... - valley; tor-peak; Thames, avon (river), Dover (water) in south eastern Britain. Dick Leith talks about the importance of external and internal history in understanding language change. Internal history and evidence refers to the nature of grammar and vocabulary and linguistics. External history and evidence refers to who spoke the language and non-linguistic historical information. The place names in Anglo-Saxon Britain are internal evidence but the dates and the invasions by different tribes is external. Leith reminds us that this point of history is more complex than initially realised. Anglo-Saxon dialects arrived already based on a Latin alphabet. Crystal follows Bede's account that the different dialects reflect the variety of tribes and Leith observes that no mention is made of Frisians or of the fact that Germanic mercenaries may have been left behind by the Romans. It is also argued that these dialects might have been in contact with each ...

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