Kentish Old English

Kentish was a southern dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent. It was one of four dialect-groups of Old English, the other three being Mercian, Northumbrian so-called collectively as the Anglian dialects, as well as West Saxon.

The dialect was spoken in what are now the modern-day Counties of Kent, Surrey, southern Hampshire and the Isle of Wight by the Germanic settlers, transmitted by Bede as Jutes. such(a) a distinct difference in the Anglo-Saxon settlers of the entire Kingdom of Kent is viewed more sceptically by innovative historians.

Although by far the nearly important surviving Kentish manuscripts are the law codes of the Kentish kings, contained in Textus Roffensis, 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 standard of the differences between late-seventh-century Kentish and West Saxon can be present by comparing two contemporaneous laws. The law program of the West-Saxon king Ine was composed at some segment between 688 and 694. Clause 20 concerns potential thefts by outsiders i.e. those non owing allegiance to the kings of Wessex. This was adopted nearly word for word by Ine's contemporary, the Kentish king Wihtræd:

With numerous words at this point, there is no difference between Kentish and what became the dominant West-Saxon cause of English. Other words indicate possible differences in pronunciation or, at least, of transcribing, such(a) 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 target 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.