#-en#: In the North _-en_ is found chiefly in the strong pp., where it is stable. In the South (except in the strong pp.) it is better preserved, occurring rarely in the dat. sg. of adjectives, e.g. _onen_ III 4, dat. pl. of nouns, e.g. _diaknen_ III 5, and in the infinitive; more commonly in the weak pl. of nouns, where it is stable, and in the pa. t. pl., where it alternates with _-e_. In the Midlands _-en_, alternating with _-e_, is also the characteristic ending of the pres. ind. pl. As a rule (where the reduced ending _-e_ is found side by side with _-en_) _-e_ is used before words beginning with a consonant, and _-en_ before words beginning with a vowel or _h_, to avoid hiatus. But that the preservation of _-en_ does not depend purely on phonetic considerations is proved by its regular retention in the Northern strong pp., and its regular reduction to _-e_ in the corresponding Southern form. #-e#: Wherever _-en_ was reduced, it reinforced final _-e_, which so became the meeting point of all the inflexions that were to disappear before Elizabethan times. _-e_ was the ending of several verbal forms; of the weak adjective and the adjective pl.; of the dat. sg. of nouns; and of adverbs like _faste_, _deepe_, as distinguished from the corresponding adjectives _fast_, _deep_. That _-e_ was pronounced is clear from the metres of Chaucer, Gower, and most other Southern and Midland writers of the time. For centuries the rhythm of their verse was lost because later generations had become so used to final _-e_ as a mere spelling that they did not suspect that it was once syllabic. But already in fourteenth-century manuscripts there is evidence of uncertainty. Scribes often omit the final vowel where the rhythm shows that it was syllabic in the original (see the language notes to I, II). Conversely, in _Gawayne_ forms like _burne_ (OE. _beorn_), _race_ (ON. _rás_), _hille_ (OE. _hyll_) appear in nominative and accusative, where historically there should be no ending. The explanation is that, quite apart from the workings of analogy, which now extended and now curtailed its historical functions, _-e_ was everywhere weakly pronounced, and was dropped at different rates in the various dialects. In the North it hardly survives the middle of the century (IV _a_, X). In the N. Midlands its survival is irregular. In the South and S. Midlands it is fairly well preserved till the end of the century. But everywhere the proportion of flexionless forms was increasing. It may be assumed that, in speech as in verse, final _-e_ was lost phonetically first before words beginning with a vowel or _h_.