Latest / Ridiculous History / How The (English) Alphabet Became A Thing, Part One: Writing Stuff Down Is A Bonkers Idea

Transcript

How The (English) Alphabet Became A Thing, Part One: Writing Stuff Down Is A Bonkers Idea · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give a big shout out in
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the English language to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: What'sh there? They are?
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: There, they are. That's mister Noel Brown. I am Ben Bullen.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: We are coming to you in a language called English.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the English language, Modern English. Like the band We're
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: gonna stop the world and melt with all of you.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: There it is, there, it is, and that's an amazing
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: thing to do, because language itself is amazing one of
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the cornerstones of all advanced human life. There are thousands
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of languages, as we know, and many of them are
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: mutually unintelligible. But it's when you think about it, language
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: is the bedrock of society. Coupled with the absolutely Bonker's
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: idea of writing stuff down, you guys, language is something
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: like time travel, teleportation, telepathy, and necromancy all tied up
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and one thoroughly ridiculous bow.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I had no idea. It was so spooky, Ben.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: It's a little spooky, right, you know. Think about it, Noel.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: The last time you read a piece by your favorite
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: dead author. That person from beyond the grave is communicating
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: directly with you.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. I mean that is sort of the nature.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: You always talk about the game of telephone. That is history,
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: but that applies to language as well, because language does
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: not exist in a vacuum. It was created by people
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: over the course of time, and it is an evolutionary
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: thing in and of itself.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: And sometimes the medium is the message.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Oh very Marshall mcluan of you. Yeah, the medium is
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the massage. Shout out to that book and apologies to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the library. And I stole that from back.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: In the days.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So this week's series, Noel, we are exploring one language
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: in particular. It's the one we're speaking now. Spoiler. It
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: is a paradoxical, piratic mixtape, all kinds of weird mismashed sounds.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: They're represented by an arcane collection of specific, squidly and
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: straight lines with a little handful of sprinkling, a dab
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and a dash of punctuation marks. Collectively, we call this weird,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: weird thing the English alphabet.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: So why don't we take this episode and I think
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: maybe a second episode to discuss exactly how this English
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: language alphabet specifically thing came about.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see how we got there, and maybe, just
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: for a treat, we might talk about the future as well.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: All right, right, okay, so what the heck is an
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: alphabet to begin with? I think it's fair for us
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: to say, to understand the English alphabet, we have to
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: understand the again cartoonishly bizarre idea of writing things down right.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: At its most basic level, all in alphabet is is
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: a set of you know, pictures to pictographs, I guess right, drawings, characters,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: brushstrokes as in the case of Japanese characters, you know,
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: where there really is an art to it, and it's
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: very bespoken, handmade. That can of course be the case
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: with other alphabets as well. This is used to represent
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: in some cases actual concepts, you know, ideas, whole words
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: and phrases. But on its most basic level, in alphabet
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: is designed to represent the phonemic structure of a language. So,
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: in other words, certain lines and curves that comprise these
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: different characters are designed to let the reader know what
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: sound they're supposed to make out their mouths.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, you nailed it. And then it also lets
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: you know what context occurs. How does this R sound
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: or how does this M or this in or this
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: B sound exist on its own, and how does it
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: tie into other sounds indicated before or after it. It's
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: an amazing process, especially when we realize how quickly this
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: happens for practiced readers, you know what I mean? Like, Oh,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: we should also mention since we love etymology. The origin
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: of the English word alphabet is not technically from English.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: It's a bit of a portmanteau, arriving from the first
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: two letters of the Greek alphabet alpha and beta, and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: they stole that from somewhere else. As we'll see, it
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: was first used in its Latin form alphabetum, by a
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: guy named Tertullian and a guy named Saint Jerome because
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: he was one of the very many saints of the
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Catholic Church.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: Yes, but not all alphabets are created equal.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: There are some that have way more symbols than others.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: There's some that really kind of thrive on sort of
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: an economy of language type model.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Modern English. The idea not the band, but also the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: band is.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: A Latin script alphabet comprised of twenty six characters, but
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: some writing systems take a different approach to, you know,
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: kind of creating this written mishmash sounds yeah yeah.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: For instance, let's consider the alternative system of the syllabary.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: An example of this would be the Cherokee language. Written
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: symbols there are meant to represent syllables of sound, and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: to your earlier point, Noel Japanese language uses at least
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: one form of syllabic writing as well. The oldest system
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: of writing anything is what we call the logogram from
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the Greek logos or word and gramma quote that which
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: is drawn or written Chinese. To the earlier point, that's
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: a great example of this. Idiograms characters that represent full ideas,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and then you see earlier examples of this like the
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Egyptian hieroglyphs or Quinea form.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: However, the biggest difference is that the symbols in an
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: alphabet and syllabic systems they represent sound directly. They don't
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: in and of themselves have any meaning, unless, of course,
