The Great Vowel Shift and the History of Britain.

The English language underwent a dramatic change in pronunciation between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries, so much so that Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare likely would not have understood each other's speech. The transformation was emblematic of the historical events that shaped a nation. The History Guy recalls the Great Vowel Shift.
This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As images of actual events are sometimes not available, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.
All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.
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Script by THG
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[@FalbertForester]

"Other languages will occasionally borrow words from each other. English lures other languages into dark alleyways, mugs them for vocabulary, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

[@josephpatterson4042]

I was waiting for him to say that but now I'm disappointed

[@juststeve5542]

And the next morning all you'll find in the alley are the discarded unwanted genders of inanimate nouns. Still slightly jealous of Hungarian (maybe Finnish and Estonian too - same family) who threw away gender completely. Which is why Hungarians speaking English will often use completely the wrong pronoun for people.

[@majordendrocopos]

Falbert Forester Yes! Which is why English is such a rich and useful language. We stole all the best bits from so many other languages...

[@maxis2k]

Other languages barrow words, then force them to conform to their rules. English barrows words, then makes up new rules just for those words, so they're unrecognizable to both English and the loner language.

[@DTavona]

-- James Davis Nicoll

[@michaelpowell1506]

I suppose "vowel shift" is a better term than "vowel movement." 😄

[@colinp2238]

Or molestation.

[@crossleydd42]

Nice one! And puns are so common in English because we have so many words to do it! I resist the temptation to add "Powell Movement"!

[@riggs20]

That was great, my friend! 😃

[@robertnewell5057]

Arf, Arf! Depends.

[@HiberniaeCor]

Hence forth, this shall be known as the Great Vowel Movement. Not great because it was epic, but because it was pretty okay.

[@Robert08010]

I live in the southern US, Tennessee, not too far from Vowel Mountain where I believe all the cast off vowels were disposed of. In this part of Tennessee, you can still hear all the cast off vowels being dumped on single syllables that seem to go on as far as the ear can hear.

[@Wooargh]

being AMERICAN its nice to know I have the most popular accent on earth

[@kittimcconnell2633]

LOL

[@sonnyroy497]

😂

[@jefffinkbonner9551]

I will always defend the unique functionality of southern contractions such as “y’alld’ve” short for “you all would have.” Genius

[@F-Man]

@@jefffinkbonner9551 In New Jersey, some of us say something like “y’alld’a” for that. Interesting.

[@InstructoratHeald]

One of the things that stuck with me from an undergraduate class called History of the English Language was the Great Vowel Shift, so I was very glad to see that the History Guy had covered it. After having taught English for over 35 years, I would be a wealthy woman if I had a dime for every time a student asked me why words are spelled the way they are. I wish I had had this video to share with my students. Thank you, History Guy, for showing how interconnected language and history really are!

[@davidharris6581]

William F. Buckley said: "When it comes to the English language, if enough of us are wrong we are right."

[@davidharris6581]

@Ken Hudson When chastised by an Oxford Don for his grammar, particularly ending sentences with prepositions. Winston Churchill quipped: "Young man that is impudence, up with which I shall not put!"

[@CelebrianNumenesse]

This is precisely what's happening right now.

[@chrissue8496]

Yes so true .....t h e comment about William Buckley's quote... We had regular elecution lessons in primary (grade) school in the 1960's to correct lazy Australian vernacular and to be sure we correctly pronounced every letter of words such as Feb-Raury..and Lib-Rary ....now I hear native English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic and Down Under always saying Feb- Uary including politicians, news readers and the high class English.....I gave up .....yes , " enough of us are wrong" and Feb- Uary is now right...and before long children will ask "Why are there two "R's " February? !!! and hence the horrors of English spelling ! The modern remedy ? ......Spell Check...!! Might I add we have "Buckley's chance" of correcting the whole mess and if you're not from Australia you'll probably have to look up what "Buckley's chance " means!!!! .... The English language ....fascinating !!!

[@juanvelez8564]

Well, he had already demonstrated that there is a wrong way to be right.

[@Darvedd]

American English stems from an *earlier* form of English, British English continued to evolve after the split. That means that in fact *both* forms of English are *correct* ... :P

[@jimtownsend7899]

I'm cleaning my desk and just came across something I wrote a while back. It has a particular bearing on this topic and conversation: "Though he thought it was tough to get the plough through the trough, he did it, because he needed the dough."

[@suleskos.2743]

I am so grateful I was born into the English language!

[@nomdaploom]

"Though he thought it was tough to get the plough thoroughly through the trough, he did it because he needed the dough."

[@Ozziehoward]

Interestingly, all the gh sounds used to be pronounced. The sound was like the ch in the scottish loch or how it is used in the german word for eight - acht; the second shows the close relation between german and english.

[@ShebrewQueen]

Amazing. Lol.

[@monkiram]

Omg lol. That's 6 different pronunciations for the "ough"! (oh, ahh, uff, ow, oo, off)

[@OldManMontgomery]

I really enjoy history. I keep telling all the younger persons (at my age, they're all young persons) I can "History is interesting, once one doesn't have to memorize dates."

[@Robert08010]

Don't you love it when a kids ask, "But why did they name it Titanic if that means 'disaster'? Weren't they just asking for trouble?" Its a real chicken or the egg conundrum there! LOL.

[@OldManMontgomery]

@@Robert08010 I really like history. And yes, not just kids, but grown ups (groan ups?) ask questions ignorant of conditions at the time of the incident.

[@jeepien]

I served on a school board for a number of years, and would take part in the process of deciding which textbooks to purchase. It occurred to me that the subject matter in the history texts hadn't changed all that much since I was in school, except that the last six chapters were history that, when we learned it, was referred to as "current events".

[@cecileroy557]

Exactly!!!

[@sjswitzer1]

It’s odd that history is often considered boring when by definition it’s the interesting things that happened. It seems like the easiest subject to make engaging and yet…

[@edmccall390]

My grandfather was born in the United States, in the northwestern South Carolina about 1870. It was an area that was difficult to access until road improvements in the early 20th century, and the people were pretty isolated from the rest of the country. I remember him using words that sounded strange to my mid 20th ears. He pronounced “deaf” just as you said in this video. He always said “deef”.

[@kchapmans]

A lot of oldtimers pronounced words oddly where I grew up in the coastal Low Country in SC in the 60s and 70s, "deef" also being one of those words. I forgot all about that until I read your post.

[@karenryder6317]

@@kchapmans My upstate NY grandfather pronounced it "deef". How did S.C. and New York yield the same pronunciation?

[@kchapmans]

@@karenryder6317 Absolutely no clue! I was raised in the swamps near Charleston and a lot of people there spoke with some really odd (to my kid ears lol) pronunciations. I recall my school teachers over the years just flat-out giving up trying to get my classmates to pronounce words correctly. Deef for deaf was totally one of those words.

[@SSHitMan]

I think that pronunciation might have come about from German immigrants who mispronounced it due to their accents, and it just stuck in some areas. This makes more sense when you realize English and German come from the same root language, so in a way the way your grandfather pronounced it was just the language coming full circle.

[@Wosiewose]

Mark Twain had an ear for pronunciations, too, and wrote them down. You'll see "deef" for "deaf" in some of his works.

[@eledatowle7128]

I had a high school teacher who told us that most English curse words came from Anglo-Saxon, so if we curse, we should apologize with, "Please pardon my Anglo-Saxon." That stuck and was said for years around here.

[@stevenrickett4333]

We often have several words for the same thing. The Anglo Saxon is the crude version and the French the polite term.

