does English actually come from England? (surprising!)

[@GirlGoneLondonofficial]

Remember everyone, English is like LASAGNA (spelled 'lasagna' in the US and 'lasagne' in the UK, add that to your list of fun facts).

[@MrRosebeing]

Or like an onion, you might say. It has layers.

[@MartySulls]

You say tomato and I say tomato. You say potato and I say potato..... (I appreciate 😀 now that this works better verbally)..... sorry

[@stephenlee5929]

I prefer Spaghetti Bognor Regis. 😊😊

[@Martyntd5]

What nonsense. Lasagne isn't lasagne when it's a bag of ingredients ...it's just a bag of ingredients. It doesn't become Lasagne until those ingredients are assembled in the right order and cooked in the right way. Only then is it Lasagne. English might be made of all sorts of ingredients, but it only becomes English when those ingredients are assembled in the right way and cooked according to the recipe invented by the English. The ingredients for English dont come from England, but the recipe for the English language absolutely does.

[@bugtracker152]

When you say in the UK, is it in brummie, cockney, yorkshire, scouse, glaswegian or west country? 😆 When some folks in Britain get annoyed because of an American accent, they often forget that the UK itself got a bunch of accents on a piece of the land which is almost 3 times smaller than Texas. 😉

[@peterbrazier7107]

The English Language met with all the other languages, and mugged them, and took the words it wanted. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@Ikkeligeglad]

The people in England was forced to use those languages not by choise

[@terrystewart1973]

The English Language got mugged by the French Language (courtesy of the Normans) and had words forced on it

[@pennyaccleton6227]

And it hasn't stopped doing it either. Language changes all the time. Quite a number of the words of my youth have completely different meanings today. The most obvious one is 'gay' which used to mean light hearted and merry.

[@Ikkeligeglad]

@@pennyaccleton6227 People should invent new ones instead of ruining the language

[@riculfriculfson7243]

Why 'Black Plague'? It was always 'The Black Death' when I were a nipper.

[@raystewart3648]

Due to the black puff spots that formed under the arm pits and genitals. I have always heard it as the Black Plague.

[@BrandydocMeriabuck]

It's both tbh, I've heard both since I was a kid. Just general variation

[@stephenlee5929]

I had only heard it called The Plague, The Great Plague or The Black Death. Never heard it called the Black Plague until here.

[@BrandydocMeriabuck]

@stephenlee5929 Pretty usual for a name to change around like that. They're quite similar, people get what it means etc. It's probably not used as often as the others like

[@russellbradley454]

Still is in Everyday English and history study.

[@musik102]

Well, English certainly comes from English. Over centuries it was developed from the language of the original anglo- saxons BUT was changed beyond recognition from what the first 5th century invaders from Germanic lands spoke. The grammar has changed dramatically. A huge of French/ Latin words have been added. To say that English doesn't come from England is like saying French doesn't come from France. Or Spanish from Spain. See how silly it gets.

[@xVancha]

But we do say French doesn't come from France, or Spanish from Spain...That's why we call them romance/latin languages.

[@musik102]

@@xVancha Oh dear. Did they speak French in ancient Rome? No they didn't! It's like asking a Parisian if he is French, and when he says " yes" , tell he's wrong because his great,great, great great, great, great....times 500 or so came from ancient Rome. Crazy, don't you think?

[@xVancha]

​@@musik102 You're confusing where something comes from with what it is. I can become a French citizen without being from France. Ancient Rome can be where French came from without them speaking it. You came from your parents without them being you. Just because you are your own person with your own personality doesn't change that...Or would you argue you gave birth to yourself?

[@musik102]

@@xVancha Well, using that logic ( or what passes for logic) why stop at ancient Rome, and Latin. For example, answer me this : " Where did Latin come from? ". And, don't say ancient Rome!

[@xVancha]

@@musik102 Latium, apparently. Proto-indo-european settlers from either the north or west, or both? My real answer would be that it's turtles all the way down. :)

[@lucie4185]

You missed out Chaucer. Very important bloke not just for his naked antics in A Knights Tale. He wrote in English when it was unfashionable to do so.

[@robertwoolstencroft5946]

Jutes also settled in Hampshire and the isle of Wight.😊

[@thorbjrnhellehaven5766]

"British English" is what I would refer to as a retronym. Before the language spread out there were just "English", but after other variants came to exist. It can be useful to keep the original term as an umbrella, but add extra description to distinguish them. Just like there were "acoustic guitars" were just "guitars" before the invention of "electric guitars", and all of them are "guitars"

[@michaelgutteridge2384]

But the old Anglo-Saxon English is itself derived from earlier proto Indo-European language (as is Sanskrit, Hindi and Greek, etc) so this process of saying something doesn't exist because it's derived from something else can go on infinitely right back to when human beings first learned how to speak, and probably even that can be traced to the gruntings of primates and such, so it basically becomes a matter of defining where something began according to your individual preference and in that respect modern English as spoken today comes from England or rather the British Isles .

