Old English – A Standard or A Dialect?

Old English started developing after the Germanic tribes invaded the islands. This can be found in the most influential account Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum written by a Catholic monk Bede. According to this account, the Germanic tribes came in 449 CE which signified the birth of a new community with its own language and history.

Dialects of Old English

The Old English Period is thought to be ranging from 449 CE to 1066 CE. There were four commonly recognised dialects: Northumbrian, Kentish, Mercian and West Saxon. These dialects were associated with independent kingdoms on the British Isles.

Northumbrian Dialect

• The earliest surviving text like the famous Caedmon’s Hymn, the Old English poem, is written in Northumbrian. However, the Kingdom of Northumbria was overrun by Vikings in the beginning of the 9^th century which led to the loss of most of the written records of the dialect.

Mercian Dialect

• The region of the Mercian dialect stretched in the east to the border with East Anglia, in the west to Offa’s Dyke, in the north to Staffordshire and in the south to South Oxfordshire. The surviving materials include the Old English martyrology that contains 230 stories about the lives of saints. This particular text is believed to have been compiled in Mercia.

Kentish Dialect

• This dialect was spoken in the county of Kent, yet eventually merged with the West Saxon dialect. When it comes to the remaining material, then there are textual records of law texts from Kentish kings Hlothere and Eadric, however, these are late 12^th century copies which are believed to have been altered and “modernised”.

West Saxon Dialect

• This dialect was spoken in the Kingdom of Wessex. It is generally divided into Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon. The former variety was used by Alfred the Great while bishop Aethelwold and Aelfric used the latter. Such texts like Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon chornicle are vital sources that helped scholars gain understanding of Old English.

Standardization

As we can see, the mentioned texts were written in dialects of Old English but was there ever a standard? Evidence says that King Alfred attempted to make Early West Saxon the standard language, yet bishop Aethelwold and Aelfric were the ones who almost succeeded. In order to understand why, it is necessary to consult the definition. Scholars believe standard language to be a language that is systematic in its use: there is minimal variation when it comes to form but maximal variation in function which, in a way, can be understood as being used in a variety of contexts and having several “functions”. It also has internal variation which can be divided into regional or social and has its own norms.

Aelfric’s Standard Old English

During the Cluniac Reforms, also called the Benedictine Reform, the bishop and his prolific produced manuscripts in Winchester and used a set of lexical items called Winchester words which were highly consistent in their spelling and inflectional endings. But we cannot say that this was the standard because in order to become an established form, it needs to be used excessively by others which would lead to it being historicised as a language without major linguistic changes. Then there would appear (il)legitimate forms of language and ideological differences between the speakers of the standard and its dialects. Aelfric’s Standard Old English, however, was only used in a circle of scholars in Winchester and not by the rest of the population on the isles. Thus it can only be treated as a focused written language or a variety of Old English that existed side by side with others.

References:

Hogg, Richard. 1992. “Introduction”. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume I: The Beginnings to 1066. Ed. Richard M. Hogg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1–25

Lange, Claudia. 2017. “Standards in the History of English”, in: Laurel J. Brinton and Alexander Bergs, eds. History of English, vol. 1: Historical Outlines from Sound to Text, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 238-252.

Lee, Rimmer. Abroad in the Yard. Accessed December 27th, 2021, from <https://www.abroadintheyard.com/last-recorded-use-of-old-english-in-history-revealed/>