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The book that transformed medieval England

HistoryExtra podcast

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Kaxan's Choices Are Really Important

Kaxan's work, we see the kind of early stages of standardisation basically. So I said that there is no standard English at this period, but with the printed book, this kind of push towards standardisation of spelling starts to happen. And one of the key aspects here is London as a key printing city. Kaxan does choose to set his shop up in London in Westminster. There are very perfect economic reasons for that. For him it was just a practical choice. This is his most direct audience. That's what he picked as a dialect. But it has huge ramifications through the ages. Yes, this is how kind of a southern city English becomes our standard for spelling

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