01355383 Varieties of English and Cultures of English Native Speakers 04 | Page 14

In the 15 th century, although English was the official
language, there were endless varieties of
pronunciation and spelling.
For example, the word ‘stone’ was pronounced ‘ston’
in the south, and ‘stane’ in the north.
And there were at least 21 ways of spelling the word
‘people’, such as ‘peple’, ‘pepule’, ‘pepille’, ‘peeple’,
‘poepull’, ‘pople’ and ‘pupyll’.
(Bragg, 2003)