Kentish was a southern dialect of

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

spoken in the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

kingdom of Kent. It was one of four dialect-groups of Old English, the other three being Mercian, Northumbrian (known collectively as the

Anglian dialects Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

), and

West Saxon West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...

. The dialect was spoken in what are now the modern-day Counties of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant ur ...

, southern

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

and the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the largest and second-most populous island of England. Referred to as 'The Island' by residents, the Is ...

by the Germanic settlers, identified by

Bede Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom ...

as Jutes. Such a distinct difference in the Anglo-Saxon settlers of the entire Kingdom of Kent is viewed more sceptically by modern historians. Although by far the most important surviving Kentish manuscripts are the law codes of the Kentish kings, contained in '' Textus Roffensis'', they were early-twelfth-century copies of much earlier laws, and their spellings and forms of English were modernised and standardised in various ways. This particularly affects the Laws of Hlothhere and Eadric. However, some indications of the differences between late-seventh-century Kentish and West Saxon can be made by comparing two contemporaneous laws. The law code of the West-Saxon king Ine was composed at some point between 688 and 694. Clause 20 concerns potential thefts by outsiders (i.e. those not owing allegiance to the kings of Wessex). This was adopted almost word for word by Ine's contemporary, the Kentish king Wihtræd: With many words at this point, there is no difference between Kentish and what became the dominant West-Saxon form of English. Other words indicate possible differences in pronunciation (or, at least, of transcribing), such as ''fremde/ fræmde'' or ''gonge/ gange''. However, there is little doubt that, even with minor differences in syntax and vocabulary, the two forms were mutually intelligible, at least by this relatively late date in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of southern England. The principal evidence for Kentish are the '' Old Kentish Glosses''.

Henry Sweet Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic l ...

included two Kentish charters and a Kentish psalm (from the Vespasian Psalter) in his ''Anglo-Saxon Reader''; a charter of Oswulf (805-10) and a charter of Abba (835).Sweet, H., ed. (1946) ''Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader''; 10th ed., revised by C. T. Onions. Oxford: Clarendon Press; pp. 181-84 & 190-95

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Dictionary
Languages attested from the 7th century English language in England Medieval Kent Language articles with unknown extinction date Old English dialects fr:Kentien

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