In the Southern dialects the old /n/-declension was applied, and so there arose such forms as /minum/ and /eowrum/ (=/mine/ and /yours/), from /min/ and /eower/ (=/my/ and /your/).[55] Meanwhile, the original simple genitive, now become /youre/, also survived, and so the literature of [Pg214] the fourteenth century shows the three forms flourishing side by side: /youre/, /youres/ and /youren/. All of them are in Chaucer. Thus, /yourn/, /hern/, /hisn/, /ourn/ and /theirn/, whatever their present offense to grammarians, are of a genealogy quite as respectable as that of /yours/, /hers/, /his/, /ours/ and /theirs/. Both forms represent a doubling of inflections, and hence grammatical debasement. On the side of the /yours/-form is the standard usage of the past five hundred years, but on the side of the /yourn/-form there is no little force of analogy and logic, as appears on turning to /mine/ and /thine/. In Anglo-Saxon, as we have seen, /my/ was /min/; in the same way /thy/ was /thin/. During the decadence of the language the final /n/ was dropped in both cases before nouns--that is, in the conjoint form--but it was retained in the absolute form. This usage survives to our own day. One says "/my/ book," but "the book is /mine/"; "/thy/ faith," but "I am /thine/."[56] Also, one says "/no/ matter," but "I have /none/." Without question this retention of the /n/ in these pronouns had something to do with the appearance of the /n/-declension in the treatment of /your/, /her/, /his/ and /our/, and, after /their/ had displaced /here/ in the third person plural, in /their/. And equally without question it supports the vulgar American usage today. What that usage shows is simply the strong popular tendency to make language as simple and as regular as possible--to abolish subtleties and exceptions. The difference between "/his/ book" and "the book is /his'n/" is exactly that between /my/ and /mine/, /thy/ and /thine/, in the examples just given. "Perhaps it would have been better," says Bradley, "if the literary language had accepted /hisn/, but from some cause it did not do so."[57]