A Short History of the English Language

[@williantheodoro2608]

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

[@TheSaltydog07]

Good luck.❤

[@williantheodoro2608]

Thanks ❤@@TheSaltydog07

[@willtibbals4265]

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

[@williantheodoro2608]

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

[@TheSaltydog07]

@@willtibbals4265 There are classes for that.

[@emeraldsroses0524]

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

[@XXXTENTAClON227]

Isaac Newton wrote in Latin so that makes sense

[@RichardBrown7k]

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

[@brauliocavalcanti3703]

@@RichardBrown7k YES. 100% correct

[@richietaylor9870]

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

[@colinp2238]

@@brauliocavalcanti3703 Except the Larin?

[@marygebbie6611]

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

[@klaatoris]

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

[@klaatoris]

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

[@marygebbie6611]

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

[@XXXTENTAClON227]

@@cosmo_mosy hell no 💀 they were basically demons

[@mountain2112]

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

[@caliscribe2120]

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

[@valerietaylor9615]

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

[@rajveer5230]

😂

[@valerietaylor9615]

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

[@CuriouStaires]

😂

[@Flint-g4h]

@@valerietaylor9615 LOL

[@calmeilles]

"Old Norse… its influence on English was mostly vocabulary." Oh dear! Oh deary, deary me! The *collision* between Old Norse and Old English produced _The Most Profound Change In The English Language Ever._ The creoles that arose from the intermingling of Norse and English resulted in dropping of most declension, the introduction of articles and new prepositions - a series of changes that began the comprehensive alteration of English from an inflected language to a mostly analytic language. Norman French did indeed introduce _some_ vocabulary but had virtually no grammatical influence. It's use as a language of court and administration left English free as a vernacular to run with the changes started by the influx of Old Norse so that by the time Middle English once again became a literary language it was ready to drop its case system which it had almost entirely done by the beginnings of Early Modern English. The influence of Norman French, even in vocabulary, is usually much over-estimated. The importation and assimilation of Latin-rooted Romance words continued long after Norman French ceased to be spoken by anyone and sometimes the distinction can be seen from Norman French itself being influenced by previous assimilation of Norse. There are instances where we have borrowed from the same root multiple times through different routes. Eg mister, master, meister, maestro, mistral and magistrate are all derived from Latin magister "teacher" coming from Old French, Norman French, Middle German, Occitan through Modern French and Latin respectively. There are even several dozen multiple borrowings from Greek such as τύμπανον 'drum' tympanum 'eardrum', timbre, timpani and χρῑστιᾱνός which gives us Christian and christen via Latin as well as cretin which came via Swiss French, and French but only in the late Eighteenth Century.

[@elbuggo]

Excellent recap there, Professor.

[@elbuggo]

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

[@calmeilles]

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

[@Bpaynee]

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

[@unavitadellamusica]

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

[@عماراحمد-ق7ن]

Absolutely captivated by this ancient history documentary. It brought the past to life in such a vivid way

[@fahadhussain66]

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

[@gregmiell3037]

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

[@Mercure250]

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

[@taylernorris5647]

I had the same Estonia nitpick.

[@maasro]

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

[@valerietaylor9615]

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

[@russeldatuin693]

Do yourself a favor and play this at 1.25 speed

[@sofia01ht]

😂😂😂

[@CuriouStaires]

Lol no shade to the speaker but thank you.

[@enchu7838]

No but why does it sound normal this way😭😭

[@1ebubekirkarakurt]

maybe he doesnt but youtube can make 1.25 speed for everyone ;)

[@avadakadabraYEET]

Lolol it sounds normal hahahahaha

[@SophiaThomas-xh3ml]

Your research is thorough and impressive! Thank you for sharing this history lesson!

[@deathcabforcutie3889]

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

[@kishanlalrohilla]

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

[@Jr-ft9ii]

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

[@goofygrandlouis6296]

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

[@theepicguy13]

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

[@vintagelady1]

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

[@valerietaylor9615]

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

[@theolagos]

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

[@ThePixel1983]

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

[@rnedlo9909]

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

[@nunuloki]

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

[@andreajohnson8652]

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

[@rabiaaslam3186]

Pajama is persian / Urdu ( etymology)

[@valerietaylor9615]

Also Hindi.

