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
www.britannica.com/topic/Engl...
www.englishclub.com/history-o...
www.oxfordinternationalenglis...
Music:
Angevin, Lord of the Land and Thatched Villagers by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

[@williantheodoro2608]

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

[@TheSaltydog07]

Good luck.❤

[@williantheodoro2608]

Thanks ❤@@TheSaltydog07

[@willtibbals4265]

Hey Willian, since you’re learning, the correct grammar in your sentence would be either “helps me a lot” which means it is currently helping, or “this helped me a lot” which means the video has helped you. “This help me a lot” is not grammatically correct” Good luck!

[@williantheodoro2608]

@@willtibbals4265 Thank you for your comment and your kindness, it helps me a lot ;)

[@TheSaltydog07]

@@willtibbals4265 There are classes for that.

[@alfonsomunoz4424]

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

[@TheSaltydog07]

It's beautiful. You're lucky.

[@marygebbie6611]

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.

[@klaatoris]

Hmm, but we (in Sweden) do not use S as a plural suffix. We also still have two grammatical genders (unfortunately).

[@klaatoris]

@@mosy5277 So sort of a pidgin language, which then became the dominant language?

[@marygebbie6611]

@@klaatoris indeed, s is an English plural. The Norse who settled down and had English wives found it too confusing to learn the many many plural forms, so they just picked the easiest one, s, and used it for everything. It's much like how many past tense forms of verbs are becoming "-ed"ified (dreamt -> dreamed, dove -> dived, etc). As for grammatical gender, Old English had three, and se (masc), seo (fem), and that (neut) were merged into "the".

[@XXXTENTAClON227]

@@mosy5277 hell no 💀 they were basically demons

[@mountain2112]

@@mosy5277 kind of like US English dropping a pointless u in words like "flavor".

[@margarets2560]

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.

[@goofygrandlouis6296]

😂😂 "oh, no! The weather is even suckier here" "a lot of single Frenchman now looking for wives and who don’t want to go back to France." Hon hon hon 😘 That's funny.

[@KateLate____]

The best English teachers are the ones that teach you history instead!

[@ronsen7119]

😂😂😂😂set me rolling

[@danidejaneiro8378]

Except it was more like: you can father some mongrel bastards with the filthy German peasants until the posh birds from France get here so you can have proper posh babies as heirs who you can then offload to your German nannies who’ll teach them the peasant tongue which they’ll mix with the posh French of the family thus creating a new English.

[@josephmwalutendeofficial1251]

Very interesting 😅

[@caliscribe2120]

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

[@valerietaylor9615]

I think he was also known as „William the Norman“, though anything was better than bastard. 😊

[@rajveer5230]

😂

[@valerietaylor9615]

This doesn’t have anything to do with English, but I’m sure that a certain German dictator was glad his father had changed his name from Schickelgruber to Hitler.

[@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.

[@elbuggo]

Excellent recap there, Professor.

[@elbuggo]

Is it possible to argue that English is North-Germanic?

[@calmeilles]

@@elbuggo Some have indeed argued just that. The larger consensus still has it classified as West Germanic. Emonds & Faarlund make a case in _English: The Language of the Vikings_ which received a comprehensive critique in Bech & Walkden's _English is (still) a West Germanic language_ in the Nordic Journal of Lingusitics, 15 December 2015.

[@Bpaynee]

This comment should be pinned, as a linguist who was looking for a good short example to show some people a quick overview to help them understand language change, I had to stop the video at this point because it made it unshareable for my purposes. Thanks for this comment!

[@unavitadellamusica]

yeah Greek! A lot of medical terms are Greek,, or come from Greek (pharmacy, pediatrician, a.s.o.)

[@emeraldsroses0524]

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.

[@XXXTENTAClON227]

Isaac Newton wrote in Latin so that makes sense

[@RichardBrown7k]

The influence of Larin on English has always been understated by many academics, Britannia was part of the Roman Empire for almost 400 years and Latin would have been the language of law and commerce, and even if only the upper classes spoke Latin as a first language most of the population would have had at least a basic understanding of the language. and used its vocabulary for 'technical' words, even after the Roman period the Church still used Latin, Many if the words attributed to the Normans probably came direct from the Latin

[@brauliocavalcanti3703]

@@RichardBrown7k YES. 100% correct

[@richietaylor9870]

@@RichardBrown7k I think I’m correct in saying that, in the highest echelons of society, French was spoken quite commonly. Certainly, French was the standard language spoken in the royal courts of Europe long after the monarchs began to speak English as their first language.

[@colinp2238]

@@brauliocavalcanti3703 Except the Larin?

[@cristinabumbac151]

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!

[@timberwolfdtproductions3890]

Definitely a lot of Latin influence in English, not just the direct adoption of French words, but influence from other Latin languages as well. Some came through a back door long after English was fully developed: the interaction between American settlers and Mexicans introduced many Spanish words and phrases to their local lingo, which spread, and eventually became officially adopted into English.

[@aclark903]

Greek also has an influence on technical words.

[@vincentlefebvre9255]

And above all the influence of french language....

[@SoWhat89]

Those are most of the French words. It's not always clear whether they'd been there before since the Roman times or whether they were brought by the Normans. But a lot of the Latin looking stuff is French, French is a Latin language. But English remains a Germanic language. The basic structure and vocab etc. are Germanic. And Old Norse is Germanic too.

[@townsley2]

Most of that Latin was brought to England through old french with the norman and plantagenests, french being a latin romance language whereas English remains germanic.

[@deathcabforcutie3889]

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

[@alexneumann3]

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!!

[@gregmiell3037]

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

[@crustycurmudgeon2182]

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.

