Modern Spanish and English of Other Days

read the opening line of the Canterbury Tales, Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote, he took that to be a demonstrative adjective, modifying April. Great was his surprise to learn later that instead of being an adjective, that was an affix of whan, modem when, the two words forming a conjunction. His mistake would seem to be natural, since when that as a conjunction is not found in modern English. While it is true that that as a conjunctional affix does appear in a few current English expressions such as in order that, so that, and to the end that, it is not part of most of our conjunctions. But as late as Shakespeare's day, that was commonly used as a conjunctional affix, as the following quotations demonstrate:1

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