Mercian (Anglo-Saxon)
Encyclopedia
Mercian was a language spoken in the Anglo-Saxon
kingdom of Mercia
(roughly speaking the Midlands of England an area in which four kingdoms had been united under one monarchy). Together with Northumbrian, it was one of the two Anglian dialects. The other two dialects of Old English
were Kentish and West Saxon
. Each of those dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Of these, all of Northumbria
and most of Mercia
were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. Part of Mercia and all of Kent
were successfully defended but were then integrated into Wessex. Because of the centralisation of power and the Viking invasions, there is little or no written evidence for the development of non-Wessex dialects after Alfred's unification, until the Middle English period .
, bordering Northumbria
and Strathclyde
; and as far south as South Oxfordshire
/ Gloucestershire
, where it bordered Wessex
. Old Norse
language also filtered in on a few occasions after the foundation of the Danelaw
. This describes the situation before the unification of Mercia.
The Old English Martyrology
is a collection of over 230 hagiographies
, probably compiled in Mercia
, or by someone who wrote in the Mercian dialect of Old English, in the second half of the 9th century.
In later Anglo-Saxon England the dialect would have remained in use in speech but hardly ever in written documents. Some time after the Norman Conquest Middle English dialects emerge and are later found in such works as the Ormulum
and the writings of the Gawain poet. In the later Middle Ages, a Mercian or East Midland dialect seems to have predominated in the London area, producing such forms as are (from Mercian arun).
Mercian also uses the eth
(Ð and ð) and thorn
(Þ and þ) both give the English 'th' sound as in 'thin'
and plural
forms. They can also be strong or weak.
s (I/me, you,he,she, we, you (pl.) and they) come in all the above cases and come in three numbers: singular, dual ('you/we two'), plural.
Demonstrative pronouns vary in the same way described below for the indefinite article, based on 'ðes' only for this. That and Those are the same as the definite article.
Relative pronoun
s (who, which, that) are usually 'ðe' and 'ðet.'
is equally complex, with all genders changing in the singular in all cases, based on variations of 'ðe.' In the plural all genders take the same word. The indefinite article was often omitted in Mercian.
Comparative adjectives (e.g. bigger) always add 're.' Example: Æðelen (noble), æðelenre (nobler).
into the present tense
, the past singular, the past plural and the past participle. There exist strong and weak verbs in Mercian that too conjugate in their own ways. The future tense requires an auxiliary verb
, like will (Mercian wyllen). There are three moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative
. Like most inflected languages, Mercian has a few irregular verbs (such as 'to be' bēon and 'have' habben). For basic understanding the four principal parts must be known for each strong verb: weak verbs are easier and more numerous, they all form the past participle with -ed.
loanwords coming via the use of Latin as the language of the Catholic Church, and Norse loanwords that arrived as part of the Norse incursions and foundation of the Danelaw
which covered much of the midlands and north of England
.
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
kingdom of Mercia
Mercia
Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...
(roughly speaking the Midlands of England an area in which four kingdoms had been united under one monarchy). Together with Northumbrian, it was one of the two Anglian dialects. The other two dialects of Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
were Kentish and West Saxon
West Saxon (Old English)
West Saxon, primarily spoken in Wessex, was one of four distinct dialects of Old English. The three others were Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian ....
. Each of those dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Of these, all of Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
and most of Mercia
Mercia
Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...
were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. Part of Mercia and all of Kent
Kingdom of Kent
The Kingdom of Kent was a Jutish colony and later independent kingdom in what is now south east England. It was founded at an unknown date in the 5th century by Jutes, members of a Germanic people from continental Europe, some of whom settled in Britain after the withdrawal of the Romans...
were successfully defended but were then integrated into Wessex. Because of the centralisation of power and the Viking invasions, there is little or no written evidence for the development of non-Wessex dialects after Alfred's unification, until the Middle English period .
History
The Mercian dialect was spoken as far east as to border East Anglia and as far west as Offa's Dyke, bordering Wales. It was spoken as far north as StaffordshireStaffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...
, bordering Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
and Strathclyde
Kingdom of Strathclyde
Strathclyde , originally Brythonic Ystrad Clud, was one of the early medieval kingdoms of the celtic people called the Britons in the Hen Ogledd, the Brythonic-speaking parts of what is now southern Scotland and northern England. The kingdom developed during the post-Roman period...
; and as far south as South Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
/ Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, where it bordered Wessex
Wessex
The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...
. Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
language also filtered in on a few occasions after the foundation of the Danelaw
Danelaw
The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the "Danes" held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. It is contrasted with "West Saxon law" and "Mercian law". The term has been extended by modern historians to...
. This describes the situation before the unification of Mercia.
The Old English Martyrology
Old English Martyrology
The Old English Martyrology is a collection of over 230 hagiographies, probably compiled in Mercia, or by someone who wrote in the Mercian dialect of the Old English language, in the second half of the 9th century....
is a collection of over 230 hagiographies
Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
, probably compiled in Mercia
Mercia
Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...
, or by someone who wrote in the Mercian dialect of Old English, in the second half of the 9th century.
In later Anglo-Saxon England the dialect would have remained in use in speech but hardly ever in written documents. Some time after the Norman Conquest Middle English dialects emerge and are later found in such works as the Ormulum
Ormulum
The Ormulum or Orrmulum is a twelfth-century work of biblical exegesis, written by a monk named Orm and consisting of just under 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse...
and the writings of the Gawain poet. In the later Middle Ages, a Mercian or East Midland dialect seems to have predominated in the London area, producing such forms as are (from Mercian arun).