[@lexx2645]

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!

[@paulbarham1038]

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!

[@fredvaladez3542]

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

[@theolagos]

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

[@ThePixel1983]

One title is "Thatched villagers" and hearing it feels almost like the video tries to impersonate one of CGPgrey's 😉

[@runfast27182r]

Very interesting video! I really enjoyed it. I would argue that Shakespeare's word choice represents more his use of iambic pentameter than the wording of the time. Having to get the right number of syllables and accents into a line probably warped things a bit. I would say that looking at the laws created around that time and letters that have survived would be a better indicator. That said, I understand the choice of Romeo and Juliette since its widely known. Gotta walk that line of making your point and relatable. Cheers!

[@wpjohn91]

Good point here.

[@welshpete12]

Yes of course , but it does not hide the underlying foundation of Elizabethan English pronunciation and word usage .

[@jdabel1]

If you liked this video, there is an English documentary series by called "The Adventure of English". It follows a similar path in more detail.

[@ProgressiveSolutions]

Good point. In addiiton, the notion that today's "middle American" is close to the English pronunciation of Shakespeare's time persists, despite strong evidence, led by the father and son team of David and Ben Crystal, that we are nowhere close.

[@marjetapeterlin]

Thank you for this clear presentation of English history.i will certainly listen to it several times and learn the gist.

[@kishanlalrohilla]

Nice explanation in short. An explanation on how English grammar developed with this could have been an added value.

[@robertoeduardobautistacont9823]

Thank you so much for this video! I'm studying English linguistics and everything that you said is so accurate and helpful. Nice job!

[@kacheek9101]

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

[@deathcabforcutie3889]

I learnt Swedish some years ago and found the same. Although I learnt French to Advanced level at school and later learnt a little Spanish, I still think of them as foreign languages (despite the vocabulary). Not so Swedish! Apart from some pronunciation I found Swedish very easy to learn.

[@Byynx]

The most comprehensive video i've found about the evolution of the english language where it connects the invasions/language inplemmentations perfectly. The majoritie of the others videos complicate what should be simple.

[@Mercure250]

0:06 Minor nitpick : Estonia shouldn't be included here, since Estonian is closely related to Finnish and is therefore Uralic. 4:09 French nitpick : l'appétit*, la protestation*, le* mouvement (and Spanish nitpick : la protesta*, el movimiento*) Very good video!

[@taylernorris5647]

I had the same Estonia nitpick.

[@maasro]

Yeah there are more nitpicks on that map (Cyprus and Transilvania, to mention the two most obvious). PS. The map at 8:12 is even worse.

[@valerietaylor9615]

Finland, too. Finnish and Estonian are similar to each other, but they’re not Germanic.

[@nunuloki]

I have read a book written by historian/novelist Alfred Duggan called "The Cunning of the Dove". It is the story told by a personal servant of King Edward the Confessor of life at his king's court and the politics of government leading up to the Norman invasion of 1066. It contains many references to the troubles in telling his stories from a time when three different languages were at use around him - English, Danish and Norman French (in the king's court). As a junior page initially in the court of Queen Emma of Normandy he had to learn French but he discovered that if he spoke Danish then people usually understood him well, and he makes the comment that Danish sounds much the same as (old) English with a heavy northern accent. That ties in with much of which we learn in this video. The storyteller himself is probably fictional, although much of what he says pops up in the Vita Edwardi Regis document. Although not really explored in this video, it seems that the Norse language of the day had more of an impact on the development of the English language than what we might think.

[@hux2000]

0:36 - "The Romans, who had ruled over England...withdrew their hold over the island." The island is called Great Britain and the part of it that the Romans controlled was called Roman Britain. England didn't exist on that island until the 10th century - half a millennium after after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

[@lightfootpathfinder8218]

I wrote a similar comment to yours ....it really annoys me when people use the wrong terms

[@scottsagerdahl5197]

Well...I learned something! That presentation was Lit. I had no Idea the English language was so complex.

[@taylorlucas6151]

Bravooo, outstanding video. I would nominate this for some type of award. The “knife” explanation was awesome. I didn’t learn very well in school but that all made a ton of sense.

[@stevedietrich8936]

This was an awesome summary of how we got from there to where we are now. While I knew modern English originated from Germanic languages, and that it had been influenced by French (among others), I learned so much from your video. "* probably not pronounced correctly" was a nice touch.

[@anderssigeklint8739]

It feels very nice for me as a scandinavian (Swedish) that all reactions i ewer have seen from english people about their partly scandinavian heritage always are positive. Always pride and newer shame. I feel honored. Yes i know that it was our brothers from Denmark and Norway who invaded England and not swedes but ewerything involving them automatic feels personal because we are a family. I guess we have good reasons to se ewen England as part of the family because of the history and that feels nice. Gretings from Sweden.

[@mikegrady8931]

Greetings to Sweden from England

[@00Andreas00]

@@mikegrady8931Lots of Swedish Vikings went to England as well.

[@rnedlo9909]

Very informative, thank you. Your last point though I have to question, the one about our language today not being understood in a couple/three hundred years. The difference now is that we have video/audio recordings that presumably will be available in an unbroken chain, leapfrogging generations, linking them together in a way that has never happened before 120 years ago

[@FranzJoseph1914]

This Is Great To Learn About The English Language History it's Very Fun to learn about.

[@Jo3man96]

The one thing I want to comment on is the american accent being closer in sound to shakespearean english than modern english accents. I think this only really applies to people who talk with received pronunciation or from the home counties and london. A lot of people further out have accents that use a lot more of the vernacular from middle english and, with stronger versions on some accents like geordie or yorkshire, they sometimes even use old english or old norse words or phrases.

