Kentish was a southern dialect of

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

spoken in the Anglo-Saxon

kingdom of Kent la, Regnum Cantuariorum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the Kentish , common_name = Kent , era = Heptarchy , status = vassal , status_text = , government_type = Monarchy ...

. It was one of four dialect-groups of Old English, the other three being Mercian, Northumbrian (known collectively as the Anglian dialects), and West Saxon. The dialect was spoken in what are now the modern-day Counties of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, Surrey, southern

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

and the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a Counties of England, county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the List of islands of England#Largest islands, largest and List of islands of England#Mo ...

by the Germanic settlers, identified by Bede as

Jutes The Jutes (), Iuti, or Iutæ ( da, Jyder, non, Jótar, ang, Ēotas) were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic nation ...

. Such a distinct difference in the Anglo-Saxon settlers of the entire Kingdom of Kent is viewed more sceptically by modern historians. Although by far the most important surviving Kentish manuscripts are the law codes of the Kentish kings, contained in ''

Textus Roffensis __NOTOC__ The ''Textus Roffensis'' (Latin for "The Tome of Rochester"), fully titled the ''Textus de Ecclesia Roffensi per Ernulphum episcopum'' ("The Tome of the Church of Rochester up to Bishop Ernulf") and sometimes also known as the Anna ...

'', they were early-twelfth-century copies of much earlier laws, and their spellings and forms of English were modernised and standardised in various ways. This particularly affects the Laws of

Hlothhere Hlothhere ( ang, Hloþhere; died 6 February 685) was a King of Kent who ruled from 673 to 685. Hlothhere succeeded his brother Ecgberht I in 673. His parents were Eorcenberht of Kent and Seaxburh of Ely, the daughter of Anna of East Anglia. In ...

and Eadric. However, some indications of the differences between late-seventh-century Kentish and West Saxon can be made by comparing two contemporaneous laws. The law code of the West-Saxon king

Ine INE, Ine or ine may refer to: Institutions * Institut für Nukleare Entsorgung, a German nuclear research center * Instituto Nacional de Estadística (disambiguation) * Instituto Nacional de Estatística (disambiguation) * Instituto Nacional Elec ...

was composed at some point between 688 and 694. Clause 20 concerns potential thefts by outsiders (i.e. those not owing allegiance to the kings of Wessex). This was adopted almost word for word by Ine's contemporary, the Kentish king Wihtræd: With many words at this point, there is no difference between Kentish and what became the dominant West-Saxon form of English. Other words indicate possible differences in pronunciation (or, at least, of transcribing), such as ''fremde/ fræmde'' or ''gonge/ gange''. However, there is little doubt that, even with minor differences in syntax and vocabulary, the two forms were mutually intelligible, at least by this relatively late date in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of southern England. The principal evidence for Kentish are the '' Old Kentish Glosses''.

Henry Sweet Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic lang ...

included two Kentish charters and a Kentish psalm (from the

Vespasian Psalter The Vespasian Psalter (London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A I) is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated psalter decorated in a partly Insular style produced in the second or third quarter of the 8th century. It contains an interlinear gloss in Old E ...

) in his ''Anglo-Saxon Reader''; a charter of Oswulf (805-10) and a charter of Abba (835).Sweet, H., ed. (1946) ''Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader''; 10th ed., revised by C. T. Onions. Oxford: Clarendon Press; pp. 181-84 & 190-95

References

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Dictionary
Languages attested from the 7th century English language in England Medieval Kent Language articles with unknown extinction date Old English dialects fr:Kentien

Further reading

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