of England. The first variety of English to be called a "standard literary language" was the West Saxon variety of Old English.

However, Lucia Kornexl defines the classification of Late West Saxon Standard as rather constituting a set of orthographic norms than a standardised dialect, as there was no such thing as standardisation of Old English in the modern sense: Old English did not standardise in terms of reduction of variation, reduction of regional variation, selection of word-stock, standardisation of morphology or syntax, or use