[@welshpete12]

I disagree Elizabethan English , would have sounded more like Devonshire or west of England English .

[@goofygrandlouis6296]

uh uh. I knew he should not have said that in the video. Feud incoming.

[@Jo3man96]

@@welshpete12 i was just making a general comment on American accents sounding like older forms of English. In terms of Elizabethan English, I think spoken ‘properly,’ it does have that West Country feel to it, but I think regional accents would still have sounded closer to what we now associate with each region. Not exactly so, obviously, but there’d be elements of them.

[@armenvardents2169]

To be correct - the Romans never ruled Englans as there was no notion of England during the Roman domination on the island named Britain and the first inhabitants of the island were not English and not even Germanic tribes, but the tribes of Celtic or Galic origin.

[@dalemoore387]

Nice overview of the development of English. One of the best I’ve seen.

[@k.p.8955]

Short, sweet as well as informative. Nice job 👌

[@andreajohnson8652]

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.

[@rabiaaslam3186]

Pajama is persian / Urdu ( etymology)

[@valerietaylor9615]

Also Hindi.

[@andyp621]

Awesome video 👍 Well put together 👍 Fascinating explaining the time line of our language and certain words added to the vocabulary over time from different area's and cultures. 🧐

[@fahadhussain66]

8:43 priceless information right here. As a traveller who comes in contact with people of varying nationalities and who knows surface level differences b/w british and american english, this makes sense. It froze there.

[@user-wq9jj7vg5f]

Great video! I learned a lot! These developments are so interesting!

[@nobbyclarke9166]

The man said Shakespeare spoke with an American accent. Different British accents are not “recent” for instance mine (Geordie accent & dialect) has routes in Anglo Saxon and Norse influence. His claim sounds more like a rumour that he has ended up believing.

[@thicclegendfeep4050]

The history of the English language also kind of goes in hand with the history of the English people and England, as well as the English Diaspora and the Anglo-sphere.

[@eloradelavallee3481]

Thanks, it help me to do revisions for my exams on the history of the English language. It was short but very informative

[@rogersledz6793]

Thank you so much for uploading this video. It is helping me get through the pandemic!

[@juliewillcox3398]

Very interesting,l have learned quite a bit Thank you.

[@Jr-ft9ii]

Fascinating video! 😃 I didn't know that the American pronunciation is closer to Shakespeare! (Didn't catch if that means closer to 'middle English' or 'early modern'). I'm a Spanish speaker. In primary school I started learning German and English and from the very beginning I was able to notice loads of similarities between those languages without prior knowledge of their origins in history, even if English was less complicated to me thanks to the many guessable words of Norman origin. Basic words like House-Haus, What-Was, Bed-Bett, World-Welt, Word-Wort, Garden-Garten caught my attention and maybe sometimes I used to mix them. Then as I continued learning at more advanced levels, I noticed that each one's grammars and word orders were significantly less parallel to each other and that English resembled a little bit to Spanish (but not enough) and I understood that probably English as lost many of these German oddities and became a simpler language with own rules. Then in the pandemic I dabbled in Norwegian and omg that was basically English with a different spelling and a more logical pronunciation... I realized that English resembles considerably more to Scandinavian languages than to German itself. The Scandinavian grammars are simpler than German and the word order is much more synchronized with English (except for the place of the verb in main clauses which makes it even easier in Scandinavian since the verb will always be placed in the same part of the sentence)

[@goofygrandlouis6296]

uh uh. You're going to start a feud here, across the Pond. 😂 "I didn't know that the American pronunciation is closer to Shakespeare" -- the British are going to be VERY unhappy with that statement.

[@theepicguy13]

you didn't know that because it is not true. A rhotic r sound is present in many English accents and is the only example people have for it being closer to the American accent

[@vintagelady1]

There is a common myth that the Appalachian accent is what the British accent of colonial days sounded like. Like most myths, it is a...myth. I also question the assertion that the American accent (which one?) sounds like Shakespeare, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to say yea or nay. This is a job for the internet, or a linguist.

[@valerietaylor9615]

I’ve always had doubts about that, too. The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, only four years after Shakespeare‘s death in 1616. Yet most New England accents drop the final „r“s in pronunciation, as do most modern British accents.

[@unknownagian6012]

Yes definitely keep going the way you talk the way you describe with the facts and not knowing everything but putting in a form that we can understand and teaching us especially for us visual learners

[@da_ostrichyeet7999]

Amazing video, thank you for creating this!

[@JustRootsAndLeaves]

The King James Bible was publish in 1611. In 1687 Isaac Newton wrote his Principia in Latin as all academic were, but 20 years later Opticks was in English. The shift away from Latin brought an influx of Latin borrow words into common English that has not yet stopped. Shakespeare wrote in this period. One reason that we do not share many of his word-choices is because he was making up (or at least, writing down)so many new words, many of which would have been as foreign to his audience as they are to us.

[@williamnethercott4364]

A decent attempt at a complicated subject. I liked the slow, clear delivery because too many people try to emphasise the limited time and complexity of the content by gabbling. As a Northumbrian, I am conscious of many northern European (frequently Danish or north German) words that are retained in my native dialect plus different vowel sounds compared to southern English which, I believe, date back to the Great Vowel Shift. Its an interesting topic and I'm glad the author didn't fall into the trap of mentioning a "British accent"; they are so many and varied that it would be absurd to simplify them to one.

[@user-ge5uy9fi4r]

Thanks for the video! and for making it the old producing style.

