Notably from Northumbria a number of documents are extant which offer us a fairly clear picture of this dialect area.The Germanic settlers, who according to the Venerable Bede arrived in England in 449, brought with them dialects of West Germanic which developed further in England into varieties which were later written down as dialects of Old English (from about 600 onwards).However, it is known that before that date there were incursions made by Germanic tribes along southern shore of England known as the Saxon Shore.Old English arose from the set of varieties of West Germanic which the early settlers spoke.
![]() By and large, the Angles settled in the middle and north of England, the Saxon in the south and the Jutes in the area of present-day Kent. ![]() With the establishment of the West Saxon kingdom in later centuries and with the court which formed the pivot point of this kingdom a first inkling of the idea of English developed. With the invasion of England by the Danes (after 800) it became more clear that the Germanic tribes in England were separate from their fellows on the continent and in Scandinavia. Among the different groupings in England in the Old English period different dialects (that is purely geographical variants) are recognizable: Northumbrian in the north, Anglian in the middle and West-Saxon in the south. Viking expansion to the south which the written form of this dialect developed into something like a standard. At this time it was Winchester and not London which was the political centre of the country. The term used for the West Saxon standard is koin which derives from Greek and means a common dialect, that is a variety which was used in monastaries in parts of England outside of West Saxony for the purpose of writing. It is common to divide England into four dialect areas for the Old English period. First of all note that by England that part of mainland Britain is meant which does not include Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. These three areas were Celtic from the time of the arrival of the Celts some number of centuries BC and remained so well into the Middle English period. The dialect areas of England can be traced back quite clearly to the Germanic tribes which came and settled in Britain from the middle of the 5th century onwards. There were basically three tribal groups among the earlier settlers in England: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. The Angles came from the area of Angeln (roughly the Schleswig-Holstein of today), the Saxons from the area of east and central Lower Saxony and the Jutes from the Jutland peninsula which forms west Denmark today. The correlation between original tribe and later English dialect is as follows. Saxons South of the Thames (West Saxon area) Angles Middle and Northern England (Mercia and Northumbria), including lowland Scotland Jutes South-East of England (Kent). Of these three groups the most important are the Saxons as they established themselves as the politically dominant force in the Old English period. A number of factors contributed to this not least the strong position of the West Saxon kings, chief among these being Alfred (late 9th century). The West Saxon dialect was also strongest in the scriptorias (i.e. West Saxon was the natural choice. A variety of documents have nonetheless been handed down in the language of the remaining areas.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |