Mercian was a dialect spoken in the Anglian kingdom of Mercia (roughly speaking the Midlands of England, an area in which four kingdoms had been united under one monarchy). Together with Northumbrian , it was one of the two Anglian dialects . The other two dialects of Old English were Kentish and West Saxon . Each of those dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Of these, all of Northumbria and most of Mercia were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. Part of Mercia and all of Kent were successfully defended but were then integrated into the Kingdom of Wessex . Because of the centralisation of power and the Viking invasions, there is little to no salvaged written evidence for the development of non-Wessex dialects after Alfred the Great 's unification, until the Middle English period.
19-458: The Mercian dialect was spoken as far east as the border of the Kingdom of East Anglia and as far west as Offa's Dyke , bordering Wales. It was spoken in an area that extended as far north as Staffordshire , bordering Northumbria , and as far south as South Oxfordshire / Gloucestershire , where it bordered on the Kingdom of Wessex . The Old Norse language also filtered in on a few occasions after
38-530: A number of purposes other than their principal one of making direct factual statements. For example, many languages use indicative verb forms to ask questions (this is sometimes called interrogative mood ) and in various other situations where the meaning is in fact of the irrealis type (as in the English "I hope it works", where the indicative works is used even though it refers to a desired rather than real state of affairs). The indicative might therefore be defined as
57-650: A specific mood: Some forms of the indicative can be used with do , does , or did , either for emphasis, or to form questions or negatives. See do -support . Distinctions between indicative and other moods such as the subjunctive were marked inflectionally to a greater extent in historical forms of the language than in Modern English . The following table shows the indicative suffixes used on regular verbs in Old English , Middle English and early and present-day Modern English. Other moods existing in English besides
76-428: Is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences . Most languages have a single realis mood called the indicative mood , although some languages have additional realis moods, for example to express different levels of certainty. By contrast, an irrealis mood
95-551: Is best to learn by the International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions for more precise pronunciation. Mercian grammar has the same structure as other West Germanic dialects . Nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; and four cases: nominative , accusative , dative and genitive . These, in addition, all have singular and plural forms. They can also be strong or weak. Personal pronouns (I/me, you, he, she, we, you (pl.) and they) come in all
114-416: Is preceded by a prefix like la , layaktuban , it means "he should write". The declarative mood ( abbreviated DECL ) indicates that a statement is true, without any qualifications being made. For many languages this is just an alternative name for the indicative mood, although sometimes distinctions between them are drawn. It may contrast with inferential mood . Reference is sometimes made to
133-482: Is strongly believed or which the speaker wishes to emphasize. Their exact meanings are dependent upon the prefix that is attached to them. For example, yaktubanna يَكتُبَنَّ is in the long energetic mood and has strong obligation meanings; it means "he certainly writes" and if it is preceded by la , layaktubanna , it will have the meaning of "he must write". The short energetic expresses weak obligation, e.g., yaktuban which means "he almost writes"; if it
152-449: Is used to express something that is not known to be the case in reality. An example of the contrast between realis and irrealis moods is seen in the English sentences "He works" and "It is necessary that he work". In the first sentence, works is a present indicative (realis) form of the verb, and is used to make a direct assertion about the real world. In the second sentence, work is in
171-654: The Benedictus and the Magnificat . In later Anglo-Saxon England, the dialect remained in use in speech but rarely in written documents. Some time after the Norman conquest of England , Middle English dialects emerged and were later found in such works as the Ormulum and the writings of the Gawain poet . In the later Middle Ages, a Mercian or East Midland dialect seems to have predominated in
190-628: The London area, producing such forms as are (from Mercian arun ). Mercian was used by the writer and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien to signify his fictional Rohirric language. Modern Old English orthography adds additional diacritics above certain letters to show specific phonological features. These distinctions largely were not shown in Old English. Such diacritics include macrons for vowel length and overdots for palatalization. Sound approximations from various European languages have been given, but it
209-521: The infinitive into the present tense , the past singular, the past plural and the past participle . There exist strong and weak verbs in Mercian that too conjugate in their own ways. The future tense requires an auxiliary verb , like will (Mercian wyllen ). There are three moods: indicative , subjunctive and imperative . Like most inflected languages, Mercian has a few irregular verbs (such as 'to be' bēon and 'have' habben ). For basic understanding,
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#1732869045539228-415: The subjunctive mood , which is an irrealis mood – here that he work does not necessarily express a fact about the real world (he could be rejecting necessity and refusing to work), but refers to what would be a desirable state of affairs. However, since mood is a grammatical category , referring to the form a verb takes rather than its meaning in a given instance, a given language may use realis forms for
247-407: The above cases and come in three numbers: singular, dual ('you/we two'), plural. Demonstrative pronouns vary in the same way described below for the indefinite article, based on 'ðes' only for this . That and Those are the same as the definite article. Relative pronouns (who, which, that) are usually 'ðe' and 'ðet.' The definite article is equally complex, with all genders changing in
266-614: The foundation of the Danelaw . This describes the situation before the unification of Mercia. The Old English Martyrology is a collection of over 230 hagiographies , probably compiled in Mercia , or by someone who wrote in the Mercian dialect of Old English, in the second half of the 9th century. Six Mercian hymns are included in the Anglo-Saxon glosses to the Vespasian Psalter ; they include
285-523: The four principal parts must be known for each strong verb: weak verbs are easier and more numerous, they all form the past participle with -ed . Mercian vocabulary is largely inherited from Proto-Germanic , with Latin loanwords coming via the use of Latin as the language of the Early Church , and Norse loanwords that arrived as part of the Norse incursions and foundation of the Danelaw which covered much of
304-588: The indicative are the imperative (" Be quiet!") and the conditional ("I would be quiet") (although this is not always analyzed as a mood) and in some dialects, the subjunctive (as in "I suggest you be quiet"). For some further information, see English verbs and Uses of English verb forms . Although the indicative is generally the main or only realis mood, certain other languages have additional forms which can be categorized as separate realis moods. Arabic and various other Semitic languages have two kinds of energetic moods , which express something which
323-575: The midlands and north of England . Some morphological differences between the Mercian and West Saxon include: Kingdom of East Anglia Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.133 via cp1102 cp1102, Varnish XID 113843484 Upstream caches: cp1102 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Fri, 29 Nov 2024 08:30:45 GMT Indicative A realis mood ( abbreviated REAL )
342-411: The mood used in all instances where a given language does not specifically require the use of some other mood. Realis mood and indicative mood can be indicated by the respective glossing abbreviations REAL and IND . In Modern English , the indicative mood is for statements of actuality or strong probability, and in addition acts as a default mood for all instances which do not require use of
361-564: The singular in all cases, based on variations of 'ðe.' In the plural all genders take the same word. The indefinite article was often omitted in Mercian. Adjectives are always declined, even with some verbs (which means they can double up as adverbs ), e.g. I am cold. Having split into weak and strong declensions (depending on the strength of the noun), these split again into all four cases, both singular and plural. Comparative adjectives (e.g. bigger ) always add 're.' Example: Æðelen (noble), æðelenre (nobler). Verbs can be conjugated from
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