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Short Stuff: History of English · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Jerry's here and if you'd never noticed before, we're speaking English.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about the history of the
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: English language, because that's the one we use right now.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the briefest history, because we certainly could have done
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: like a really robust, full episode on this. Yeah, but
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I like this short version. And we want to thank
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: English Club dot com and a particular The Conversation dot
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: com and a professor of litt at the University of
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Bristol name ad Putter.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Go fighting Abby's is that what it is?
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: You got me again?
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: But anyway, Putter wrote a really good article that helped
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: out with this one. But we're talking about the history
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: of the English language briefly because I was just kind
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: of curious, like, who are the first people to speak English?
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: And the first English is what you have to talk
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: about first, which is of course Old English, which came
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: about right after the Romans left Britain. This is you know,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: it was a very long time ago they colonized Britain,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: but they were like things aren't going so great in
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: the Roman Empire, so we're gonna leave.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's just interesting that Romans spoke Latin, but
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the Brits spoke Celtic. And then after the Romans left,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: because their empire was crumbling around them, the Brits still
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: kept speaking Celtic, but not for very long because the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Romans had basically been occupying Britain, but they'd also been
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: in turn protecting it. But as the Roman Empire crumbled,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: that left Britain totally vulnerable and open to invasion, and
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: in very short order that's exactly what happened. Three Germanic tribes,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, all basically came
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: down from northern Germany Denmark area and said, we own
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: this place. Now, you guys are going to start speaking
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: like us.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they spoke what's called North Sea Germanic, and those
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Celtic speakers were kind of they ended up where they
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: ended up, which was north and west in what we
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: now call Ireland and Scotland and Wales. So the Angles,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: which was one of those Germanic tribes like you've ever
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: heard Anglo Saxon, that was because they were the Angles,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: and the Saxons and the Jutes.
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: Two of the three of those tribes were.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: The Angles and the Saxons, and once they got to Britain,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: their language was referred to as what we would call
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Old English or Anglo Saxon, and it is is the
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: original form of English, and this was used in the
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: early Middle Ages. But this is not anything that you
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: would recognize as English as we know it today, except
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: for just a few words here and there.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like his he some of these really really old words.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: And remember he they think is possibly like as old
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: as humanity, as far as words go. That was already
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: in use. But yeah, it didn't bear much of a resemblance,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and so old English chuck was in use I think
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: from about four fifty to eleven hundred CE.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, the original thing that got me
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: looking for this was if they could pinpoint, like not
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: necessarily the people, but who the first English speakers were.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: But our friend professor Putter here actually does name a
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: couple of people, and this is you know, this is
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: sort of as legend goes. But when these Germanic tribes
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: came through, they asked a couple of those leaders, Hingist
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: and Horsa to come in and help protect the country.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: And they showed up. They and of.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Course again this is this is as the story goes,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: so we really don't know if it's true or not,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: but they would have been the ones that brought in
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: this Old English. So technically you could say that they
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: were maybe the first English speakers as know it as
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Old English.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: That's so fascinating, Like if these guys aren't legendary, they
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: are the first English speakers in England or Britain. Yeah,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: so Old English stuck around until the Normans came along.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: So in ten sixty six, William the Conqueror, the head
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: of the Normans, he was the Duke of Normandy, which
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: is in France today, showed up in England and said,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: hengist horsa, You guys are a few hundred years old.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: It's time for you to hand over the reins to
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: May William the Conqueror. And it just so happened, since
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: he was from what's today part of modern France, he
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: spoke what you would kind of recognize as a type
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: of French.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: And so the.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Normans brought French to England, but rather than it becoming
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: totally widespread, it actually became part of what Professor Putter
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: calls a linguistic class division, where the royal court and
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the upper classes spoke the King's French, and then the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: lower classes continued to speak Old English.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and what's going to happen here?
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Of course, And as we'll see, as England got to
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: conquering for hundreds of years, you pick up on words
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: as you move about the earth, and in this case,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of French words were added to what was
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: now known as Middle English.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Do you want to hear one that I guessed was right?
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Sausage, Oh yeah, sausage sage. Yeah.
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: Let's take a break.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: When we come back, we'll talk about a big change
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: that happened to Middle English pronunciation that linguists are.
