Zimmit's FunHouse Adventure- oh yeah, the KKK still exists today, you’re never getting rid of them. And no, their leader is not in the White House, just for anyone that will try to make that case
As a German living next to the Dutch border it is VERY easy to understand Old English. In German the bird is called Nachtigal. Nearly all words in "simple rural live", heaven and "easy weapons" come from German words. Shakespeare still used the swine (Schwein/pig) and hound (Hund) is our word for a dog. We have Kuh (cow), Gans (goose), Acker (acre), Feld (field) Pflug (plough), Milch (milk), Sonne (sun) Mond (moon) Sterne (stars), Speer (spear) Schwert (sword), Axt (axe) and many more...
Most of the most common words in English come from native Old English roots, not from German - but it's definitely interesting to look at all of the English-German cognates, especially the ones where the connection is a bit blurry :)
@@simonroper9218 my surname is of olde English origin) 7th century Saxon England) Also originates from Devon aswell) so maybe that family who had that surname were Saxon invaders In Devon
@@joshuagreenslade3445 Old English, Dutch and German are all Germanic languages. I interpret him to be saying that the language spoken by the Plattdeutsch is closer to Old English than it is to modern German or Dutch. He is not saying it is not Germanic, just that it is not as close to modern German as it is to other Germanic varieties, specifically Old English. The concepts of German and Germanic are related but not the same.
@@Valhalla_Heathen Dansk 😎 D Hvad siger [seegh-er] han? N Hva siger han? S Vad säger [saygh-er] han? "E" What says he? Yes, you do - just think of it as a mix of distorted or misspelled Swedish & Pseudo English 😅 D Hvad skal vi [ve] give dem nu [noo*]? E What shall we give them now? D Kom her [heir]! Lad os [us] først [first] gå [go] ud igen [ee-gain] for at finde min fader [fa'th-er ! ] / moder [ mo(u)'th-er ! ] / broder [bro(u)' th-er ! ] / søster [s'oe's-ter]. E Come here! Let us first go out again (for) to find my father / mother / brother / sister. D Er [air] vi alle her allerede? E Are we all here already? Etc.
Where is your ego? It is so very refreshing to see an intelligent young man being knowledgeable and engaging without treating us to parade of his\her empty headed ego on centre stage. Keep up the good work. It would be great to hear more of you.
I whole heartedly agree. And my wife says he's cute. No wait, it was a cute accent. No, she's not saying that he's not cute, he is cute, but that his accent is pleasant...... Oh for god sakes woman! Make the post your damn self! [Sounds of the phone being handled and a few hand slaps] What I said was that I wish young men understood that being intelligent and well spoken is attractive, and it doesn't hurt if you're actually attractive too. Oh, and let me add... I love this explanation of the etiology of the English language. It's very interesting and illuminating. Thank you very much! [Yells over her shoulder] Come git yer damn phone! (Mutters) heathen...
Old English is waay easier to read and understand if you're German, because we still have all the inflectional case markings that Old English had. Also a lot of the OE words are a lot more similar to the German cognates than to the PDE equivalents. This comes in really handy when you're a German studying English diachronic linguistics :D
@@Zeutomehr Ja, bei uns an der Uni hat man die Wahl zwischen diachronic linguistics und synchronic linguistics :) und kann außerdem Zusatzveranstaltungen zu Old English und Middle English belegen
I think many people overlook the cultural and historical aspects of the English. As if English is the vanilla flavor and all the other cultures and languages are interesting. I think other people like to make English just a combination or alteration of other languages. Though that may be true, all languages are related, and English is just as valid of a language as any other. I find lots of people that are fascinated with ancient Rome or Persia or Scandinavia or Germany, and they geek out over the battles and lore and rituals and languages of these cultures, but few are interested in ancient England. This is just my experience here in the southern US, but I think it's a shame we overlook some cultural just because of their familiarity
This is definitely an unfortunate phenomenon. It happens in other countries too, e.g. many Brazilians are less interested in their Portuguese roots and traditions because they're seen as being so familiar that it's "boring" and unexciting
English history and lore is plenty popular - in the fantasy genre, which distorts real history through a mythical lens. Ancient epics did the same thing for their cultures’ histories.
