Early sounds and dialects affect modern language greatly. Without the written work of medieval period the influence of such dialects would be unknown. Many wars were fought and relationships made that can be credited with why early sounds and dialects expanded. Great works were done while using the combinations of pronunciations and inflections of the spoken languages. The mixture of people intermingling also caused some differences of religious beliefs and an impact made on the written work of the period is seen as well. A brief discussion of early sounds and dialects and the influence it had on literature in the Middle Ages is the base of this paper. Much of what will be discussed is accredited to The Norton Anthology of English Literature and Bede=s Conversion of England. The contact between tribes caused a change in language that caused a change in beliefs, and they together influenced early literature. .
The influence between contacts of tribes is attributed to wars and marriage. The first users of a distinctive language to be noticed were the Celts, the first speakers of Indo_Europe language to arrive in Britain. The Romans under the rule of Emperor Claudius crushed the Celts. The Romans built roads, temples and introduced Christianity. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records Vortigern, King of Celts issued an invitation, to the AAngle Kin@ to help them with their defense against the Picts. In response the men of three tribes came, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. The foreigners organized seven kingdoms, Northumbria, Marcia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. The combinations of marriages and other wars lead to Alfred the Great. He strongly influenced the establishment of literary language, and he produced translations of the Bible, Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, Orosius, Bede=s Historia Ecclesiastical, and he also helped to establish West Saxon as a literary standard (Abrams et al.