Northumbrian was a dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria. Together with Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon, it forms one of the sub-categories of Old English devised and employed by modern scholars.
The dialect was spoken from the Humber, now within England, to the Firth of Forth, now within Scotland. In the Danelaw after the Viking invasions, Northumbrian may have been influenced by the Norse language.
Old English (Englisc or Ænglisc, pronounced [ˈeŋɡliʃ] or [ˈæŋɡliʃ]), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman (a type of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland.
Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language; and Latin, brought to Britain by the Roman conquest. Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Kentish, Mercian, Northumbrian, and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian, and Scots from Northumbrian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century.
West Saxon is the term applied to the two different dialects Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon with West Saxon being one of the four distinct regional dialects of Old English. The three others were Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian (the latter two were similar and are known as the Anglian dialects). West Saxon was the language of the kingdom of Wessex, and was the basis for successive widely used literary forms of Old English: the Early West Saxon of Alfred the Great's time, and the Late West Saxon of the late 10th and 11th centuries. Due to the Saxons' establishment as a politically dominant force in the Old English period, the West Saxon dialects became the strongest dialects in Old English manuscript writing.
Early Scots was the emerging literary language of the Early Middle English–speaking parts of Scotland in the period before 1450. The northern forms of Middle English descended from Northumbrian Old English. During this period, speakers referred to the language as "English" (Inglis, Ynglis, and variants).
Early examples such as Barbour’s The Brus and Wyntoun’s Chronicle are better explained as part of Northern Early Middle English than as isolated forerunners of later Scots, a name first used to describe the language later in the Middle Scots period.
Northumberland and Durham dialect, Northumbrian dialect, or in England North East dialect is any one of several traditional English dialects spoken in the historic counties of Northumberland and County Durham. The term Northumbrian can refer to the region of Northumbria but can also refer specifically to the county of Northumberland. This article focuses on the former definition and thus includes varieties from throughout the wider region, including County Durham.
The traditional Northumbrian dialect is a moribund older form of the dialect spoken in the area. It is closely related to Scots and Cumbrian and shares with them a common origin in Old Northumbrian.