Bro! I commented on another video "frooooddooo, no!" When was climbing around on some rocks cus omg it's so Lord of the rings (and yes, I mean it as a compliment)
@@sjakierulez But they aren't the bulk of our DNA, just little bits added in, we are, for the most part unchanged from the Celts that conquered the island 4-5 thousand years ago. if you take a DNA test it will say for a typical Englishman 50-60%British (Celts) and the rest will be German (Saxons) with a small mix of Scandinavian and Norman DNA The reason for the small amount of German in the English is because even back then the Anglo Saxons were mostly Native British People who adopted the English culture and became mixed and Eventually true Anglo Saxon. a Pure Anglo Saxon is a mix of Briton and Germanic. the same goes for English people today, just because there might be up to 10% something else does not make them different. Especially when the Scandinavians were already so closely related to Saxons. if you want actually learn read up on it.
This totally reminds me of when I visited Kenya. I went with a Tanzanian who talked about how Kenyan's speak "bad" Swahili. From what I gather there are a lot of polyglots in that region of the world. Swahili and English are both a lingua franca in both countries, but everyone has their own tribal or ethnic language. I guess when you have many groups of people who don't share a native language the mutually intelligible language probably starts to shift and change more rapidly than it normally would. Maybe 200 years from now there will be a New Swahili that will be very different from what people speak today.
In my view, it starts off with an accent in any language which gradually changes the language as a whole. I myself can not speak any other language apart from English, though languages do fascinate me. As an example, English is quite a widely spoken language and so there are many accents with it. My grandmother can hardly understand anyone that speaks English unless it’s in a West Yorkshire or posh British accent. Where as my self being exposed to many different ways of speaking can understand pretty much anyone. I hope to one day work towards being bilingual.
Many years ago I was walking up the stairs at home saying out loud "a", "e", "i", "o", "u" at each step. My kids asked me what was I doing. I said I was having a vowel movement. This was my great vowel shift.
I find this most interesting. I have been living in Germany for 50 years and have learned to hear and understand the many different inflections in the many dialects spoken. Language is always changing and I find it unfortunate that some modern forms of English try to simplify and reduce the richness of the language. Local dialects reveal the history behind speech. Don't lose them!
I think there is always a natural, organic struggle between simplification and complication. For example, Spanish and Italian are grammatically easier than Latin. Over time, there may be a build up of complexity (in English, I believe the build-up in complexity is the increase in vocabulary, rather than in grammar)
I've realised something very important recently when exploring other languages and cultures: How insufficient my understanding of my own native language really is. Your vids were an immeasurable help in this realisation. Thank you sir.
@@satunnainenkatselija4478 much like the latin and the rest of romance languages, they got stuck writing in vulgar latin for centuries past the romance language was already spoken in the day to day live but was still called latin, around 10th-12th you can see a drastic change on those writen languages to reflect the common usage.
It's just like how modern written Icelandic looks almost like old Norse, jus a few added "u"s and diphthongs here and there and of course terms for modern things. But this is an illusion caused by the very conservative spelling of Icelandic. Modern Norwegian which is spelled very differently than old Norse (and of course has lost almost all traces of cases) in spoken form really not that much more different from spoken old Norse than Icelandic is. The two languages has simply diverged in different directions but besides some differences in rates of loanwords and loss of case, the sound changes has happened at about the same rate.
This is not really accurate. Icelandic spelling actually very accurately represents Icelandic phonology - unlike languages like French or English with complex historical spelling, with Icelandic if you know the spelling rules you know how any word is pronounced. So, the fact that the spelling accurately represents modern Icelandic and also is extremely similar to ON means that Icelandic really has not changed much, as opposed to Norwegian, even in spoken form. It's not just cases, it's verb conjugation, gender, vocabulary and phonology as well. Now of course Norwegian does preserve a handful of Old West Norse features lost in Icelandic, but those are very few. It's a bit like how English is overall a much less conservative language than German, but English does preserve some proto West Germanic features that German has lost.
@@Philoglossos "if you know the spelling rules" is [au]? is [œi]? is [ʏ] and is [ɪː]? is [ai]??? I swear someone threw all the vowel letters and digraphs into a hat while they were designing this system. And don't get me started on the consonant digraphs. Just because you can accurately pronounce a word from knowing the rules doesn't mean the language's phonological changes were conservative.
