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Episode 54: Pronoun Pros and Cons

The History of English Podcast

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Chaucer's Use of the Norse Pronouns

Chaucer used the phrase their bodies to refer to miller and his wife. Nowhere else does he use that northern norse pronoun. Chaucer's usage is consistent with other texts from the same period. They was used in the south, but them and their were still largely confined to the north. But by the end of the middle s period, then and there were in common use in the south as well. The old h forms gradually disappeared, around the same time that the norse t h forms replaced the old english forms, hay, hym.

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