Southern dialect
The Southern dialect consists of the South-Western and South-Eastern (also known as Kentish) regions. During the Old English period, the South was known as the center of the Anglo-Sacon court dialect therefore, that means that this Southern Middle English dialect was a direct descendant of the West Saxon dialect of Old English.
It is interesting to note that this area becomes linguistically uninteresting in the Middle English period. It shares some features of West Midland dialect. The Southern dialect also was said to be very conservative (slow to change) and shows very little influence from other languages which explains why it differed so much from the Northern dialect (which was influenced by Scandinavian.) |