[@kellywalker8407]

The exact opposite here. If we used the f-word we would say "pardon the French". Interesting......... Lol

[@Padraigp]

Also isnt it crazy that we still find anglo saxon words taboo to this day we are horrified if somone drops so low as to use the peasant language? I hate that. Its so racist.

[@Padraigp]

​@@kellywalker8407 yes thats true. I wonder if its not an ironic thing. Pardon my bad french which isnt french at all...😂

[@jeanjaz]

I always pictured the aristocratic early French-speaking Brits getting after their kids for using those crude and unacceptable anglo-Saxon words the gutter-snipes spoke. Still do it today. In the U.S. Only problem is many who use the old anglo-saxon extensively seem to only have a vocabulary of about 50 words - they repeat the same words over and over and over again.

[@ariochiv]

I don't recall seeing the History Guy so animated and passionate. I think we may have found a pet subject.

[@tonypetts6663]

I was thinking the same thing 😀

[@workhardism]

Yes...and historical hats, which he also seems to have a fondness for. LoL. Informative and entertaining: THG is easily of my fav channels. 👍

[@ahippy8972]

I agree! I love this channel and I agree he does seem very passionate about this subject. It’s very interesting it’s really good that we have intelligent content instead of young people doing silly stuff to make us laugh.

[@ariochiv]

@@workhardism He wasn't this excited even in the episode about hats! :D

[@onepcwhiz]

He's trying to channel some anchor from the 40s or 50s. Doesn't work.

[@lesleywilkie2848]

I was privileged to have spent some time living in Central Africa for a few years. We spoke English with a large number of Afrikaans and local language words like ndarba, bundu, mootie, shongalulu, kia, broekies, tackies braai, and more. When I returned to the UK, I had to switch to British English to be understood! I guess the same happens in Australia, New Zealand, Canada as well as the US adopting local words to suit new situations and conditions.

[@bobelliott2748]

I did a university degree in English Literature with an emphasis on Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare. You were right when you said Chaucer and Shakespeare would have had trouble understanding one another but after awhile they would have. Great video. Thanks.

[@charlesmason1278]

Not just our English language. Thirty years ago, I knew a gentleman who was born and raised in a French-speaking area of Nova Scotia. In his youth, he had dated a young lady from a French-speaking area of New Brunswick. Despite both of them having a "French" background, they had to communicate in English.

[@stevedriscoll6539]

Firstly may I congratulate you on your fascinating presentations. Secondly, as an Englishman from Norfolk (England, not Virginia!) I can honestly say that this is one of my favourite pieces of your work. My sister has a Doctorate in Middle English, but I find that your explanation of the topic is every bit as knowledgeable as anything that she has explained to me about my mother tongue. Thank you.

[@archlich4489]

Bob's his Uncle

[@YorkyOne]

@@archlich4489 Fanny's his aunt.

[@alicemilne1444]

Hello Steve, I second your opinion that this presentation was excellent. You mentioned that your sister has a PhD in Middle English. I'm interested in finding a video of someone reading a Middle English text while reproducing the original pronunciation as closely as possible. Could you possibly ask your sister if she can give me a readily accessible source? Thanks in advance.

[@orsoncart802]

@@alicemilne1444 Hello, Alice, There’s a young fellow named Simon Roper with a KZbin channel under his own name. He’s very keen on the pronunciation of old English and its dialects. I’d provide a link here but YT does like them. Nevertheless Simon’s channel is very easy to find.

[@alicemilne1444]

@@orsoncart802 Hello, Orson. I've already watched some of Simon Roper's videos. He's an amateur linguist who takes a more "fictional" approach to Old English. He writes his own texts in Modern English and then "translates" them into what he thinks is Old English. But since we have no records of how people actually spoke everyday Old English, I'm not that much of a fan of his type of reconstructions. He's obviously very interested in speech and how accents change and evolve, but when you watch him discussing with someone like Geoff Lindsay for example, the difference between the professional academic and the gifted amateur is very evident.

[@almostfm]

As someone once said: "It's why cough, rough, though, and through don't rhyme but pony and bologna do."

[@joanhoffman3702]

This reminds of an episode of "I Love Lucy" where Ricky was reading a book to Little Ricky. Every time he mispronounced an -ough word, Lucy corrected him, until he couldn't take it anymore and burst into a tirade in Spanish. English can be fascinating and frustrating!

[@buzzkrieger3913]

Or plumb. For a real challenge how is ghoti pronounced?

[@almostfm]

@@buzzkrieger3913 Some scientists claim there is no such thing as a ghoti.

[@hacunamatata6802]

And hough became hock, as in "They hocked the horses." A hind is a cow. Hindend makes a little more sense.

[@buzzkrieger3913]

@almostfm Well, that's not quite right. There's technically no such things as ghoti, but could have a ghoti if we could agree which of the ghoti to pick ;)

[@mschwage]

Damn. The history guy can even knock the great vowel shift out of the park! Riveting!

[@cmstevens4684]

No matter what the subject, the History Guy never fails to deliver an informative, enthusiastic and thoroughly entertaining commentary - his presentation skills are second to none and deserving of prime-time television. Please keep the videos coming...

[@preshisify]

🥰

[@167curly]

Hear, Hear!

[@jimbob3332]

Any day should begin with a great vowel movement

[@kougerat5388]

ha ha ha that's great 😂

[@mrdddeeezzzweldor5039]

Good primer...but how about taking language development back to the days before the Tower of Babel. That’d be great! 😎

[@mrdddeeezzzweldor5039]

@Jacob Zondag None of us really has the truth at this stage of our understanding, just faint trails and guesses.

[@neilwilson5785]

I just noticed that my home county is pronounced Haartfordshire.

[@BFDT-4]

English is NOT pronounced as the Spanish BV conflation! Such a potty mouth! ;)

[@CAPDude44]

The History Guy is a better teacher than any teacher I ever had in school

[@joshuaroan7342]

Better than all of mine combined.

[@tleilaxu42]

Dude gets to pick his curriculum. If you care about something, you can communicate with your students better than if you don't.

[@suleskos.2743]

He is a lovely teacher. I have two other favorites however to this day. My Social Studies teacher from elementary school, (Mr. Vinus, University Park School), and my English teacher in high school who kicked my bum further than even my own mother, who known as the "walking dictionary".

[@bryankirk3567]

Your passion really got to me. I now look at my language in a different light. Thank you.

[@theducklinghomesteadandgar6639]

I comment this regularly to him!!! I had one teacher, fourth grade English/homeroom, she was as good and so perfect for 4th grade teaching and amazing at her subject. She read to us regularly as part of our class, amazing chapter books. I'm 49 now. I remember two, James and The Giant Peach, and How to Eat Fried Worms. She always had little treats for us after recess if we would lay our heads down on our cool desks for one minute, and she involved the class in decorating and so much!! And she had a really good way of correcting our grammar as we spoke that never embarrassed anyone, but made us ALL remember those rules, like no double negatives, and how to use had, have, got properly and so much more! I commented on the school's FB page or something about 15 years ago, more in depth than what I just shared. She had been looking around the same time and saw my posted memories and commented back to me, still remembering who I was!!

[@jillsauder8340]

The Great Vowel Shift was always a mystery to me. Thank you for connecting it to the Black Death. That was a real lightbulb moment for me. After the Black Death, and the resulting chaos, I understand that many peasants ran away to the cities for a year and a day, to escape their serfdom. So internal immigration was also happening and dialects were mixing that way too. The introduction of the printing press (and the standardized spelling it created), just when vowels were shifting was another "aha" moment for me. So now we have "meat," "steak," and "death," all spelled with "ea" but all having different vowel sounds. Thank you for helping me understand why.