@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm Incredulity isn't an argument, and besides, none of those changes are particularly odd (mostly diphthongization and fronting of back vowels to front rounded vowels). The phonology of Icelandic really is quite conservative, and these sound shifts amount to not much greater than the differences between many modern varieties of English. If you don't believe me, check out the Ecolinguist video on Old Norse - in it, Dr. Jackson Crawford speaks in ON in the reconstructed pronunciation, and with an audible American accent at that, and yet he is perfectly understood by the Icelandic speaker. Or we could just take an actual sentence and compare: Old Norse: [uːlvr̩ heːt maðr̩, sonr̩ bjaːlva ok halːbeɾu, doːttur uːlfs ins oːarɣa] vs Icelandic: [ulvʏr hjet maðʏr, sonʏr pjawlva oɣ hatɬpeɾʏ, towʰtʏr ulfs ɪns owarɣa] Like come on, if you think these changes are big enough to significantly impede intelligibility after a bit of exposure, you're kidding yourself.
This theory makes a lot of sense, I'm a native Spanish speaker, I've been in the UK for a decade now and I've always been interested in languages and history to me your theory explains the crazy difference between old English and modern English, as a Spanish speaker I can read any text in Spanish even from the 9th century and nothing really has changed other that some letters would have sounded more Italian than Spanish like the letter "z" I can even understand most words in any Latin text although I couldn't understand the context or what the text actually says but I have tried to understand old English and I've always found it fascinating how different it is to modern English, it's a language I'd like to learn. Keep up the good work
I hate to be this person, but I assume by you using 'whomever' you want to use proper formal speech. In your sentence there, it should be 'whoever it was', not 'whomever it was'. The pronoun who(m)ever inflects based on _its_ case _in_ the noun phrase, not on the case of the noun phrase. The noun phrase itself may be the accusative object of 'I'd like to thank x', but whoever would be the nominative subject (or in this case a compliment) in the phrase 'it was x'. If you don't give a damn about proper formal speech, sorry to waste your time. I swear I'm only half this annoying irl 😝
In the Early Middle English poem "The Owl and the Nightingale" that was supposedly written in the twelfth or thirteenth century (shortly after the death of King Henry, but it is uncertain whether Henry II. or Henry III. was addressed in the poem), there are still used inflected articles and a grammatical gender, for example "of thare ule" (of the owl, feminine gender) and "thes monnes earen" (the man's ears, masculine gender).
I love this poem, thanks for mentioning it! Both interesting from a language perspective and entertaining from a literature perspective. I believe it's thought to have been originally written in Kentish, a very distinct and linguistically conservative dialect in Middle English (kept grammatical gender until the 1300s), although the surviving copies have been “translated” to other dialects.
Trying to learn old english while we're in lockdown. Never found languages easy but old english seems to be very forgiving in interpretation and usage.
As a struggling foreign language student, I've often wondered how modern English lost gender for nouns and the need, for example, for agreement of adjectives. I think your hypothesis is very compelling, and the best I've heard to date (not that it seems to get discussed much)! Many thanks.
There may be another reason for the rapid change when the Vikings and Normans took over. It is likely there existed a class difference in Anglo-Saxon Britain with those people of Celtic orign speaking a more pidgeon version of Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Saxon nobility speaking and wrote a more classical and pure version of Saxon. When the Vikings and Normans invaded and replaced the Anglo-Saxon nobility, the Anglo-Saxon nobility would have been removed, and the pidgeon version of Anglo-Saxon spoken by the common people (which was not written down previously) would have taken over as the official version of Anglo-Saxon. In addition pidgeon Norse and later French that the newcomers would have added to English.
There were no doubt some British people who could read and write in 500 A.D. but a lot of what was written would be destroyed by the invaders. And the result is that there are lots of gaps in the historical record. People tended to think that the Celts were all pushed into the west, like the elves in The Lord of the Rings. And what we get between 500 and 1066 A.D. is the story of the Anglo-Saxon nobility, written in classical Anglo-Saxon as you said. Bede's histories are from an Anglo-Saxon point of view. But it's likely that in the great hall where Beowulf was first recited, there were people whom we would call Celts, perhaps with class distinctions in place. Yet at the time of Alfred the Great, there were also Welshmen who owned property in the kingdom of Wessex. They might have spoken Old English but with Celtic grammar.