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: you're using them as like exhibits like ABCD, etc. You
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: can of course use them that way. So you could,
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: for example, read the letter B and think, well, I
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: see that letter in a lot of things, but on
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: its own without any other letters. It is just a sound.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: I'm going to need a little bit more than that
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: to communicate an entire idea or thought.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Just so, and if we look at the ancient history,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: we'll see that writing is humanity's principle technology even now,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: for collecting, manipulating and story data and transmitting information. It
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: is a crazy idea. It's classic human So it's no
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: surprise we talk a lot about parallel thought. It's no
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: surprise that this concept was invented or discovered multiple times
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: independently in the Near East, in China and throughout Mesoamerica.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: The Cunia form script, you know, collection of characters that
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: was created in Mesopotamia aka present day Iraq circa thirty
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: two hundred BCE, was very very first to the party,
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: the language party, and it's also the only writing system
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: that can be traced to actual prehistoric roots. Like its
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: earliest prehistoric origins, first writing was used as a tool
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: in order to help aid in things like math, and
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: that earliest form of writing itself actually dates back to
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: an eighth millennium BCE system of numbers using clay tablets
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: clay tokens consisting of multiple different shapes. So why don't
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: we go to our buddy, James Wright, an editor over
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: at International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: James Wrights rights, he does do that, Ben, he does
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: emailed it. Give us James writing, Ah.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, So James Wright says that you can trace, like
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you were saying, Noel, the invention of kinea form over
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a period of ten thousand years, from the prehistoric predecessor
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: to the present day alphabet, and James sees it as
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: a division of four phases of evolution. First, you have
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the clay tokens we mentioned earlier, and they represent units
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: of goods. There are three dimensional tokens. People are literally
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: handing these back and forth. Then they get transformed into
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: two dimensional pictographic signs representations of the tokens without actually
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: needing to have the tokens. And again, for cartoonishly long
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: amount of time, this script was just very counting. It
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: was just for nerds. It didn't change until much later
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: when they started using phonetic signs to talk about the
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: names of individuals in that civilization. That's right, and like
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: those clay tablets we talked about the tokens. The pictographic
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: script we're talking about now actually served a very specific
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: kind of mathematical purpose in the practice of accounting, and
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: that's from thirty five hundred to three thousand bcees, so
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty ancient profession being an accountant. We had
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: phonetic signs that were introduced then to transcribe the names
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: of individual people. That marked a very important turning point
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: when writing started to actually emulate sounds, those phonemes that
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: we were talking about the way we hear language spoken.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: And as a result, this kind of became applicable to
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: things beyond just counting. It became applicable to expressing all
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: manner of thoughts and ideas. With two dozen letters each
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: representing a single vocal sound, the alphabet perfectly represented a
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: rendition of human speech. It was able to do a
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: pretty good job of that.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: So after these concepts that we've kind of previously outlined ideography, logography,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: I think I got that right, and syllabarries, this new
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: alphabet really was a massive step forward into integrating much
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: much more advanced ways of communicating ideas into a written form.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: One hundred percent, that's right.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Until this is going to happen often.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: It's gonna Yeah.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: So until the third millennium BCE or so, as we
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: were saying, writing is for accounting, and it really changes
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: as war, spiritual minded people in Sumerian civilization start using
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: some form of visual depiction or engraving for funerary inscriptions.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: At every step in this evolution we see a steady
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: progression in the abstraction of data. So you start off saying,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: here's a way to write, you know, the number seven.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Here's a way to write the number four, and if
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: you take four from seven, here's a way to write
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the number three. Now we are talking about increasingly complex ideas,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: all of which eventually lead us to the alphabets we know, recognize,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: and practice today. So what happens next? How do we
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: get to the How do we get from a bunch
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of nerdy boffins who are very good at numbers to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the modern alphabet. We've got some steps along the way.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: That's right, the rise of the English alphabet, building on
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: this foundation created by our ancient predecessors.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: The very first widely used alphabet adjacent ish esque thing
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: was developed by Semitic peoples, the Phoenicians. Does that make
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: Does that ring any bells? Anybody phonetics Phoenicians about seven
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: hundred years later, right, consisting of twenty two letters, all consonants.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: At this point, this Semitic language spread all throughout the
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: Mediterranean region, and that includes the Levat, North Africa, Southern Europe,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: and the Iberian Peninsula. The Greeks at this point built
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: further on Phoenician alphabet by adding vowel sounds. Remember we
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: only previously had consonants.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: That's exactly very guttural, right, that would create a guttural thing.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: And if you think about it, the vowels are what.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: Makes language a little more mollifluous, right, a little more
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: melodic beautiful.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that only happens about seven fifty BCE. The are Pals,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the Greeks, they took letters from this Phoenician alphabet ish
