Quote:
Originally Posted by dar512
Middle English as a whole gets about 45 pages. It does cover the great vowel shift which gets four pages. I don't see "Chancery Standard" in the index. But as I said this is book for general consumption, so it may just not be mentioned by name.
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The Chancery Standard was a language reform that was introduced during the reign of King Henry V in the early 15th century to provide a standardized language for use across all of England by the bureaucracy (called the chancery). When it was introduced, English had several dialect forms and it was sometimes difficult for someone who spoke one dialect to read something written in another. The Chancery Standard was mainly based on the London and East Midland dialects but sometimes used other dialect forms.
One of the most noticeable features of the Chancery Standard that still persists today are the third person pronouns
they,
them and
their. Before the Chancery Standard, the usual form of these pronouns in London English was
he,
hem and
hir. As these could be confused with singular pronouns, the dialect forms from the North of England (where the dialect was heavily influence by Norse immigrants) were selected for the Chancery Standard to clarify written communication.