What is middle English?

The most obvious difference is that you can read Middle English and understand it, or some of it, anyway, whereas Old English is very foreign looking. Old English, often called Anglo-Saxon, is a heavily inflected Germanic language with three genders, three numbers ( singular, dual and plural) and five cases in the noun, Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative and Instrumental. Middle English is a lightly inflected Germanic language that has a great deal of French vocabulary and grammar, no gender and only three cases in the noun, Subjective, Possessive and Objective ( Modern English has only two, Subjective and Possessive).