[@putramatebean4696]

This is very good Chanel because it explains clearly related to the history of English

[@justintimeagain2341]

Literally that Old English you spoke sounds so much like something from LotR which makes sense because Tolkien was a linguist, and he wanted LotR to be a sort of English mythology.

[@chrismatthews8717]

The grammar simplification largely took place in the period before the conquest when the Danish Viking settlers and the Anglo-saxons began to intermingle, interbreed and trade. Their languages were often very similar apart from the grammar. So different word endings, conjugations etc were ditched in favour of simplification, pronouns etc.

[@wvcricker5683]

Now THIS video that showed up randomly on my KZbin algorithm for no apparent reason is actually something I was glad to watch. I found it interesting and well thought out. Truly enjoyed watching.

[@gaufrid1956]

Good to hear my namesake Geoffrey Chaucer. I've never forgotten that quote from "The Canterbury Tales".

[@SketchyTigers]

Really good video! Some commenters have already talked about the dramatic grammatical changes in English, and I have one nitpick too. Modern American pronunciation is equally as distant as modern British pronunciation to the pre-colonial English ancestor. The various accents and dialects have all diverged in various ways since the colonisation of America. American phonology has not 'frozen' in time. Just take the 'oo' sound for example. You used a very modern form of this vowel (which is actually a semi diphthong as it becomes more tense at the end /ʉ͡w/) and the same development happened in British English. It's called GOOSE fronting, or centralisation of the GOOSE vowel. The same applies to your GOAT sound. Previously, much like the GOOSE vowel, it was articulated in the back of your mouth (/u/ and /o/). American vowels have redistributed again into a front and back vowel split unlike standard southern British English. American English has also seen the cot-caught merger where, for many speakers, they are pronounced the same. British English has seen the phonetic change of historic diphthongs into monophthongs. See American 'ear' i-er, and Southern British ī (/iɚ/ or /iəɹ/ vs /ɪː/). New York has a feature where many monophthongs become diphthongs, such as a Bostoner's 'coffee' /ku͡ɐfi͡j/ this is a bit of a tangent oops

[@Copyright_Infringement]

Good summary of the topic; I'm used to seeing a lot of linguistic laziness in this site, so I'm pleasantly surprised to see this. On the "Shakespeare is closer to American English" thing: that's actually not true. All accents have evolved roughly equally away from Shakespeare's accent. He would have pronouned R like an American, yes, but he would have pronounced his vowels more like the Irish or Scottish, and his other consonants would be closest to that of an Australian.

[@Laotzu.Goldbug]

It is true that modern American speech would not sound as Shakespeare did, but it is also true that if you are looking for an accent that is closest to what you would have found in Britain during Shakespeare's time, even if it is not an exact match, you are going to find it in the United States rather than in the UK. Specifically in the Southeastern Seaboard, and especially the Carolina Islands.

[@ovaloctopus8]

@@Laotzu.Goldbug I'd say probably the West Country from the reconstructions I've seen of Shakespearean English they sound like they're from Somerset or Cornwall.

[@helloxonsfan]

@Copyright Infringement ... Remember, the video didn't say that the current American accent is the *_exact same_* as the Shakespear accent. It only said that it's *_"closer"_* by comparison than the modern British accent. 👍👍👍

[@ovaloctopus8]

@@helloxonsfan but again he's wrong. It's closer than a modern Home Counties accent but it's not closer than a West Country accent.

[@helloxonsfan]

@@ovaloctopus8 ... Is a West Country accent considered _the standard_ modern British accent or is it considered regional? Because there are also a variety of regional American accents that'd also be a closer match. But focusing on all the vast multiple regional & sub-regional differences would be an unending task, at least for this topic. That's why the only proper comparison is with the two standard speech forms in both countries. 👍

[@Steven-dt5nu]

It is fascinating the development of English in its present state.

[@EagleOneM1953]

Fascinating... I've always wondered how the first people in a country or region communicated and started using spoken language instead of gestures to make each other understood.... And how they figured out how to write it so they could read it and understand... Mesmerizing...

[@pintificate]

As an Australian Grammar Nazi, I'm impressed with this brief overview of the English language. I can detect no egregious error here. Yes, there are a number of aspects of American English which are closer to Middle English than modern British English is; even some of the spelling conventions, which might surprise conservative British English speakers. Another surprise is that some of the similarities of Australian English to American English are not just a result of the modern US domination of internet/media, but rather hark back to the late 18th, and the early 19th, centuries. Britain founded Sydney as a consequence of the American Revolution, which meant that many of the "tired, poor wretched refuse" that Britain didn't want were sent here to Sydney beginning in 1788. Anglo-American world domination is in decline, not so much because of outside pressure but rather due to loss of the arrogance that's necessary to build, and maintain, an empire. Welfare states - and all the Anglosphere states now are such - are never a hallmark of rising world dominance but a sign of decline. No nation or empire in history was ever a welfare state during its ascendancy. India and China will be the great rival powers of the future, replacing the now boring Anglo/America vs Soviets/Russia act currently being played out in the Ukraine region. Due to British colonialism, India has more familiarity with English than China does, and the bulk of its non-Hindi speakers themselves speak an Indo-european language. However, _Mandarin_ is the largest _native_ language in the history of the world, and all the speakers of other Chinese languages and dialects can read the same newspaper. They use and comprehend the same script. My advice to young linguists: 1) If you're Chinese, learn English! Do it now! English is a combination of the two major language groupings of Western Europe - Latin and Germanic, which are both Indo-european . 2) If you are a speaker of _any_ Indo-european language (almost half the world!), at least learn _some_ English. Otherwise, study Indo-Eurpean roots. If you hate reading, learn the lyrics to some "catchy" songs. Do it now. 3) If you're an English speaker, learn the Mandarin language, and general Chinese script! If you follow these instructions, you will be able to meaningfully communicate with close to _forty percent_ of the entire world's population. .