[@ChuckJansenII]

Another very informative episode. As my mother once told me when I was very young, "You have very colorful language that is beyond your age. Try not to be an old sailor anymore, 'kay." This episode surprised me. I understand that English is such a mix of languages, too. Soooo many crazy rules and exceptions. But it does have one great benefit in being great for word play humor.

[@nitro105]

if only high school english teachers were as interesting as the history guy!

[@Axgoodofdunemaul]

Teachers are forced to follow their lesson plans, which are written by bureaucrats. When I was a substitute teacher in the 1970s, I used to do it the THG way, and the kids got educated -- at least in the narrow areas of the stories I told them.

[@stephenjacks8196]

You didn't mention the vowel shift in the colonies / nacent US (from 1400.to 1800). Any correlation with all the Fs in our Constitution supposed to be Ss?

[@kathyyoung1774]

If they didn’t have to teach Common Core, they could do better. But you are right that many teachers are boring and uninspiring. ~ retired teacher

[@kathyyoung1774]

@Hope For the Future Agreed. My grandchildren get propaganda in their English classes. But not grammar and spelling and composition. Not English and American lit.

[@richardgalli7262]

indeed, sir

[@Gizmomadug]

We each hae oor ain leid. In Scotland there are eight differing dialects, and the word for potato is pronounced the same way in all of them: "Tattie".

[@Delgen1951]

oh a tater! In the American south were a lot of Scott settled "Taters" are common..

[@blackcountryme]

In the black country (near Birmingham England) it'd be taters.... This is also slang for testicles... "Yowm onny jelluss coz yow cor spake proppa like we!"

[@postscript67]

Eight dialects? Name them.

[@bob-ny6kn]

@Wroger Wroger I was floored the day I learned British "err" (equivalent meaning of Am. "um") is pronounced (Am.) "eh"... Made so much sense of American "blue blood" dialects (for example, Boston, MD, USA). I wish I had pursued language.

[@Gizmomadug]

@@postscript67 The main Scots dialect divisions are: Insular Scots (IS) in Orkney and Shetland Northern Scots (N), comprising: North Northern Scots (NN) Mid Northern Scots (MN) South Northern Scots (SN) Central Scots (C), comprising: North East Central (NEC) South East Central (SEC) West Central (WC) South West Central Scots (SWC) Southern Scots (S) along the Scots side of the border. Ulster Scots (U) in the north of Ireland Urban Scots refers to the dialects of Scots spoken in and around towns and cities especially Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Although the Belfast dialect cannot be considered Scots it does include a number of features of Ulster Scots origin. Gàidhealtachd, the Gaelic for the Highlands and Islands to the west - were of course until recently on the whole Gaelic speaking. In areas along the highland line Gaelic influenced Scots can be heard.

[@jonnybottle]

Good episode. I don't know when the shifts happened but languages that stemmed from German, such as Dutch, also underwent vowel shifts and this was documented by Jakob Grimm, one of the Brothers Grimm of fairytale fame, who were leading philologists, and lexicographers. Grimm established that these shifts were not random but consistent across words with the same vowels as they changed from the progenitor language.

[@antoniescargo1529]

Dutch does not stem from high German. My language is named west low franconian. Spoken in NL, B, F, D. South Africa. Suriname. We have dialects like Frisian and Low Saxon.

[@cathyallen6541]

Your historical presentations are always top notch. Great subject, well done. Btw: In the Ozarks, many old timers still say someone is "deef" (deaf).

[@remost9957]

In Eastern North Carolina, late 1960s, I had friends who said "all reet" for all right. Early Noam Chomsky would say that the Old English form was ree-xh-t where xh is a back of the mouth fricative, like the "ch" in Hebrew (Yiddish???) "challah" or in Bach, or the labial fricative "f" in "rough." Per young Chomsky, this underlying form is extracted when children learn English, and still operates as "gh" in the mind of the modern English speaker but is transformed by various rules to silence in "right", to an "f" in rough and to an "h" in Irish "McCaughey". IDK, seems too complicated to me! But then I hear the ancient form re-articulate itself in the speech of teenagers. East NC extends to the Outer Banks where you can hear the modern dialect closest to Shakespeare. (The Brits utterly muck it up when they stage Hamlet in The Received Pronunciation of BBC News.) Hwat the heck? A gud neet to thee!

[@pikachuchujelly7628]

I think it sounds more like "diff" than "deef".

[@celiabarrett2107]

Well, where I am from up North, people used to say deef for deaf. And we still say all reet for all right. Or sometimes A' reet actually. From near Scottish border. Maybe we kept some of those vowels 😂

[@celiabarrett2107]

​@@remost9957when you say a gud neet to thee, honestly that's the way people talk round the border of England and Scotland. 😊 I wish English still used thou. I think it was still in use in Yorkshire until recently.

[@NicleT]

One of the great _word migration_ story I know, it’s about the word *Budget*. In Medieval French vocabulary, the _Bougette_ was the little pouch strapped to one’s belt for carrying money pieces. The expression comes from the verb _bouger_ : to move, hence the expression is a diminutive that signifies “the little thing that shakes”. But It then migrate in English and became _Budget_ associated to money management. It then came back in French after a while with this new definition. So in French _Budget_ is a word that migrate at least two times. So great!

[@jamesrichardthompson]

Hmmm... have you also explained the origin of the word "booger"?!

[@gusloader123]

@Nicle T --- Small wonder that I did not do well in 7th and 8th Grade French class. Francais sounds good (as does Welsh/Welch) but trying to read it with an American-English eye/brain is annoying. Example: If a French word ends in "t", then the "t" is not pronounced. If the word ends with two t's (tt), the t sound is pronounced. Argh! 🤕 Then to make matters worse they (as also the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) have masculine and feminine words. Double Argh! 🤕 🤕 Instead of saying/writing "Table" they put a "Le" before the word. A table is a slab of wood with four legs. It is NOT masculine or feminine - it is an inanimate object.

[@NicleT]

@@gusloader123 I know, French have so much exceptions and it’s _logic_ was mostly made to accommodate scribe monks somehow. Each language is a world! I often wonder if there is a natural learning curve that allow to go from a language to another step by step with ease? I’m probably not clear, I don’t really know how to explain this idea haha!

[@masterchinese28]

When the French took the word back they dropped the 'd' and it became buget. French are all about vowels and consonants are just connections to other vowel sounds.

[@NicleT]

@@masterchinese28 but it still "budget" in French.

[@minxadinxaroo]

I come from the West Country in England. I recently discovered that the accent and dialect is the closest to the Wessex language as it was spoken. My Somerset grandparents used thee and thy instead of you and yours. My Gloucestershire grandparents said "Bist" instead of "are you", and they both said "deef" instead of deaf. If you couldn't hear they'd say "What's the matter? Bist deef?" !! "How bist?" meant how are you. There's a funny song by a local band called Adge Cutler and the Wurzels, "Thee's gott'n where thee cassn't back'n hassn't?" About a young married couple having parking problems with their new car, full of double entendres and translating to "You've got it where you can't reverse it, haven't you? " Of course, everything is much more cosmopolitan these days, but there's still people in the area who understand this way of speaking.

[@royfearn4345]

Ar, well, if tha canna spake plein english tha'll niver gerron in larf wilt tha?

[@frankgulla2335]

What a great compliment to the podcast "The History of the English".

[@trumpetmom8924]

This is why my students with dyslexia get easily confused and why we spend incredible amounts of time explaining different vowel pronounciations. Don’t even try to get into how syllabic stress and even individual vowel sounds change when prefixes and suffixes are added. That and digraph WH in American English is rarely pronounced differently than W. Thank you for the enlightening episode, sir. I may be able to add tidbits of it into lessons with my students.

