century, although we only have copies. The earliest records of which we can be certain date from the first half of the 8th century.