[@luislaplume8261]

Dear James West, I hate to admit it but you are right! We Americans have a welfare state that started in 1933 under President Franklin Roosevelt who was a Democrat and expanded under President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. And I speak as a naturalized American citizen who was born in Havana,Cuba in 1955 and I speak American English with a New York accent. Us Cubans know our history and politics and American history and politics. With the open border under this tyrant President Biden we are committing political and economic, financial, diplomatic, social, national SUICIDE! I hope every Democrat that runs for election this November will lose, if not good bye America and soon good bye Canada and by mid century good bye to all Western Civilization!

[@joshuddin897]

Why thank you doctor? Oh nurse!!!

[@jackiepaper6464]

We don’t speak English in the United States. We speak Murican. This is an actual quote for someone I work with. He once said to me I have never read a book in my life. This is how people like Trump become president.

[@tracycagliero129]

This video was very informative, why bring politics into it?😒😑

[@ImJustFunSize]

Wow! This was incredibly interesting. I didn’t know how crazy the history of English was. 😮

[@greggoodyer9058]

Wonderful, informative video. Thank you.

[@ngusumakofu1]

I wish you had mentioned how English has spurned whole new languages out of the various creoles and pidgins spoken in many former British colonies and territories in the Caribbeans and West Africa. Great piece though.

[@savemykind5877]

Hi. I think you wanted to write "spawned" instead of "spurned" Good comment.

[@katerinaxatzi8551]

EXCELLENT work!!! GREAT and very interesting video!!! Οne of the best video I have seen, which analyzes the English language and describes its historical course through the centuries and the influences it has received to date! It is very pleasant!!! It's not tedious and boring! However, I would like to mention that there is no reference to the great influence of the Greek language on English, meaning the huge number of Greek words in the English language, something that is verified by the OXFORD DICTIONARY!!! Incidentally the words you use, for example: Diphthong, Synonym, Grammar, Phenomenon, Dramatic, Prologue, European, Story and History, Static and others, are Greek!!! By the way, I would like to point out that these words are not ancient, but are used as they are from antiquity until today! I would not dare to try to refer to the Terminology of any kind of Science, (Scientific Terms), most of which are Greek, because I would have to write for days! (Also the German and French language and others, contains a huge number of Greek words!)

[@pavlosMr501]

Πολύ σωστή, καλύτερα δεν θα μπορούσα να τα πω. Παραθέτω την ομιλία του Ξενοφών Ζολώτα από το 1959 kzbin.info/www/bejne/aaXVmoSogZ2Caqc

[@SamDiMento]

I took a British Lit I & II class at, literally, just the local university when I was in eleventh or twelfth grade dual enrolled, and we were actually assigned Canterbury Tales in Chaucer's original MIDDLE ENGLISH, original spelling included, with lots and lots (and lots) of footnote explications, over the course of about half the semester. Somehow we got through it. Can't say it was an enjoyable experience and only got a B+ in the class, but it taught me something and I'm grateful for it in a way. And I didn't have much issue interpreting the Chaucer lines here...hoorah for small victories. We also had to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in middle English, but that wasn't Chaucer.

[@kelseyheckman9786]

This is so interesting. Language evolves just like nations

[@henlaojim]

I would expect English to change little in the future because a) there are so many speakers of the language today who know English as a first or second language. It has recently come to the attention of linguists, apparently, that languages with few speakers can change entirely in a generation or two while large literate speaker bases pin the language to some extent. B) we have students learning everything from Shakespeare to Dylan and passing this on from generation to generation. My daughter has learned some affection for Shakespeare, e e cummings, and any number of other poets. Whether or not she has passed this on to her children remains to be seen.

[@PhillFest]

And c) We have actual recordings, movies, documentaries, etc that will preserve the “sonic geometry” . Imagine if the recording technology existed for at least 500 years how different ALL the languages would be today?

[@litigioussociety4249]

Saying any accent of English today is closer to the dialect and accent of Shakespeare is like saying 10 is closer to 100 than 9. English has had many accents and dialects change and be birthed over the last 400 plus years, as well as every other language, which is why we really have no idea how languages sounded thousands of years ago. It's only been a little over a hundred years of recorded speech, and in early recordings we can already hear accents, tones, and such that no one uses anymore; most notably, the Mid-Atlantic accent of Hollywood in the first half of the 20th century came in to being and went away all in that short period. Vowels are the biggest thing that change over time. For example, you mentioned the long i sound in knife, which is a dipthong of flat a and long e, but some rural Americans pronounce it more like flat a or slower like two separate vowels. Consonants change mostly through softening, hardening and vocalizing, which is why English has the annoying reality of the letter s sounding usually like soft s or z, and then at times hard s (ts,) zh, sh, or silenced.

[@manuelpalomino3710]

This is an amazing comment. thx. It's sad that we'll never get to know all old accents and pronunciations of English. Your comment abouth the Hollywood and Mid-Atlantic accent was so appealing that I searched for a recording of it. Amazing how a languge can evolve so fast in such a short time. Brilliant comment!

[@JC-ks3yk]

Which is probably why he said he didn't want to get into an in depth analysis of linguistics.

