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Lecture #7-8 The Formation of National Language. Me dialect. London dialect.

The Old English dialects acquired certain common features which distinguished them from continental Germanic tongues; on the other hand, they displayed growing regional divergence. To complicate matters further, Old English had many dialects. The four main dialect forms of Old English were Mercian, Northumbrian (known collectively as Anglian), Kentish, and West Saxon. Each of these dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Kentish (a dialect spoken in the area known now as Kent and in the isle ofWight) has developed from the tongue of the lutes and Frisland.

West Saxon was the main dialect of the Saxon group, spoken in the rest of England south of the Thames and the Bristol channel, except Wales and Cornwall.

Mercian was a dialect derived from the speech of Southern Angels and spoken in the kingdom of Mercia. Northumbrian, another Anglian dialect, spoken from the Humber north to the river Forth. Of these, all of Northumbria and most of Mer cia were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. The portion of Mercia and all of Kent that were successfully defended were then integrated into Wessex.

The changes in the lingustic situation justify the distinction of the 2 historical periods. In Early Old English from 5th to the 7th centuries English language consisted of a group of spoken tribal dialects having neither a written nor a dominant form. At the time of written Old English the dialects had changed from tribal to regional; they possessed both an oral and a written form and were no longer equal; in the domain of writing the West Saxon dialect prevailed over its neighbours. Alongside Old English dialects a foreign language, Latin, was widely used in writing.

After the process of unification of the diverse Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in 878 by Alfred the Great, there is a marked decline in the importance of regional dialects. This is not because they stopped existing; regional dialects continued even after that time to this day, as evidenced both by the existence of middle and modem English dialects later on, and by common sense - people do not spontaneously develop new accents when there is a sudden change of political power.

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 this classification written documents of the 15th century can be classified into three types:

  1. those written in the more 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.

This classification cuts right across another classification that according to the kind of documents:

London documents of the former half of the 15th century are poems by Thomas Occleve, official London papers, and also official documents from other towns. The literary language is also found in letters written by kings, queens, ministers, and other officials. In some texts written basically in London English occasional influence of local dialects is found. These are poems by John Lydgate (1370-1451), showing East Midland influence, prose works by Sir John Fortescue, with slight traces of South-Western dialects; prose works by John Capgrave (1393-1464) with elements of East Midland dialects. In the private letters of John Shilingford, Mayorr of Exeter in Devonshire, written in 1447-1450, there are only slight traces of the local South-Western dialect. The fact that a Devonshire man, writing private letters to his friends also living in Devonshire, does not use the local dialect but the London literary language, is eloquent proof of the authoritative position London English had acquired by the middle 15th century.

The formation of national language was greatly fostered by two events of the late 15th century.

1) 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. They came to an end in the battle of Bosworth, when Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor, who became king of England as Henry VII. 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 predominance of the national language over local dialects.

2) Another great event was the introduction of printing.

Printing was invented in Mayence (Germany) by Johann Gutenberg in 1438. From Mayence printing spread to Strasburg, then to Italy and to the Netherlands. In the town of Bruges, in Flanders, the Englishman William Caxton (1422-1491) became acquainted with this art. He published the first English printed book, The Recuyeil of; the Histories of Troy) in Bruges. Returning to England, he founded j the first English printing office in London in 1476 and in 1477 1 appeared the first book to be printed in English, namely, The Dictes ; and Sayings of the Philosophers. The spread of printed books was bound to foster the normalization of spelling and also of grammatical forms.