[@Nomadicmillennial92]

Technically every language is part of a wider connected family of languages. Virtually every language has loan words from other languages. Turkish for instance has a surprising amount of French words.

[@Magpie_Media]

English = 8 languages in a trench coat.

[@GirlGoneLondonofficial]

what a great way of putting it!

[@barneylaurance1865]

I think this underplays how much English is really Germanic language. Or main grammar and most commonly used short words are all still based on what we had in Old English derived from the closely related Germanic languages.

[@bobbies1562]

That's hilarious! Good way of saying it.

[@rogerwitte]

I love Simon Roper's videos about old and middle English

[@davidioanhedges]

4 Tribes - Angles, Saxon, Jutes, and Frisians - and Old English is most closely related to Frisian ... Stir in Norse, Old Norman French, and add a bit of Latin, spice with Dutch as a trade language, then borrow words from many languages, and you get modern English

[@kh23797]

In fact, lots of people were trading across Europe... The "i" reported in 2019: "Scientists have [proved that] the ancestors of those who built Stonehenge ... travelled to England from ... Turkey or Greece. ... The group arrived around 6,000 years ago, [and] replaced the existing hunter-gatherer population ... From around 2450BC, a new group of fair-skinned, blue-eyed people from the steppes of the Ukraine and Russia arrived in Britain, replacing the native population almost entirely. (This was also reported on the BBC)

[@stevealharris6669]

Hello from the Kingdom of East Anglia.

[@carolineskipper6976]

I've always been fascinated by language and its development, and the connections between different languages. Maybe if I'd known you could study linguistics when I left school I might have done just that.

[@colinmoon8097]

Why would anyone complain about calling it British English as it merely clarifies the version of English being used.

[@GirlGoneLondonofficial]

you'd be surprised at all of the comments I get!

[@barneylaurance1865]

Because they're trying to delegitimise other varieties of English.

[@sem1ot1c]

@@barneylaurance1865 No, because it denigrates other languages like American for example

[@eloquentlyemma]

I love that one of the “poshest” English words “smashing” when meaning very good or even excellent, comes from the Gaelic phrase “Is math sin” (pronounced s’ ma-shin) which means “That is good”. It was brought to England from soldiers who trained in the Western Isles and the Highlands of Scotland.

[@LastEuropaKiss]

That's actually considered a "folk etymology", it's thought of as improbable as the actual origin though, as smashing seems to originate in America apparently.

[@pinkgirlgaminghappypink697]

the great vowel shift change the v for a b and we know were that would leave us all 😁

[@john_g_harris]

The reason I don't like "British English" is because English English is quite a lot different from Scottish English.

[@donaldb1]

That's fair. But you could say British Englishes.

[@john_g_harris]

@donaldb1 No you couldn't, not if you'd had a drink or two. 🙂

[@hannofranz7973]

Even this is wrong. There is no such thing as English or Scottish English. What people usually refer tocas British English is also called RP (received pronunciation) or the Queen's English (even though hers was somehow peculiar) or BBC English or Oxford English for being the established standard for and by the posh people. If this can be called a kind of regional standard, it would be Southern British Standard. As the name tells you already, a variety of accents further north aren't part of this standard just to name a few: Brummy (Birmingham), Yorkshire, Scouse (Liverpool), Geordie (Newcastle). All these places are in England. The same with Scottish English. even though, there are features in common among Scottish accents and dialects, the local varieties change considerably and a number of them are on the edge and beyond galic nand scots like Highland and Western Island Scottish, Doric (Aberdeen) or Orkney and Shetland Scottish.

[@rp1692]

I think the term "English English" just sounds funny, so people tend to avoid it. But English English and Scottish English DO have a lot in common. Scots write "colour" and "centre" just as English people do. And I think words like "chips" usually have the same meaning in Scotland as in England? Now, where the term "British English" is most misleading is when people discuss pronunciation, but in that case "English English" would often be wrong too. "Southern English English" is usually what's being discussed.

[@fr3238]

List of English words of Old Norse origin: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old_Norse_origin

[@rollinwithunclepete824]

The US, nationally, does not have an official language. However some states do.

[@davidhyams2769]

The Gaelic (Irish, Scots, Manx). Celtic (Welsh, Cornish, Breton), Germanic (Angle, Saxon, Jute, Danish, Norwegian) and Romance (Latin, French etc) languages that contributed to early and middle English are all branches of an even older linguistic family called Proto-Indo-European. There are a few European languages that don't have this connection, Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and Basque. Finnish and Estonian are closely related and more distantly related to Hungarian, while Basque is a completely separate language that doesn't appear to be associated with any other and is thought to be extremely ancient.

