Northumbrian

Origins
Northumbrian is a disappearing Anglic language variety derived from Northumbrian old English, it is spoken in Northumberland and Northern Durham and is linguistically closest to Lowland Scots. Northumbrian is descended from the language of the Angles who settled in northern Britain, in an area now known as Northumbria and southern Scotland, in the 5th century AD. The language was originally known as 'Inglis' and has since been influenced by Norse, Cumbric, Scots, English and Norman French.

Northumbrian dialects were once spoken over a much wider area of Northern England, but now they survive only in Northeastern areas.

Here is an example of a sample sentence in the two languages, and Dutch, another close relative;


 * English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
 * Northumbrian (literary standard): Aa human sowls is born free an equal i dignity an reets. They er endoowed wi mense an conscience an sud guide thorsels yen ti the ither iv a spirit o britherheed.
 * Dutch: Alle mensen worden vrij en gelijk in waardigheid en rechten geboren. Zij zijn begiftigd met verstand en geweten, en behoren zich jegens elkander in een geest van broederschap te gedragen

Geographical distribution


Northumbrian corresponds to no. 2 on Shackelton's traditional dialect map. Originally, Northumbrian was spoken all over the old Kingdom of Northumbria, but nowadays it survives only in Northumberland (with the exception of the southeasternmost corner) and north Durham.

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Archaic English words show its Germanic roots, which are reflected in Northumbrian:
 * English: hound, fowl, house, milk
 * Northumbrian: hoond, foul, hoos, meelk

It might not be as easy to learn for an English speaker as, say, Esperanto, but is probably the easiest natural language to learn for English speakers due to the fact that it is so similar to English. In fact, Northumbrian and English share approximately 80% to 90% of the same lexicon.

1: Also "beild".

Can Northumbrian people and other English people understand each other?
In the majority of instances Northumbrian people and people from other regions of England can understand each other with few problems since most Northumbrians can just change to standard English. Many Northumbrian speakers only speak Northumbrian at home with family and friends. Standard English is used for business and communicating with tourists.

"Missing" letters
Many writers now strictly avoid apostrophes where they supposedly represent "missing" English letters. Such letters were never actually missing in Northumbrian.
 * The consonant clusters in the inflectional endings ⟨ing⟩ and ⟨and⟩, cognate with Standard English ⟨ing⟩, changed to /n/ in Early Northumbrian, the modern realisations generally being /ɪn/ and /ən/ hence the spelling -in' , the standard literary apostrophe-less spelling being -in.
 * The cluster ⟨mb⟩ had been reduced to /m/ in Early Northumbrian hence spelling such as num'er (number), cham'er (chamber) and tim'er (timber), the standard literary apostrophe-less spellings being nummer, chaamer and timmer.[21]

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