Until the 19th century, the
West Country and its dialects were largely protected from outside influences, due to its relative geographical isolation. While standard English derives from the
Old English Mercian dialects, the West Country dialects derive from the
West Saxon dialect, which formed the earliest English language standard.
Thomas Spencer Baynes claimed in 1856 that, due to its position at the heart of the Kingdom of Wessex, the relics of Anglo-Saxon accent, idiom and vocabulary were best preserved in the Somerset dialect. The dialects have their origins in the expansion of Old English into the west of modern-day England, where the kingdom of
Wessex (West-Saxons) had been founded in the 6th century. As the
Kings of Wessex became more powerful they enlarged their kingdom westwards and north-westwards by taking territory from the British kingdoms in those districts. From Wessex, the Anglo-Saxons spread into the Celtic regions of present-day
Devon, Somerset and Gloucestershire, bringing their language with them. At a later period,
Cornwall came under
Wessex influence, which appears to become more extensive after the time of
Athelstan in the 10th century. However, the spread of the English language took much longer here than elsewhere. Outside Cornwall, it is believed that the various local dialects reflect the territories of various West Saxon tribes, who had their own dialects which fused together into a national language in the later Anglo-Saxon period. As Lt-Col. J. A. Garton observed in 1971, traditional Somerset English has a venerable and respectable origin, and is not a mere "debasement" of Standard English: In some cases, many of these forms are closer to
modern Saxon (commonly called Low German/Low Saxon) than Standard British English is, e.g. The use of masculine and sometimes feminine, rather than neuter, pronouns with non-animate referents also parallels Low German, which unlike English retains grammatical genders. The pronunciation of "s" as "z" is also similar to Low German. However,
recent research proposes that some syntactical features of English, including the unique forms of the verb
to be, originate rather with the
Brythonic languages. (See
Celtic language influence below.) In more recent times, West Country dialects have been treated with some derision, which has led many local speakers to abandon them or water them down. In particular it is British comedy which has brought them to the fore outside their native regions, and paradoxically groups such as
The Wurzels, a comic North Somerset/Bristol band from whom the term
Scrumpy and Western music originated, have both popularised and made fun of them simultaneously. In an unusual regional breakout, the Wurzels' song "
The Combine Harvester" reached the top of the
UK charts in 1976, where it did nothing to dispel the "simple farmer" stereotype of
Somerset and West Country folk. It and all their songs are sung entirely in a local version of the dialect, which is somewhat exaggerated and distorted. Some words used aren't even typical of the local dialect. For instance, the word "nowt" is used in the song "Threshing Machine". This word is generally used in more northern parts of England, with the West Country equivalent being "nawt".
Celtic-language influence Although the English language gradually spread into
Cornwall after approximately the 13th century, a complete language shift to English took centuries more. The frontier between English in the east and Cornish in the west shifted markedly in the county between 1300 and 1750 (see figure). During the
Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, which centred on
Devon and
Cornwall, many of the Cornish objected to the
Book of Common Prayer, on the basis that many Cornish could not speak English. Cornish probably ceased to be spoken as a community language sometime around 1780, with the last monoglot Cornish speaker believed to be
Chesten Marchant, who died in 1676 at
Gwithian (
Dolly Pentreath was bilingual). However, some people retained a fragmented knowledge and some words were adopted by dialect(s) in Cornwall. In recent years, the traffic has reversed, with the revived
Cornish language reclaiming Cornish words that had been preserved in the local dialect into its lexicon, and also (especially "Revived Late Cornish") borrowing other dialect words. However, there has been some controversy over whether all of these words are of native origin, as opposed to imported from parts of England, or the
Welsh Marches. Some modern-day revived Cornish speakers have been known to use Cornish words within an English sentence, and even those who are not speakers of the language sometimes use words from the language in names.
Brythonic languages have also had a long-term influence on the West Country dialects beyond Cornwall, both as a substrate (certain West Country dialect words and possibly grammatical features) and languages of contact. Recent research on the roots of English proposes that the extent of Brythonic syntactic influence on
Old English and
Middle English may have been underestimated, specifically citing the preponderance of forms of the verbs
to be and
to do in South West England and their grammatical similarity to the
Welsh and
Cornish forms as opposed to the forms in other Germanic languages. The
Cornish dialect, or Anglo-Cornish (to avoid confusion with the
Cornish language), has the most substantial Celtic language influence because many western parts were non-English speaking even into the early modern period. In places such as
Mousehole,
Newlyn and
St Ives, fragments of Cornish survived in English even into the 20th century, e.g. some numerals (especially for counting fish) and the Lord's Prayer were noted by W. D. Watson in 1925, Edwin Norris collected the Creed in 1860, and J. H. Nankivel also recorded numerals in 1865. The dialect of
West Penwith is particularly distinctive, especially in terms of grammar. This is most likely due to the late decay of the Cornish language in this area. In Cornwall the following places were included in the
Survey of English Dialects:
Altarnun,
Egloshayle,
Gwinear,
Kilkhampton,
Mullion,
St Buryan, and
St Ewe. In other areas, Celtic vocabulary is less common; some possible examples of Brythonic words surviving in the Devon dialect include: • Goco — A bluebell • Jonnick — Pleasant, agreeable ==Characteristics==