Speaker A
Welcome to the first episode of the History of English Podcast. My name is Kevin Stroud, your host for this podcast, which will explore the history of the English language.
Introduction to the History of English Podcast exploring the language's evolution from Indo-European roots to modern global use.
Key Takeaways
- English language history is deeply intertwined with social and political power shifts.
- English has evolved by absorbing influences rather than resisting change.
- The Norman Conquest significantly shaped the English language and vocabulary.
- English’s vast vocabulary reflects its adaptability and international use.
- Modern English, including Shakespeare’s works, is accessible to contemporary readers without translation.
Summary
- The podcast explores the history of the English language, focusing on its evolution and the people who spoke it.
- English originated from an obscure Germanic dialect spoken about 2,000 years ago in Northern Europe.
- English ranks behind Chinese and Spanish in native speakers but has nearly 1 billion speakers worldwide including many non-native speakers.
- English is widely used as an international lingua franca for communication between speakers of different native languages.
- The podcast explains peculiarities of English spelling, grammar, and vocabulary through its historical development.
- English has a massive vocabulary due to its ability to borrow and adapt words from many other languages.
- The Norman Conquest of 1066 was a pivotal event that introduced Norman French influence, changing English socially, culturally, and linguistically.
- French became the official language of England for centuries, but English survived by assimilating French vocabulary and evolving into Middle English.
- Language spread is influenced more by power dynamics than by the number of speakers, as seen in the spread of Latin and English.
- English language history is divided into three main periods: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English, with Shakespeare writing in Modern English.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
In this introductory episode, I want to lay the groundwork for the series of episodes which will follow.
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Let me begin by noting that this is ultimately a history podcast. The topic happens to be English, but this is not a podcast about the technical aspects of English.
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Instead, this is a podcast about the history of the language, and you can't separate the history of the language from the history of those who spoke the language.
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So this is really the story of the English language from its earliest ancestor, the Indo-European language spoken in Eastern Europe over 4,000 years ago, to its current status as the closest thing we have to a modern international language.
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And it's the story of the people, places, and events which shaped the language into what it's become today.
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And speaking of the language we have today, it's a language that's emerged from an obscure Germanic dialect spoken in Northern Europe about 2,000 years ago, to one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world.
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Technically speaking, English ranks behind Chinese and Spanish in terms of the most commonly spoken native or first languages.
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Some linguists estimate that nearly 1 billion people speak English today.
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Of the total number of English speakers, it's estimated that there are approximately three times as many non-native speakers of English as native speakers, and this reflects the desire of people around the world to learn English as the de facto international language.
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English is routinely used as the common medium of communication among speakers of other languages.
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When German businessmen established a Volkswagen plant in China, the Germans and their Chinese counterparts used English to communicate with each other, even though it's not the native language of either group.
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So why should we bother learning about the history of English? Well, first, simply because it's interesting.
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It really is a fascinating story, but also because it helps to explain many of the peculiar aspects of English.
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I mean, why do so many of us say, I could care less, when what we really mean to say is, I could not care less.
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And why do we have houses, but not mouses, we have mice.
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Why do we have boxes and foxes, but not oxes, we have oxen. We have man, woman and child, but we don't have man's, woman's and child's.
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Why do we spell knife with a K, or gnome with a G? And why is the F sound sometimes spelled with a G H as in cough, and other times with a P H like phone?
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I mean, I could go on and on because the examples seem endless, but the answers to those questions lie in the history of the language.
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Now, I've heard some people express that English must have an unusually large number of these peculiarities compared to other languages.
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But that's not necessarily true. There are lots of languages, and many of them are quite complicated and have lots of unusual or peculiar rules.
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But the one thing that English does have that lots of other languages don't, is a massive vocabulary.
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It's generally agreed that no other language has the number of words that English has.
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And that should tell you something. Unlike some languages which reject outside influences, English has shown an incredible willingness and ability to adapt and evolve.
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To borrow elements from other languages, including words, and to adapt them into English.
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About 1,000 years ago, in the year 1066 to be precise, an army led by William of Normandy invaded England from Northern France.
