A Short History of the English Language

A brief history of English from the Anglo Saxons to Shakespeare

Some sources:
The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. I: The beginnings to 1066 by Richard M. Hogg

A History of the English Language by Albert C Baugh

Music:
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

[williantheodoro]

thank you for speaking slowly and clearly. I'm learning English and this help me a lot

[alfonsomunoz]

I had an instructor at a community college who would read in Old English. I was fascinated by it.

[caliscribe]

No one was happier for a nickname change in history than William the Bastard, now William the Conqueror.

[marygebbie]

while the Viking influence on English was mostly vocabularly, yes, the grammatical impact is arguably larger. It's why the standard common plural form of words in just to stick an s on it and why English lost grammatical gender of nouns like what German still has today.

[emeraldsroses]

Good short explanation of the English language. There’s is something you missed in this: Latin also influenced the English language in science, not only Old Norman French . Many scientific terms are derived from Latin.

[calmeilles]

"Old Norse… its influence on English was mostly vocabulary." Oh dear! Oh deary, deary me!

The *collision* between Old Norse and Old English produced _The Most Profound Change In The English Language Ever._ The creoles that arose from the intermingling of Norse and English resulted in dropping of most declension, the introduction of articles and new prepositions — a series of changes that began the comprehensive alteration of English from an inflected language to a mostly analytic language.

Norman French did indeed introduce _some_ vocabulary but had virtually no grammatical influence. It's use as a language of court and administration left English free as a vernacular to run with the changes started by the influx of Old Norse so that by the time Middle English once again became a literary language it was ready to drop its case system which it had almost entirely done by the beginnings of Early Modern English.

The influence of Norman French, even in vocabulary, is usually much over-estimated. The importation and assimilation of Latin-rooted Romance words continued long after Norman French ceased to be spoken by anyone and sometimes the distinction can be seen from Norman French itself being influenced by previous assimilation of Norse.

There are instances where we have borrowed from the same root multiple times through different routes. Eg mister, master, meister, maestro, mistral and magistrate are all derived from Latin magister "teacher" coming from Old French, Norman French, Middle German, Occitan through Modern French and Latin respectively. There are even several dozen multiple borrowings from Greek such as τύμπανον 'drum' tympanum 'eardrum', timbre, timpani and χρῑστιᾱνός which gives us Christian and christen via Latin as well as cretin which came via Swiss French, and French but only in the late Eighteenth Century.

[cristinabumbac]

I'm proud I know almost all the facts în your presentation: when I learn a language I learn also all the history of the country. But there is something missing: the Latin influence on English which is really important. Being a Romanian I know Latin and found lot of it in English!

[margarets]

I’ll never forget how my 12 grade English teacher explained how English came to be. Not exact but gets the point across. Okay you had a bunch of Germans looking for a new place to call home because the weather in German is crap, so they set sail found land thought “this looks great…oh, no! The weather is even suckier here, hey other Germans don’t send anymore over.” So you got a lot of people speaking German for a while. Then you had William come in with a lot of French men because he wanted a throne. Battles and killing happen for a few years, war ends and now you have a lot of German widows and a lot of single Frenchman now looking for wives and who don’t want to go back to France. The Frenchmen go to William and say “Will, my man, look there are now a lot of single German women and we don’t wanna go home. Do you have a problem if we marry them?” William said “go for it, ” BUT “you are Frenchmen and the German language is beneath you, you can’t learn German. Also, you can’t teach your new wives French because they are German, and they aren’t good enough to learn French.” So the Soldiers asked him “so how are we supposed to communicate?” And William said “you’ll figure it out.” And that’s how we got English. 😂😂😂😂 Coolest English teacher Ever.

[russeldatuin]

Do yourself a favor and play this at 1.25 speed

[gregmiell]

Great teacher! His speach is slow, succinct, and clear, allowing the listener to digest the connected concepts with relative ease.

[alexneumann]

Really good video! I learned so much in under 10 minutes. Thank you for posting this great content!

[thenewlc]

Great video! Learning other languages has lead me to notice English’ unique structures and complexities. This video helped connect the dots as to why. Thanks!!

[deathcabforcutie]

Excellent video! You explained a lot in a very short time, but without over simplification.

[lexx]

Thank you for always producing such amazing content! You are definitely one of my favorite channels ever, and always make quality educational videos. Please keep up the amazing work!

[crustycurmudgeon]

Fascinating! Simplistic (and perhaps it needs to be), but quite informative. I once tried to delve into this subject-- alone, naive and eager. I swiftly ran away from those waters after dipping a few tentative toes. Easy to get caught up in the many tributaries of this vast river. Much thanks for separating so much of the chaff I got lost in from the actual wheat.

[kacheek]

omg thank you for explaining the Old Norse link! I visited Norway and was shocked by how much I understood

[theolagos]

Great content as always 😎 Love the background music as well. Can't explain why your channel is so underrated thought 🤔

[andreajohnson]

The absolutely enormous influence of Latin on English appears to have been missed entirely in this video. Also, pajamas is an American word. Pyjamas would be the English word.

[fredvaladez]

A well-done and fascinating presentation. Especially easy to understand. Thanks.

[paulbarham]

I love this subject! Back in the mid-eighties(1985), I was enthralled by a multi-part series narrated by Robert MacNeil called The Story of English. It was fascinating...and so this subject continues to be to me. Enjoyed it!