'They were competing for supremacy': Which is the oldest English accent?
So, that surely means my East Anglian home accent is the one that's closest to the original Anglo-Saxon sound, right? Well, not really – because there are few more linguistic twists and shifts to come.
The Anglo-Saxons began to settle among the British tribes they found and divided the country up into kingdoms: Kent, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia (middle England) and Northumbria. Northumbria encompassed northern England and some of Scotland – perhaps indicating the first signs of a north-south divide.
Over the course of the next few centuries, the Anglo-Saxons were followed by other groups that settled in England and transformed the language: the Jutes and Danes from modern Denmark, Friesians from Germany and the Netherlands, and the Vikings from Scandinavia. That's why modern English is not just an updated form of Old English – instead, it has absorbed many different languages. And those linguistic changes did not play out equally across England. They varied from region to region, depending on where the newcomers arrived and settled.
Molly: By the 9th Century, the area of England that is now Yorkshire, the East Midlands, and East Anglia were largely ruled by the Danes. The Anglo-Saxons were pushed into the southwest, West Midlands, and held a pocket of the north in Northumbria. Devon and Cornwall, Wales and Scotland remained Celtic language-speaking for now.