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: Still trying to figure out right after this.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: So this is like, if you've ever read Chaucer, which
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: I did in college, like the Canterbury Tales, this is
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: I thought, like, we read Old English some in college,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: but there's no way because when I saw examples of
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Old English, it's not even decipherable hardly. What I was
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: reading was Middle English. And that's what Chaucer was, and
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: that was you know, that's a challenge as well. Yeah,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: but it definitely wasn't Old English. And actually toward the
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: latter part of Middle English is when something called the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Great vowel Shift happened, which basically shortened vowel sounds like
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: a lot, and it happened pretty quickly apparently.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they used to say for sheep, they would say shape.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: Oh, I thought you were gonna say They said.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: No, no, And I didn't understand how we said that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: It shortened from shape to sheep. Sheep sounds like it's
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: longer than shape. But there was a huge change in
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: vowel pronunciation in English around this time. And from what
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: I saw, they're totally baffled as to why this happened.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: They just know that it did around this time, and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: that actually contributed to another huge change in the English language,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: at least spoken English, with this huge great vowel shift.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: And then then from there the changes were much more subtle.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: It was, like I said, England was conquering from all
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: over the world, so little words got added here and there.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Printing was a thing now, so they're like, you know,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: we need to kind of standardize everything because people are
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: reading for the first time and books are kind of
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: cheap and they're more available. So the dialect of London,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: which is where the printing industry was, you know, sort
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: of lodged at first became the dialect of the English
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: language and the basis of the first English dictionary. This
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: is what we would call basically early modern English, and
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: it's the English as we know it. The difference between
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: early modern and late Modern is just to a lot
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: more words, because as the world evolved and technology evolved
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: and things like that, you just needed more words.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Plus also, the Brits were pretty firmly in charge of
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the world for a while, and they picked up a
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: lot of words from different corners of the British Empire. So,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: for example, the word bandana comes from India.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Did you know that?
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: I did not know that that's.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Considered an English word even though it wasn't originally an
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: English word. It just got absorbed into the English language
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and it became a further addition to the modern, late
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: modern English vocabulary.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: When you look at the word, though, it totally looks
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: like an Indian word. Yeah, bandana was probably imagine that
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: A was changed, right.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And there's probably a y in there somewhere that really
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: shift juiced it up.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: One more person we should shout out though, And this
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: was I just thought was sort of an interesting addendum
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: that doctor Putter had found was kind of shouting out
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: the first poet, uh as far as English poet, and
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: this was someone named cadmon c A E D m
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: O n hail. And there was a historian monk named.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: Uh b E d E. I don't I don't know if.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: That's Bede or it's just be d. Oh it is
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: bed I'm cute.
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: That's so cute.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: But I think b D is the one who committed
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Cadman's story to history, which is pretty great because Cadman
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: was someone who was illiterate basically, and as the story goes,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: like got this gift of poetry from God and was
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: the first English poet as we know it, which means
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: it's Old English, which means looking at these words is impossible.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: It looks like someone was typing and like passed out
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: It does You're gonna You're gonna take a shot at it.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'll try.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: These are the first lines of a poem, which translated
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: would mean now we must praise the guardian of the
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: heavenly kingdom, the rulers might and his plan. But has
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: written in Old English as a poem was new as
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: in you new scolgone hereon, Heophandris is weird, metodis mitt
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: and his and his and I got that part and
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: his mud mudgia punk.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: So yeah, Moge, is it that weird? B? Is that?
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: How do you pronounce the beat?
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: I don't even know. It's the thing that's It's like,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: am I A B or am I A P? I
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: can't decide, so I'll just I'll be both foren I'll
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: write it.
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: So it's confusing. I'm not sure what that even is.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: But moge, we'll say bank. Modge bank means plan in
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: old English. So from now on, I'm going to say,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: don't worry, I have a modge bank.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: Oh I hope you remember that. I want to say
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: moge bunk from now on on the show.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: All right, we'll try to remember.
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: All right, all right, so that's the modge bunk. That's
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: what we're gonna do.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: This is right, Okay, I think you just cemented it.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: But it is interesting to say that and in his
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: is we're both. I mean, this is a thousand or
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: almost two thousand years ago. This guy wrote this, and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: you can look at it and say, oh, I noticed
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: those two at least and his Yeah, I don't know
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: what the rest says, but and his is in there right.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: So that was it, and we take our hats off
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: to Professor Putter and the University of Bristol, whose mascot
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I still cannot find, even though I kind of looked
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: it up while we were recording.
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: Do you have mascots if you don't have sports teams?
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think just to kind of create general goodwill
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: among the student population. That's the real function of a mascot.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: I just didn't know if that was an American thing
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: or what.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: We'll find out if you go to University of Bristol
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: or even just know what their mascot is right in
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and let us know. Okay, all right, good match punk Yeah,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: short stuff is out.
• 11:50
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• 11:53
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• 11:56
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