From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   His political importance is well known, his linguistic legacy less so.   
      
   Alfred on the decline of learning in England after the Danish invasions:   
      
   "...there were very few people on this side of the Humber who could   
   understand their service-books in English or translate even one written   
   message from Latin into English..."   
      
   He proposed a programme of translations, by means of which a younger   
   English generation could be made literate in their own language.   
      
   As a result, "almost all surviving prose texts during the late ninth   
   century and into the tenth were written in the dialect used by Alfred   
   and his scribes." (Crystal)   
      
   Alfred's West Saxon became the first approximation to a Standard English.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)