[@freethebirds3578]

I teach 3rd graders to read, especially English Language Learners. The looks on their faces.... I tell them that English is crazy, it doesn't make sense, so just roll with it. The phonics program we use tries to put rules on everything, but out of around 200 cards, all but 9 have at least one exception. I generally don't spend as much time on rules as I do vocabulary.

[@menachemsalomon]

As a grade school teacher, I often and explained that the reason English spelling is so strange is because the spelling of a word doesn't just tell you how to pronounce it, but also the word's history.

[@ElectroDFW]

I'll agree it can teach you the history of the word, but in no way does a word's spelling tell you anything about how to pronounce it. Only context and the 'rules' of vocabulary can do that. As evidenced by homographs. "The sow helped sow the cord, while the boy started to wind up his kite string because the wind had died down."

[@alisonbarratt3772]

Since you are a teacher can u help me out?I live on Prince Edward Island in Canada. There is a street called "Pownal" people say Paw null when they say it!!!! Pronounced like u know a dogs paw and null like the word nullify. So Paw Null.But....when i see the street sign Pownal I say pow like bow u know when u bow to a queen Pow and nal like the sound null like nullify .so Pow Null is what i say .i think i am saying it correctly what do u think?Thank you.

[@menachemsalomon]

@@alisonbarratt3772 I was a teacher for 4 years, but changed professions 8 years ago, so not a teacher anymore. But to answer your question, at first glance I would probably pronounce the name as you do, but names often originate in other languages and don't follow conventional English pronunciation rules. (My first name, for example.) So ask the locals how they pronounce it, and go with that. Even if they're mistaken, historically or ideally, their pronunciation is, in practice, the correct one.

[@kwlloyd7]

Alison Barratt The Pownal in Vermont is pronounced with a pow!

[@Darvedd]

Yes, including where the word originally came from, or which language. :)

[@carolpinchefsky7126]

I kept waiting for him to say, “Inconceivable!”

[@annefrishberg1415]

Yes! Someone hears it, too! 😅

[@melaniegates1655]

I KNOW! Right?!

[@Knoar]

How have I not noticed this before

[@miklosernoehazy8678]

...what does that word mean?... ...I do not think that word means how you say it!...

[@gabe333331]

From “ The Princess Bride”, heheheh

[@padraicfarrell188]

I've been watching History Guy for a few years now. I think this is the segment I have rewatched the most. Completely fascinating.

[@emmakinzian539]

The best part of this video is how excited you are. There's nothing better than listening to someone talk about something they're both passionate and educated about.

[@raydunakin]

I like how much feeling you put into these.

[@budahbaba7856]

Yes! there from the 14:00+ he begins building a crescendo worthy of an old time evangelist! Something else i love about his presentations is how well they are edited. I don't notice the mid-sentence chopping like i do with so many other YT creators -including the majority of creators i am subscribed to. He really seems to work hard at making a professional product, and i appreciate that. God knows how much i appreciate being able to this channel and not be subjected to all the chop shop editing! :)

[@cen7ury]

The History Guy truly is one of the great orators of our generation.

[@zappawench6048]

"People 50 miles apart couldn't understand each other" - mate, I've had to translate between Brummies and Black Countrians, and they were only roughly 5 miles apart.

[@hetrodoxlysonov-wh9oo]

Yam rought there, 'It ay arf black ova Bill's muvers ouse' Translation, 'it's dark over Bill's mothers house' meaning the weather front is coming in from Stratford' bill being William Shakespeare.

[@ahippy8972]

I agree it’s the same in the north east. In wallsend we speak totally different words to the Folks of Shields then you get all the ex coal miners In shiremoor up to Ashington who speak much slower form of geordie but with tons of unique only to them words. GEET LUSH came from Newcastle twenty years ago nobody had a clue what it meant now in Devon and Bristol they started saying gurt lush and claiming they invented it. My granma who was born in 1898 used to say things like “wey man it’s geet lush ootside teday giz sum watta to watta the flowas so they divvent snuff it.” In Ashington they would use different lingo.

[@diannecombs8433]

Take a train in UK,,, every stop has a different accent... Attended Un. of Glasgow in 1980,,,, sheesh...

[@Hrodn]

@@ahippy8972 Ye deed reet marra. People born on Tyneside, historically the banks of the Tyne, are known as Geordies and speak the Geordie dialect or accent. Yet people from South Shields have a noticeably different accent within the dialect and are known as Sanddancers. Five miles down the coast from South Shields is Sunderland and their accent, known as Mackem, is very different.

[@Cryolemon]

I live in Nottingham, in central England, and even going 20 miles in different directions (Newark in one directions, Mansfield in the other) and you get very noticeably different accents. And that's ignoring Lincoln, Derby and Leicester.

[@pierremainstone-mitchell8290]

Fascinating Lance and yet again I've learnt something new. As one who had to read Chaucer and Shakespeare at school I had no idea that the two men would not have been able to understand each other! Well done indeed!

[@maggiebee5261]

Thanks for this one THG. Loved it! Always look forward to your posts - one of the few really worthwhile channels on YT 😋

[@fransmith3255]

Actually, when you think about it, the 'great vowel shift' is kind of replicated in today's language changes. Australian accent distinguished itself quite completely within a similar amount of time from English accent. And if you listen to an Australian video of speech from 1960/70, and compare it to a very recent video, we sound surprisingly very different, and the America influence into our accent has changed our speech hugely. And that's only 50 years. I would think that the trajectory of another 110 years might almost equal the 'great vowel shift' in England, with respect to Australian accent...

[@Pants4096]

To my ear, New Zealand has taken it even further, almost to a comical effect where vowels have wrapped all the way around and come back on themselves. It really is fascinating!

[@fransmith3255]

@@Pants4096 Hehe, I love listening to the New Zealand accent. 🤣

[@nickfirth4440]

As to the Australian accent, I remember listening to an old woman on TV from the old London square mile, and I immediately noticed that she basically had an Australian accent! I grew up in the bush in Western Australia, where it sounds like an iron bar going down a corrugated tin roof, and nobody opens their mouth, due to the flies...

[@Padraigp]

Totally accents change a lot very quickly it seems. Without much changing...even in the 1970s videos of news reels the differences are large for cities and for rural areas even more so. In ireland you can go five miles and find such strongly different accents happening today.

[@SchmulKrieger]

That's a duhyngerous idea.

[@harmonicresonanceproject]

Fabulous! I'm sitting here in South Oxfordshire, watching you explain to me why we say it like that. Love it.

[@markj2305]

I knew an old man from Normandie. He said with his version of Norman, he understood the Nazi's invadeders more than the common French of Paris. I had no idea the Norman had so much in common with the German.

[@user-cp3zj5oc7q]

Have followed u for a fair few years. This was another masterpiece. Thank you for your work.

[@SpiceeMustard]

I wish you were my history teacher in high school. My British history professor in college was A LOT like you though. He never had us open the textbook but instead told us Britain's history in his own way full of love of the "story" with great personality. Funny: he wrote the textbook and it was the most expensive of my college career. But its the only one I still have.

[@776281]

"A language is a dialect with a navy." Consonants drift too, just not as fast.

[@776281]

Plus there is a real laziness that takes it toll. Sections of place names do not get said, the silent "t" in many french words, weir becomes vier becomes fear becomes 'ear. The missing K in Knight. Then there are pronunciations that stay the same where the language has changed; Menzies can be pronounces Mingus (something to do with a missing zog). Linguistic drift is real.

[@DaiElsan]

I though a Dialect was the arch enemy of Dr Who. ;)

[@rogerwhittle2078]

That made I laugh. Is Consonantal drift faster than Continental drift?

