English has developed over the many years and evolved in countless ways. Throughout the period labelled Old English, 450-1150, language was modified due to large social, political, cultural and economic influences. The invasion of the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes), in the 5th-8th centuries left the Celtic language displaced except in Wales and Scotland. From this, Old English developed from the invaders dialects. However, this lead to a varied language as not all dialects were the same. Majority of the basic grammatical words (e.g. the, in, was), nouns and verbs were derived from this period. Shortly after, in 8th century came the Viking invasions. The Viking’s language, Norse, was close enough to the Anglo-Saxon that the inhabitants were able to communicate successfully. Though the Vikings still took over a large amount of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, particularly in the north and east of the country. Similarly to the Anglo-Saxons, Norse is the reason for many common Standard English words such as get, take, angry, awkward, they, she and more have survived through the years. The rest of the country was still lead by the original invaders, which all had their own dialects.
The Angles had 2 main dialects; Mercian in the Midlands and Northumbrian in the north, Kentish was spoken by the Jutes and West Saxon was spoken in the rest of England (south of the Thames and west as far as Cornwall). Due to the large sum of dialects throughout England, all texts were hand written and everything was spelt phonetically dependant on your regional dialect. Shorting of words was also used for common words to save time among the messengers, e.g. ‘and’ was represented with a ‘7’. In fact, a large number of towns, villages and isolated areas still have Danish names from their 25 year ruling. Majority of these are located in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, for example’ -by’ means