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: thing and they said, look, these these certain symbols represent
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: stuff that does not exist in Greek speech. So we're
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: going to change them, and we're going to make them
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: our new vowels, our predecessors of aeio U. And sometimes
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: times why sometimes sometimes why why is it tricker? What
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: this is the creation of the first true alphabet, meaning
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: both vowels and consonants are explicit symbols in a single script.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: In the early years, we already see fragmentation. There were
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: so many variants of the Greek alphabet, and as a result,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: many other different alphabets evolved from these differing systems. We
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: see this time and time again. Dude, everybody wanted a
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: single system of language, but they all wanted it to
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: be the one they had made.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: What could go wrong, what could go wrong, and many things.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: It turns out the Latins that later were known by
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: the Romans, of course, you know, with their sandals and whatnot,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: they were super into this idea and they you know,
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: this is another language thing that happens, a lot of pinching,
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: you know, picking and choosing from other cultures and other alphabets.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: They did this from the Greeks, as they did with
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: lots of other things. We know. The Romans were notorious
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: idea thieves, but they did.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: You know, they did improve a lot of things, wouldn't
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: you say, Ben, But they're spin on it.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They also looked at Etruscan civilization and they said,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: we like what those folks are doing. Let's take this
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Grecian alphabet and let's add the letters F and S
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: just like our friends down the way, and ancient Latin
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: did not have the letters G, J, V or U
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: as they will call it, W, Y and z. But
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: by about the third century CE, the Roman alphabet started
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: to look very similar to what we would call modern English.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: They had every letter except for J U or V
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and W and V and you just by the way
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: ridiculous historians, V and you have a cartoonish shared history.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Both were used throughout the Middle Ages, and until relatively
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: recently they were considered a single letter, so you kind
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: of had to read on context. That's why every Dan
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Brown esque Indiana Jones esque film you see that has
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: old Latin.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: Is it a V?
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Is it a W?
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: That That's why people were just freestyling exactly right.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: The history of writing in Britain actually, however, begins with
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: the Anglo Saxons, and that was in the fifth century CE.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: They had significant ties to Scandinavia and other cultures from
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: the North Sea regions. The ancient Anglo Saxons had a
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: form of writing called oh my goodness futhorc.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: You gotta say it with your chestthorp.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: It's like a rodos yes just right, dragon shouts shout out. Indeed,
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: this k of dragons shout out. It was a It
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: totally is, man, It's a runic language. That's what the
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: dragon shouts were. If you've ever played the game, which
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: is a lot of fun, although it pisses me off, man,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: because I'm at a place again where I'm gonna have
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: to start over because I've gotten to a game breaking
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: place in my save and my old saves are too old,
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: and I just am not gonna I don't know if
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna do it.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Man, I love the game so much, but it keeps
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: letting me down.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: It's okay, you'll always end up being a stealth archer.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: That's true. I am a little bit of a you
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: know that.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Where the game takes you. I mean, flexible ruines kept
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: getting added to this foothork and when what we see
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: is a pretty stunning evolution. Fouthort just appeared in England
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: with twenty six character and by the time it went
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: out of fashion around the eleventh century Common era, it
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: already had thirty three characters total. So people kept adding
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: rooms to depict abstract ideas. And you know, around this
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: time too, there's event diagram always happens with language. So
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: if we go back from the eleventh century to the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: seventh century. We'll see that the Latin alphabet was introduced
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: by Christian missionaries and it began to take hold. The
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: first formal list of all the letters or all the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: symbols or characters in the Old English alphabet comes around
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: ten eleven CE. It had a lot of the hits.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: It had a lot of the hits.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: It included all of our modern English letters, including j,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: U or V and W. This wasn't a modern alphabet yet. However,
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: we do want to give a show out to everyone
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: who's encountered this firsthand in high school, in your high
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: school classroom, or perhaps in college, where students may still
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: to this day be forced to read the likes of Beowulf,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: which I think is pretty cool. He's got a monster,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: it's got a muscle man, our hero, Beowolf. But the
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: language is a bit let's just call it not a challenging.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Isn't even the right word? Yeah, Ben, Yeah, no.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I propose that we collectively prank ourselves and Max get
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: in on this if you want. But we have included
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: a written Old English sample of the first part of
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: BeO Wolf. So here's what I'm thinking we'll all get
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: a little of this. Let's read part of it, and
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: let's just do our best. A lot of these characters
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: are unfamiliar, and then right after we will play a
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: clip of someone reading it accurately. Sound good.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I love this game so much. Right, Okay, Ben,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: you found this. You gotta start.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, here we go. What the gardana ingarda gum singa
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: berm garfernoon wo die please eiliing frem.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, what are you like? The the arm from twin Peaks.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: It sounds like you're reading backwards. I am the arm.