[@stevedietrich8936]

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

[@alexneumann3]

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

[@thenewlc]

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

[@SamDiMento]

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

[@lovelllonniell8171]

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

[@thicclegendfeep4050]

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

[@pmajudge]

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

[@nobbyclarke9166]

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

[@hux2000]

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

[@lightfootpathfinder8218]

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

[@scottsagerdahl5197]

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

[@JustRootsAndLeaves]

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

[@EagleOneM1953]

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

[@chrismatthews8717]

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

[@gaufrid1956]

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

[@ShinseiUK]

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

[@williamfulgham2010]

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

[@harrynewiss4630]

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

[@maribone20021]

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

[@SamanthaAnimations]

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

[@dervauerbach]

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

[@williamnethercott4364]

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

[@ThanuMithu18]

Good short explanation of the English language.There's something you missed in this :Latin also influenced the English language in science,not only old Norman French.Many scientific terms are derived from latin.Thank you for your presentation of History 😊.

[@white-dragon4424]

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

[@matthewkent8796]

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

[@AllenUry]

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

[@matthewkent8796]

@@AllenUry BBC is the queens english.

[@icedry4913]

In high school, we had a teacher whom was multilingual - English, French and German (perhaps more). I think she was Swiss. She taught English literature - Beowulf with a sweet French accent. Never really understood the book, but was totally mesmerized by her words. She once told us, English is the simplest (in terms of grammar) of the three languages but not systematic. e.g. why put a 'k' in front of 'knife' when you don't speak it; why 'bow' tie and 'bow' of a ship is spoken differently.

[@SketchyTigers]

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

[@AliDurmaz-wk5xk]

As a Turk, I like this video. It was very informative. Thank you for your work.

[@taylormartinlucas]

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

[@davidmarsh1167]

You forgot Belize in Central America

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

Yep, one tiny pocket of English in that corner of the world.

[@ANDROLOMA]

Naw, I checked. It's still there.

[@marjetapeterlin]

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

[@graceygrumble]

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

[@tanler7953]

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

[@graceygrumble]

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

[@jiqbal8480]

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

[@graceygrumble]

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

[@harrynewiss4630]

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

[@waluigihentailover6926]

5:13 That is incredibly fascinating! Human lore is awesome!

[@mohamedmohamed-kc8yb]

If only high school history was this fun-I might've actually stayed awake!

[@allanlank]

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

[@DarkDutch007]

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

[@allanlank]

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

[@DarkDutch007]

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

[@arranssabapathy]

Love the video! Just one thing, your map at the start of the video is slightly incorrect: Sinhala is only spoken on the southern side of Sri Lanka while Tamil, a Dravidian language, is spoken in the North and East side of Sri Lanka.

[@juliewillcox3398]

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

[@gregmorris2022]

Excellent video. I already cannot understand most people under 30 years old. Case in point, I have no idea what younger people mean when they use the words “meta” or “gas lighting”.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

Welcome to my (old) world. I don't get half of this crap either.

[@ANDROLOMA]

I'm still perplexed by how to define "woke."

[@gregmorris2022]

@@ANDROLOMA I woke up this morning.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

@@gregmorris2022 That's the proper use of "woke"! I'd also accept "awaken".

[@marknewbold2583]

Gaslighting is not a particularly new usage

[@k.c1126]

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

[@danidejaneiro8378]

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

[@k.c1126]

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

[@danidejaneiro8378]

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

[@GreoGreo]

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

[@yagak4758]

If I had a dollar for every time I watched an 'ancient history documentary' instead of doing my chores, I'd have enough to buy my own ancient artifact!

[@mydogisbailey]

French really made English so unique among Germanic languages

[@hasanmahmudhm64]

English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England. The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. English. Pronunciation.

[@HBKnowItAll]

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

[@kristofevarsson6903]

I know this was meant to skip the smaller details, but I would like to add that the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes are historically recorded as having such an identical language that they didn't require interpreters to exchange information. Obviously they weren't pronouncing words precisely the same nor were they using perhaps the exact same words to refer to things, but the overall vocabulary had such complete overlap that these slight differences didn't hamper communication between either speaker. It'd be akin to a Scotsman with a particularly heavy accent speaking to an American, both in English, but the accent and pronunciation is different - however after a few minutes your ears adjust to the new sounds and your understanding of one another improves with every passing minute.

