A History of the English Language (with subtitles)

this is the history of English if you haven't already subscribed to the channel make sure you do and also check out my courses in the link in the description the English language is a big beautiful mess few languages are as diverse and unexpected in their history and few have undergone changes so dramatic and so violent welcome to the history of English let's begin we can categorize the development of English into three distinct eras Old English from 450 to 1100 Middle English from 1100 to 1500 and modern English from about 1500 up until the present and

if you didn't notice I'm actually speaking modern English right now can I just stop here and remind everyone that languages change and evolve over time I just want to make sure we're clear on that just like animals languages fade and go extinct one language may spread so wide for example that in specific regions local dialects creep in and those become new languages that's what happened to Latin basically it's a very natural process and it's very similar to evolution in animals some languages are pretty different just like some animals are pretty different here's an African click

language here's a barrel live fish right well back to the topic you'll make me sad English is a Germanic language what does that mean does that mean English is German no it doesn't Germanic is a word used for a group of people from a particular part of the world who once probably spoke the same language a language which doesn't exist today Germanic languages now include German English Dutch Swedish Danish and quite a few more so think of all of these modern languages as having a great-great grandma in common called proto-germanic grandma proto-germanic something like that

to be clear English does not come from German English and German are basically cousins the history of the English language is a history of invasion and the movement of people and the beginnings are no different during the time England was under the control or protection whatever you want to call it of the Romans a few Latin words stuck with the Celtic locals the people who were living there at the time we use prefixes like pro and sub in modern English as a result the Romans left Britain around 400 AD leaving the Celtic Britons the the

locals now pretty vulnerable this allowed Germanic tribes and remember Germanic Germanic tribes to come in and settle in fact it happened over a fairly long period of time so it wasn't exactly an invasion so what I mean is didn't happen on a Tuesday the Germanic tribes pushed most of the Celtic Britons out and settled in modern-day England Old English grew out of this period and from the early 6th century to about 1100 we have Old English from that we get works like babe so let's listen to some old English from the 700s hey that's really

bad way up under walk knew where the mundum far or that him I will chatter um satinder over thrown rod a Hugh done chilled a Goomba if you couldn't understand that don't worry I couldn't understand a single word well maybe I can hear words like and sometimes I think but really it's so far away from modern English basically it's another language so what's next well everything was going fine in Britain until those damn Vikings invaded bringing with them another language called Old Norse it's another language from there we get words like reindeer dirt choose egg

and Kindle the word Thursday means does anybody know Thor's day Thursday means Thor's day it comes from Old Norse to put that into perspective about one percent of modern English comes from Old Norse it's about 2,000 words [Music] the next important event in the history of the English language was the Norman invasion or the Norman Conquest this was an invasion led by a guy who was basically a french-speaking Viking named William the Conqueror after William took over Britain in 1066 French started sneaking into the English language French words were spoken more by the upper class

the wealthy people and Old English was spoken more by common people by people in the lower classes so today we have pairs of words that have almost the same meaning one from Old English and one from old French words like lawyer and attorney deem and judge hunt and chase Pig and pork cow and beef freedom and liberty weird and strange I could go on for days now we don't make the distinction but the Norman Conquest resulted in a much more colorful language that allowed for more creative expression over 7,000 English words that we use today

are from French basically the Norman Conquest so this invasion gave us what we now call middle English let's listen to a bit of the Canterbury Tales from about 1401 that appeal with his shortest SOTA the Drakh of March hath perced to the rota and bothered every vine in swich liqueur of which bear to engender it is the floor when zephyros egg with his sweater breath in spirit earth in every bolt and F the tender Krampus next is early modern English and there's no real invasion here only important people and events first Shakespeare Shakespeare is credited

with creating a huge number of English words and phrases and his plays are extremely influential to this day from him we get words like assassination cold blooded manager uncomfortable and many many more whether you know it or not you're probably quoting Shakespeare on a daily basis here's a little Shakespeare a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying the other really important event that helped to shape modern English was the great vowel shift

which was in the 15th century now this was essentially a change in English pronunciation vowels are a e i o and you and you can say them different ways sometimes we say a as a and sometimes we say a as ah well it didn't used to be like that so there was a major shift in the way that vowels and many other sounds in English were pronounced a word like knave K and a ve would have been pronounced something like kanava kanava now we have a silent K so we don't say canook we say hmm

no knowledge knave knives we say just hmm and we also have long vowels like a instead of aa and we have a silent E which makes no sound but changes the short a to a long a the rules of spelling were being written down around the same time and unfortunately the writing people the spelling people didn't seem to be talking to the pronunciation people so the pronunciation changed but the spelling hasn't really changed we say ke na ve knave like knave na ve but still spell it in the most ridiculous possible way I have a

feeling that's starting to change but if you ever get confused with English spelling and you want to shout at someone about it get in a time machine and yell at someone writing down words in the 15th century I would be remiss not to mention the influence of the King James translation of the Bible as well apart from strengthening these strange word Spelling's many new phrases and idioms were created for that translation and we still use those today phrases like by the skin of your teeth and a broken heart and a sign of the times there

are a ton of modern expressions that come from the King James Bible finally we come to modern English and an ironic reverse invasion as Britain began to explore the world by sea and colonize as English spread to places like India Africa North America and Australia via trading and colonization some words began to trickle back slowly to England we get pajamas from India trek from Africa and ketchup from China of course English also spread to those colonies and new dialects began to take shape in those places so who knows maybe California English will become a completely

new language someday I think it's pretty close kind of changed a little bit in like this she's like this whole like situation the English language continues to evolve and someday the words I'm speaking right now will sound as old and strange to future listeners as Old English sounds to me that's just how it goes you make me sad [Music] you [Music]