Short Stuff: History of English

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. Jerry's here and if you'd never noticed before, we're speaking English. So we're going to talk about the history of the English language, because that's the one we use right now.

Yeah, the briefest history, because we certainly could have done like a really robust, full episode on this. Yeah, but I like this short version. And we want to thank English Club dot com and a particular The Conversation dot com and a professor of litt at the University of Bristol name ad Putter.

Go fighting Abby's is that what it is?

You got me again?

But anyway, Putter wrote a really good article that helped out with this one. But we're talking about the history of the English language briefly because I was just kind of curious, like, who are the first people to speak English? And the first English is what you have to talk about first, which is of course Old English, which came

Yeah, So it's just interesting that Romans spoke Latin, but the Brits spoke Celtic. And then after the Romans left, because their empire was crumbling around them, the Brits still kept speaking Celtic, but not for very long because the Romans had basically been occupying Britain, but they'd also been in turn protecting it. But as the Roman Empire crumbled, that left Britain totally vulnerable and open to invasion, and

Yeah, they spoke what's called North Sea Germanic, and those Celtic speakers were kind of they ended up where they ended up, which was north and west in what we now call Ireland and Scotland and Wales. So the Angles, which was one of those Germanic tribes like you've ever heard Anglo Saxon, that was because they were the Angles, and the Saxons and the Jutes.

Two of the three of those tribes were.

The Angles and the Saxons, and once they got to Britain, their language was referred to as what we would call Old English or Anglo Saxon, and it is is the original form of English, and this was used in the early Middle Ages. But this is not anything that you would recognize as English as we know it today, except for just a few words here and there.

Yeah, like his he some of these really really old words. And remember he they think is possibly like as old as humanity, as far as words go. That was already in use. But yeah, it didn't bear much of a resemblance, and so old English chuck was in use I think from about four fifty to eleven hundred CE.

Yeah, and you know, the original thing that got me looking for this was if they could pinpoint, like not necessarily the people, but who the first English speakers were. But our friend professor Putter here actually does name a couple of people, and this is you know, this is sort of as legend goes. But when these Germanic tribes came through, they asked a couple of those leaders, Hingist and Horsa to come in and help protect the country.

And they showed up. They and of.

Course again this is this is as the story goes, so we really don't know if it's true or not, but they would have been the ones that brought in this Old English. So technically you could say that they were maybe the first English speakers as know it as Old English.

That's so fascinating, Like if these guys aren't legendary, they are the first English speakers in England or Britain. Yeah, so Old English stuck around until the Normans came along. So in ten sixty six, William the Conqueror, the head of the Normans, he was the Duke of Normandy, which is in France today, showed up in England and said, hengist horsa, You guys are a few hundred years old. It's time for you to hand over the reins to

And so the.

Normans brought French to England, but rather than it becoming totally widespread, it actually became part of what Professor Putter calls a linguistic class division, where the royal court and the upper classes spoke the King's French, and then the lower classes continued to speak Old English.

Yeah, and what's going to happen here?

Of course, And as we'll see, as England got to conquering for hundreds of years, you pick up on words as you move about the earth, and in this case, a lot of French words were added to what was now known as Middle English.

Do you want to hear one that I guessed was right?

Yeah?

Sausage, Oh yeah, sausage sage. Yeah.

Let's take a break.

When we come back, we'll talk about a big change that happened to Middle English pronunciation that linguists are.

Still trying to figure out right after this.

So this is like, if you've ever read Chaucer, which I did in college, like the Canterbury Tales, this is I thought, like, we read Old English some in college, but there's no way because when I saw examples of Old English, it's not even decipherable hardly. What I was reading was Middle English. And that's what Chaucer was, and that was you know, that's a challenge as well. Yeah,

Yeah, they used to say for sheep, they would say shape.

Oh, I thought you were gonna say They said.

No, no, And I didn't understand how we said that. It shortened from shape to sheep. Sheep sounds like it's longer than shape. But there was a huge change in vowel pronunciation in English around this time. And from what I saw, they're totally baffled as to why this happened. They just know that it did around this time, and that actually contributed to another huge change in the English language, at least spoken English, with this huge great vowel shift.

Yeah.

And then then from there the changes were much more subtle. It was, like I said, England was conquering from all over the world, so little words got added here and there. Printing was a thing now, so they're like, you know, we need to kind of standardize everything because people are reading for the first time and books are kind of

Well.

Plus also, the Brits were pretty firmly in charge of the world for a while, and they picked up a lot of words from different corners of the British Empire. So, for example, the word bandana comes from India.

Did you know that?

I did not know that that's.

Considered an English word even though it wasn't originally an English word. It just got absorbed into the English language and it became a further addition to the modern, late modern English vocabulary.

When you look at the word, though, it totally looks like an Indian word. Yeah, bandana was probably imagine that A was changed, right.

And there's probably a y in there somewhere that really shift juiced it up.

One more person we should shout out though, And this was I just thought was sort of an interesting addendum that doctor Putter had found was kind of shouting out the first poet, uh as far as English poet, and this was someone named cadmon c A E D m O n hail. And there was a historian monk named.

Uh b E d E. I don't I don't know if.

That's Bede or it's just be d. Oh it is bed I'm cute.

That's so cute.

But I think b D is the one who committed Cadman's story to history, which is pretty great because Cadman was someone who was illiterate basically, and as the story goes, like got this gift of poetry from God and was the first English poet as we know it, which means it's Old English, which means looking at these words is impossible. It looks like someone was typing and like passed out or something.

It does You're gonna You're gonna take a shot at it.

I mean, I'll try.

Uh.

These are the first lines of a poem, which translated would mean now we must praise the guardian of the heavenly kingdom, the rulers might and his plan. But has written in Old English as a poem was new as in you new scolgone hereon, Heophandris is weird, metodis mitt and his and his and I got that part and his mud mudgia punk.

So yeah, Moge, is it that weird? B? Is that? How do you pronounce the beat?

I don't even know. It's the thing that's It's like, am I A B or am I A P? I can't decide, so I'll just I'll be both foren I'll write it.

So it's confusing. I'm not sure what that even is.

But moge, we'll say bank. Modge bank means plan in old English. So from now on, I'm going to say, don't worry, I have a modge bank.

Oh I hope you remember that. I want to say moge bunk from now on on the show.

All right, we'll try to remember.

All right, all right, so that's the modge bunk. That's what we're gonna do.

This is right, Okay, I think you just cemented it. But it is interesting to say that and in his is we're both. I mean, this is a thousand or almost two thousand years ago. This guy wrote this, and you can look at it and say, oh, I noticed those two at least and his Yeah, I don't know what the rest says, but and his is in there right.

Do you have mascots if you don't have sports teams?

Uh?

Yeah, I think just to kind of create general goodwill among the student population. That's the real function of a mascot.

I just didn't know if that was an American thing or what.

I don't know.

We'll find out if you go to University of Bristol or even just know what their mascot is right in and let us know. Okay, all right, good match punk Yeah, short stuff is out.

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