[@susannagarlitz792]

Interesting... Since we're already on the topic of the English language, consider there are three accepted dialects of English, American English, British English and Australian English but each of those dialects is spoken in a different country each with its own Navy. This would seem to be an exception, three countries with three different dialects of the same language each with it's own Navy with no serious suggestion that these dialects ought to be considered different languages.

[@rogerwhittle2078]

@@susannagarlitz792 I bet it goes further than that. The Royal New Zealand Navy use English and the Canadian Navy use a mix, but mostly English. Rather amazingly, the official language for the Indian Navy - indeed the whole armed forces - is English. The Republic of Singapore have a significant navy that once worked very closely with the RN and thus may use English operationally. And suspect that is not the total.

[@ChsUgde]

Another fascinating video. Love the enthusiasm you bring to each subject you discuss. I'd love to have attended one of your lectures.

[@charles300566]

Your clips are truly excellent: the research, the choice of subject, and the narration.

[@kayhoww]

Amazing. You answered more questions I had on this topic in the first five minutes than other youtubers did in entire videos.

[@nessunodorme3888]

Yes, it's possible to present the Great Vowel Shift in a much more complicated and confusing way -- and lots of people do! History Guy did a good job with the subject.

[@timmarshall4881]

Interesting. I’m a Yorkshire man and although even in my 66 years my own dialect has changed quite a lot. Words in my childhood like thou are rarely now spoken. Timothy Marshall

[@adamcarreras-neal4697]

or thee, my maternal grandparents both used these, and that was rural Oxfordshire, they were both born in the 1910s

[@gregb6469]

We can trade some brain-dead Leftists/socialists who think 'the rich' owe them a living for some Cubans who are willing to work and love the idea of freedom.

[@user-kq5hz3rm5h]

As an Ozzie I love good English and much appreciate this from a broad-accented American. We are not separated but united in our common language.

[@happybuddhabear1155]

I really enjoyed this episode. All of them really, but this was was right up my alley. Thank you.

[@MegaFortinbras]

When I was studying an incident that occurred on the Anglo-Scots border (see "Kinmont Willie Armstrong") in 1596, I had to read a number of letters and documents written by late 16th century Scots. The only way I could decipher the spelling was to read them aloud in a Scottish accent.

[@samanthadata1049]

MegaFortinbras it would be so nice if you could make a translation available in youtube for us, students of the English language!

[@MegaFortinbras]

@@samanthadata1049 Translation of what? Some documents I read forty-some years ago?

[@samanthadata1049]

MegaFortinbras Yes, but you hadn't mentioned it was so long ago. It does change things. When I read your comment, I believe it was something fairly recent and that you might have it easily available to share. Thanks for answering.

[@MegaFortinbras]

@@samanthadata1049 You apparently missed the date that I mentioned, "1596", and the phrase ""late 16th century".

[@surruk51a]

Chaucer, likewise, make more sense spoken in a Tyneside accent (and rhymes better)

[@Xenogeek2]

I'm an Aussie married to a Tennesseean. A co-worker once asked me, "Do you and your wife go thru that tomahto-tomayto thing?" I replied, "Yes. I say tomahto and potahto, she says mater and tater." Considering all the comments I have received, I should explain that my wife is an educated and highly intelligent individual. She talks like a hillbilly only for comic effect, and only when she is alone with her family. When I talk about "hillbillies," I'm referring to the white inhabitants of California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maryland.

[@barnabyaprobert5159]

There's a hit TV sit-com in there somewhere.

[@Xenogeek2]

@@barnabyaprobert5159 Yep, life imitates art.

[@barnabyaprobert5159]

Enjoy it, my friend.

[@zapthycat]

Do you ever ask her, "what's taters, precious? What's taters eh?"

[@karenlajonna7229]

I am from West TN! I say tomayto, btw.

[@mikemccarty8344]

Love this video! It's amazing how pronunciations of vowels varies even today between countries, or even counties in the states. I really enjoy your presentations!

[@williamsmith1464]

this has been my favorite thg yet. i look forward to watching the rest. thanks and keep up the great work.

[@lopezrodriguez8372]

Thanks for this episode! I´m a coordinator at an EFL school. I´ve passed the episode on to my teachers and we´ve been discussing it. Good food for thought.

[@sambolino44]

The way you always end with a pun shows the influence Mr. Peabody had on you.

[@punditgi]

Fascinating story. Well done, History Guy! 👌

[@henryrodgers1752]

Just brilliant! What a wonderful piece. Thank you.

[@ozwzrd]

I say "potato" and my wife says "shut up"...

[@bruno640]

The Knights Who Say, "Ni!" (C'mon, I can't be the only-one to pull a "Monty-Python" on this subject...!) ☺

[@rupturedduck6981]

Oh "IT" to you ! Now for your punishment you must chop down the biggest tree in the forest with (WAIT FOR IT) A HERRING !!

[@bruno640]

@@rupturedduck6981 Ahh, Thank You! (I was beginning to think my memory was long-gone, for sure...!) ☺

[@mikecurtin9831]

Don't forget the tribute of a small shrubbery.

[@rupturedduck6981]

@@mikecurtin9831 Oh Oh now you'd done it ! Here comes that killer rabbit 🐇 with his GREAT BIG POINTY TEETH ......... !!!!" RUN AWAY RUN AWAY"!!!! That rabbit's dynamite.

[@mikecurtin9831]

@@rupturedduck6981 "You're a looney!" While they're all saying, "Comfy chair..."

[@Redmenace96]

Great vid! Complex history, but you nailed the right parts to tell a good story. Thank you.

[@OneMoreJames]

Thank you, for this concise and insightful look. This is the first of your videos that I've seen, and you had me opening up multiple tabs, for reference, and skipping back a few minutes to double-check something. Very cool. I'm a subscriber, after one video. Keep up the good work!

[@coc_is_me]

“Tomato” is still pronounced in the Shakespearean manner in Ireland. Hiberno-English still retains many elements of early modern English language and pronunciation.

[@somniumisdreaming]

As is Cumbrian n Northumbrian.

[@jcoker423]

@@gideonroos1188 Check out the last (bonus) episode 143+ of the podcast 'History of English' by Kevin Stroud. He reads a poem by Chaucer in Middle English/Early Modern English and Modern English. It sounds like Scots, Irish and then English respectively. It makes sense as Scots is closer to the original Anglo-Saxon and Hiberno-English has elements of EME as CC'C says above.

[@benrobertson7855]

Ae nz

[@CarneyColours]

I was born 1940 in a place called Salford (Greater Manchester), we are known to have a ''northern'' accent which some would believe to be how everyone in the north would sound like, however there are numerous accents throughout the whole of England, some to the extent that with only a distance of a few miles between one place and another it can be difficult to understand what is being said.............I give you the following example, form my home in Salford to a place called Tyldesly just 10km to the north west, I once attended a wedding and heard one chap say to another the following (phonetically) "" Dust thee git downt rod fut parper after yon shift is dun""........I was so bemused by this tongue I had to ask what had been said, the chap then proceeded to explain what he had said, when I wrote his words on a piece of paper he stated that it is precisely his words, ......so!, while both of us would write the same, we certainly used vastly different accents to verbalise the same words as follows....""Do you go down the road to get the paper (newspaper) after your shift is done"", both of these chaps worked as coal miners on night shift duties.

