West Country English

West Country English is a group of English-language varieties and accents traditionally used by the native population of the West Country: the southwest of England.

The West Country is often defined as encompassing the official region of South West England: Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, Bristol and Gloucestershire. However, the exact northern and eastern boundaries of the area are hard to define. In the adjacent counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Hampshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, it is possible to encounter similar accents and indeed, much the same distinct dialect, albeit with some similarities to others in neighbouring regions. Although natives of all these locations, especially in rural parts, often still have West Country influences in their speech, their increased mobility and urbanisation has meant that in the more populous of these counties the dialect itself, as opposed to the people's various local accents, is becoming increasingly rare.

Academically the regional variations are considered to be dialectal forms. The Survey of English Dialects captured manners of speech across the South West region that were just as different from Standard English as any from the far North of England. There is some influence from the Welsh and Cornish languages depending on the specific location.

Earliest records

Medieval period

The Late West Saxon dialect was the standard literary language of later Anglo-Saxon England, and consequently the majority of Anglo-Saxon literature, including the epic poem Beowulf and the poetic Biblical paraphrase Judith, is preserved in West Saxon dialect, though not all of it was originally written in West Saxon.

In the medieval period, Sumer is icumen in (13th century) is a notable example of a work in Wessex dialect.