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-eye fish. Right, well, back to the topic. You 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, 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 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, it 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 Beowulf. So let's listen to some Old English from the 700s. 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, chews, egg, and kindle. The word Thursday means, does anybody know? Thursday. Thursday means Thursday. It comes from Old Norse. To put that into perspective, about 1% of modern English comes from Old Norse. That's about 2,000 words. 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 1400. 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. 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 U, 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-N-A-V-E, would have been pronounced something like K-N-A-V-E, K-N-A-V-E. Now we have a silent K, so we don't say K-N-A, we say N-N-O. Knowledge, knave, knives, we say just N. And we also have long vowels like A instead of AH, 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 K-N-A-V-E, knave, like knave, N-A-V-E, 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 spellings, 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. My American accent that you heard on Terminator kind of changed a little bit into Callie from the Valley. She's like this whole 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.