Old English Dialects

Old English Dialects
North of the Humber River was Northumbrian. This was the dialect that became the standard of a great religious and literary culture in the 8th and 9th centuries.
In the middle of the country, between the Humber river to the north and the Thames to the south, was Mercia, a loose collection of settlements and kingdoms.
Kentish - was the dialect spoken in the southeastern corner of the country. Here, too, little survives in this dialect.
The most important dialect of Old English was West Saxon (W-S), the form of the language spoken and written in the southwestern part of the country.
This was the dialect of King Alfred (d. 899), of the seat of government of the A-S people that emerged in the late 9th and early 10th century, located in Winchester, and of the church.
Most manuscripts of OE literature are in the W-S dialect, so when we read “Old English” in modern editions, we are reading texts in the W-S dialect.
OE was first written using runes, but after the Christianisation (initiated in 597) Latin alphabet was adopted.
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