[@bobm4378]

wow, thanks for that 'deep dive' :D :D

[@hesky10]

Knew about Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian, but not about basque! Very interesting

[@rp1692]

Regarding the "huge German influence" you shouldn't conflate (1) native Germanic words we have in English with (2) words that modern English has borrowed very recently from German, like frankfurter. (And in the case of (1), it's Germanic rather than specifically German, although the Saxons came from what is now Germany.)

[@misolgit69]

it's a homogenous language some would say greater than the sum of it's parts

[@stephenlee5929]

The thing is if you need to differentiate versions of English, then adapting the name that the language is named for seems wrong. Also given that most people speaking of 'British English' are not talking about that used normally in Wales, Scotland or NI, then at least it should be 'English, English.

[@TerenceSquires]

Modern English spoken and taught around the world is because of Britain, the most influential language in the modern world, and it is still evolving! Strangely, French was the official language of England from 1066 until 1362 but for such a romanticized language🙄.......practical English still made an immanent comeback and then some. IMO "Modern English" is the "de facto" language of Britain, not just England.

[@chrissouthgate4554]

Said he, defining the position of English; in Latin!

[@TerenceSquires]

@@chrissouthgate4554 Of course English is heavily influenced by Latin roots (among others) that is not disputed here. 🤔"de facto" is in the Oxford English dictionary.

[@AlecBrady]

Norman French still has official status in England: when a law passed in Parliament has received the Royal Assent (the equivalent of a US act being signed into law by the President) this is announced with the words "le Roy le veult", "the King wishes it".

[@RoyCousins]

​​@@chrissouthgate4554 It's the Lingua Franca! 😁

[@john43397]

What some people call "modern English" began in the Shakespearian era. The word modern is confusing now to many people after 400 years, it has nothing to do with todays' modernity. Old English still has an influence on base words we use every day. Such as go get bring and words that describe what we do every day. Incidentally "here" in the Anglo Saxon chronicles means "army". This confuses many people who try to read the chronicles.

[@Really-hx7rl]

Words such as Knife come from a Norwegian heritage. We dont pronounce the K but that is how you would of pronounced it originally. There is also a great shift going on, on multimedia platforms such as KZbin. Its called the great bowl shift and its where people talk BS most of the time.🙄

[@angelawhitehouse8066]

I don't believe that most ordinary people ever spoke much Latin, or later on French.

[@russelsellick316]

Correct...

[@TheNapchop]

Most of the 'french' words came from latin, and already were used in England by the ruling classes and the better educated. A lot of celtic, latin, saxon and Norman French (who were themselves a mix of celtic and saxon) and the influence of Frisians who traded with the English for wool.

[@susanford2388]

Ombudsmann is a word used in Danish Norwegian, Swedish, German & English.

[@GirlGoneLondonofficial]

didn't know that!

[@susanford2388]

@@GirlGoneLondonofficial I learned that in 1999 when I was working in Athens, I read in the Athens News, that the Gov. was finally putting an Ombudsmann together to seek out corruption, I exclaimed Hooray in the office & my Swedish/German colleague said that word is German, so we looked it up, in a dictionary of course back then. Have a nice day. I enjoy your videos.

[@euanthomas3423]

@@susanford2388 Looks Scandinavian rather than German (om rather than um, bud as in Danish forbud for forbidden etc.)

[@Keith-b4r8o]

That's because we, the English, borrowed the word from Swedish in the 1960s. We had no Ombudsman before then.

[@Bramfly]

Also in Dutch

[@Stand663]

Actually the English language is filled with Indian words ie bangle, shampoo, jungle, crimson, bungalow, khaki etc etc.

[@lawrenceglaister4364]

Ie bungalow and shuftie

[@weedle30]

Gymkhana, juggernaut, jodhpurs….

[@Poliss95]

pyjamas.

[@Poliss95]

@@lawrenceglaister4364 Shufti is from the Arabic.

[@Stand663]

We use African words too ie Coffee, Mama, Banjo, Jamboree …

[@rp1692]

I do get annoyed when my fellow commenters object to the term "British English" because we need a term to refer to English as spoken in Britain. It's senseless to just call it "English" (implying that it's the same everywhere where it's spoken) when contrasting it with other varieties. That would only make sense if we were going to rename American English "American".

[@sem1ot1c]

Time to recognise American as a separate language not just a degenerate form of English

[@neilchilds7555]

We know that it’s a mixture of germanic we had a visit from the Viking romans a bit of French and so on today we have English we british people know where we came from and our language it’s a mixture the smugness of telling people where thier language comes from 😅and all word that were mentioned are use by the u.s people I’ve all so forget the u.s then changes some spellings of words one example Color when it’s colour laziness

[@DevilishScience]

There are two separate sources of French in English. The early Norman French and a later Parisian French, so we have cognates such as warranty from Norman and guarantee from Parisian. Similarly warden and guardian.