[@intreoo]

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

[@merickroragen6467]

He mentions at the end that in several hundred years our English will be just as indiscernible to the future speakers as Old English is to us. I wonder how the Internet and modern tech is affecting that? With records being in our English and preserved so well, will English change at all?

[@HeyNonyNonymous]

If I'm not mistaken, the middle English poem spoke of the showers of April soothing the draught of May, bathing every vine with sweet liqueur, of which green garden flowers grow?

[@valerietaylor9615]

Correct, except it’s March, not May.

[@ovaloctopus8]

Your last couple of statements are a bit misleading. North American English didn't freeze in place. If you want to hear what Shakespeare sounded like West Country accents are probably closest as they also kept the rhoticism. Just because North American English is still Rhotic doesn't mean that nothing else changed. For example it's unlikely that people in Shakespeare's time said "TOOsday" like North Americans. They would say "TYUsday" like some modern speakers of English in England. Apart from that this was a great video though. I really enjoyed it

[@TheRagingPlatypus]

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

[@cgaccount3669]

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

[@bradgreen6079]

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

[@TheRagingPlatypus]

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

[@dk7934]

@ 8:45 So Shakespeare apparently sounded more American than English? Is there a 17th century recording of him that I am not aware of? This sounds particularly unlikely.

[@andyp621]

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

[@katerinaxatzi8551]

On September 26, 1957 and October 2, 1959 in Washington, as part of the World Bank Annual Meetings, Mr. Xenophon Zolotas, a famous and highly educated Greek, delivered two speeches in English using (exclusively) Greek words. Not ancient ..... but words used by the Greeks, as they are, from Antiquity until today, in their daily lives and not only!!! Mr. Zolotas was a great Economist, who at the age of 24 became a University Professor, for a number of years Governor of the Bank of Greece and Prime Minister. who by many has now been accepted as one of the most important personalities of the last century). The special element was that he used throughout his speech words that were of Greek origin and are used in English. The audience watching the IMF meeting was speechless and Zolotas's speech became historic with him and his wife making headlines in the NYT and "Washington Post". (Somebody must be fluent in English and Greek to be able to write two such speeches. I will quote you the first one.) The speech was: ''Kyrie, I eulogize the archons of the Panethnic Numismatic Thesaurus and the Ecumenical Trapeza for the orthodoxy of their axioms, methods and policies, although there is an episode of cacophony of the Trapeza with Hellas. With enthusiasm we dialogue and synagonize at the synods of our didymous Organizations in which polymorphous economic ideas and dogmas are analyzed and synthesized. Our critical problems such as the numismatic plethora generate some agony and melancholy. This phenomenon is characteristic of our epoch. But, to my thesis, we have the dynamism to program therapeutic practices as a prophylaxis from chaos and catastrophe. In parallel, a panethnic unhypocritical economic synergy and harmonization in a democratic climate is basic. I apologize for my eccentric monologue. I emphasize my eucharistia to you Kyrie, to the eugenic and generous American Ethnos and to the organizers and protagonists of this Amphictyony and the gastronomic symposia. Η δεύτερη ομιλία στις 2 Οκτωβρίου 1959: Kyrie, It is Zeus’ anathema on our epoch for the dynamism of our economies and the heresy of our economic methods and policies that we should agonise between the Scylla of numismatic plethora and the Charybdis of economic anaemia. It is not my idiosyncrasy to be ironic or sarcastic but my diagnosis would be that politicians are rather cryptoplethorists. Although they emphatically stigmatize numismatic plethora, energize it through their tactics and practices. Our policies have to be based more on economic and less on political criteria.Our gnomon has to be a metron between political, strategic and philanthropic scopes. Political magic has always been antieconomic. In an epoch characterised by monopolies, oligopolies, menopsonies, monopolistic antagonism and polymorphous inelasticities, our policies have to be more orthological. But this should not be metamorphosed into plethorophobia which is endemic among academic economists. Numismatic symmetry should not antagonize economic acme. A greater harmonization between the practices of the economic and numismatic archons is basic. Parallel to this, we have to synchronize and harmonize more and more our economic and numismatic policies panethnically. These scopes are more practical now, when the prognostics of the political and economic barometer are halcyonic. The history of our didymous organisations in this sphere has been didactic and their gnostic practices will always be a tonic to the polyonymous and idiomorphous ethnical economics. The genesis of the programmed organisations will dynamize these policies. I sympathise, therefore, with the aposties and the hierarchy of our organisations in their zeal to programme orthodox economic and numismatic policies, although I have some logomachy with them. I apologize for having tyrannized you with my hellenic phraseology. In my epilogue, I emphasize my eulogy to the philoxenous autochthons of this cosmopolitan metropolis and my encomium to you, Kyrie, and the stenographers.''