[@Mercure250]

While it's true we don't know with exactitude how they talked, we do have clues about pronunciation from texts. The spelling is a clue, especially before the standardization of spelling following the arrival of the printing press, but also, the kinds of mistakes they would make (if they tend to forget a certain letter, we can presume that letter is silent, or something like that), and of course, we also have instances of people writing about how they pronounce things, which, while they did not have the IPA, can be descriptive enough so that we have a rough idea of what it was. It's not perfect, but it's something. Sound changes follow rules too, so we can get a little bit of help from modern pronunciation. Again, it's not perfect, but we can get pretty solid hypotheses. It's true that prosody is pretty much always completely lost in writing, though, and that's something we really needed recordings for.

[@litigioussociety4249]

@@Mercure250 It's a matter of time. The further back, the more speculation. After one thousand years, there's a good chance most consonants at the start of a word remained the same. Vowels are much harder, because unlike the way consonants are made with the mouth, how's have a completely fluid spectrum between a schwa and the various sounds and dipthongs today. This schwa effect is found in almost all languages. After 3500 years, almost everything is lost. For example, odds are Hebrew sounded very different in the time of Moses and the time of Jesus, and definitely different from today. Of course, most depictions of the past use modern dialects for ancient languages anyway, so they don't even attempt to depict it in a way that's plausible.

[@Mercure250]

@@litigioussociety4249 Absolutely true. The earlier we go, the more details we lose. That's also why it's pretty much impossible to reconstruct languages beyond a certain point. We are able to reconstruct PIE, but what came before that? Hard to tell. And yeah, movies and such often don't care all that much. But, well, not everyone is a language nerd, so it's understandable, in a way. It makes the people who actually care all the more special, imo.

[@DvirTTT]

Fascinating, thank you

[@safarodisharabindrabehera2621]

Beautiful history of English

[@intreoo]

English is by far the most interesting of European languages. I take interest in many European languages, such as Basque, Ladin, Albanian, Greek, etc.. But no language has had such a history of different influences merging together as English has.

[@eliseivanica]

i’m learning swedish as an australian, it’s definitely obvious to see how they’re both derived from the same language, old norse. i find the vikings affect on the english language by far the most interesting part of the whole language.

[@spyarmy7725]

Where are you from?

[@fiore4379]

Old English is really pretty, I’m happy to learn more about my identity in regards to my language 😊

[@sam_nongkynrih]

This video is such a helpful one. I can't just skip without saying thankyou to the creator of this video. India

[@longschlongsilver7628]

I was with you until near the end, when you described the American accent as being static, which isn't the case at all, nor is it the case for any accent that exists or has existed

[@richienyhus]

Agreed, that is one thing that stood out as being completely wrong. While American English, Scottish English and Irish English still (mostly) pronounce the letter R, all other dialects of English stopped properly pronouncing the letter R about 200 years ago. It was this fact that created a popular American misconception that the American English accent is "correct" or more historical, however those who have studied the rhymes in early modern English literature (such as in Shakespeare) have demonstrated that this is categorically false. There are plenty of videos on KZbin that demonstrate a reconstructed Shakespearean English accent and to me it sounds like if a pirate accent was less exaggerated.

[@coryhafer7285]

@@richienyhus somehow I feel like you talk about something slightly different than longschlong. At least I thought he ment how the current pop-culture is changing the way we speak.

[@richienyhus]

@@coryhafer7285 At 8:36 in the video the creator of the video falsely claims that the American accent is "frozen in place" and has become static. Further he falsely claims that American English is the closest accent to Shakespearean English.

[@ShinseiUK]

A very interesting video on the evolution of English! However, I disagree on some things. First, the Old Norse influence on English was significantly greater than just some vocabulary. Old Norse completely restructured the way we use definite articles, turning them from ones similar to that of German to the simple The we have today. Secondly, American English is as close to Shakespearean English as British English is. The only notable thing American English kept that the English Shakespeare may have hod is rhotic Rs, but we don't know what Rs they may have used. Similarly, most of the vowel sounds from Shakespeare's time are either not used at all today in both AE and BE or have been moved to another vowel's sound. I like that you attempted speaking the dialect and language of the times though, an attempt I wouldn't be able to pull off very well!

[@williamfulgham2010]

I have heard that the rhotic R sound is still locally spoken in parts of Southwestern England. Also, has anyone identified the source of the loose association with pirate folklore and the rhotic R ?

[@harrynewiss4630]

@@williamfulgham2010 Yes it is. And in other parts of the British Isles.

[@georgebaccett9951]

BBC report: English language: -It uses and depends on the Roman alphabet. -60% of its vocabulary comes from Latin, compared to only 26% of Germanic vocabulary. -Its grammar is not completely Germanic, it has parts of grammatical structure from Latin. For this reason, philologists consider the English language a hybrid language. The information in this video is correct. By the way, I'm English, greetings from London.

[@maribone20021]

I am American married to A Dutch man. Our children speak good conversational English. Then we moved to Wallonia, the French speaking part of Belgium. Our youngest daughter got her secondary school diploma in French. We discovered that, in English, there are many "reading" words that we don't normally use in conversation. Such as ",precipitation " and "habitation." Almost ALL of these words are exactly the same in French!!!

[@graceygrumble]

The American accent is not closer to a Shakespearean accent than most modern British accents. It is merely closer to Shakespearean than most 'posh' accents, which you refer to as 'a British accent'. In a few hundred years, there will be nothing as dramatic as the change between Chaucer and now, because everyone, now, is literate and English is becoming increasingly standardised, through media such as this vid, literature, TV and film Shakespeare is almost perfectly understandable and it is 409 years since his death. However, my assumption presupposes that the English will continue to be the 'Lingua Franca'. It might very well be usurped, as Greek, Latin and French have been. If so, you might be right. English might become very Chinese-ish, or Swahili - ish, or Hindi-ish. Time will tell.