[@daphnelovesL]

Old English and Frisian are quite close.

[@charlesjames799]

Yeah the Danes that’s where it originated

[@Poliss95]

Most European languages are Indo-European. Finland has to be different and uses the Uralic language.

[@catherinewilkins2760]

English is a modern language, most of the profanities are Anglo-Saxon. Its Germanic and medieval Norman French. Latin also included. We speak a bastard language.

[@legendofmirr]

This is just language in general you have been listening to too many frenchmen. Im sure a person who spoke Latin would think the same about french. Its not a bastard language its a melting pot language There is way more to it than this video i recomend RobWords channel.

[@MrGBH]

English isn't a language, it's three languages in a trench coat, that goes around beating up other languages in order to rifle through their pockets for loan words and loose grammar

[@Nomadicmillennial92]

F

[@barneylaurance1865]

Maybe so, but those three languages in the trench coat are all West Germanic languages. French, Greek, and Latin are just some of the other languages. French and Latin are not in the coat as a lot of people seem to assume.

[@TheEulerID]

Lasagna is certainly not English, whether we are talking cuisine, linguistics or culture...

[@bobbyg1068]

Really fascinating topic! I think it's important to remember that modern English is a global language. We could use the Germanic word sleepwear, but in my experience we usually say the Hindi pajamas. Tomato is from Nahuatl, algebra is from Arabic, tycoon is from Japanese and chipmunk is from Ojibwe. Plus British and American English have been in constant contact with one another since the revolution, influencing each other's accents and vocabularies. Britons who complain about Americanisms are using words that originated in the US all the time without realising it e.g. glitch, teenager, landslide and 24/7.

[@adriankelly6291]

Oh wow. Haven't even watched yet but DONT GET IT TWISTED! English comes from ENGLAND. It is true that the current English language includes phrases from Denmark, Norway, Italy and particularly France. But the language as it is comes from England....... 🙄😒🙂‍↔️

[@LastEuropaKiss]

A lot of the problem with Beowulf is the spelling and extra letters. If you know some other Germanic languages it helps too. Though even Modern English written phonetically with the spelling conventions and extra letters they used in Old English would look indecipherable to most people today lol, for example, this is Modern English: In a þic and lusc ƿīlæġe, þær lifde a geong man namde Eadric. Hē ƿæs a sċēap-hyrde hƿo tendad to his flocc ƿiþ muc cēaru. Ān dæg, hƿīle cēaring for his sċēap on þe grene hyll, hē sāwe a ƿundorful glād in þe heorte of þe forst. Eadric, bēing of an ēgre kind, desided to ƿencur forþ into þe ƿudu. Þe trēas stōd tall and þe lēafes hƿispered suce of old. As hē georniged dēopre, þe āer greoƿ þicce ƿiþ an ōþer-ƿoruldlig ārā.

[@donaldanderson6604]

1066 is the key date as it produced ,over 400 years, a marriage of French and German. Generally, French and Latin gave us the long, fancy words and Anglo Saxon gave us all the best swear words. I was lucky to learn German and Anglo Saxon at the same time, back in the days when English degrees required knowledge of AS. By the way, Shakespeare is really easy if you hear it in a really good stage production. Listen to Judi Dench or Ian Mckellan and it sounds perfectly straightforward.

[@Hfil66]

The problems with English spelling are not so much about the hybridization of the language (most European languages are fairly hybrid) but because how old the spelling rules are (this is also true of French). Many other European languages only developed standardised spelling in the 19th century (modern countries such as Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and many others, did not exist during the 16th and 17th century, and so did not develop spelling rules until the 19th century - so their spelling rules are better aligned with modern pronunciation of the languages).

[@Richard-yd1ws]

The 100 most used words in English are Anglo Saxon/ Norse 40% of English is AngloSaxon/ Norse 40% French/ Latin

[@thearab59]

Your list of German words are just that, Modern German words that are used as loan words in English, just like pizza is from Modern Italian. They are not words brought over from southern Denmark in the 6th century, as these things did not even exist in the 6th century. BTW, congrats on voting today. Now you, like me, are to blame for it all!

[@charlestaylor9424]

Other languages have loan words, English follows other languages, drags them into an alley, knocks them out and rifles through their pockets for useful words.

[@atypicalatoms9425]

😂

[@davidmartin8211]

The Friesian language, from what is now the Netherlands, is the closest linguistically to Old English. But don't forget that England was subject to waves of invaders which affected the local language. Also, English also was mutated by individuals who most likely code switch between their native language and Middle English.

