Territorial and Social Dialects in Modern English
The classification of modern English territorial dialects presents serious difficulties, since their borders are very fluid, and the language standard more and more intrudes into the area of dialect speech. One of the most serious attempts was made by A. Ellis. Although this classification is not without flaws, it generally reflects the dialect map of modern Britain quite accurately and is accepted as the basis for many dialectologists. In general terms, based on the scheme of A. Ellis, modern English dialects can be classified as follows.
Northern dialects, divided into three subgroups - 1) Northumberland, North. Durham, 2) South. Durham, most of Cumberland, Westmoreland, North. Lancashire, the hilly part of West Ryding in Yorkshire; 3) East Riding and North Riding in Yorkshire
middle dialects, divided into ten subgroups: 1) Lincolnshire, 2) south-east. Lancashire, North - East. Cheshire, Sev-zap. Darbyshire, 3) sev-zap. Lancashire, South Ribble, 4) Middle Lancashire, Isle of Man, 5) South Yorkshire, 6) Most of Cheshire, North. Staffordshire, 7) most of Darbyshire, 8) Nottinghamshire, 9) Flint, Denbay, 10) east. Shropshire, South Staffordshire, most of Warwickshire, South. Darbyshire, Leicestershire;
Eastern dialects, subdivided into five subgroups: 1) Cambridgeshire, Rutland, southeast. Northamptonshire, 2) most of Essex, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, middle part of Northamptonshire, 3) Norfolk and Suffolk, 4) most of Buckinghamshire, 5) Middlesex, south-east. Buckinghamshire, South Hertfordshire, southwest Essex;
Western dialects, subdivided into two subgroups: 1) zap. and South. Shropshire (west of the River Severn), 2) Herfordshire, except its eastern part, Radnor, Eastern. part of Bracknock;
southern dialects, divided into ten subgroups: 1) part of Pembrokeshire and Glamorganshire, 2) Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, sev. and vost. parts of Somersetshire county, a large part of Gloucestershire, southwest. Devonshire, 3) a large part of the county of Hampshire, Isle of Wight, a large part of Berkshire, the southern part of Sarrey, zap. part of Sussex, 4) sowing. Gloucestershire, East. Herfordshire, Worcestershire, South. part of Warwickshire, north of Oxfordshire, south-west of Northamptonshire, 5) most of Oxfordshire, 6) north of Surrey, north-west. Kent, 7) most of Kent, east Sussex, 8) zap. Somersetshire northeast Devonshire, 9) Eastern. Cornwall, most of Devonshire, 10) zap. Cornwall.
One of the main features of modern English territorial dialects (as well as dialects of other languages) is their conservatism. One or another deviation from the standard of literature is mostly due to the evolution, but the lack of evolution: many linguistic phenomena are different in dialects.
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The runic alphabet. Old English alphabet and pronunciation.
Runes are the 24 letters (later 16 in Scandinavia and 30 or more in Anglo-Saxon England) of an ancient Germanic alphabet used from the 2d or 3d to the 16th century. Perhaps derived ultimately from the Etruscan alphabet, the runic alphabet was used mainly for charms and inscriptions, on stone, wood, metal, or bone. Each letter had a name, which was itself a meaningful word. The rune ^, for instance, could stand for either the sound "f" or the fehu, "cattle," which was the name given to the rune.
They were of specific shape, designed to be cut on the wooden sticks, and only few people knew how to make them and how to interpret them. Runic inscriptions that came down from the oldest settlers on the isles are few, and the language (as it is interpreted) is not what might be called Old English - it was rather an ancient language which might be very close to the languages of other Germanic tribes. The story of runes might be very interesting in itself, yet we are not concerned with the story of the development of the English language, and what we are going to study here was written in an alphabet dating back to the 7th century; it was Latin alphabet with few specifically English additions. Some English sounds had no counterpart in Latin, so three signs developed from runes were added, plus ligature se, now well known as a transcription symbol.
The Latin alphabet was carried throughout medieval Europe by the Roman Catholic church - to the Irish and Merovingians in the 6th century and the Anglo-Saxons and Germans in the 7th. The oldest surviving texts in the English language written with Latin letters date back to c.700
14. Economic and social conditions in the 11-12th centuries.
The OE period in the history of the language corresponds to the transitional stage from the slave-owning and tribal system to the feudal system in the history of Britain. In the 11th c. feudalism was already well established. According to a survey made in the late 11th c. slaves and freemen were declining classes. The majority of the agricultural population ware bound to their lord and land. Under natural economy, characteristic of feudalism, most of the things needed for the life of the lord and the villain were produced on the estate. Feudal manors were separated from their neighbors by tolls, local feuds, and various restrictions concerning settlement, traveling and employment. These historical conditions produced a certain influence on the development of the language. In Early ME the differences between the regional dialects grew. Never in history, before or after, was the historical background more favorable for dialectal differentiation. The main dialectal division in England, which survived in later ages with some slight modification of boundaries and considerable dialect mixture, goes back to the feudal stage of British history.
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