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: Off sklid scaffing, scappiana, pritum monogum magpum made us said,
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: flash off your eggs soda. It's like sounds like Latin
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: eggs oda er la siur and nearest weird the s
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: funding he pas pro frey gibod Vaux underwelcoming.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it all right, back you doing, you
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: do it so we all get it?
• 20:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, welcome underwelcoming, paw odd pat him egg.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Well yes, the betting dra just power through it.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Bro.
• 21:06
  Speaker 7: I'm gonna offer hot not hind boom ban hot wow,
• 21:15
  Speaker 7: good scion.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: It actually gets easier to keep keep going, keep going.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: That was the end. That was.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: All right, the arm yes, so we we hope you
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: enjoyed that, folks. Clearly we're having the time with it.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: We're gonna take just a second and play, uh a
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: rendition of those lines as the boffins say they're supposed
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: to sound. Are we ready?
• 21:39
  Speaker 7: Yest way, God, Dana and your dog.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: We did a perfect job.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: Whiss chilled shaving.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: We don't have the guitar, want to go through off eggs.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: So the old loss suit an artist?
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Pretty good, pretty good.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Hey, that's throw about him. That's my favorite word, right there?
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: A shooter.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: That was good, That was good.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: All right, we're so good.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: No, that is not what that line says.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: That was good signing right there, boys, let me tell
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: you what that is not.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: How it's written, like well done, well done.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Other than that line, I think I was absolutely perfect.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: So you were spot on. All thank you you're seven
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: all right.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Tough crowd, tough crowd.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I give you a nine to five then, thank you, sir.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that. I will pay you in bed bucks.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: We can already tell you, guys, this is not the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: English most people speak today. And I'm sorry that I
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: keep go fiing and giggling and stickert at this, but
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I love that we were able to explore that with
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: with our audience. To get to modern English, we got
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: to go through Middle English. And this is still weird,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: still weird, still very weird. This is a period of
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: English development that we owe largely to warfare, the Norman invasion.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: That's right, Shortly after the olding the Chaphabet was first
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: writ down writ large and or small.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: The Normans invaded.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: Ten sixty six CE, and English as a language was
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: then at this point considered something of a I don't know,
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: a feature of the low. The low bore nobility, clergy, scholars,
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: and other top dogs. They were speaking in Latin, that
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: was the fan. The lads used to speak Norman or Latin.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: But by the thirteenth century, when writing in English began
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: to become a bit more prominent, the language started to
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: reflect this these centuries of Norman conquest and rule.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, old English letters that used to be just for
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the poor and the hoi poloi, things like tharn and
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: eight were replaced by the sound t h and then
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: ving or win eventually became.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Uh or w right and the other English letters were jettison, no,
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: no need go home. Get yeah, I don't even go home,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: just jump in a well for all it. And this
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: stuff is definitely still challenging.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: And as we're going to see with I know what
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: you pulled here, Ben, I know this body.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: Bits mitt it's your favorite part. It's so fun to say,
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: and it really does. Remember we were talking about, like,
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: you know, a language composed entirely or largely of consonants
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: is gonna have this gruff, like absolutely grinding grading kind
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: of quality. But when you introduce a lot of these
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: these you know, vowel sounds, you get a very sing
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: songy thing, and this Middle English really does kind of
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: drive that home. What we're talking about, of course, is
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: Chaucer's famous work that you were also probably forced to
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: read excerpts of in school, The Canterbury Tales.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and we are we are clearly delighted with
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: some big Friday energy to share with you our and
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: excerpt from our favorite part of The Canterbury Tales, which
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: was never completed. No, here's what I think. Let's have
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: you just for the fun man, let's have you give
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: us the excerpt from the Miller's tale the sauciest bit
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: in Middle English and the max if we could lean
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: on you, maybe give us the modern translation.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Ben, that's so generous, it makes be very happy. I
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: swear my big weird Friday energy will not go to waste.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: And again, folks, this is the Middle English version. You
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: can still hear the rhyme, but please listen carefully as
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Noel continues.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: Yes, and listen for the dirty innuendos.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: There we go the window. She on death, and that
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: in haste have to quote she come off and speed
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: the faster, lest that our neighbors the espie a spy.
