English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day

There is a great wealth of modern dialect literature, as indicated by the lists in the _E.D.D._ Some of these dialect books are poor and inaccurate, and they are frequently spel...

The Mercian district lies between the Northern and Southern, occupying an irregular area which it is very difficult to define. On the east coast it reached from the mouth of the...

There is a widely prevalent notion that the speakers of English Dialects employ none but native words; and it is not uncommon for writers who have more regard for picturesque ef...

thus:--"While Canterbury was so important a seminary of learning, there was, in the Anglian region of Northumbria, a development of religious and intellectual life which makes i...

A little before 1300, we come to a _Metrical English Psalter_, published by the Surtees Society in 1843-7. The language is supposed to represent the speech of Yorkshire. It is t...

The subject of the last chapter was one of great importance. When it is once understood that, down to 1400 or a little later, the men of the Scottish Lowlands and the men of the...

According to the New English Dictionary, the oldest sense, in English, of the word _dialect_ was simply "a manner of speaking" or "phraseology," in accordance with its derivatio...

We have seen that the earliest dialect to assume literary supremacy was the Northern, and that at a very early date, namely, in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries; but its...

With the ascendancy of East Midland, and its acceptance as the chief literary language, the other dialects practically ceased to be recorded, with the exception (noted above) of...

Though the Kentish dialect properly belongs to Southern English, from its position to the south of the Thames, yet it shows certain peculiarities which make it desirable to cons...

Ich leve ine God, Vader almighti, makere of hevene and of erthe. And ine Iesu Crist, His zone onlepi [_only son_], oure lhord, thet y-kend [_conceived_] is of the Holy Gost, y-b...

The history of our dialects in the earliest periods of which we have any record is necessarily somewhat obscure, owing to the scarcity of the documents that have come down to us...

It has been shown that, in the earliest period, we can distinguish three well-marked dialects besides the Kentish, viz. Northumbrian, Mercian, and Anglo-Saxon; and these, in the...

Wessex _see_ Anglo-Saxon Westmoreland dialect, 117, 118 William of Palerne, 80 Wiltshire dialect, 128-129 Wise, J.R., 5 Wright, Dr J., _English Dialect Dictionary_, 9, 85, 90, 1...