Editing South West England (section)

==Language==
{{Main|West Country dialects|Cornish language}}
The [[Cornish language]] evolved from the [[Southwestern Brythonic languages|Southwestern]] dialect of the [[Common Brittonic language|Brittonic language]] spoken during the [[British Iron Age|Iron Age]] and [[Roman Britain|Roman period]].<ref>{{Cite book|author=Jackson, Kenneth|title=Language and History in Early Britain|location=Edinburgh| publisher=Edinburgh University Press|year=1953}}</ref> The area controlled by the Britons was progressively reduced by the expansion of [[Wessex]] after the 6th century, and in 936 [[Athelstan of England|Athelstan]] set the east bank of the [[River Tamar|Tamar]] as the boundary between [[Anglo-Saxon]] [[Wessex]] and [[Celts|Celtic]] Cornwall.<ref name="autogenerated3">[[Philip Payton|Payton, Philip]] ''Cornwall''. Fowey: Alexander Associates (1996).</ref> The Cornish language continued to flourish during the [[Middle Ages]] but declined thereafter, and the last speaker of traditional Cornish died in the 19th century.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://kernowek.com/pages/cornish-history-kernowek-kernewek.html | title=The Cornish Language | publisher=Kernowek | access-date=9 February 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120919202534/http://kernowek.com/pages/cornish-history-kernowek-kernewek.html | archive-date=19 September 2012 | url-status=live }}</ref> Geographical names derived from the British language are widespread in South West England, and include several examples of the [[River Avon (disambiguation)|River Avon]], from ''abonā'' = "river" (cf. [[Welsh language|Welsh]] ''afon''), and the words "[[tor (rock formation)|tor]]" and "[[wikt:combe|combe]]".<ref>Gover, J.; Mawer, A. and Stenton, F. M. ''Place-Names of Devon'', 1932</ref>

Until the 19th century, the [[West Country]] and its dialects of the [[English language]] were largely protected from outside influences, due to its relative geographical isolation. The West Country dialects derive not from a corrupted form of modern English, but from the Southwestern dialects of [[Middle English]], which themselves derived from the dialects of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of [[Wessex]]. [[Late West Saxon]], which formed the earliest English language standard, from the time of King Alfred until the late 11th century, is the form in which the majority of Anglo-Saxon texts are preserved. [[Thomas Spencer Baynes]] claimed in 1856 that, due to its position at the heart of the Kingdom of Wessex, the relics of Anglo-Saxon accent, idiom and vocabulary were best preserved in the Somerset dialect. There is some influence from the [[Welsh language|Welsh]] and [[Cornish language|Cornish]] languages, depending on the specific location.

West Country dialects are commonly represented as "[[Mummerset]]", a kind of catchall southern [[rural]] accent invented for broadcasting.