href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@15755@[email protected]#chapVI" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">The Southern Dialect. Alfred the Great. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Old English Homilies. The Brut. St Juliana. The Ancren Riwle. The Proverbs of Alfred. The Owl and the Nightingale. A Moral Ode. Robert of Gloucester. Early history of Britain. The South-English Legendary. The Harleian MS. 2253. The Vernon MS. John Trevisa. The Testament of Love.
47 |
| VII |
The Southern Dialect of Kent. Quotation from Beda. Extract from an Old Kentish Charter. Kentish Glosses. Kentish Sermons. William of Shoreham; with an extract. The Ayenbite of Inwyt. The Apostles’ Creed in Old Kentish. The use of e for A.S. y in Kentish. Use of Kentish by Gower and Chaucer. Kentish forms in modern English. |
56 |
| VIII |
The Mercian Dialect. East Midland. Old Mercian Glossaries of the eighth century. The Lorica Prayer. The Vespasian Psalter. The Rushworth MS. Old Mercian and Wessex compared. Laud MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Ormulum. The English Proclamation of Henry III. (see the facsimile). Robert Mannyng of Brunne (Bourn). West Midland. The Prose Psalter. William of Palerne. The Pearl and Alliterative Poems. Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight. |
65 |
| IX. |
Foreign Elements in the Dialects. Words from Norman, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, etc. Celtic. List of Celtic words. Examples of Latin words. Greek words. Hebrew words. List of Scandinavian words. French words. Anglo-French words; gauntree. Literary French words, as used in dialects. |
82 |
| X |
Later History of the Dialects. Spenser. John Fitzherbert. Thomas Tusser. Skinner’s Etymologicon (Lincolnshire words). John Ray. Dialect glossaries. Dr Ellis on Early English Pronunciation. The English Dialect Society. The English Dialect Dictionary. The English Dialect Grammar. |
99 |
| XI |
The Modern Dialects. Prof. Wright’s account of the modern English Dialects. |
106 |
| XII |
A Few Specimens. Some writers in dialect. Specimens: Scottish (Aberdeen, Ayrshire, Edinburgh). Northern England (Westmorland). Midland (Lincoln, S.E. Lancashire, Sheffield, Cheshire). Eastern (N. Essex, Norfolk). Western (S.W. Shropshire). Southern (Wiltshire, Isle of Wight, Sussex). |
110 |
|
Bibliography |
133 |
|
Index |
136 |
|
Facsimile. The only English Proclamation of Henry III. Oct. 18, 1258.
⁂ For a transcription of the Facsimile see pp. 75-6. |
at end |
{Transcriber’s Note:
In addition to the chapters and some subheadings, all pages have anchors in the form "pageiv" or "page68".
The Facsimile is not included in this e-text. In its place is appended a
transcription which undoes the orthographic changes described by the author on p. 75.}
DIALECTS AND THEIR VALUE
According to the New English Dictionary, the oldest sense, in English, of the word dialect was simply “a manner of speaking” or “phraseology,” in accordance with its derivation from the Greek dialectos, a discourse or way of speaking; from the verb dialegesthai, to discourse or converse.
The modern meaning is somewhat more precise. In relation to a language such as English, it is used in a special sense to signify “a local variety of