[@TheScottEF]

I believe there may be one other interesting and dramatic historical influence: the Plague. About the time of the Black Death, Normal French was starting to spread throughout England, being very much the dialect of the striving classes, some linguistic/historians believe. English, however, continued to evolve in greater isolation in the countryside. With that era's pandemic, urban dwellers disproportionately perished and were replaced with workers from the Middle English-speaking rural farms and peasantry, moving the language more back into the Germanic fold.

[@harrynewiss4630]

Rubbish. Norman French was in steep decline even in the later 13th century.

[@LeeCarlson]

It never ceases to amaze me when content providers refer to the Gaelic peoples of Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales (as well as Cornwall) as Celtic. Particularly as all of the tribes inhabiting Europe were Celtic (this includes the Franks, Burgundians, et all

[@valerietaylor9615]

The Franks and Burgundians were German.

[@j.vanderknaap9446]

The first word in your dictionary is Dutch. We named your money (US). We showed you a landscape full of meerkats and wildebeests. We even introduced you to Saint Nic. Yet you managed to omit us from this narrative entirely. Bravo.

[@Moishe555]

Wunter Slaucsh!!!

[@duwang8499]

Actually the name dollar derives more from Low German than from Dutch.

[@Jamieclark192]

Not sure you are correct about sharing an accent with Shakespeare. Shared pronunciation of certain words, perhaps. Not accent. The American accent would have come about from the intermixing of various different colonists from all over the British isles, as well as Native American, Spanish, German, Italian, French and Dutch influences etc. Not to mention the various different American English accents which also influence the standard American accent. I don’t think pronunciation and accent are the same thing. I’m from the south of England, I pronounce words very similarly to an Australian but we don’t share the same accents. Words can be pronounced the same in different accents.

[@nonexistant8557]

my best interpretation: old english: what. we garden in the yard, three kings, three friends, who the appealing and freedom middle english: when that april, with his showers suit. the draft of march has peirced the root and bathed every day in sweet liquore, of which virtue engendred is the flour

[@carlgharis7948]

That middle English I can kinda guess he's talking about a garden or agriculture or farming or something. That's all I really got something that might relate to things to do with gardening or farming

[@ManMan-fl3lq]

Thanks for information. I'm learning English now. i hope my English will improve in the future

[@NathanDudani]

Ah, Frenglish, my favorite

[@davidgold5961]

5:54 the asterisk at the bottom is grammatically incorrect because you must have an * in the main body of the text, which references the footnote at the bottom of the page. You cannot have just one star symbol without having one in the main body of the text.

[@michaelwells1349]

8:20 *even farther, hahaha come on...you said you're a linguist

[@emanuelskelaj9843]

Can you also do short about other languages like Albanian and aromanian?

[@Steven-dt5nu]

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

[@InFlamedParlysis88]

Tbh, this raised more questions than it answered. Specifically how old norse double dipped it's influence. -bc Danes spoke Old east Norse(derivative of old norse) which then mixed with the Celtic languages. Misc Celtic languages were across Europe till Rome(latin) effectively mixed with mainland Europe but not all of British Isles. Leaving Celtic only there that partially mixed with Old east Norse creating Anglo-Saxon(named for 2 tribes from the Netherlands that settled the region in England). Then more traditional old(west) norse mixed with the Vikings invasion. And that's where this video begins.

[@georgebaccett9951]

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

[@SantaFe19484]

Nice video! How do we know what Shakespeare's accent sounded like and that it's closer to an American accent if there were no tape recorders back then?

