45. British Dialects

Since the very earliest times there were four main dialects in OE Northumbrian, spoken by Angles living north of the Humber, Mercian spoken by Angles between the Humber and the Thames, WestSaxon, the language of the Saxons south of the Thames, Kentish, the language of the Jutes. The rise of Wessex as a political power in the 9th century had its consequences for the West-Saxon dialect: in the course of that century it became the dominating literary language of the epoch

The dialects differed from each other by essential phonetic and morphological features. These differences corresponded to the territorial position of the dialects discrepancies between the extreme dialects were greater than those between each of the extremes and the Midland.

The WestSaxon dialect is represented by the works of king Alfred, both original compositions and translations of Latin texts, also by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, works of the abbot AEIfric and sermons of Wulfstan

The Northumbrian dialect: the Runic texts of the Ruthwell Cross and Frank's Casket, translation of the gospels, Caedmon's Hymn and Bedes Dying Song.

The Mercian_dialect: translation of the Psalter and hymns.

The Kentish dialect: Translation of Psalms and old charters.

The superiority of the West-Saxon dialect both in quantity and importance of the documents using it confirms its dominating position as the literary language of the period.

Peculiarities of Non-West-Saxon Dialects

Non-West-Saxon dialects have some peculiarities in their vowel system, e.g. in place of West-Saxon AE, A they have an E as in stret 'street'. In all Non-West-Saxon dialects back mutation is much widely spread. Non-West-Saxon dialects differ from West-Saxon in mutation of diphthongs.

It is the Northumbrian dialect that differs most from West-Saxon in morphology. In this dialect, -n in case endings of the weak declension is usually dropped. Feminine o-stem substantives sometimes take in the genitive singular the ending -es on the analogy of masculine a-stem substantives. The infinitive in Northumbrian often loses its final -n and ends in -a: drinca 'drink'. All these and many other phenomena show that in Northumbrian a reduction of inflections was taking place in the OE period already. This was probably partly due to Scandinavian influence.

MIDDLE ENGLISH

The Northumbrian dialect is now called Northern, Mercian is called Midland, and West Saxon and Kentish are united under the name of Southern. The boundary between Northern and Midland runs along the Humber, that between Midland and Southern is close to the Thames. The Midland dialect is subdivided into West Midland and East Midland. The dialect of London combines East Midland and Southern features.

As a result of the Norman conquest and the transfer of the capital from Winchester to London, the dialect base of the rising national language was shifted, roughly speaking, to the north-east: instead of the West Saxon, that is the South-Western dialect of ME; the base is now East Midland.

MODERN ENGLISH

In the course of the 15th century the London literary language gradually spread all over the country, superseding local dialects. Spoken English in various parts of Britain gradually approaches the literary norm, and differences between the norm and popular speech tend to become obliterated. This process has been carefully studied by the eminent British scholar Henry Cecyl Wyld. According to his classification, written documents of the 15th century can be classified into three types: (1) those written in the London literary language, (2) those written in a more or less pure local dialect, (3) those written basically in the London literary language but bearing some traces of local dialects.

The formation of a national language was greatly fostered by two events of the late 15th century. The most significant event of the period was the Wars of the Roses (1455—1485), which marked the decay of feudalism and the birth of a new social order. The political result of this prolonged struggle was the rise of an absolute monarchy. This meant a high degree of political centralization and thus contributed to centralization in language as well, that is, to a predominance of the national language over local dialects.

Another great event was the introduction of printing. In the town of Bruges, in Flanders, the Englishman William Caxton published the first English printed book, The Recuyeil of the Histories of Troy, in Bruges.

Existence of a language norm becomes evident in the 16th century. The literary language is apprehended as a model which must be followed, wherever this or that user of English may happen to live. On the entire territory of Southern and Midland dialects in all written documents, including private letters, only literary English is used. All other dialects, except the Scottish, were reduced to the state of merely oral languages.

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