[@georgedyson9754]

Of course the European languages you mention are also not unrelated in their origins. The Indo-European languages also have some common roots in Sanskrit. Languages are not static and immutable and constantly change over the years, diverging by location and separation from other tribes geographically, but then as you say may, merge again through territorial conquest reuniting some of those languages which have earlier common roots. Even in my 70+ years of life I have seen English mutate in several ways - one of those which constantly irritates me is the merging of adjectives and adverbs. Adverbs are on the way out it seems! Especially a statement like 'win big' which always leaves me hanging with the question - big what, as big requires a noun in my use of English! It could be a big difference in score ' or a big trophy perhaps. But then I am being pedantic I suppose!

[@Pcologist]

As a keen student of Onomastics over the last 70 odd years the history of the English language is more complex in its etymology. However, as an ardent follower of your adventures through your vlogs. I must compliment you on your simplified explanation of the origination of modern English as is today. Please remember that Englisc was used from the very earliest of times and many years before and without any distinction of all the later ancient Teutons or their languages imported by Germanic invaders. Englisc was as a language applied to the tribal group of related languages by Alfred the Great and thus the name English for the Language is much older than England the Country.

[@Bossman1959uk]

No one would use “kaput” in England. I’ve checked that with my friends girlfriend who comes from Austria. The word is purely German although most of the people here seem to know the word for some reason. Might be something to do with the wars with Germany.

[@terrystewart1973]

For Old English, if you read it yes it does sound pretty incomprehensible. But try saying it, or listen to someone speaking it, and I think you'll be surprised by how much you understand if you're ok with British regional accents

[@paulhammond5599]

Very interesting but every language in Europe and most others worldwide are formed in exactly the same way.

[@Mike-James]

According to the people that knows (Google) and not the Karen, more than 350 languages are spoken in the USA. In Great Britain over 600.

[@afpwebworks]

That's fascinating. You are very good at digging about in these rabbit holes and finding things i never knew anything about. I knew otday's subject up to the extent of knowing that English was made up from lots of influences But that's roughly where it ended for me. Thank you for this video and so many others.. Keep on going Who knows what else you'll find that i never bothered finding out about and you make it fascinating.

[@paulhammond5599]

Very interesting but every language in Europe and throughout the world was formed in exactly the same way

[@philash824]

A lot of French words entered the English language after 1066 for some reason. Edit: never mind you just mentioned it

[@kachuru]

I've been learning a bit of Dutch and sometimes it sounds just like English with a strong accent. Like, je drinkt water en je eet een appel

[@charlesjames799]

Scottish comes from Scotland and Irish comes from Ireland so it stands to reason that English comes from England.

[@hesky10]

The usa doesn't have an official language at the federal level fyi. 32 states have English as an official language!

[@ethelmini]

Modern English does still have some gendered words - brewster for example

[@Mittac001]

The English have never had a true identity, unlike the Scots, Welsh or Irish. We've been partly conquered (or taken over,) the Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Normans, Romans, etc... A lot of place names also reflect on who was ruling that part of England at the time. For example, -by is from the Vikings, and -cester is from the Romans.

[@davidioanhedges]

Scots are the descendents of the Scotti an Irish Tribe, which explains why they speak a sister language to Irish Gaelic, not a descendant of Pictish They were conquered by the Norse/Vikings, the Normans, and the English many times ... The Irish were partly conquered by the Norse as well and they founded most of the Irish cities The Welsh are the most pure ... but not very

[@MrGBH]

if the English have an identity, it's as the centre of a multicultural mashup

[@chrissouthgate4554]

@@MrGBH I was thinking the other day, that many British are more Irish than the self-proclaimed Irish-Americans.

[@Really-hx7rl]

Actually Scott's are not the true tribes that made up Scotland over a thousand years ago. The Scott's today moved in from Northern England. 🙄😁🤣

[@mirfjc]

Scotland has actually an even more mashed origin than England. England is "just" Romanized Britons mixed with invasive Anglo Saxons; then blended with Vikings and French-speaking Vikings (Normans). Scotland comes originally from a 4-way mash-up of an Irish invasion in the western highlands and islands (the eponymous Scotti), non-Romanized Britons (Picts), Romanized Britons (the ancient Kingdom of Strathclyde), and the northern end of Anglo Saxon Northumbria, which reached up to Edinburgh (hence the name) and got isolated from the rest of Northumbria due to the Danelaw Vikings. The Anglo-Saxons are the reason there is (the poorly named) "Scots" "language" that is native to modern Scotland despite being and Anglic language (would be considered an extreme dialect except for political reasons - it is NOT English "imposed" on Scotland, it is a native Scottish language). On top of those 4 pieces in place by about 700 AD, you then have to add on a significant Viking component. This includes by far the most Viking originated place in the UK: The Shetland Islands.

[@robert3987]

The Normans brought many French words to England.

[@grahamroberts2893]

English is one of the three official languages of the European Union 😅

[@jamesbeeching6138]

English is a bastardised language which has (and is still) evolving from several sources or root languages such as Germanic/Frisian/French/Norse/Celtic.....We are now evolving again with influences from our Empire ..IE pyjamas, bungalow, karzi etc....Interesting that food/animal names show the class distinction in medieval times: Beef-cow, pork-Pig , mutton-sheep.....Another of my favourite words is badger...Evolved from the French for digging...The old English name was Brock!!🦡🦡🦡🦡🦡

[@stephenlee5929]

That last food one is strange, as the animal is used for the more expensive food (UK) option being Lamb, Lamb is both the animal and the meat.

[@jamesbeeching6138]

@@stephenlee5929 I think in the medieval times mutton was eaten more than lamb!

[@53Zander]

If you could look back on this video in say 200 years, would we understand the language , we are using now if we did not have a translator????😂😂

[@Poliss95]

@53Zander I don't understand a lot of the language young people are using now! When did 'sick' start to mean good?

[@barneylaurance1865]

Probably, yes. We can understand writing from 1824, 200 years ago, e.g. The Westminster Review, fairly easily now. Although linguistic innovations can spread much quicker now I think there may also be more pressure to slow down change, as we can easily read informal internet writing from years ago. In the 1800s I imagine people would have been exposed to little or no old informal language usage.

[@barneylaurance1865]

@@Poliss95 If you don't understand that's possibly because they're not trying to include you at that moment. That doesn't mean they don't also know a more formal register of language that's doesn't change nearly as fast. Urban Dictionary has a definition of 'sick' meaning good or cool from as early as 2001 (maybe earlier but the definitions are crowd-sourced and it doesn't allow sorting by date)

[@chuckmaddison2924]

No

[@philipm06]

1.46 billion people - not bad for a little country.

[@clivehemming4778]

" Pipe down you lot, your having a bubble." What about the twelfth century English speaking collage of Oxford.

[@wessexdruid7598]

English is just a 'collage'...

[@ultraredd]

Fun fact: The US doesn't have an legally official language. English is commonly used but so is Spanish.

[@RobinPalmerTV]

It was once thought the de facto language of the US would be Spanish by 2020 as it would have overtaken English but the thinking is that the Trump years put stop to this happening.

[@wessexdruid7598]

@@RobinPalmerTV What - by stopping immigration?? LOL.

[@Stand663]

The official language in the US is English. When immigrants come to the US, they have to speak in English.

[@ultraredd]

@@Stand663 With all due respect, please refer to usa.gov, an official government website: "Does the U.S. have an official language? The United States does not have an official language. English is the most widely used language in the U.S., and some states designate it as their official language. People in the U.S. communicate in more than 350 languages. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, some of the most widely spoken languages other than English are Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Arabic." English is the default most commonly spoken language, especially when it comes to government, which is why immigrants are encouraged to learn to speak it.

[@cookielady7662]

@@Stand663 the original poster is correct. We do not have an official language.

[@danmayberry1185]

Grandad reverted to Cornish when he got excited.

[@melissareohorn7436]

East Anglia is actually West of Anglia

[@oopsdidItypethatoutloud]

Booo... leave our language alone 😢 ❤ from Northeast England ❤️

[@tonys1636]

If one spoke Norman French to a French person today, they would recognise it was French but not understand much. A bit like a Geordie speaking to an RP speaker, both speaking a version of English. Barrister, Court and Council/Counsel have Norman French origins. Many legal words and terms do, along with Latin. The French have even started to use some of our modified Norman words as a modern French word does not exist and a long description required otherwise. P.s. Belvoir Castle, pronounced Beaver, is good view castle in Norman.

[@morganetches3749]

Yes it is, it developed in England

[@infinityandbeyond2680]

But that doesn't mean that America can claim it since they have no official language

[@GirlGoneLondonofficial]

I think only a very dumb segment of Americans would try to claim that English is originally from America. :)

[@wessexdruid7598]

"The US Senate passed an amendment to the Immigration Law making English the official language of the United States in the summer of 2006." "Sen. Cramer Co-leads Bill to Designate English as Official Language of the United States. WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and JD Vance (R-OH) introduced the English Language Unity Act to establish English as the official language of the United States." - Senator Cramer's own website, 2023.

[@darrens7995]

​@@GirlGoneLondonofficialare you sure you didn't mean do instead of would? Every American I have come across says British English and always English when referring to what comes out of them. How is that not the same thing as dumb? If we are supposed to assume we know what they mean why wouldn't it make sense to say it the correct way? Why argue with the English everytime they are wrong?

[@mirfjc]

@@wessexdruid7598 There are pushes to do this, and language does get slipped into laws in formulation, but none have thus far been signed into law. Sen. Cramer is still pushing for formal official designation in 2024, showing that it is not yet the law of the land. (passing the US Senate is just like a bill passing the House of Lords - a law is not a law once voted, it's a law once reconciled by upper and lower houses and then signed into law by the head-of-state.)

[@mirfjc]

"But that doesn't mean that America can claim it since they have no official language" UK also does not have official language. (Google it).

[@hughtube5154]

Perversely, though English is the global language*, the term used to describe when non natives use English to converse is "lingua franca" - an Italian phrase which translates to "language of the Franks" (the Franks being Germans who moved to France). *for business. Medicine uses Latin for anatomy, and Greek for diseases.

[@urseliusurgel4365]

What came over from the Continent c. 450AD was 'North Sea Germanic' also called Ingaevonic, Old English developed from this language on the island of Britain, it is home grown.

[@bonetiredtoo]

This has been much debated and the jury is still out whether he intended it but every word, except one, in Churchill's "We shall fight on the beaches" portion of his great speech of 4th June 1940 has Old English roots. The exception? The last word "surrender" which is of French origin.

[@GirlGoneLondonofficial]

oh that's really interesting!

[@atypicalatoms9425]

😂😂 that is basically how we view the French lol

[@chrissouthgate4554]

@@atypicalatoms9425 Funny, but not with a lot of justice. After all the French won the Hundred Years War, the American Revolution & most of the Napoleonic Wars.

[@Poliss95]

@@GirlGoneLondonofficial No. Surrender isn't a French word. That's just taking the P out of the French because they were supposed to surrender a lot. You used to be able to do a Google search on 'French military victories' and the top result was '404 not found. Did you mean French military defeats?' That search term no longer works.

[@barneylaurance1865]

@@Poliss95 What do you mean its not a French word? It apparently comes from Old French "surrendre".

[@andrewconstable9409]

Many linguists are of the opinion that English had a pre Roman Swedish input. Ancient Greek sailors described the language of (western) Britain as anglopvonic. Draw your own conclusions..

[@davidswan4083]

Best thing Old English ever did was lose grammatical gender, it just doesn't make sense that an inanimate object could be masculine or feminine, or you could have oddities like Lady or Wife being feminine but woman being masculine (Taking the gender of the suffixe) or Boy and Girl being neuter. I'm using the Modern English translations here.

[@michaeljoyce9161]

A subset of standard English has been used since 1988 for communicating between vessels at sea. It follows on from English being adopted for the language of aviation. This language subset is called Seaspeak.

[@XRos28]

Great video! I know most of it, but not all! Videos like this are amazing, educational mixed with historic informationmative and more. Good one, thanks!

[@russelsellick316]

Also used to make up new words from ancient greek. Latin was known there before 1066...

[@stevenwinteruk]

This is looked up many years ago. English evolved from those european languages and has had lots of influences from other languages as well, such as French.

[@MillsyLM]

Map Men's "Why are British place names so hard to pronounce" is a good explanation of this subject too.

[@rolos140670]

English is the most romance of the germanic languages. French is the most germanic of the romace languages

[@JohnSmith-oe4ci]

I find it interesting that English uses the word bottle which is only used in Friesian. The rest of the northern Germanic region uses the word flasche - which we also have in English as flask

[@LastEuropaKiss]

Well, Brea bûter en griene tsiis makket goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk after all.

[@LastEuropaKiss]

​@@EaterOfBaconSandwiches Yep, tsiis = cheese in both meaning and pronunciation. Perhaps you should have a go at Beowulf, you might be able to decipher it lol.

[@LastEuropaKiss]

@@EaterOfBaconSandwiches Old Norse is hard at first, but if you've learned any other Germanic langage I've noticed after a while they all tend to blend into one, and you can assume cognates and spellings. Surprisingly though, even today North Germanic languages and English are still very close to be mutually intelligible to a small degree for individual whole sentences. Like this one for example: Den lille grønne gresshoppen sitter i det lange gresset under bjørketreet (Nor) Den lilla gröna gräshoppan sitter i det långa gräset under björken (Swe) Den lille grønne græshoppe sidder i det lange græs under birketræet (Dan) Litla græna *grashoppuri situr í langa grasinu undir birkitrénu (Ice) Lítill grǿnn grashoppuri sitja i langr gras undir birkjatré (Old Nor) þe lȳtel grēne græshoppa sitiþ in þe lang græs under þe birċe trēo (OE) þa lūtilaz grôniz *grasąhuppoarijaz sitiþ in þa langaz grasą under þa birkijǭ trewą (Proto-Ger) *I have constructed these words, as they don't/didn't exist, but they can easily be compounded and would probably be understandable, they are more to show similairites. Even in 900 AD, after ~400 years of separation Old Frisian and Old English were still almost identical, other than English using thorn and eth, and Frisian apparently using th instead: (Old Frisian) Thā jērum thā wēron mith snodernesse and cūthnese gefild, wē skēawade åkennedman on erthe (Old English) Þā gēarum ðe wǣron mid snotternesse and cūþnesse gefylde, wē scēawode ācennedmann on eorþan. (Modern English) The years that were with wisdom and knowledge (couthness) filled, we saw (showed) learned man on Earth The "ācennedmann" could be used today, as "ken" is used in the North and Scotland as "to know". So today "A-kenned-man" would be a knowing man. It's amazing how much can change, but at the same time so little over 2,500 years from Proto-Germanic. Sorry for the info dump, but Germanic languages are very interesting to me haha.

[@riculfriculfson7243]

I love the fact that we have a linguistic rule that states "'I' before 'E' except after 'C'". We have more words that BREAK that rule than follow it. Our language makes NO SENSE 🤣

[@Poliss95]

@riculfriculfson7243 That's why the 'rule' is no longer taught in schools.

[@filipieja6997]

You forgot Vatter(father), mutter(mother), tochter(daughter), sohn(son), nephe(nephew) etc ... are all Germanic - the language of the common people and family. Latin through the influence of William only had a heavy influence on vocabularies used in law, commerce, in leadership etc.., the vast majority of the common people during the time of Willan's reign remained the Old English among the people. The structure of English language itself remained intacked and still having a strong sentence structure to Germanic languages including the Northern Germanic language from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The closest to Old English today is Low German and Frisian still spoken in North Sea areas today (in north Germany and Frisian Dutch regions).

[@rp1692]

Right. But English "father" does not derive from German "Vatter". Rather, both words have a common Germanic origin. The term "Germanic" is misleading because it tends to make people think that the modern German language is older than English or is an ancestor of it or that German has some other special or core role rather than simply being one Germanic language among many.

[@neilmccarthy5102]

Very good analogy! ‘Lasagna’ .. love it!

[@FalcomScott312]

The only English languages you would hear people speak are Britian, North America, Australia, Canada, Wales, Ireland, & Scotland in the world!

[@susanford2388]

A Chinese Singaporean friend of mine who grew up in Singapore said in her house they spoke dialect & outside everything was English & her schooling too.

[@martinedwards7360]

Good explanation 👏

[@TukikoTroy]

Love the Lasagne analogy. There was a documentary on one of the UK channels years ago which compared Old English with the language spoke in Jutland and both languages could understand one another. When we were eleven, our English teacher had us read Macbeth out loud in class with each student reading a passage. Then the teacher 'read' it again in modern English to demonstrate how the language had developed since Shakespeare's time. Great fun... had the side-effect of fostering an interest in Shakespeare in some of us, too.

[@LastEuropaKiss]

If it's the one I'm thinking of that was Frisia in the Netherlands not Jutland, and it was Eddie Izzard trying to buy a brown cow from a Frisian farmer, but otherwise yes, had the Normans not invaded English and Frisian would likely be highly intelligible today (though kind of still are to some small degree). If you look at the sources from Norse sagas and Anglo-Saxon writings there is never mention of a translator being needed between the Germanics, but always a mention of a translator with say Norse speaking to the French for example. The Norse even wrote about the English in one of the sagas something along the lines of *We share the same tongue, and were once the same people*.

[@TukikoTroy]

@@LastEuropaKiss Ah yes, that sounds about right. Eddie being in it rang a bell.

[@LastEuropaKiss]

@@TukikoTroy There's clips of it on KZbin under the title "Mongrel Nation - Brown Cow" including an "overview" by History with Hilbert as he speaks both Old English and Frisian

[@TukikoTroy]

@@LastEuropaKiss Thanks for the info.

[@alangknowles]

The UK doesn't have English as an Official Language. Only Welsh is recognised as such.

[@Keith-b4r8o]

That's not true.

[@mirfjc]

@@Keith-b4r8o It is true. Google it.

[@zandvoort8616]

English originates from Germany.

[@England....]

Jawohl mann! Anglo Saxon ja!

[@MrRosebeing]

Nope, it didn't. It originated in what is now Germany, brought over by the Angles and the Saxons. Over time it developed into anglo-saxon, then further evolved into later versions of English.

[@dib000]

That's exactly what she said.

[@stephenlee5929]

And no input from the Jutes?

[@MrRosebeing]

@@dib000 I just answered the question in the title because I am lazy.

[@MrRosebeing]

@@stephenlee5929 I know the Jutes were involved, also, but I don't know the full ins and outs of what happened, just the basics.