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And many of you will know this story very well, because William of Normandy became known to history as William the Conqueror, the last foreign leader to invade and conquer England.
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The arrival of the Normans changed almost everything in England, socially, culturally, economically, legally, and especially linguistically.
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The defeated Anglo-Saxon Earls were wiped out and removed from power, and they were replaced by Norman French Earls and Knights who had fought with and supported William.
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For the next three centuries, French became the official language of the English government, the courts, the aristocracy, and the ruling class.
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In fact, it was not until the late 1300s, around the beginning of the so-called Wars of the Roses, that we have an English monarch who spoke English exclusively again.
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What we see happening here is a theme which will extend throughout the podcast.
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Language shift is not about numbers, it's about power.
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A relatively small number of powerful people speaking one language can make a much larger number of people learn their language.
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We see the same phenomenon in Western Europe when a relatively small number of Latin-speaking Romans imposed their language on the Celtic peoples who they invaded in Western Europe.
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Today, almost everyone in continental Europe west of Germany speaks a language which evolved from Latin, the so-called Romance languages.
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We also see it in the spread of English in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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The total number of people who speak English as their first language is relatively small compared to the world at large.
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Yet people throughout the world seek to learn and communicate with each other in English.
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It's this tendency for language to spread because of power, sometimes military or political power, sometimes economic power, sometimes social or cultural power.
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But it's this tendency for language to spread because of certain power associated with the speakers of the language, that caused a major upheaval in the English language when the Norman French arrived in 1066.
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Afterwards, French was imposed by the Normans as the official language of England.
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During that period, English came very close to disappearing as a distinct language.
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It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that it almost became an Anglicized dialect of French. It absorbed a massive number of French words.
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But it didn't become French, it remained English, albeit a highly modified version of English. It became a much larger language with an enhanced vocabulary.
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The language changed so much as a result of this experience that linguists mark this period as the transition from Old English or Anglo-Saxon to the period known as Middle English.
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And this is but one example of how English survived by assimilating outside influences, rather than rejecting change and subsequently dying out.
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The Norman Conquest was just one event that changed the English language, but all languages are constantly evolving and changing.
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It's just that the changes are typically more gradual and subtle, not the sudden and dramatic change marked by the Norman Conquest of England.
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In fact, linguists employ a general rule to mark the natural evolution that most languages experience.
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That general rule is that most languages evolve over the course of a thousand years to the point that a speaker at the beginning of that period would not be able to communicate with a speaker at the end of that period because of the natural language change.
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And this general rule certainly applies to English. As I mentioned before, there are earlier periods of English, known as Old English.
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And an intermediate period known as Middle English. There's also a third period, which represents the version of English which we speak today, called Modern English.
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So those are the three periods to keep in mind. Now, if I conducted a poll and told most people that there were three periods of English, Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.
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And I asked them to tell me which period Shakespeare belonged to, I suspect that the overwhelming majority would answer either Old English or Middle English.
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In fact, I would not be completely surprised if no one gave the correct answer, which is Modern English.
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Shakespeare is considered a modern English writer because we can read his words today without the need for a translation.
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Now, I know some of you will say, hold it a minute, I need a translator to read Shakespeare, but there is a difference between not understanding Shakespeare's references, or the particular way in which he uses words for literary effect.
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And not understanding the language itself. There are certainly translations of Shakespeare's works into conversational contemporary English, and those translations can be helpful, but they're not necessary.
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If you're willing to spend the time and effort, you can read Hamlet or Macbeth today in the same words Shakespeare used, and still understand the gist of the story.
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Another literary work from the same time period is the King James Bible. Once again, there are modern translations of the King James Bible to make it easier to read, but it's not necessary.
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If you're so inclined, you can read the King James Bible and understand it without a translation.
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Now, Shakespeare's works and the King James Bible were written in the late 1500s and early 1600s.
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So this was near the beginning of the Modern English period, and that's part of the reason why there are noticeable differences between the English used in those works and contemporary English.
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But English has not evolved to an extent that we can no longer understand those 16th and 17th century works.