[@Nolaris3]

It's not exactly American, sounds closer to Cockney. We obviously can't sure how people spoke back then but we have many clues. For example, certain rhymes and puns in Shakespeare's writing don't make sense in Modern English, but do in the older pronunciation. Shakespeare was sometimes bad at spelling, which clue us into how things would have been pronounced back then. There were other contemporary writings about the language too. For example one writer noted that the "r" in English should be pronounced in a "doggy way", revealing that the letter was pronounced closer to the rhotic American way than standard British. If you're curious what the sound is like, I suggest you search for "OP" Shakespeare or "original pronunciation", where some people perform in the reconstructed version of the language. Tl;dr Imagine Shakespeare but performed by Hagrid from Harry Potter

[@happyrider4343]

Shakespeares pronunciation would be with modern English words but somewhat before the great vowel change became final, so the pronunciation of the passage from Romeo and Juliet that you read would be a bit different, I do not know if it was intentional or misunderstood. Great work, though!

[@Dave_Sisson]

Great stuff, but the map at 8:01 misses out on quite a few ex British territories. Ones big enough to appear on your map include: Jamaica, Belieze, The Trucial States (Now U.A.E.), Oman, Aden (later South Yemen), Falkands, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Cyprus, Jordan, Palestine (now Israel), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and several others.

[@taylernorris5647]

Not to mention France, The Netherlands, Minorca Island and Hanover.

[@professorsogol5824]

Not to mention the omission of the US of A from among "all lands EVER colonized by the British" [Emphasis added]

[@slaphead55]

@@professorsogol5824 The map does include the eastern USA which is the only area the British colonised. The move west came after independence.

[@professorsogol5824]

@@slaphead55 I revisited the map and I see you are generally correct. But I also noticed that the map puts the Canadian border some 500 miles too far south, passing south of the southern tip of Lake Michigan, and although the British may have colonized the area around Puget Sound in Washington (George Vancouver), I'm pretty sure the British did not colonize what are now known as North and South Dakota.

[@RichardBrown7k]

@@taylernorris5647 Or you could say that Britain was an Hanoverian territory, George I was the Elector of Hanover, a small independent German state, as were his successors to the English throne until Victoria who could not inherit the title as she was female.

[@putramatebean2606]

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

[@johnkellett7797]

With your last comment you are perfectly correct. American English spelling and grammar is increasingly difficult to understand by me, an Englishman. PS. Your language is not closer to Shakespearean language than mine as your language is mostly derived from the West of England. Shakespeare was a Midlander.

[@danielfortier2629]

4:10 - "La mouvement" is INCORRECT in French. It's "LE" mouvement. Mouvement is masculin, not feminine. Also, "la preostestation" is also incorrect. I presume it's a typo. The word is "protestation". There is no letter "e" before the "o" and there is no "s" before the first "t". The word "apetit" is also misspelled. There is an "accent aigue" on the "e" AND there are two "p's". The proper spelling is "appétit". Gee, in four French words you got the spelling of ONE right! That's terrible!!! Maybe you should use a spell-check before making a video. Seeing SO MANY flagrant, and obvious errors in French convinces me not to continue you didn't do your research properly and therefore I will stop watching your video, and giving you a thumbs down.

[@rmar127]

It would have been cool, if you had used the same examples piece across the whole video. IE, read the excerpt of Beowulf in old, middle and Early Modern English. That would have given more emphasis on how the language has changed.

[@professorsogol5824]

I don't think such a text exists. Some single word examples could probably be found using body parts like "finger" and "eye" But longer passages, no. Shakespeare never attempted to re-write Beowulf or Chaucer. That being said, Shakespeare wrote a play entitled Troilus and Cressida and Chaucer wrote a poem Troilus and Criseyde. But I doubt you'll find a passage in one that is parallel to the another.

[@rmar127]

@@professorsogol5824 it would not have to be a copy of an original text. That’s what translating is for

[@professorsogol5824]

@@rmar127 ??? Your comment here doesn't make sense. You asked for " the same examples piece" and "read the excerpt of Beowulf in old, middle and Early Modern English." My point is Beowulf does not exist in Middle and Early Modern English. And if our presenter were to attempt to translate the passage into these earlier dialects of English, he would be translating into a dialect in which he lacks native speaker fluency.

