Kentish was a southern dialect of

Old English Old English ( or , or ), 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 developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

spoken in the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

kingdom of Kent The Kingdom of the Kentish (; ), today referred to as the Kingdom of Kent, was an Early Middle Ages, early medieval kingdom in what is now South East England. It existed from either the fifth or the sixth century AD until it was fully absorbed i ...

. It was one of four dialect-groups of Old English, the other three being Mercian, Northumbrian (known collectively as the Anglian dialects), and West Saxon. The dialect was spoken in what are now the modern-day Counties of

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

Sussex Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...

, southern

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

and the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...

by the Germanic settlers, identified by

Bede Bede (; ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, Bede of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the most known writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most f ...

Jutes The Jutes ( ) were one of the Germanic people, Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the end of Roman rule in Britain, departure of the Roman Britain, Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic na ...

. Such a distinct difference in the

Anglo-Saxon settlers The settlement of Great Britain by Germanic peoples from continental Europe led to the development of an Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon cultural identity and a shared Germanic language—Old English—whose closest known relative is Old Frisian, s ...

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 The (Latin for "The Tome of Rochester Cathedral, Rochester"), fully titled the ''Textus de Ecclesia Roffensi per Ernulphum episcopum'' ("The Tome of the Rochester Cathedral, Church of Rochester up to Ernulf, Bishop Ernulf") and sometimes also ...

'', 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 lang ...

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
{{Germanic languages Languages attested from the 7th century Medieval Kent Language articles with unknown extinction date Old English dialects

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