The North East is famous for our distinctive dialects and way of speaking. But where did the dialects come from? And what might the future of the dialects be? The subject of how a dialect develops, is naturally a very complex matter, but this series of articles hopes to answer those questions – and a few more things besides.
Origins of Dialects
The North was always different, even going back to Roman times, when they strangely called it Britannia Inferior by way of comparison to Britannia Superior in the south. The North was always colder, wetter and hillier. This meant that agricultural practices were different going way back into prehistory and consequently there were profound cultural differences between here and regions further south.
If we see language as a product of culture, then these cultural differences were always likely to produce linguistic differences. However, it is with the arrival of the Anglian tribes, after the Romans left Britannia around 410 AD, that we first see any form of English here and we can truly start to quantify the linguistic differences. Over time these tribes developed the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, which were to combine into the great kingdom of Northumbria.
The Angles
When the Angles arrived, it is generally thought that there were a variety of Celtic tongues, at least some of which can be related to modern Welsh and the Latin language, left behind by the departing Romans.
The Angles appear on the scene in the 5th century and while there were already some differences between Anglian languages in the north and Saxon languages in the south, the major differences were still to come. It is said that even early on the north preferred the word bairn to child, but it is the arrival of the Vikings in the 8th and 9th centuries that really made a big difference as the Vikings contributed many new words.
Then another huge jolt came from the arrival of the Normans after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, as Norman-French became the language of the rulers and the status of English was demoted, to the point that Melvyn Bragg has argued that it was in some respects just hanging on for 300 years. One of the consequences of the dominance of Norman French was that spoken English diversified, along the Danelaw line from London to Cheshire and either due to the Danelaw line or the earlier divergence, the languages grew apart.
Celtic influence?
It has traditionally been thought that the Celts remaining after the Romans left Britannia around 410, were pushed to mountainous areas of the west, today’s Cumbria.
Wales and Cornwall and that apart from a number of place names, such as Penrith, there is little or no Celtic influence on Old English. However, Katie Wales argues in her excellent 2006 book Northern English; A Social and Cultural History that the existence of Celtic kingdoms, such as Elmet and Craven, “may have confirmed a perception of difference between the North and the South and even of an essential distinction between Northumbrian English and dialects further south.”
The Anglo-Saxon Period 410 to 793
Wales also argues that “scholars have traditionally, if rather crudely labelled what they see as the ‘major’ dialects in the Anglo-Saxon period largely on the basis of Bede’s account, because of the scarcity of actual linguistic data: hence ‘Anglian’ from the West German dialect of the Angles; Kentish from that of the Jutes and ‘West Saxon’ from that of the Saxons. ‘Anglian’ itself is traditionally divided also into ‘Northumbrian in the North and ‘Mercian’ in the Midlands.”
There is an early literary reference to the Humber as a cultural divide, provided by King Alfred of Wessex in a letter to go with his translation of Pope Gregory’s Cara Pastorali. This was the golden age of Northumbria and there had been important cultural centres at Lindisfarne, Wearmouth and Jarrow, all destroyed by the Vikings, while other important centres remained at Hexham, Whitby and Ripon.
Most early English texts still surviving from 8th to 9th centuries are of Northumbrian origin. These include Caedmon’s Hymn, Bede’s Death song and runic inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross near Dumfries.
Caedmon’s Hymn
The poem Caedmon’s Hymn is the earliest known poem from any recognised version of English and can be read below in both Northumbrian and modern English.
Northumbrian version:
Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard,
Metudæs maecti end his modgidanc,
uerc uuldurfadur su he uundra gihuaes,
eci Dryctin or astelidae.
He aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrafe haleg Scepen;
tha middungeard moncynnæs uard,
eci Dryctin æfter tiadæ
firum foldu Frea allmectig
Modern English version:
Modern English version:
Now we must praise the Heavenly Kingdom's Watcher,
the Lord's power and his purpose of mind,
the work of the Wondrous Father as he,
the Eternal Lord, established wonders.
He, the Holy Creator, created heaven
as a roof for the children of earth;
Then the Watcher of Mankind created this middle earth,
the earth of the people,
Eternal Lord, God Almighty
The Viking Influence on Dialects
When the Vikings first appeared in Northumbria, at Lindisfarne in 793, they were intent on little more than pillage and murder and this remained the same for a few decades afterwards. However, over time, more and more Vikings began to settle in Northumbria and consequently, the influence of their language(s) began to be felt in the way that Northumbrians spoke.
Wales has noted that, “settlement patterns of the Danes have certainly contributed to emerging differences over time between Northumberland Durham/Yorkshire dialects. So, in Northumberland and the border region, streams are still burns, in Teesdale becks. Indeed, even by the 880s what Higham calls a fracture was emerging between Bernicia and Deira, since the Danes had sovereignty over the latter, the present-day ‘lower North’, their capital being at York.””
Summing Up Dialects
The Northumbrian dialect during the Old English period was not one monolithic language. Having been born out of and shaped by language contact with Viking Norse dialects and with Celtic varieties on the borders of Northumbria, it was always going to have varieties. These contacts with other varieties of language led to the loss and simplification of grammatical infections.
The North can be said to be the crucible for the movement towards analytical phasing of English language generally as it drove language change in a way West Saxon did not. Wales has argued that already the broad aegis of ‘Northumbrian’ are beginning to be distinguished – in the Border regions, in Cumbria, in the far Northeast, between the Tyne and Tees, on Merseyside, on Humberside and in Yorkshire west and east in Lower North.
The emergence of Norman French as the dominant language of the court after the Norman invasion of 1066, was to see Northumbrian and other Northern English dialects stray further away from those of the south.
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