Old English dialects

The language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons at the time of their migration to Britain was probably more or less uniform. Over time, however, Old English developed into four major dialects: Northumbrian, spoken north of the river Humber; Mercian, spoken in the midlands; Kentish, spoken in Kent (the southeastern part); and West Saxon, spoken in the southwest. All these dialects have direct descendants in modern England, and American regional dialects also have their roots in the dialects of Old English. Modern English spelling owes most to the Mercian dialect, since that was the dialect of London. Most OE literature is not in the Mercian dialect, however, but in the West Saxon, for from the time of King Alfred until the Conquest, Wessex dominated the rest of Anglo-Saxon England politically and culturally. Nearly all Old English poetry is in West Saxon, though it often contains spellings and vocabulary more typical of Mercian and Northumbrian – a fact that has led some scholars to speculate that much of the poetry was first composed in Mercian or Northumbrian and only later “translated” into West Saxon. Whatever the truth of the matter, West Saxon was the dominant language during the period in which most of our surviving literature was recorded.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-03