Celtic was the original language in the West Country, specifically in Devon.  It is said that the Celtic language was spoken in this area until the middle ages¹³, but some traces can still be found in the current dialects. The Saxon people arrived in England from the east and that is why the West Country was one of the last parts of England where the Saxons settled down. The dialects in the region are very much influenced by both the Celtic and the Saxon language. The region is fairly isolated due to geographic circumstances. Dialect have been well preserved into the 19^th century¹³, until newcomers came to the area and the dialects got mixed up with their language.

Except for the Cornish dialect, the West Country dialects have a slower rhythm to speech because of the vowel length and, like in Dutch, some letters in words can be replaced with closely related letters: /s/ for /z/ and /f/ for /v/.

In order to hear how different the Cornish and English sound, please play the following audio recording: