This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Late West Saxon is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
West Saxon, primarily spoken in Wessex, was one of four distinct dialects of Old English. The three others were Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian (the latter two known as the Anglian dialects).
There were two stages of the West Saxon dialect: Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon.
Early West Saxon was the language of King Alfred (849–899). By the eleventh century, the language had evolved into Late West Saxon.1
Late West Saxon was the dialect that became the first "standardised" written English ("Winchester standard"). This dialect was spoken mostly in the south and west of England around the important monastery at Winchester, which was also the 'capital city' of the English kings. However, while other Old English dialects were still spoken in other parts of the country, it seems that all scribes wrote and copied manuscripts in this prestigious written form. Well-known poems recorded in this language include Beowulf and Judith. However, both these poems appear to have been written originally in other Old English dialects, but they were later "translated" into the standard Late West Saxon literary language when they were copied by scribes.
The "Winchester standard" gradually fell out of use after the Norman Conquest in 1066. Monasteries did not keep the standard going because English bishops were soon replaced by Norman bishops who brought their own Latin textbooks and scribal conventions, and there was less and less need to copy or write in Old English. Latin soon became the "language for all serious writing", with Anglo-Norman as the language of the aristocracy, and any standard written English became a distant memory by the mid-twelfth century.
Late West Saxon is the distant ancestor of the West Country dialects.
References
| ɮ | This Indo-European languages-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 15 November 2008, at 18:36.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Late West Saxon".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.