[@tanler7953]

It could be that British English speakers have an easier time with Shakespeare than Americans. I find Shakespearean English tedious and difficult. Anything written after 1750 is much easier to follow, like the many well-known romantic novels of the 19th century or the Royal Proclamation of 1763. My impression is that English became modern with the start of the industrial revolution.

[@graceygrumble]

@@tanler7953Your 'impression' of when English became 'modern' is based on your own ability/inability to understand English texts? I'm not convinced that the 'Tan Ler Proclamation' is valid. In fact, I would go as far as to say you're talking bollocks. Hey ho!

[@jiqbal8480]

The American accent is near to the Irish accent because most of the settlers were from Ireland in America

[@graceygrumble]

@@jiqbal8480 'The American accent' differs from place to place. Each group of immigrants made their mark, but I wouldn't say that Irish accents predominate. Which American accent?

[@harrynewiss4630]

Suggesting that American accents are similar to Shakespearean is totally wrong. If you want to hear something close to Shakespearean English then you need to listen to the speech of older speakers in parts of SW and Western England. It's a weird conceit some Americans have about their accents somehow being more authentic than modern English ones.

[@allanlank]

But I speak Canajun-eh (a mixture of Celtic English, Breton French and Afrikaans) . Actually the grammar change happened during the Danelaw, to simplify the dialectic difference between Anglo-Saxon and Danish. You also didn't mention that the French of the Normans was heavily influenced by their original tongue, old Norse.

[@DarkDutch007]

Did not know that enough Afrikaans speaking people ended up in the region of Canada to infuence the language, or instead of Afrikaans could it perhaps be Flemish, Friesian, Dutch or Low German/Plattdeutsch?

[@allanlank]

@@DarkDutch007 The inclusion of Afrikaans to Canadian English is greatly a product of Canadian participation in the Boer War. The Canadians were as much "farm boys" as the Boers, farmers, they fought and the words the Boers used for familiar articles and implements were brought back to Canada by the soldiers..

[@DarkDutch007]

@@allanlank Right, I forgot about the Boer Wars with the possibility of Canadian participation in it.

[@cristiangarciagomez9020]

Loved the video, it helped me a lot

[@pmajudge]

OUTSTANDING INFROMATION !! THANK YOU " THE GENERALIST PAPERS" FROM U.K. (2022).

[@HBGamingTD]

0:06 I found a mistake, Estonian is not an Indo-European language.

[@diamantedante]

I have big doubts about the part at the end where you say the English language of the present will sound as foreign to people in 500 years as Chaucer's English does to us. There are massive standardizing forces which came about since the bulk of Chaucer's writings. He also wrote deliberately in a way that literate people from around England could understand, even making sure to give certain characters accents and other localisms to indicate who was from what area and from which social strata. Sure, there are still pockets of very strong dialects in the UK, but entertainment / infotainment media and educational materials aren't produced with them in mind. Nothing is marketed to them in their patois.

[@mirpopolos6209]

I agree with Dante, but coming from a different direction. Between 1820 and 2020 English did not change nearly as much (in England) as between 1620 and 1820. However, change has been so rapid in the USA in the last 70 years that if the languages were spelt phonetically, they would now be considered two separate languages, as different as Danish and Swedish easily. I heard an American in a shop say "I wonna bodla wodder", and the poor shop assistant, who was Polish, just did not understand this simple request for a bottle of water. Moreover, almost everybody in Europe refers to "Scotland", more or less, but Americans call it "Scudland". There have been important vowel shifts and consonant shifts, and whole important letters are missed out, as in "the innernet".

[@mirpopolos6209]

Wait a minute, Dante MUST be American, so he never sees the British television he would not understand. There are detective series with strong Northumbrian accents, probably the most difficult to understand of all (except Glasgow). There is a lot of comedy from Glasgow. We learn to cope with it, but Americans would not bother, so it is not exported, or it is remade in American versions. I have never heard Geordie (the speech of Newcastle) called a patois before. Do the Jews of New York (who have a distinct accent as far as I can tell it is them) have a patois ? Is there a Texan patois ? I could never understand films with Chicago gangsters, but we were forced to have them. As for our educational programmes always being in standard English, no they aren't. In particular, there is a professor of archaeology who retains the accent of Bristol (which is surprisingly distinctive). The BBC has, for many years, made a point of using a great mixture of accents on its children's programmes, and races (so you get black men living in unlikely places like remote Scottish islands).

[@harrynewiss4630]

That's almost certainly true for the standard language. But immigration means that sociolects spoken in some cities are likely to drift further away from standard English

[@lovelllonniell8171]

Thanks, this video helped me a lot for my school public speaking challenge, my topic was the history of English

[@gmd722]

This was well explained and brilliantly done. (points to self with a degree in Philology).

[@white-dragon4424]

Modern American accents have a close relation, and even still sound very much like West Country English. When they've heard West Country I've even seen Americans saying on KZbin that they know people in the US who sound just like it!

[@matthewkent8796]

I'm from the UK. Some American sounds like Irish. Australian sounds like cockney.

[@AllenUry]

@@matthewkent8796 Interesting. Perhaps that's why, as an American, I find modern Irish much easier to understand than many so-called "British" accents (save for *posh* accents, the accent of the BBC.)

[@matthewkent8796]

@@AllenUry BBC is the queens english.

[@k.c1126]

This is a pretty decent overview. I would have added in the modern section that dialectal variation may lead in the future to people from England, the Americas, Australia and India speaking different language variations of English altogether, as was seen in post Roman Europe. A lot of Creolization based on English is likely to have some influence as well.

