OE —
While looking for sources on my topic, the BBC English, I can across this article (copied below). Beyond just an interesting history of the letter “yogh,” it is an example of the effects of standardization from the printing press. While the printing press was helpful to spread the written language, it seems to [...]
It’s almost certain that the various dialects of OE were mutually intelligible despite phonetic and morphological differences. It’s equally certain that the language that became OE was very similar to the Germanic dialects spoken on the Continent (i.e. Frankish), but that over time OE diverged from German spoken on the Continent and in Scandinavia. But [...]
Reading about the four main dialects of Old English that have been “established” by linguists, I couldn’t help thinking about how slim the margin was that gave us West Saxon OE instead of some other form. According to Chapter 2 in Crystal (and elsewhere, I think, in Freeborn), the West Saxon dialect is the best-studied [...]