[@sheriffsammy8263]

This video helped me a lot in my assignment

[@fallguy80]

It's interesting how some Norman French is also derived from Scandinavian languages like Norwegian and Danish.

[@shealinbanta4169]

I wish everyone knew how to speak English so you can talk to someone you wanted to without being confused

[@jackiepaper6464]

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

[@tracycagliero129]

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

[@christianpipes2110]

❄️🫵🏻😂

[@ImJustFunSize]

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

[@Franktheguy128]

Who is here because of english class

[@cdanerz3677]

American accent is not that close compare to Shakespeare's time. There are many local accent in England that sound similar to what was in Shakespeare's time

[@eloradelavallee3481]

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

[@ДамирСамир-е4б]

## Language as a System and Structure You're absolutely right, language can be viewed as both a complex system and a structured entity. Let's break down these concepts: **System:** * Language can be analyzed as a system made up of smaller, interconnected subsystems. Think of it like a machine with different parts working together. * Each subsystem deals with a specific aspect of language, such as sound (phonology), word formation (morphology), sentence structure (syntax), meaning (semantics), and context of use (pragmatics). **Structure:** * Within these subsystems, language also exhibits distinct levels of organization. Imagine arranging components hierarchically, like building blocks. * The basic units at the lowest level are typically indivisible (e.g., phonemes in phonology, morphemes in morphology). * These units combine to form higher-level units with more complex meanings and functions (e.g., syllables from phonemes, words from morphemes, phrases from words, sentences from phrases). This concept of **double articulation** allows language to be incredibly efficient. A small number of basic units can be combined in various ways to create an infinite number of meaningful expressions. For example, in the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," we can identify different levels and subsystems: * **Phonology:** Individual sounds like /k/, /w/, /ɪ/, /k/ combine to form syllables and words. * **Morphology:** Morphemes like "quick," "brown," and "jump" come together to form words with meaning. * **Syntax:** Words are arranged in a specific order ("The quick brown fox...") following grammatical rules. * **Semantics:** The sentence conveys a specific meaning about a fox jumping over a dog. * **Pragmatics:** The context of the sentence (e.g., a children's rhyme) influences how it is interpreted. By understanding language as a system and structure, we gain deeper insights into how it works and how it allows us to communicate complex ideas with remarkable efficiency.

[@danielhooke6115]

9:15 With the "T" in the middle of words becoming "silent" on both sides of the Atlantic: moun'ain for mountain, ba'le for battle, etc.

[@egbront1506]

The dropping/slurring of the T in words like battle is a southeastern English affectation and is regarded as "uneducated" for want of a better description even by speakers there. The T is pronounced in the rest of the UK and often quite clearly at that. I don't necessarily subscribe to the dropping of the T in the US. It often sounds like a d - so you get ba'le vs baddle, wa'er vs wodder. Also, in the UK, you get a T/R shift in less careful, run-on speech when a short word ending in T is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, so that "get out!" sounds like gerrout! and "what about it?" becomes wharrabourit?

[@Drobium77]

@@egbront1506 That has been going on for at least 100 years, We say "gerroudevitt" to say go away. Or "y'went gerrin me daan thee're" it's been around for a long time

[@tzarcoal1018]

I think it is a bit difficult to determine the exact influence of Old Norse, as many words were similiar between old Norse and Old English....Old Norse was a germanic language aswell after all.

[@cbsteffen]

Middle and Modern English words with “ch” or the letter “y” sometimes come from Old English words with the older soft “c” and soft “g” sounds respectively. (In other words, the letters might’ve been named “chee” and “yee” in Old English.)

[@Laceykat66]

9:10 - I would tend to disagree with your prediction that in a few hundred years today's English will sound like Chaucer. It has been five hundred years since Shakespear and we can still understand him with little effort. Compare that to the five hundred years before the Baird. England's National Poet has locked the language to a great extent. My one question is, given that the majority of the population did not read or write, with the invention of the printing press why wasn't spelling changed to meet the new vowel shift? As few people ever wrote or read the word Knife, changing it to nife does not seem like such a radical event. Thank you for your wonderful videos.