Agreed. During this period, English became a form of French creole. Over 10,000 borrow words came into English from Norman French and the grammar was greatly simplified.
Only nobility spoke french, the peasant in the farm did not have contact with french, by the time norms conquer England the declination of cases was already happening.
@@BFRandall Do you really think the Ænglisc everyman toiling in the fields adopted swathes of French words because their landlords got replaced by foreigners? These words took centuries to seep into the language.
@@BFRandall I love modern English. I know all of the "Anglish" purveyors and Anglo-Saxon types will hate me, but I think of the Norman Conquest as an overall positive.
Refreshing low key editing. Very high quality content too especially compared to other channels on related topics. This channel is setting a new high standard.
I have to say, within just a few short videos you've made me look at my own language in a brand new light. Thank you. I never felt English to be that interesting of a language. I kind of feel ashamed because it's the only language I can speak fluently & I'm not even that great at it. I guess that's the product of living in America.
the history of the english language is storied and fascinating. if the british isles had never been repeatedly invaded after the anglo-saxons settled there, and if the british had never created a world empire and invaded just about every land on the earth, english today would likely sound a lot closer to old english (and to modern german, dutch, etc) than it does now
Hi Simon, Love your videos, just come across them now. I’m an emerging screenwriter in York and have just written a short screenplay “DEAPPENUNG” as part of the BFI Network Northern Exposure scheme, about a Celtic Christian missionary meeting a pagan priestess. I’ve attempted to translate it into Old English, but not knowing much about Old English academically or linguistics in general, I’m sure it’s pretty error-strewn. I’ve contacted a few academics up here in the north to see if anyone could recommend a keen student to have a look over it, but no joy so far. I was wondering if you might be inclined. It’s 7 pages (not solely dialogue!), 10 with Modern English subtitles. I thought it best to stick to Old English for both characters, rather than getting mixed up in Old Norse or even Brythonic.
There was a brief glimmer where I thought you were going to say that a lot of people are suggesting that the reason for the sudden shift was aliens (extraterrestrial aliens, not Scandinavian aliens)
What are the origins of your surname? Lol because many names of English origin came about because of the families profession like "Carter" or "Smith" etc were your ancestors badass or what? Lol
@@simonroper9218 The famous Great Vowel Shift was probably due to French speaking kings, noblemen and their families etc. having to pick up English after 3 - 400 years of linguistic dominance - a sort of full scale reality version of the hilarious BBC comedy 'Allo, 'Allo 😂
@@leehitt4704 No, the Normannic ones - they kept on speaking "French" for over 300 years after , before they had to pick up English for real - and of course they got all their vowels wrong just like they do today 😅
You've a new subscriber here. Great communication/presenting on show and I thank you for the information. I'm Irish and I picked the native language back up in the last year. It's very interesting when you start to understand why we speak the way we do. Keep up the good work 🙌🏻
@blackswan20 very interesting reading m'chara. What I found from when I started my irish journey again (I had 14 years teaching in school prior as withing Irish education system it's mandatory). As a pupil and student we never had the real understanding of the VSO structure only 9% of languages use this) along with pronunciation, mutation rules. I find that once you get a grasp of the underlying rules it flows off the tongue and combines quite elegantly. I'm not near fluent yet but with time that day shall come. My tip for anyone picking up a language would be to listen to native music for pronunciation and vocab. I've read that the Vikings became more Irish than us once they settled and inter-married. Same happened with the first batch of saxons who came over here to plunder. Couple of hundred years later they were referred to as the 'old English' who all spoke Gaelic and fought against the crown.
WOW. That's pretty interesting. I had no idea that the Flemish language and Anglo-Saxon English language had words in common. I can tell you that from the few words I know in Flemish I am in turn able to understand and pronounce (better) words in Scots Gaelic. So, on the flipside of your statement would I be correct in assuming that as a Flemish speaker you may not be able to understand much modern British English?
The Norman period where Norman French became a new prestige language, especially as a written language, in addition to Latin, probably also was a factor in loosening the standards of Old Language, and in turn, accelerating the language change at the vernacular level. As the vernacular gained prestige over Norman French, its outcome was congealed relatively quickly with the development of the printing press. Great videos!