• 26:32
  Speaker 8: Perhaps this absalom Gan whippy, his mouth full dry Dirk
• 26:39
  Speaker 8: was the night as peach or as call. And at
• 26:43
  Speaker 8: the window out she put down here hole and absalom
• 26:48
  Speaker 8: him feel no better anywheres. But with his mouth he
• 26:53
  Speaker 8: Kisseda here naked airs.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Air spelled e R s S.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Get the vibe. It was a big mistake he aired
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: in kissing her naked ass.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to you know. It's very I'm
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: going to be honest with you guys, very difficult for
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: me as a nerd to not jump in and finish
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: this in Middle English but so everyone understands as we're
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: getting to the English alphabet. Luckily, our super producer Max
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: has his own big yes and energy. Max, could you
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: give us the modern English translation of what we just heard,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: and please please lean into the most ridiculous voice possible.
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: Accents are okay, the windows, she undoes, and that in haste,
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: get done with it, said she Come on and hurry
• 27:43
  Speaker 6: up lest our neighbors as be thee.
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: I guess we don't have a translation for that one.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Power through it.
• 27:50
  Speaker 7: But this ab so lone wiped his mouth very draw
• 27:57
  Speaker 7: doc with the night as pitch or as the coal,
• 28:03
  Speaker 7: and at the window out she put her hole and
• 28:11
  Speaker 7: absolon to keep him happen dead, no better nor worse.
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: But with his mouth he kissed herd naked ass.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: A plus ap plus.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that voice was, Max, I love it.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: It sounds like it terrified. It's a I'll tell you
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: who it is. It's a guy from the northern Peninsula
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: of Michigan who's talking to the afternoon regional news.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: I think it's a dude who finds us on our
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: canoe trip in the woods and tells me I got
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: a pretty mouth, right.
• 28:45
  Speaker 6: I think it's your super producer trying to read a
• 28:51
  Speaker 6: English translation of Gipperish.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: You know, hey, we get We get the gist though, guys.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: It's says she sticks her out the window and make
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: some kiss kiss her on it, right in the right,
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: in the whole.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so fabulous because you have racy stuff, chaucer,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: you scamp, but butt jokes aside. We can clearly I'm
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: not above it.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: We can. You're believing it. In fact, yes, I'm up
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: there with it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we could clearly see and hear the similarities in
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Middle English. Right, we're off to the races linguistically. Yet no,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: old fellow ridiculous historians, we are not quite done. Middle
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: English is already the result of thousands of years of
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: warring cultures and translations and mistranslations and invasions. It still
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: needs one more revolution to reach what we call modern
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: English today. And this time the revolution is not warfare.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: The revolution is technology.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the revolution will not be televised, but it
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: certainly will be broadcasts in a sense.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, we are going to learn more about the invention
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: of the printing press, and we will do that in
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the second part of our weird exploration of the English
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: language and how it became a thing. No, Uh, you
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: and I are on the road pretty often, and uh
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: we have as everybody knows, we have a great love
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: of museums and libraries. And I gotta tell you still, man,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: I am baffled by Old English, like I am baffled
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: by Beowulf. And I think we did an okay job
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: reading that.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Oh it was a delight to do it.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Ben, Would you say that there are some similarities between
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Old English and Welsh? Yes, Like there's a lot of
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: those same weird phonemes that exist, and a lot of
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: like extra consonants and stuff.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of Uh, there's a lot of
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: script and uh sound the script to sound when you
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: look at it? You think you get there, buddy. As
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: as I've probably mentioned too often, I am still phenomenally
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: baffled by the way the Welsh used the letter F.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: That's one, there's two f's And.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: What is it for? What is it? What is it
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: good for? A for sure?
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: And speaking of F words, thank you so much to
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: everyone for tuning in joining us for part two of
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the English Alphabet. Speaking of our favorite F word, big
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: big thanks to our pal Jonathan Strickland ak the quister.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah Baby Jay, big big thanks of course as well
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: to our super producer and newest favorite voice actor, mister
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Max Williams.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Christopher Aciotis needs the chef codes here in Spirits and
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: uh geez, well, we'll keep a short This is a
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: two part we can think the rest of them part two.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: Thanks to you Ben for your linguistic sojourns and spelunkings
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: into the topic of the English alphabet and the wherefores
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: and the whys and the how tos of its creation.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, uh vos who held to you which apparently
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: means being good.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Health and with hughes as well. Then we'll see you
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: next time, folks.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.