Alphabet
The letters b, d, g, l, m, n, p, q, s, t, v, w, and z behave like Modern English.- c is always pronounced hard, like cat, never soft like cell.
- ċ is pronounced like ch in cheese.
- h at the beginning of a word, hard as is hat. Before t and at the end of a syllable, pronounced like ch in loch or the German ich, e.g. niht (translates as night)
- ġġ and cg are pronounced as dge as in wedge.
- ᵹInsular GInsular G is a form of the letter g somewhat resembling a tailed z or lowercase delta, used in Britain and Ireland. It was first used by the Irish, passed into Old English, and developed into the Middle English letter yogh...
before a, o, and u, it has a guttural sound, like the French r, before i, e, and y it sounds like the Modern English y. - r always rolled in Scottish style (rrr)
- sċ and sc both give the 'sh' as in shoe,
- f pronounced v as in very (as in found in Modern Welsh).
- æ the a as in man
- ā as in aah
- a shortened as in barn
- ē like the ay in bay
- e like the e in bed
- ī like the ee in creek
- i as in bin
- ō as in the o in the Scottish och
- o as in cot
- ū like oo in moo
- u like the ou in Doug
- ȳ like the u in the French tu
- y shortened version of the above.
Mercian also uses the eth
Eth
Eth is a letter used in Old English, Icelandic, Faroese , and Elfdalian. It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with dh and later d. The capital eth resembles a D with a line through the vertical stroke...
(Ð and ð) and thorn
Thorn (letter)
Thorn or þorn , is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, and Icelandic alphabets, as well as some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th. The letter originated from the rune in the Elder Fuþark, called thorn in the...
(Þ and þ) both give the English 'th' sound as in 'thin'
Grammar
Mercian grammar has the same structure as other West Germanic dialects so is very dense and often complex.Nouns
Nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; and four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. These, in addition, all have singularGrammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
and plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
forms. They can also be strong or weak.
Examples
- Strong masculine noun stān (stone)
- nominative (singular, plural): stān, stānes
- accusative: stān, stānes
- dative: stāne, stānen
- genitive: stānes, stāne
- Weak masculine noun name (name)
- nominative: name, namen
- accusative: namen/name, namen
- dative: namen/name, namen
- genitive: namen/name. namene/namen
Pronouns
Personal pronounPersonal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s (I/me, you,he,she, we, you (pl.) and they) come in all the above cases and come in three numbers: singular, dual ('you/we two'), plural.
Demonstrative pronouns vary in the same way described below for the indefinite article, based on 'ðes' only for this. That and Those are the same as the definite article.
Relative pronoun
Relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
s (who, which, that) are usually 'ðe' and 'ðet.'
Articles
The definite articleDefinite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
is equally complex, with all genders changing in the singular in all cases, based on variations of 'ðe.' In the plural all genders take the same word. The indefinite article was often omitted in Mercian.
Adjectives
Adjectives are always declined, even with some verbs (which means they can double up as adverbs), e.g. I am cold. Having split into weak and strong declensions (depending on the strength of the noun), these split again into all four cases, both singular and plural.Comparative adjectives (e.g. bigger) always add 're.' Example: Æðelen (noble), æðelenre (nobler).
Verbs
Verbs can be conjugated from the infinitiveInfinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
into the present tense
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
, the past singular, the past plural and the past participle. There exist strong and weak verbs in Mercian that too conjugate in their own ways. The future tense requires an auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
, like will (Mercian wyllen). There are three moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
. Like most inflected languages, Mercian has a few irregular verbs (such as 'to be' bēon and 'have' habben). For basic understanding the four principal parts must be known for each strong verb: weak verbs are easier and more numerous, they all form the past participle with -ed.
Vocabulary
Mercian vocabulary is largely derived from Proto-Germanic, with LatinLatin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
loanwords coming via the use of Latin as the language of the Catholic Church, and Norse loanwords that arrived as part of the Norse incursions and foundation of the Danelaw
Danelaw
The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the "Danes" held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. It is contrasted with "West Saxon law" and "Mercian law". The term has been extended by modern historians to...
which covered much of the midlands and north of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Further reading
- Mitchell, Bruce, and Robinson, Fred C. (2001) A Guide to Old English (6th edition). Oxford: Blackwell ISBN 0-631-22636-2
- Sweet, H., ed. (1885) The Oldest English Texts: glossaries, the Vespasian Psalter, and other works written before AD 900. London: for the Early English Text Society
- The Vespasian PsalterVespasian PsalterThe Vespasian Psalter is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated Psalter produced in the second or third quarter of the 8th century. It contains an interlinear gloss in Old English which is the oldest extant English translation of any portion of the Bible. It was produced in southern England, perhaps in St...
facsimile of the MS.: Wright, David H. (ed.) (1967) The Vespasian Psalter. (Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, #14) Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger OCLC 5009657, an interlinear glossGlossA gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....
found in a manuscript of the Book of Psalms in the Cottonian Library (now British Library). The gloss was prepared around 850. This gloss is in the MerciaMerciaMercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...
n dialect.
- The Vespasian Psalter