I was about to make the same comment but I will leave it to you. The Norman conquest and the need for the two people to communicate certainly facilitated a simplified language.
@@sidibill What is even just as fascinating is how the quickly evolving Old English vernacular version fused so much Norman French into the vocabulary, making the new language so incredibly different from what was there just 200 hundred years before.
But the Old English inflexion system was already in decay as evidenced by errors in writing. The mass migration of Norse speakers had a greater effect precisely because the two languages were close in vocabulary but divergent in grammar. Middle English was was a pidgin which then absorbed first Norman French and Latin words.
In a old church on the Isle of Wight I found an old inscription above the entrance...made a photo and sent it to a friend in Island. It is actually islandic..old norse....
One example of the differences, but the similarities would be "to have" habban (OE) and hafa (ON): OE: ic hæbbe, þu hæfst, hé/héo/hit hæfþ, wé/gé/híe habbaþ ON: ek hefi, þu hefir, hann/honn/þat hefir, vér hǫfum, þér hafið, hie hafa OE collapsed the plural together like Old Saxon and Old Frisian, while ON collapsed the 2nd and 3rd person singular, which today is reflected in the single present inflection in all continental Scandinavian Germanic languages. With those two languages competing, it's not too difficult to see how they could collapse together into: ME: ich have, þu hast, he/sse, sche/it haþ, and we/ye/þey haþ, haveþ, have, or haven (see Saxon for the variations they have in dialect to this day). In the north of England, they said and some still do, from what I heard, "I haves, we haves, they haves," with the 'es' ending being simply the present tense indicative marker.
I feel like I watch a lot of videos on languages like old Norse / old English and I’m surprised that I haven’t discovered your channel until now! Thank you for the great videos :)
Listen to The History of English Podcast to learn an amazing amount of detail about the foundation and evolution of English over the millenia. Great podcast!
I was dumped here after falling into a clickhole and found it interesting an credible enough to watch the entire thing. Now thanks to Mr. Roper I am interested in learning more. Not now though - I'm going to jump into another c'hole
Very interesting channel. Nice to know that there is at least one person out there who cares to dispel myths and inform people nowadays about the origins of English.
There is a history video on UA-cam about this saying that Old English was almost extinct by Normanic French. French was so much in the rise that today England would speak French, had there not been the Pest. The Pest spread in the French speaking towns whereas the now Old English countryside was not affected. Then so many French speaking nobles had died, they allowed the court for justice the first time in English.
Not the pest, pride was the downfall of Norman French. They were embarrassed about how the Parisians regarded them, for the first time in a long time, the aristocracy and nobles started to use English. King John lost Normandy in 1204, and our Norman rulers began to think of themselves as Englishman more than anything else over time.
I heard from someone that before the rise of a very affluent class in and around S.East England that the language was universally(?) rhotic, and it is only with the rise of this class and their desire to distinguish themselves as higher class created the new pronounciation.
Ah I don't know. I suspect that it was probably more like that in regions other than the south-east, where due to court etc people would have had to travel there and most likely adopted the accent in order to fit in. These people would have been obviously very wealthy, being aristocrats primarily, but as the expansion of industry and the growth of the middle class happened, people probably started doing it more broadly and then bringing their new accents back with them, creating a new image of class as involving accents as well as simply titles and wealth. People don't generally change their accents to disassociate with others generally, but they do alter their accents in order to become part of an 'in-group'. It's similar to the theory behind Communication Accommodation Theory, where people prefer similar accents, and people are more likely to imitate the accents of those they wish to gain approval of.
I would have thought that one of main reasons why Middle English is so different from Old English is the Norman Conquest. When William the Conqueror became King if England, he initiated a language policy in which the most high status language was Latin, and the next most high status language was Norman French. The various dialects of English and Old Norse had very low status. For centuries very little was written in English, and the former standard of Wessex English was no more importance than any other form of English. The reason why some form of English survived was down to a number of factors. 1) Even though the English language had no status, the vast majority of people in England spoke dialects of English and old Norse dialects. 2) The hundred years war, in which the King of England claimed to be King of France but was not accepted as such. This caused England to be less connected to France and made English speaking more acceptable to the nobility. 3) The black death. This gave low status people more status. Because of these factors English (combined with Old Norse) dialects became more high profile, but because of the long period in the dark, the Old English dialects combined with the Old Norse dialects combined with aspects of French. So whereas old English was a purely Germanic language, middle and modern English is a hybrid language with words of Germanic and Romance origin. Also some of the words of Germanic origin are come from Old English and some from Old Norse.
