'They were competing for supremacy': Which is the oldest English accent?
To understand why some of these accents and dialects are older than others, let's travel back 1,500 years....
BBC/ Serenity Strull/ Getty ImagesWilliam: ... to the Angles and the Saxons, groups of tribes who came to England from northern Germany during the 5th and 6th Centuries. They spoke a mix of Germanic languages and largely landed in the east of England and set up home there. East Anglia gets its name from the Angles and is the origin of the word "England".
Old English grew out of those Germanic languages, mixed with languages already present in Britain, such as Celtic and Latin remnants.
"It makes sense to think of East Anglia as being the source of the earliest variety of English as we know it," says Kerri-Ann Butcher, a lecturer in English Language at the University of Leeds. A 5th-Century deer ankle bone from Norfolk with a runic inscription saying "roe deer" might be the earliest example of writing in Old English found in the UK.
