The English Language: Where Did It Come From?

📺 WATCH NEXT:

⬇️ GET MY FREE STORYLEARNING® KIT:

✍🏼 ON THE BLOG:
Prefer reading to watching? We’ve got you covered!

💻 CERTIFICATE OF ONLINE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CEOLT)

📖 LEARN A LANGUAGE THROUGH THE POWER OF STORY:

🗣 SUPERCHARGE STORIES WITH SPEAKING PRACTICE
Many StoryLearning students have found great success combining story-based learning with 1-on-1 speaking practice. We recommend LanguaTalk for finding talented tutors who can help you become more confident.

📸 FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM:

⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:16 - What is English?
0:51 - Celts and Romans
1:50 - Germanic Tribes
2:36 - Old English
4:25 - Vikings
6:09 - Writing
7:16 - Middle English
9:20 - Late Middle English
12:03 - Sword and Sorcery Tales
12:36 - Early Modern English
13:44 - Enter William Shakespeare
15:11 - The Academy Attempt
16:23 - Late Modern English
17:06 - Alphabet and Pronunciation
17:52 - Astonishing Things

📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:

🎬 Video Clips:
Do You Understand the Words That Are Coming Out of My Mouth? - Rush Hour (1/5) Movie CLIP (1998) HD

The Ancient Celtic Languages

What Was Life like in Medieval England?

Cædmon's Hymn 🎵 (Sung in Old English)

Beowulf (Old English)

How the Normans changed the history of Europe - Mark Robinson

Where did English come from? - Claire Bowern

General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales (Premiere)

What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like - and how we know

Original Pronunciation - Hamlet | To Be, or not to be... | Ben Crystal

The Queens English

🖼 Images:
“Claudius crop” by Marie-Lan Nguyen is licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons

“RP English Monophthongs Chart” by RP_vowel_chart is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

[favOriTe-ve]

I think English is taken for granted most of the times. It's a really beautiful and unique language but people don't give it enough credit just because it's common and heard everywhere

[Shibbyify]

Wow,
my love of Spanish and language learning has me learning about my own language English, and I'm fascinated by this thing I've always taken for granted

[prof.emanuelpaiva]

As a Brazilian, I would say I'm impressed by the way that English was developing all through the years. ❤

[toms]

Excellent presentation, Olly!
Some of this was covered, coincidentally, way back in high school German class. However, since it was designed to help students understand the history and development of the German language, the English portion was mostly skipped over while emphasizing the vowel shifts and changes in both.The migration of tribes, invasions and other influences makes for a fascinating study.

[JWhisp]

Fantastic video! Helpful for my "history of the English Language" class!

[pieterbosman]

Most entertaining. A pity there are so many facts that I find it difficult to remember. The beauty, however, is one can always rewind and also watch again later. Thanks for the info.

[imawatermelon]

As boring as English can be since we have very few cases and it’s a pretty simple language in general I still believe it’s one of the most magical languages because of how widespread it is. There’s a ton of different dialects, expressions and even many languages that are not English have a variety of English phrases. I also speak German and in German we have the word Handys for a cellphone which comes from English. It’s pretty cool!

[californianorma]

❤❤❤ Excellent. Anyone watching this gets the gist of the book I read recently, The Story of English. Great book, but took a lot more time than the video ☝🏽🫵🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 English...it has something for everyone! Wherever you're from, there will be a familiar word in English 🥰😎🤷🏽‍♀️ I intend to share this with ESL people I know. The list of vowel pronounciation with various spellings is GOLD!

[srikarthik]

Very fascinating topic. I loved the presentation

[arnulfo]

One English word with one of the most interesting etymology is the word "girl". The word girl first appeared in English around 1300 and it originally meant "child of either gender" or "young person". Meaning that both male children and female children were called "girls". It wasn't until the 1400s when the word boy came into English and only female children were called girls. In modern times we still use the word "girl" to refer to adult young women. So in a way the world girl still retains that original meaning of "young person".

[javiermoretti]

One of the most contentious Americanisms that was originally British is "soccer" (it's actually North American, since it's the word used in Canada as well). At Oxford, students took the portmanteau “assoccer” (association football) and shortened it to "soccer." The term was adopted in the United States but forgotten in the UK.

[colebearden]

This is a wonderful history of the English language! Thanks for doing all this research.
I can't wait to share all this information with my EFL students.

[PaleMist]

@2:29
Sunday from "sun".

Monday from "moon".

Tuesday from "Týr" (Germanic god of warriors and mythological heroes).

Wednesday from "Wōden" (Old English for "Odin", Germanic god of war and of the dead and the Norse All-Father).

Thursday from "Thor" (Germanic god of lightning, thunder, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, the protection of humankind, hallowing, and fertility).

Friday from "Freja" [Germanic goddess of love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future)].

Saturday from "Saturn" (Roman god of time, generation, dissolution, abundance, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation).

[dallansimper]

The days of the week are celestial bodies and gods, sometimes the same thing. Monday - Moon, Sunday - Sun. Tuesday - Mars, Wednesday - Odin, Thursday - Thor, Friday - Freya, and Saturday - Saturn. Tuesday took a sideways route to get from Mars day to Tues day, but it was named for the god of the sky and war..

[coolbrotherf]

The massive amounts of accents is interesting. Many other languages don't have the hundreds if not thousands of accents that English does. I imagine it makes learn it a bit challenging as just because you might understand Americans, you might not understand British or Indian English speakers very well at all.

[annehersey]

My cousin the Geneologist, found an ancestors will from 1599 in Reading, England before the family emigrated in 1635 to the Massachusetts Colony. Our name today and on the first American ancestor's gravestone was/is HERSEY. In the earlier will however, throughout the will, the name was spelled-Hersey, Hersi, Hearsie!!! We think the name may have come with Wm the Conquerer's French army with Guy D'Hercy. I found all of that so interesting and is one reason I found this video so interesting.

[piepods]

In Australia, “garn” and “carn” mean “go on” and “come on”.

[marcusvachon]

Around @13:40, he began speaking of the printed press. There's a story of a printer that used the word "egg" to describe what we know as egg. This printer was from the western part of London. However, if he would have been from an area that was east of London, we would have been using a different word. Just outside of London, probably an hour's horse ride east, people used the word "eyg" to describe egg.

[DKHunna_]

2:31 From Germanic Gods, Very easy. Thursday -> Thor’s day
Wednesday -> Odin’s Day (In old english Odin was called Wodin/Woden)
I forgot the rest

[anenglishmanplusamerican]

I have just watched an 18 mins of video about my native language. Brilliant.