Old English dialects.

. The migration of the Germanic tribes to the British Isles and the resulting separation from the Germanic tribes on the mainland was a decisive event in their linguistic history. Geographical separation, as well as mixture and unification of people, are major factors in lin­guistic differentiation and in the formation of languages. Being cut off from related OG tongues the closely related group of West Germanic dialects developed into a separate Germanic language, English. That is why the Germanic settlement of Britain can be regarded as the begin­ning of the independent history of the English language.

The history of Anglo-Saxon Britain from the 5th to the 11th c. has been reconstructed from multiple sources: Bede’s ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon historical chronicles and le-

] documents. Some events of external history have a direct bear­ing ^on development of the language and therefore must be re­called here. They are: the economic and social structure of society, the introduction of Christianity and the relations between the kingdoms.

The period from the 5th till the Uth c. (which is called Old English in the history of the language) was a transitional period from the tribal and slave-owning system to feudalism.

The basic economic unit was the feudal manor; it was a self-contained economic unit, as it grew its own food and carried on some small industries to cover its needs. Consequently, there was little social intercourse be­tween the population of neighbouring areas. Tribal and clan division was gradually superseded by townships and shires, which were local entities having no connection with kinship. The new economic and geo­graphical groupings and barriers did not necessarily correspond to the origins! areas of tribal settlement.

These conditions were reflected in the development of the West Germanic tongues brought to Britain. The economic isolation of the regions as well as the political disunity of the country led to the for­mation of new geographical boundaries between the speech of different localities. The growth of feudalism was accompanied by the rise of regional dialectal division replacing the tribal division of the Germanic settlers. These forces, however, worked together with the unifying force: the complete separation from related continental tribes (and tongues) united the people into one corporate whole and transformed their closely related dialects into a single tongue different from its continental rela­tions.