Midlands dialect
The Midland dialect consists of the West midlands and the East Midlands. The West midlands is viewed as the most conservative of the dialect areas in the Middle English period. There were many documented literary works. It is in the western half of the Old English dialect area Mercia. The East Midlands dialect is different from the West because of the heavy Scandinavian settlement during the Middle English period which made the Northern dialect similar to Northern East-Midlands. It is interesting to know that this Scandanavian influence then moved south down the country and by the thirteenth centure, the East Midland dialect became a prosperous part of English. "It was the East-Midland dialect that eventually became the originator of the Modern English standard."
Interesting Fact: "In the 13th century this part of England, especially Norfolk and Suffolk, began to outstrip the rest of the country in prosperity and population because of the excellence of its agriculture, and — crucially — increasing numbers of well-to-do speakers of East-Midland began to move to London, bringing their dialect with them. By the second half of the 14th century the dialect of London and the area immediately to the northeast, which had once been Kentish, was thoroughly East-Midland, and a rather Scandinavianized East Midland at that. Since the London dialect steadily gained in prestige from that time on and began to develop into a literary standard, the northern, Scandinavianized variety of East-Midland became the basis of standard Modern English. For that reason, East-Midland is by far the most important dialect of Middle English for the subsequent development of the language." |