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But if we were to go back in time a little further, from the 1600s to the 1300s, we would find ourselves in the period known as Middle English.
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The period following the Norman Conquest of England, and the big difference between that period and the Modern English period is the way words were pronounced, especially vowels.
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For some reason, around the year 1500, English speakers in the British Isles, primarily in England, and even more specifically in the south of England, in and around London.
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They began to change the way they pronounced their vowels. This is known as the Great Vowel Shift.
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This shift or pronunciation change is one of the events which marks the transition from Middle English to Modern English.
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So what did Middle English sound like?
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Well, one of the benefits of a podcast is that I can actually illustrate how these older versions of the language sounded.
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But first, a disclaimer.
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I don't claim to be an expert in the pronunciation of Middle English or Old English.
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Again, my focus here is on the history, not so much the precise manner in which Old English vowels or consonants were enunciated.
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However, I hope that my pronunciation will give you at least a general sense of how the earlier versions of the language sounded.
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So in order to illustrate the evolution of English, I want to read a passage from one of the most important pieces of literature composed during the period of Middle English.
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The Canterbury Tales by Jeffrey Chaucer.
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It's very likely that you read the Canterbury Tales in school, I know I did, but what you probably read was a modern English translation of the original text written by Chaucer in the 1300s.
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The book is a collection of tales told by a group of pilgrims on their way to the shrine of Thomas Beckett at Canterbury Cathedral.
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The following passage occurs near the beginning of the book, as the author recalls his first impressions upon meeting the pilgrims, in this instance, a knight.
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A knight there was, and he was a worthy man, who from the time that he first began, to ride out, he loved chivalry, truth and honor, freedom and courtesy.
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He fought bravely in his Lord's wars, and in them he had ridden no other man so far, as well in Christendom as in heathen places, and ever honored for his worthiness.
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Now, here's the same passage as it was actually written by Chaucer, and as it would have been read in the 1300s during the period of Middle English.
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A knight there was, and that a worthy man, that through the time that he first began, to ride out, he loved chivalry, truth and honor, freedom and courtesy.
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Full worthy was he in his Lord's war, and there to had he ridden no man fair, as well in Christendom as heathenness, and ever honored for his worthiness.
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That was the sound of Middle English. I think the most important thing to take from that passage is that it's really not that far from Modern English.
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The words and grammar are very similar. The biggest difference is pronunciation.
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Again, there was a time when certain words, and especially the vowels, were pronounced differently than today.
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There are three key components to language: the words that are spoken, the vocabulary, the way in which those words are put together, the grammar.
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And the way in which the words are actually spoken, the pronunciation. The first two of those are very similar to Modern English.
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It's the third that marks the biggest difference.
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Let me give you another example. I'm going to use a passage which is often used for the purpose of illustrating the evolution of English, the Lord's Prayer.
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I'm going to use this passage not for any particular religious purposes, but simply because it's a passage which exists in many different historical languages, including Modern, Middle, and Old English.
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The Modern English version comes from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, so this is shortly before Shakespeare's writings.
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Here it is.
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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.
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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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Now, in Middle English.
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Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as in heaven.
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Give us this day our bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive unto our debtors.
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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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So, as you can hear, Middle English is not the English we speak today.
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But it's close enough that we can recognize it as a form of English.
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But if we were to go back in time even further, to the period before Middle English, before the arrival of the Norman French in Britain.
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We see and hear a language that's barely recognizable as a form of English at all, but it is.
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It's the earliest version of English, which is known as Old English or Anglo-Saxon.
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You've probably heard English described as a Germanic language, but you may not know exactly what that means.
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Does that mean English came from German? No, not exactly.
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It means that English, like Modern German, Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian, all evolved from an ancient ancestral language spoken in Northern Europe called Germanic, or Proto-Germanic to be precise.
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So English did not come from German, nor did German come from English.
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They each came from an even older shared language.
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So it shouldn't be surprising that the further back in time we go, the more English looks and sounds like German.
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Because the further back in time we go, the more they have in common.
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Old English was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, who were Germanic-speaking tribes from Northern Germany and modern-day Denmark.