[@LandersWorkshop]

They still speak like that in parts of Yorkshire too. One guy said to me ''Ow long did it take thee to come hither.' My response was similar to yours! :D

[@LandersWorkshop]

@Art Anson Well it's not hard to understand any English dialect / accent if you live in the country long enough and travel all over it. :)

[@LandersWorkshop]

@Art Anson Hello. Yes I read your reply to mine BEFORE you edited a massive paragraph and deleted a large swathe of it. :)

[@CarneyColours]

@Varoon Having been born in Greater Manchester it was inevitable that I would pick up the dialect, on the other hand my grandfather who was born at Kingston upon Thames, Surrey in 1886 did not arrive in the Manchester area until 1900 and was employed on the Manchester Ship Canal at the same age, and by the time I was born (1940) he had picked up the dialect and his dialect was actually broader than mine!!...So maybe the old adage " when in Rome" etc, rings true?

[@bobarmstrong4403]

I dont have trouble understanding dialects, even that spoken in the Erewash Valley..but in the 50 years that I have lived in New Zealand, Some changes have become noticeable..first of all, the Great Aussie upwards inflection at the end of each sentence, especially from the ladies. Almost Tyneside Geordie in its ancestry...more notice is our vowel shift.. a pen is now a pin, yet a pig is a pug.The national dish is fush & chups, and maybe a boiled igg for breakfast. A chair has become a cheer and a square has become a squeer. A car has always been a kaah, however.

[@jonbradley4789]

Thank your team. Brilliant script. Excellent editing.. Well done.

[@linnmatthews8615]

Love, love, loved, this episode. Thank you so very much. I've known that people for whom English is their second language, all say how hard English is to learn. Now I have a glimmer of an understanding why that is.

[@jaysonl]

Way back in high school, my AP English teacher read Canterbury Tales to us in the original Middle English. It was quite a revelation to me that the silent Ks in words like "knight" and "knife" were, at that time, not silent at all! (If I remember correctly, "knife" was pronounced "kuh-NEE-fay", and "knight" was "kuh-NIH-guh-tay", both rhyming with the modern "repay")

[@2eleven48]

Following on from that, my surname is Knight. Some years ago I showed my passport to pick up my mail from an island poste restante in Greece, and the guy came back with the mail and asked, doubtfully, K-nee-git? Bless him.

[@Default78334]

It makes more sense when you learn that the German cognate for "knight" is "knecht" where the kn is still pronounced.

[@eyeyayayay]

Norman French is awesome! It is still spoken by some people on the islands of Guernsey and Jersey. It has been a real privilege to move to Guernsey and learn the Guernesiais variant of Norman to pass it on to my children.

[@rosaamarillo2110]

‘Let’s call the whole thing off’ ...... very cool episode history guy... I am a big history buff, but you amaze me with every episode... where were the history teachers like you when I was growing up???...... And, as a Texan married to a Bostonian..... this is all so true...

[@aandccash8951]

Love your shows - they are always interesting, entertaining and informative. I have to play your video at three-quarter speed to fully appreciate and take in what you are saying...so for me, ironically, 'less shift and more stay put' fits the bill.

[@22vx]

I love history where it pertains to linguistic development - absolutely fascinating.

[@jupitercyclops6521]

Being someone who speaks "jive" as a first language, I found it confusing.

[@jupitercyclops6521]

@Wroger Wroger hahahaha....Ahaha! Your arguement is lacking to say the least. "Its pronounced this way because we pronounce it this way. Inflated ego and conceit has nothing to do with being correct. The tomato came from this side the pond, numbskull. That makes our pronunciation the correct pronunciation. Typical wanker Brit with your false sense of entitlement. That being said, I love u guys. When your not making us kick your ass, we're pretty damn good allies.

[@jupitercyclops6521]

@Wroger Wroger me thinks ur being sarcastic in the first place. But then 1 never knows

[@22vx]

@Wroger Wroger But swamp swine are not common. In fact, they're extremely rare.

[@nuttyjawa]

It's so refreshing to hear an American say Oxfordshire, etc correctly :), and of course a great video

[@redram5150]

As a Pennsylvanian, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The “shur” is easily understood, at least in the eastern half

[@raykent3211]

Interestingly the English pronounce the plural "the shires" not as the sheers but the shyers, like the American way.

[@nuttyjawa]

@@raykent3211 when not a place name, Shire / shires is pronounced Shyer

[@rogerscottcathey]

yan keys or yawn kees?

[@GunFunZS]

To be honest it's fairly rare for an American to have a reason to say Oxfordshire in either way. (edit, I accidentally posted at this point, which might come across as impolite.) The point I was going to make is that if you get to general American recognition of Oxford, the shire isn't part of it at all. In general, I think most of us would know there's an Oxford university somewhere or other, and that it is prestigious. We also probably know of Oxford as being a basic type of shirt for office workers at the bottom of the professional queue. If you asked the man on the street what "shire" meant, he'd probably say, " I dunno, where hobbits are from?" A couple decades ago, it would have been "where Robin Hood is from, I guess?" This is because most of us have no more reason to be aware of it than you would have the need to know the correct way to pronounce Willamette, or Oregon. In general, people from the UK put a lot more pride and emphasis on their regionalisms, than is done here. Americans do have pride of place, but not to the degree that is generally caricatured in EU media. Alaskans and Hawiians are a lot more likely to make it part of their identity. Texans to a lesser extent, though they talk of it more. For them, it is more of a shared running joke with an element of truth. We alaskans love to make fun of the people from little texas...

[@civwar054]

One of your best. Thanks!

[@paulbriggs3072]

In a mere decade in Upstate New York, I stopped saying crick for creek and brang for brought, chimbly for chimney, and a dozen others. But I still say yep.

[@yclepe]

I once read an article by a linguist who speculated that "Pirate talk"(Haarrrr) may be a hold over from the great vowel shift. I was reminded of a great Historian who asks"Don't all good stories involve pirates?"

[@RoyCousins]

The real reason may be a bit more prosaic: Robert Newton played Long John Silver in the 1950 film version of Tresure Island. He used an exaggerated version of his native Dorset accent. Ever since, the Pirate accent has become an overblown version of a West Country accent, but there may be an element of truth, as many seafarers came from the region.

[@GraemePayne1967Marine]

There are some islands in the Chesapeake Bay, and some parts of Appalachia, where the local dialect is much closer to Middle English than it is to standard American English.

[@highpath4776]

@@RoyCousins Most pirates were Welsh (Davy Jones, Captain Morgan)

[@lisakilmer2667]

This is the best explanation of the GVS I have heard: nice and neat! I have read that linguists can predict how words will change based on how common they are. The commonest words retain their usage while less common words evolve more easily. That would explain the unevenness of the change in pronunciation of the same sets of vowels in various words.

[@tomconsidine246]

Another interesting topic.! I think I read that irregular words child/children, get/got, is/was, and so on can only retain their irregular forms BECAUSE the words are so common. Were they less common, their special rules would not be well mastered, and would fade away. Thus less-used words tend to become regularized to use standard plurals, tenses, and so on.

[@jenlru]

EXCELLENT!! I'm studying for a teaching exam, that had question about the GVS, and this video went above & beyond my prof's understanding of this. I learned so much & can finally give some perspectives to students who struggle with pronunciation/etc., esp ESL learners

[@kaylibert4020]

This was so interesting and your delivery is so entertaining.