[@danidejaneiro8378]

The didn't have mass connectivity in the 4th century. We all watching the same KZbin videos so we're unlikely to stop understanding each other. Regional varities could possibly diverge more (sometimes I struggle with Irish or Caribbean friends) but a standard variety of global English will persevere as long as we have the internet.

[@k.c1126]

@@danidejaneiro8378 ... So basically the same situation as post-Roman Europe. I'm not trying to suggest that the separation is going to begin any time soon. In fact, we may be hundreds of years away. However, the seeds of daughter language development are already observable in the differences between Indian, Australian, South African, and Caribbean English. Whenever we reach another 'dark age', we can expect to see changes. And English, like Latin, is likely to become the next 'dead language' preserved as a lingua franca.

[@danidejaneiro8378]

@@k.c1126 - not at all like post-Roman Europe for all the reasons I mentioned in my first reply which you chose to ignore. Thanks anyway.

[@GreoGreo]

Indians speak their native languages more than english. What are you yapping?

[@elcabrito21]

I feel and am much smarter now thanks to you and your video, good sir 👑

[@dervauerbach]

This is a very succinct and informative summary for those first touching on this subject (and therefore very useful). There are errors in the Spanish (protesta, and not pretesta; movimiento, and not moviemiento) and in the French (appétit, and not apetit; protestation, and not preostestation; le mouvement, and not la mouvement) in the comparison made with Romance languages (4:11). There are former English/British colonies missing on the map (Belize, Jamaica, Trinidad, plus various not visible Caribbean islands, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Aden, Gulf Emirates, Lebanon) at 8:12. And there is almost no mention of Latin within the context of the Church, monastic life, and scholarship (or Greek). Approximately 60% of English vocabulary is Latin-based (either through French or other Romance languages, or directly from Latin). There is also no mention of the influence of immigrant or Indigenous populations either in the US or the UK, or in any other anglophone nation.

[@L-mo]

English will not _necessarily_ continue to change at the pace and extent to which it has. Other languages have changed a lot less over similar time periods - like Italian or Icelandic.

[@ThePixel1983]

Most importantly there's movies now which might slow down change by preserving spoken examples.

[@irishjet2687]

@@ThePixel1983 I think audio recording is HUGELY important to language, dialect, and accent evolution. When your frame of reference is essentially the people who live within a few miles of you, and most people never travel far from where they were born, a handful of people could influence dialect or accent in a generation. I would tend to think that local and regional accents are less likely to differentiate going forward. They likely aren't totally dying out, but the rate at which they spring up will be dampened. Meanwhile, I think we might see generational accent differences becoming more common, as entertainment figures can reach a large and wide audience (possibly influencing how they talk), but often those people are reaching different audiences according to age demographics. Of course, this is just me spitballing. I'm probably totally wrong, but I'd be curious to hear what linguists think about that specifically.

[@justajellydonut2]

@@irishjet2687 Exactly what I was thinking with regard to the advent of modern technology (radio, television, the internet) likely solidifying the English language to a greater extent than it has been in the past. Not that differences in slang, or spelling conventions between say Commonwealth English and American English will disappear, but the overall language itself I imagine will evolve less as the physical distance between speakers that facilitated significant evolutions in language in the past are nowhere near as relevant today. I'm not a linguist, by the way.

[@white-dragon4424]

Mass communication will probably slow the changes to a crawl. It was far different when communities were a lot more isolated. The only thing that will change it more is political correctness, which in some ways is a good thing. Some words that were a-okay 40 or 50 years ago are now becoming almost obsolete because they're deemed offensive by people today.

[@enricomanno8434]

Italian language of course had some changes.. but I can easily read the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri written in the 12 hundred... well not 100% The creation of the Italian language from vulgar Latin it happened in Sicily at the court of the great Frederick the II Hoenstaufen...Stupor Mundi

[@russeldatuin693]

Do yourself a favor and play this at 1.25 speed

[@odd-steinararntzen886]

A very understandable and informative piece.

[@Aritul]

I thoroughly enjoyed this video.

[@vrenak]

As a dane, I largely did understand the old english, of course, I do enjoy languages and speak 3 German as well as Danish and English obviously, but if you know something about words that have fallen out of use, and are a little creative with how they can have evolved, you can pretty quickly make some sense of it.

[@TheRagingPlatypus]

Really great video. There is one point I'd like to argue. Just because English changed so much in the past, doesn't mean it will continue at the same pace. Some languages, like German have changed very slowly. It is u likely English will stop changing as quickly because the very nature of the people is different than German but it is possible.

[@cgaccount3669]

I agree. We now have dictionaries and just about everyone can read and write. That should slow changes down. Although things like movies can help spread slang. I do wonder if accents will merge now with distant groups communicating easily today.

[@bradgreen6079]

German has changed a lot of the years. Hoch Deutsch is relatively new in comparison and the dialects from region to region vary so much to be unrecognizable to other Germans

[@TheRagingPlatypus]

@@bradgreen6079 German has changed but compared to English, very, very little. And no, Hochdeutsch is not new. It is new as a national language but was a dialect way back. There are regional differences but these again have changed little over time. They are just being supplanted by Hochdeutsch. People of each of these regions can read old texts in that dialect. They can literally read books so old that a similar age book in English is a different language. Moreover, the pronunciation has changed less in Germantoo. This is one reason our spelling is so out of synch with pronunciation. The German word "Knie" is still pronounced Kuh-nee whereas, of course, we dropped the K sound long ago. Add to this the great vowel shift and English has become unintelligible over time. Look at the words they rhymed in the past are often no longer rhymes. Not so in German.

[@mariambajelidze8515]

A brilliant video🌹 Thanks 🥰

[@kafrur]

A very good summary. Thanks.