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They were only a small part of many Germanic tribes that dominated Central Europe east of the Rhine.
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And when the Roman Empire began to collapse in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Germanic tribes poured into Western Europe, into the areas previously controlled by the Romans.
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This included Southern Britain in the area we know today as England.
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What began as an invitation became a migration, and eventually became an outright invasion.
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Beginning in the fifth century, these Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons defeated and displaced much of the native Celtic-speaking Britons.
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And they established several independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, which eventually coalesced in the face of Viking invasions beginning in the seventh century to become a unified nation.
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These were the same Anglo-Saxons who were defeated by the Norman French in 1066.
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So what did this very early version of Anglo-Saxon English sound like?
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Well, fortunately, we have many sources from this period to document the language of the Anglo-Saxons.
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One of the most well-known is one of the earliest poems composed in English.
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You may have read it in English class in school. It's the epic poem called Beowulf.
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And it's virtually certain that if you read it, you read a Modern English translation, because as you will see and hear, Old English is so far removed from Modern English, and so much closer to the original Proto-Germanic language.
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That it's completely foreign to modern ears. Remember the general rule that languages evolve over the course of a thousand years to the point where they can no longer be mutually understood.
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So let me read the first few lines from Beowulf in Modern English.
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So, the spear Danes in days gone by, and the kings who ruled them, had courage and greatness.
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We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns. Now, here's the same passage in the original Old English.
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What we garden in your dogum, day at kuninga thrim yfrulnan, hotha athlingas ilin fremdon.
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As you can hear, there's very little in that which is recognizable to modern English ears.
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Let's also listen to the Lord's Prayer in Old English and compare it to the Middle English version I read earlier.
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Father, through the earth on heaven, sit in name, to become the rich, the will, on earth and heaven.
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Your, and forgive us your guilt, so we forgive your guilt and doom.
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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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Again, this is far removed from Modern English. It's difficult to discern much in that passage that's familiar as English.
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As I said earlier, even though Modern English differs from Middle English in pronunciation, it still shares a great deal of vocabulary and grammar.
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But when compared to Old English, it shares neither pronunciation nor grammar, and the vocabulary is so far removed from Modern English that we only see glimpses of words that will eventually become recognizable to us.
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Evil is evil, father is father, is our, heaven is heaven, earth is earth, forgive is forgive.
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So, how did we get from there to here?
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Well, that's the question I'm going to try to answer over the course of this podcast series.
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I'm going to take you back to the beginning, the very beginning, to the ancient language from which English ultimately derived.
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The oldest known ancestor of English, the Indo-European language.
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Of course, this is also the oldest known ancestor of almost all of the languages of Europe, as well as many of the languages of Central Asia, including Sanskrit and Persian.
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Over the next few episodes of the podcast, I'm going to cover the period from the original Indo-European language to the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain.
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This is the story of pre-English.
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And it's very important to the overall story of English, because English is a mutt language, combining elements of many different languages.
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But almost all of those major influences share a common Indo-European ancestry.
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The Germanic languages, Greek, Latin, French, the Celtic languages, they all came from this common source.
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So in order to fully understand the history of English, you have to understand this essential period.
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I will then look at the period from the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain to their defeat at the hands of the Norman French.
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That's the period of Old English. After that, we will cover the period from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the time just before Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
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That's the period of Middle English. And then the last portion of the podcast will cover the period from Shakespeare through the creation of the British Empire.
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And the expansion of English to North America, the Indian subcontinent, Australia and beyond.
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That's the period of Modern English. Collectively, that's the story of English.
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So in closing this introductory episode, I would like to make note of a quick housekeeping matter.
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I would encourage you to check out the website for this podcast, historyofenglishpodcast.com.
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Each episode is available at the site, and there's a specific page dedicated to each episode with a summary of the episode and maps and illustrations mentioned in the episode.
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So until next time, thanks for listening to the History of English Podcast.
Topics:History of EnglishEnglish language evolutionNorman ConquestOld EnglishMiddle EnglishModern Englishlanguage historylinguisticsEnglish vocabularylanguage change
