The credit of making the East-Midland dialect standard English goes to Chaucer, the father of English poetry. While a standard form of written English has existed for hundreds of years, there has been even within England a great diversity in the pronunciation of people belonging to different regions and different sections of the community. One particular regional accent, however, has over the last five hundred years, acquired social prestige. It was the pronunciation of the southeast of England, particularly of the London region, to which this prestige was attached. It gradually lost some of the local characteristics of London speech and became the speech of the ruling class through the influence of the public schools in the nineteenth century. It thus got established as a 'class' of pronunciation throughout England and was recognized as characteristic of a social class rather than a regional pronunciation. Those who wanted social advancement had therefore to modify their speech to bring it neaeer the social standard.