Loegrish language
Loegrish is a Brythonic Celtic conlang, closely related to Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Cumbric. It originated in what is now England, south and east of the Severn and Humber rivers with the exclusion of Cornwall and Devon (i.e., the region known in Middle Welsh as Lloegyr). As of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain in the fifth through seventh centuries, Late British in this region was mostly replaced by the ancestor of Old English, though it remained widely spoken in several areas, such as the Fens, the Chilterns, and Kent. Loegrish died out in 1645 with the death of Jacob Seward, who was the last known native speaker in England until the revival of the language that begun in the nineteenth century. The revival has met with little success; only about 200 people claimed to speak the language within the United Kingdom as of the most recent count by the Celtic League. The first known native speaker since the revival is Jacob North, born in 2014. The associated ethnicity, Loegrish people, number a few tens of thousands in England and Wales, and a few tens of thousands more in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries.
Dialects
Loegrish is split up into three main dialects, as follows:
- Kentish, spoken in Kent and neighboring areas
- Chilterns Loegrish, spoken in the region around the Chilterns; used as the standard
- Fennish, spoken in the Fens
Chilterns Loegrish
Chilterns Loegrish is chosen as the standard for Loegrish due to the fact that the Chilterns were the location of the only independent Loegrish-speaking state to ever exist, the Kingdom of Saint Alban. It is also easily intelligible to speakers of all dialects. Jacob Seward of St Albans was a speaker of Chilterns Loegrish.
