English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day

m its position to the south of the Thames, yet it shows certain pecu

this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight"; a remark which obviously implies the southern part of Hampshire. This suggests that the speech of Kent, from the very first, had peculiarities of its own. Dr Sweet, in his Second Anglo-Saxon Reader, Archaic and Dialectal, gives five very brief Kentish cha

an hrithr, and vi. scep.... Th?m higum et Cristes cirican of th?m londe et Cealflocan: th?t is thonne thritig ombra alath, and threo hund hlafa, theara bith fiftig hwitehlafa, an weg spices and ce

is to

d loaves, and one rother [ox], and six sheep.... To the domestics at Christ's church, from the land at Challock: that is, then, thirty vessels of ale, and three hundred loaves, of which fifty shall be white loaves, one

y date. No. 268 is: "Cardines, hearran"; and in several modern dialects, including Ha

French originals. They are printed in Morris's Old English Miscellany, and two of them will be found in Specimens of Early English, Part

fonden ure loverd, swo hin an-urede, and him offrede hire offrendes, gold, and stor, and mirre. Tho nicht efter thet aperede an ongel of h

at

Lord, so (they) honoured him, and offered him their offerings, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. The night after that (there) appeared an angel from

of Chart-Sutton in 1320. He translated the Psalter into English prose, and wrote some religious poems, chiefly relating to church-services, which

h wel the c

im-self hy

wessch?3 n

cometh to

n lo

at habben

be hit wi

the word?s

Englíssch?

i the12 ine t

and Holy

nd m

hit14 is is

h thet the

(the) land? 7. there is noe that may not have it? 8. that will try to have it? 9. these are? 10

ect of the fourteenth century, and is remarkable for being much more difficult to make out than other pieces of the same period. The whole work was edited by Dr Morris for the Early English Text Society in 1866. A sermon of the same date and in the same dialect, and

ilate, y-nayled a rode [on a cross], dyad, and be-bered; yede [went] doun to helle; thane thridde day aros vram the dyade; steay [rose, ascended] to hevenes; zit [sitteth] athe [on the] right half of God the Vader almighti; thannes to comene He is, to

re it is denoted by ll, as in llyn, a lake. In every case, modern English substitutes for it the ordinary l, though lh (= hl) was in use in 1340 in Southern. The prefix y-, representing the extremely common A.S. (Anglo-Saxon) prefix ge-, was kept up in Southern much longer than in the other dialects, but has now disappeared; the form y-clept being archaic. The plural suffix -en, as in haly-en, holy ones, saints, is due to the fact that Southern admitted the use of that suffix very freely, as in cherch-en, churche

(A.S. hit), sit (A.S. sittan), bitten (A.S. b?ten), etc.; and sometimes the A.S. short y, as in pyt, a pit. The sound of the A.S. short i was much the same as in modern English; but that of the short y was different, as it denoted the "mutated" form of short u for which German has a special symbol, viz. ü, the sound intended being that of the German ü in schützen, to protect. In the latter case, Ke

the Kentish dialect. He took advantage of this to introduce, occasionally, Kentish forms into his verse; apparently for the sake of securing a rime more easily. See this discussed at p.

for varying his rimes. The earliest example of this is in his Book of the Duchess, l. 438, where he uses the Kentish ken instead of kin (A.S. cynn) in order to secure a rime for ten. In the Canterbury Tales, E 1057, he has kesse, to kiss (A.S. c

left is really Kentish, and occurs in the Ayenbite of Inwyt; the Midland form is properly lift, which is common enough in Middle English; see the New English Dictionary, s.v. Left, adj. Hemlock is cert

he Kentish dialect in Middle English by W. Heuser, in t