Mutual Comprehensibility of Middle West Low Germanic

[Thomas McFadden]

In grammatical terms, Kentish is, to my knowledge, considered
the most conservative dialect of ME.  The distinction between dative and
accusative case in particular was maintained into the 14th century in some
texts (e.g. the Ayenbite of Inwyt), i.e. about 2 centuries after it was
pretty much gone elsewhere.  Cynthia Allen wrote a book that goes into the
loss of case marking in OE and ME in quite a bit of detail, looking
through several individual texts.  There are further references there on
Kentish conservativeness.

Allen, Cynthia. 1995.  Case Marking and Reanalysis.  Oxford: Clarendon
Press.

On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Philip Rusche wrote:

> I have never heard that Kentish was particularly conservative.  It might
> have been more conservative grammatically than northern dialects, but its
> vowel system went through a number of changes in the OE period and in the ME
> period it tended to voice its fricatives (at least /f/ and /s/) initially.