[@1allanbmw]

I took History of English at the same time I took Dutch Literature. Silly me, I actually thought the English class would be a cake walk like my Dutch Lit was. I was wrong. My professor was the head of the department however, and when I approached him about combining the required up coming project BOTH classes required, he thought it a great idea. He noted I wasnt doing so well, but realized I was learning something interesting inspite of everything. I ended up doing a comparison study of ancient Dutch and English vs modern Dutch and English. Old English "ors" and old Dutch "hors" in modern times became "horse" and in Dutch "paard"! Not even close as it once had been. I agree that many migrations from the Continent to Britian greatly influenced the language as all comers brought their own languages with them. No mystery there, really. But in your conclusion, it would have been easy to overlook that a more common way to speak all languages became more necessary with the passage of time. Not only England, but all of Europe began to trade more and more, not just locally, but worldwide. The Dutch East India Company required a uniform language for doing business around the world just as the English or French. After America threw off the English after the Revolution, there was an effort made to make American English different from British English. After the 80 Years War with Spain, the Dutch did something similar. By and by, in trade, finance and politics anyway, the King's Dutch was taught. To this day, in Friesland for example, Fries is spoken at home, but children are taught Dutch in school so that they will be able to communicate outside of the province. The conscience effort to "create" a more Dutch language and make it more unique and apart was instrumental in the efforts to standardize it. The language still borrows quite a lot from English, usually either business English or pop culture. But there are Dutch words to express the same ideas. It's just not as "fun". So the notion that there was nothing going on upon the Continent, at least in The Netherlands anyway, isnt entirely correct. I'm pretty sure it happened to a smaller degree perhaps elsewhere, but I can only speak to the Dutch language. It is a fascinating subject and requires much more than just 15 minutes, History Guy. But without doubt, you once again find something of immense importance and interest to all of us who value history, culture and mankind's neverending development. Thank you!!

[@siobhanvictorian3669]

1allanbmw I enjoyed your comment. Very interesting. I know in Italian, there were many changes and still are. Especially since more Italians have learned English from pop culture and tourists.

[@crossleydd42]

I can't, offhand, think of any Dutch words which are used in English, apart from yacht! I assume it is not pronounced 'yot' in Dutch, as it is in English!

[@johnrussell5245]

@@crossleydd42. How about 'gang plank'?

[@blastulae]

@@crossleydd42 Among the words English got from Dutch is an all too common four letter word beginning with F and ending with K. "Paard" is due to the influence of German "Pferde".

[@cdjhyoung]

A great subject once again. And as usual, it brings another subject to mind: the staying power of American English regional dialects here in the US. Even though we have had the consistent influence of television flooding our minds with mostly a mid-western version of American English, regional accents still exist and don't seem to be dying away at any hastened speed. To this day, the ear can tell those from Minnesota from a New Englander, from someone from the southern coasts. The Mississippi Delta has a language all its own (and to a certain extent, its own sub-culture). I would have thought that after seventy plus years of broadcasted language that strongly favors the mid-west sound as standard, much of these other styles would have disappeared.

[@marbleman52]

cdjhyoung....You made a very perceptive observation and a great question. Just why DO local and regional dialects seem to stubbornly hang on? Years ago when I was in college and taking classes to become a teacher, I learned about how children first learn to talk and the theory was that in our brain we have what was called the "language acquisition device" ( probably better called a process today ). The exposure to hearing the parents talking becomes 'hard-wired' into the long term memory part of the brain and I think this is why the different dialects do not easily or quickly fade away.

[@gasfiltered]

marbleman52 o would love to see some research on this. While I grew up in the Midwest, I’ve had the great privilege to live all over the country and several places in Europe, but I have a non-descript accent and I can pick up a local accent within a day or two and drop it just as quickly. I currently live in Alabama but work in KY and MD, three very distinct accents. Because people in the south are distrustful of outsiders, I move between the KY and AL accent as needed. I don’t even sound like the people where I grew up. This is not uncommon, but not necessarily normal either. Conversely my neighbor moved from Manchester, England over 40 years ago and he can still barely make himself understood in AL. Despite decades without any connection to England, and constant exposure to the plodding drawl of Alabama, his accent shows almost no sign of degradation. Wildly different outcomes from two people of similar class, family history, and education levels.

[@marbleman52]

@@gasfiltered It sounds to me that you worked on your ability to learn other dialects and wanted to be able to change from one dialect to another. I think that it is just like learning another language, but in your case, you learned to adjust your native language to suit the conditions. I would say that your neighbor from England perhaps has not deemed it necessary or desirable to do the same and I think that is the difference between you and him.

[@marbleman52]

@@edinburgh1578 I like how you spelled your name...Ed in Burgh...Edinburgh, capital of Scotland. I am from the "South", born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Arkansas and Texas. I have a "Southern" accent; not as much as some folks because I have traveled some and even lived in Virginia for a number of years, and so my accent has been influenced from different States and different accents. The "Southern" accent is one that almost defies mimicking. I have watched many movies where the actor tries to sound "Southern" and they never can; it sounds so corny and ridiculous and I cannot help but laugh when I hear it. A person has to have been born and raised for a while here to be able to sound 'southern'. This is probably true for you as well.

[@marbleman52]

@@edinburgh1578 I personally enjoy hearing the different accents from different parts of the U.S. I think our Society would become very boring and unappealing if everyone spoke exactly alike...that's no fun..!! I spent almost 10 years in Virginia and I remember hearing some people pronouncing the word...'roof' ( as in 'too' ) as 'ruff' ( as in tough )., and 'tire' as 'tar'. To my ears, people from 'up North' talk very fast and they think us Southerners talk slow and with a 'drawl'. Northerners say "you'se guys" and I say "y'all", and depending on where one is, you will hear 'soda pop', 'pop', 'Coke'( and not necessarily meaning 'Coca-Cola', and many, many other local & regional words and slang. I love it..!!

[@kurtwicklund8901]

Your presentations are written very well. They are delivered with an enthusiastic tone which makes the video fly ny.

[@rominacapriati2013]

Thank you so much. This witty and informal lecture has helped me to have a better perspective of the language I love and teach.

[@tctc0nsulting]

The best 16 minutes of KZbinry ever! I especially liked, "...an affectation of eighteenth-century upper-class Englishmen in southern England ..." to explain the potato vs potato thing!

[@raykent3211]

Maybe it's deliberate humour in the song or maybe they couldn't come up with an alternative, but the tomaydo / tomahto thing works but the potato one doesn't cos nodody says potahto. My mum called them spuds, I'll stick with that. No idea of the etymology.

[@stewartritchey7602]

Either way potatoes taste the same.

[@ronfullerton3162]

@@stewartritchey7602 Very much the same as a Spud!

[@fordhouse8b]

​@@raykent3211 A spud (related to spade) was short pointy spade used to cut and dig up roots. A tool like this was used to dig up potatoes, and the first recorded use of the word as slang for the potatoes itself was in New Zealand in 1845.

[@raykent3211]

@@fordhouse8b interesting, thanks. I now live in France and most locals eschew "pomme de terre" in favour of "patate" , where the vowel sound is close to what he suggests, neither aah nor ay but "at", as in cat or mat.

[@kevynbrownell719]

When the german "invasion" of england is talked about, it's always said "the saxons this, the saxons that". But the language and country name is credited to the angles.

[@majordendrocopos]

Angles, Saxons and Jutes were all Germanic people who were originally invited to what is now England to help defeat the Vikings. They stayed and settled. Nobody really knows why the Angles gave their name to England, or why the Romans named Britain after the Brythons, a small tribe they came across in southern England.

[@mikespearwood3914]

Ironically the celtic languages (even today) called England something that translates to "Saxonland".

