Early Divisions of English

EARLY DIVISIONS OF ENGLISH Dialectical Differences.—The different Germanic tribes which gradually overran Britain spoke, already in their ancient homes, dialects which were to some extent differentiated, and doubtless these differences were enhanced by the circumstances of political and geographical separation incidental to the settlement of a coun try of the size and physical character of Britain. But the dialectal differences of the Old English period do not amount to much. These differences consist chiefly in a slightly various development of the original West Germanic vowel system. This variety was rich in potentialities of later differences, rather than important in the loth and earlier centuries. It could certainly have formed no bar to social intercourse. The old records enable us to dis tinguish four main dialectal types—the Northumbrian; Mercian; Kentish ; Saxon.

Northumbrian and Mercian, which have much in common, rep resent the speech of different tribes of Angles, and are often re ferred to together as Anglian. Mercian was spoken in the greater part of the area between the Humber and the Thames ; it is, speaking generally, the dialect of the West Midlands. From the Mercians (Mierce) a group of Anglians are definitely distinguished by name as East Anglians (Eastengle) who settled Norfolk and Suffolk. Unfortunately the dialect of East Anglia is hardly re corded before the Norman Conquest, but the copious remains of this type from the r2th century onwards show marked differences from the West Midland type.

Saxon Settlements.

The Saxons settled the whole country south of the Thames with the exception of Cornwall which re mained Celtic, part of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight and Kent, which were settled by Jutes. Certain areas to the north of the Thames were also Saxon territory, namely Gloucestershire, Wor cestershire, south-west Warwickshire, and, as the names them selves imply, Middlesex (Middlesexe, "Middle-Saxons") and Essex (Eastsexe, or "East Saxons").

Of the dialects of the Middle and East Saxons not enough is preserved in pre-Conquest documents to furnish data for a clear conception of their linguistic character, but from King Alfred's time onwards, West Saxon is recorded in the most considerable prose texts of this early period, and a form of Saxon, sometimes known as the Saxon Patois, is preserved in a collection of homilies, and some glosses of the i oth century. This latter dialect has some features characteristic of West Saxon, and others characteristic of Anglian, and is probably the dialect of Worcestershire. Kentish, preserved in various charters, glosses, and two sets of verses of no literary merit, covering the period from the late 7th to the loth century, shows quite distinctive dialect features which mark it out, from the beginning, on the one hand from West Saxon, and on the other from Mercian.

The English, together with other ancient Germanic peoples, originally made use of the Runic alphabet (see RUNES), which speedily gave place to a form of handwriting which, with certain modifications, persisted during the whole Old English period. This was a special adaptation of the Roman alphabet in use among the Irish, and taught to the English by Christian missionaries from that nation. The age of the surviving English Runic inscriptions is uncertain, and most of them were probably, some of them cer tainly, produced at a time when the ordinary writing was already in use.

The Roman or Irish alphabet was soon rendered more suitable for expressing the sounds of English by the introduction of the Runic symbols') ("thorn") for tit and p ("wen") for w, for which th and uu were written in the earliest English records.

Old English Spelling.

The spelling of Old English is fairly consistent and represents, on the whole, an attempt to render the actual sounds as far as the alphabet, somewhat inadequate for its purposes, will permit. The characteristic vowel sound, approxi mately that in present-day English cat, is rendered by ć, a com bination of a, and e; marks of quantity are used in many mss. though by no means consistently, and sometimes a vowel symbol is doubled to express length. Doubling of consonant symbols is consistently carried out to express a long, or double, consonant sound. On the other hand the symbol g or 3e is used to express at least three sounds, the stop g, and the back ("guttural") and front ("palatal") open consonants or spirants. Similarly c is used for the k-sound, and for a front ("palatal") stop which subse quently became "ch" as in chin.

The chief changes wrought in the West Germanic sound sys tem in the dialects of Old English were in the domain of the vowels. As a result of isolative tendencies, the West Germanic a became de, a became ae, the old diphthongs ai, au, eu, became respectively eo in O.E. Among characteristic English changes due to the influence of neighbouring sounds, may be mentioned : the diphthonging (fracture) of old ć, e, i to ea, eo, ib before cer tain consonantal combinations, and, in varying degrees in different dialects, also when followed by o, and especially, by u, in the next syllable (u-mutation) ; the fronting, or palatalizing of back vowels (a, o, u) when originally followed in the next syllable by i or j (i-, or j-mutation). The old Germanic stress upon the "root" syllable of words was retained, and the vowels in the unstressed, inflexional syllables were consequently weakened and altered from their original sound. This weakening of unstressed vowels had ad vanced very far before the end of the O.E. period, and in Earliest Middle English had obliterated the earlier distinction between a, e, u, which are first confused, and then levelled under one sound which is written e.