Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English

language.

This is Episode 134, a Lancasterian standard.

In this episode, we're going to take the story of English out of the 1300s into the 1400s.

This new century was marked by two very important developments in the English language.

The spoken language became more unstable as the Great Vowl shift got underway, and those

shifting vowels combined with the various regional dialects to create a great deal of uncertainty

in English pronunciation.

But while the spoken language was very fluid, the written language was actually becoming

more standardized.

That process coincided with the arrival of a new ruling family in England, the house

of Lancaster.

And it appears that the Lancasterian kings of the early 1400s actually contributed to

the standardization of English.

They promoted English as the language of the government and the bureaucracy, and their

scribes adopted a writing standard for all correspondence which became known as the

Chanceree Standard.

That was the first step in a long process that produced the written language we have today.

So this time we'll look at the rise of the House of Lancaster and the beginnings of

standard written English.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is HistoryOfEnglishPodcast.com

and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes and transcripts at patreon.com

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