[@termeownator]

@@majordendrocopos Close, the Angles and Saxons and, to a lesser extent I think, the Jutes (think their only kingdom was Kent) are reputed to have been invited, but I believe to combat peoples from what would be the modern day Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France (among them the Frisians, can't recall the others). I mean, you could describe them as vikings possibly, not sure but I'm thinking that's a moniker that means raiders, but they weren't Nordic. (Note this also responding to the original comment) When what are known today as the Vikings (the Danes) began raiding the coasts of Northumbria and thereabouts a few centuries later the, the inhabitants referred to them as something close to berbers, which I think is etymologically related to 'barbarian', but I'm almost sure by then meant raiders (from the sea), like the Barbary Pirates of the Mediterranean. The Danes settled in York, and at one point maybe a century and a half before the invasion of the Bastard, the Danelaw stretched from Tyne upon Wear south to the edge of London. In the first years of the eleventh century they actually had a few Kings on the throne. The first, Cnut (gotta make sure you correct the autocorrect, there) actually ruled the Kingdoms of England, Norway, and Denmark, and after him his son. Then the throne passed back to the English, for about a minute at least, til the Bastard realized he needed a new name, figured he oughta try and Conquer something. I wanted to mention that pre-1066 the Danes also had some influence on the Language as well, and that while the Angles and the Jutes did settle and found Kingdoms, the Saxon kingdoms became predominant, Mercia (Trump 2020) and then Wessex, which produced the first King of England. Unsure as to why the language would've been referred to as 'Saxon' rather than Anglo-Saxon though, could be some new info I'm not privy to. About the name England, I'm just speculating but since the kingdoms of the Angles were the first they would've come upon on the east coast, that might have had something to do with it. Perhaps the similar happened with the Romans? Could have gotten the name Brittania from Gauls who had encounters with that tribe, or was one of the first tribes Caesar himself encountered on his expedition?

[@paulqueripel3493]

@@termeownator A youtube linguist says that the language most similar to English is Frisian.

[@YorkyOne]

@@termeownator The Saxons were originally hired as mercenaries by the native British in their wars against the invading Picts (from 'Scotland') and the Scots (from Ireland) - not from continental invaders. The name England derives from Ængla Land (land of the Angles). I doubt the Anglo-Saxons would call the Vikings a name rooted in Greek but will happily stand corrected. And Britannia is derived from the native British name for the island, Pretanī (Greek Brettaniai).

[@DawnOldham]

This was THE BEST VIDEO IVE SEEN! I’ve always wondered WHY these words are pronounced and spelled so differently. It totally makes sense that a huge influx of foreign English speakers would begin to change the way words were pronounced. It’s mind blowingly simple.

[@Svensk7119]

This was one of the best summaries of this subject that I have ever seen! Well done, sir! I remember first hearing about this from my brother and his wife as I was studying Spanish. (When you learn another tongue, you learn about your own.) I remember the slightly skatologically joking name of this phenomenon, the Great Vowel Movement... Love and prove also used to rhyme. There is so much that could be said, but we'll done, THG. Well done!

[@ChiTownPulse]

Intriguing, this puts a different light on how to read the writing from different periods of time.

[@chuckwilliams6261]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4eqaGquibV7bKc

[@CarynOMahony]

Also, to get an idea of how different Shakespeare sounded in his time, look up a video by David Crystal and his son Ben. David is an English linguist and his son is an actor for the Royal Shakespeare Company. They've worked out, using rhyme, how Shakespeare would have sounded.

[@highpath4776]

I find it really difficult as I read words more like pictures and so its the pattern of the letters and the memory association to the pronounciation that I have- it sort of works like a look-up table, so old and middle enligsh I am not fluent in but struggle slowly,

[@ChiTownPulse]

@@CarynOMahony Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.

[@AcydDrop]

Thank you for this channel and your hard work that goes into providing this amazing content. I don't comment much but I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy this channel and the work you do here. Also being English, it has never occurred to me to pronounce "Buckinghamshire", "Lincolnshire", "Oxfordshire" etc as "SHY-ER" (phonetic spelling here) and not "Sure" or "Sheer" (phonetic again) but I never really knew why until now. So thanks for that too! Keep up the amazing work here!

[@karenryder6317]

The History Guy says it isn't lazy speech but the Brits really do have a tendency to compress their consonants as in "Strawbrees" for strawberries and "Wustersheer" for Worchestershire.

[@jamieblanche3963]

You really are the best :) Thank you for all of your videos.

[@taylorbasford4542]

Thank ya, kindly. This was a treat

[@jmkulikowski]

I love the way you get into each subject! You just made the history of vowel pronunciation enrapturing! How do you even do that?

[@suzbone]

Me to my husband this morning: OMG ONE OF MY FAVE HISTORY KZbinRS JUST DROPPED A VIDEO ON ONE OF MY FAVE SUBJECTS YEEEEEEEEE!!!11! Me at 4:27 dang, History Guy, settle down!

[@archstanton1628]

He was foaming at the mouth there 😁

[@suzbone]

@@archstanton1628 If you pause anywhere during that part it's a gallery of "Faces of Historian Consternation". Then ten seconds later he's back to his normal tone. I get super excited about this sort of thing too though so I totally get it. I've read/watched a whole lot about the great vowel shift over the years, but all the technical linguistic details that would be included bogged down my overall understanding. I knew the moment I got the alert that this vid would provide an excellent overview to help me gel the details into a bigger, clearer picture. BOY HOWDY was it that, and more. For years I've wished English linguistic history could reach a larger audience, and I couldn't be more pleased for it to have come out of this channel. And so much important related history is tied in here, too... thank you SO MUCH History Guy!!!

[@suzbone]

There's an old but excellent BBC series on the history of the English language that's tremendously informative and enjoyable, "The Adventure of the English Language" hosted by Melvyn Bragg. Full playlist: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gWK7gqtvpax6mpI

[@seadog4330]

It was irritable vowel syndrome.

[@claires8735]

@@seadog4330 😅😂🤣

[@chriscaughey1103]

I was an English teacher, and with a history minor from college too you always make me smile!

[@Music_is_Breathing]

Fantastic presentation!!! I love your animation and energy!!!!!!

[@1977Yakko]

I do love it when The History Guy gets passionate about a subject. You can tell he was really invested in this one.

[@gayamarina]

Watched it 2 times in a row. Both to entertain myself and to make sure I understand and remember everything (because my heart kept jumping out of my chest, both elated and distracting). Thank you for your work. This video is amazing!

[@dadetkina]

Such a great explanation with a bunch of details, thank you! 😌

[@polymorpheus9745]

When you get excited, your voice is reminiscent of Wallace Shawn. Inconceivable!

[@cesarebeccaria7641]

I think I've been to the end of the comments, although that is a moving target. Yet no one has quoted Winston Churchill. "Britain and America; two nations separated by a common language."

[@riggs20]

@Steve Terry I did not know about "endorsement." How funny!

[@SaxonYear410]

Churchill never said this.

[@SaxonYear410]

@Steve Terry Don't get me wrong, even I initially thought Orwell said it instead (turns out it could be Bernard Shaw, but that's just as doubtful). The fact of the matter is, Churchill said/wrote many memorable things, but even more of those have unfortunately been attributed to him as a consequence.

[@jamesalexander5623]

@@SaxonYear410 It was George Bernard Shaw!

[@dac545j]

@Steve Terry Reminds me of "Life of Brian".

[@kennethbailey2616]

I’ve spent some time in the UK and my English friends and I would often laugh at the differences between our supposedly common language. My cousin is a minister in Scotland but wss born in Bozeman, MT. He was stationed there while in the Army and met a comely lass and made Scotland his home. He no longer has our typical Montana argot. Languages are so interesting and I really enjoyed this narrative. In fact I’m plumb tickled. :)

[@mbm8690]

I like that you said argot, it's a synonime to dialect, or even slang, isn't it

[@AdrianHepburn-vz9yr]

Come to Queensland cobber.

[@helenamcginty4920]

Scottish English is very different again. My Sots pal would say 'see you the morn' for see you tomorrow. Oxter for armpit. Etc.

[@billthomas8205]

Excellent episode - thank you.

[@alchemist6098]

Very informative and delightfully delivered...