East Anglia as an Old English and Middle English Dialect Area Peter Trudgill professor emeritus; Fribourg University, Switzerland honorary professor; University of East Anglia, England ABSTRACT: Surviving Old English texts from East Anglia are non-existent, and we struggle with the traditional story that Old English dialects were simply divided into four groups: Northumbrian, Kentish, West Saxon, and Mercian, which supposedly covered the whole of England from Chester to Bristol, the Humber to the Thames, and the Welsh border to the East Anglian coast. But there is every reason to suppose that such a large region must have been much more linguistically differentiated than this and to argue that East Anglia formed a dialect area of its own. In a highly insightful contribution, Jacek Fisiak argued that it is possible to employ evidence from place-names and personal names to support this argument. He also demonstrated how we can employ retrodiction to make use of evidence for East Anglian distinctiveness from later periods, for which there is more evidence. KEYWORDS: East Anglia, dialect area, Old English, Middle English 1. Introduction As an English-speaking region, East Anglia has always been a distinctive linguistic area. Modern East Anglian English descends in good part from the Old English which grew up out of the Anglian dialects that were brought over the sea from continental Europe, particularly during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The Angles who became known in England as the Eastern Angles mostly arrived in England via the Wash, and then turned east, sailing down the rivers as far as possible. Groups of Saxons also arrived via the Wash, but headed south along the Ouse and the Nene and the Icknield way, occupying Essex as well as areas further west—Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire (Kristensson 2001). 2. East Anglia as an Old English dialect area Norfolk and Suffolk, then, were mainly Anglian, while the areas which bordered them to the south and west were initially mainly Saxon. Regional lin-
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