Dialect Division

Dialectal coverage has been an important criterion in selecting the text samples of the Old and Middle English sections of the Helsinki Corpus, and the dialect has been coded for each text dating from these periods. In Early Modern English, collecting a dialect corpus would need a new project. In defining the dialects of the Middle English period, the information found in the Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English (LALME) has been indispensable. The dialect codings of most earlier Middle English texts are based on the definitions of the Middle English Dictionary.

Old English

West-Saxon Kentish Anglian, Mercian Anglian, Northumbrian

Middle English

South-Western

South-Eastern

West Midlands

East Midlands

Northern (1400-)