Old English should
not be regarded as a single monolithic entity just as Modern English
is also not monolithic. Within Old English, there were language
variations.
Old English has
variation along regional lines
as well as variation across different
times.
The four main
dialectal forms of Old English were
Northumbrian,
spoken north of the river Humber; Mercian,
spoken in the midlands; Kentish,
spoken in Kent (the southeastern part); and West
Saxon, spoken in the southwest.
Each of those dialects was associated with an
independent kingdom on the island. Of
these, all of Northumbria
and most of Mercia
were overrun by the Vikings
during the 9th century. The portion of Mercia
and all of Kent
that were successfully defended were then integrated into Wessex.
After the process of
unification
of the diverse Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in 878 by
Alfred the Great, there is a marked
decline in the importance of regional dialects. This is not because
they stopped existing; regional dialects continued even after that
time to this day.
The
bulk of the surviving documents
from the Anglo-Saxon period are written in the
dialect of Wessex, Alfred's
kingdom. It became necessary to
standardize the language of government
to reduce the difficulty of administering the more remote areas of
the kingdom. As a result, documents were written in the West Saxon
dialect.
The Church
was affected likewise, especially since Alfred initiated an ambitious
program to translate
religious materials into English.
Because of the
centralization of power and the Viking invasions, there is little
or no written evidence for the
development of non-Wessex dialects
after Alfred's unification. Late West
Saxon was still used after the Norman
Conquest but Latin
and Norman French
then became the languages of the
nobility and
administration.
Modern-day
Received Pronunciation is not a direct
descendant of the best-attested dialect, Late West Saxon. It is
rather a descendant of a Mercian
dialect, since that was the dialect of
London.
