Dead Language Society is a fun substack. I believe I have linked to it before. I may add it to the sidebar.
Gradually, however, the English language regained its prestige, as the ties of the new English nobility to France weakened, both through their long stay in England and England’s gradual loss of territory in France over the course of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453).
This had an effect on the life of the upper classes: in the year 1362, for example, English replaced French for use in Parliament and the courts, which had earlier used French and Latin.
What we think of as Modern English was actually formed from a mixture of dialects in the Midlands and East Anglia, and in the great churn that was medieval and early modern London. The dialect of Old English you learn in textbooks, however, is a different dialect altogether, one conventionally called West Saxon.1
What’s more, we can prove this even without knowing anything about the history of England. Merely by comparing textbook (West Saxon) Old English with Modern English, we can prove that there’s no way for the one to have developed into the other.
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