3.2. Middle English Dialects Rise of the London Dialect

The Norman Conquest put an end to the supremacy of Wessex and its dialect (West Saxon). As French became the official language of the country, each dialect had only local significance.

A precise map of all the dialects, probably, will never be made for lack of sources and their unreliability and because of dialect mixture.

It is usual to speak of three main groups of dialects in ME: Northern, Midland and Southern. Northern dialects were spoken to the North of the river Humber. Midland dialects were spoken between the Humber and the Thames. Southern dialects were spoken to the South of the Thames; one of the most peculiar among them was the dialect of Kent.

The basis of the dialects remained more or less the same as in OE. In OE there was the opposition between Anglican and Saxon. In ME the most significant was the opposition between North and Midland (i.e. Northumbrian and Mercian).

The Northern dialects developed from OE Northumbrian. In Early ME they included several local dialects: the Yorkshire and the Lancashire dialects and also what later became known as Scottish.

Mercian served as the basis for Midland dialects, further subdivided into East Midland and West Midland.

The Southern group included the dialect of Kent and the South Western dialects.

The dialects differed from each other by essential phonetic and morphological features.

A special position among the dialects belonged to the dialect of London. As London was situated on both banks of the Thames, its dialect had both Southern and East Midland elements. But gradually the latter took the upper hand, and when the dialect of London developed into the language of all the country it did so essentially as an East Midland dialect with comparatively few elements from other dialects.

The development of the dialect of London into a national language was due not only to the exceptional political and economic role of London as the capital and greatest commercial centre of the country, but to some other factors as well:

(1) the popularity of Chaucer, «the father of English poetry», who contributed greatly to the conversion of the London dialect into a literary language,

(2) Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible from Latin into English in 1389,

(3) introduction of printing.

In the year 1476 William Caxton printed the 1-th English book. It was an event of great importance for the development of the English language. It helped to form a unified standard language on the basis of the London dialect.

With the development of the English national language, the territorial dialects did not disappear. They exist even now, but their role is greatly reduced. They are subordinated to the national language, which is the most important means of communication used in all the spheres of activity of the English people.

3.3. Early Middle English Written Records

For a long time, due to the Norman Conquest, there were two written languages in England, both of them foreign: Latin and French. The first works in the vernacular began to appear towards the end of the XII c. They were mostly of a religious nature. With the disappearance of West Saxon as a literary standard in ME each scribe or author tended to relapse into his native dialect.

The London dialect of those centuries is represented by several important documents: Henry III’s Proclamation of 1258, poems by Adam Davy (early XIVc.), the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), John Gower (1325-1408) and John Wycliffe (1320-1384).

There are written records in other dialects.

The Scottish dialect is represented by the poem Bruce written by Barbour (1387) - a poem about the king Bruce’s struggle for the freedom of Scotland.

The Northern dialect is represented by Cursor Mundi, an amplified version of the Gospels and The Prike of Conscience, a religious poem attributed (perhaps wrongly) to Richard Rolle of Hampole.

The Midland dialect is represented by «Ormulum», a religious poem (composed by the monk Orm), and Anglo-Saxon Chronicles known as the Peterborough Chronicle.

The Southern dialects are represented by the poem Brut composed by Layamon – a free rendering of the Brut d’Angleterre by Wace, an Anglo-Norman writer of the 12- th c.