Oh, and I'm a fan of the immigrant factor being the cause for much of the simplification. Once saw/read something about the Scandinavian immigrants being responsible for the adoption of "s" for most plurals, getting rid of all the crazy "eyen" but still leaving a few like "children", "oxen" etc. What's your take on that? Well documented or only theory?
If the plural -s was a result of Scandinavians, we would probably see it in other modern Germanic languages, but we don't. We do see it in Romance languages though, which means the -s could have been picked up from the Normans conquering England. (Coincidentally, the Norman conquest of England marks the switch between Old English and Middle English...)
@@haha69sexnumber Seems that -as was a common plural ending well before the Normans arrived. Check this link if you're interested. www.etymonline.com/word/-s
Latin had accusative plurals in -as, os, -es, -us and -es (in the 1st to 5th declensions) for masculine and feminine nouns, and these led to the French and Spanish (but not Italian) plurals in -s. When noun cases and genders disappeared from the hybrid Anglo-Norse language it must have been easier for Middle English to follow the Norman-French system. Plurals in -en are still disappearing: who says "shoon" or "hosen" any more? "Brethren" have been pushed out by "brothers," but "children" persist. "E'en" (eyes) remain in old ballads. "Eier" (plural of "eyes" meaning "eggs") is long extinct.
@Anglus Patria I'm very proud of my English (and Welsh) heritage and fascinated by its history - but then you come along, Anglus Patria, with your racist bollocks and fuck it up for all of us.
Always interesting to hear a simplified, conversation if you will, explination regarding the evolution of the English language; especially as it is in a constant state of flux and words are still being redefined in both meaning as well as pronunciation.
I just stumbled across your videos yesterday and first of all, I would like to give my deepest thanks and gratitude to this work! It is really hard to work out how language has changed when you really see it as a spoken and (!) written language. Many linguistics, philologists and people who studied their own "modern" version of poetry, etc. etc. really miss the fact, that there has always been regional dialects, accents, even influences of other languages that were solemnly having impact on one single district, because of whatever reasons - be it trade or just having a lot of foreigners in said community because of being a trade outpost and such things. I also wanted to say something to you as a native German speaker. In modern German language, there are two main styles of German, the "Hochdeutsch" (High German) and the "Niederdeutsch" (Lower German) which - linguistically spoken - have nothing to do with modern high German as a language spoken today but are merely two categories of regional dialects spoken above the Rhine and below the Rhine and how they developed. For example you used the word nightingale in modern English language and looked how it has changed over the years. The 14th century style of pronounciation is quite similar to how you would say it in modern German (Nachtigall - pronounced like the old English way, without the "e" at the end). There are a lot of English words that share these similarities, such as nightmare (Nachtmahr - a word not commonly used in modern German but was very common until the 17th century) and such. The funny thing is, as a native (modern) German speaker I would really say I understand Old English far better than Medieval German or even Old German (from around 7th - 12th century). Well, you have my deepest respect and please continue this great work! (Sorry if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes)
RP is the end result of the Norman French based aristocratic accent being aspirationally imitated by the lower classes. Modern RP has lost it's French sounding pronunciations. French speakers and the Queen pronounce land in much the same way. Queen... leeyand, French... Leeyond. RP... land.
btw, I've never heard that RP was an invented accent, but that it was systematically imposed through the school system throughout the country, homogenizing the speech of the educated, and leaving regional accents to the working classes.
I would consider this an understandable myth. There is little evidence that the Victorian state primary school system contained formal elocution lessons within its curriculum - which focused upon the 'three Rs'. It is plausible that in certain cases children were exposed to RP during dictation lessons due to their teacher being educated at a school, university or training college where RP was spoken. However, a majority of schools were staffed by people expressing themselves in regional accents - including the South East, where RP of that era (as opposed to today's RP) was not the local dialect. What makes the idea of RP becoming imposed via schooling understandable is, firstly, that it was of course seen as socially desirable to sound like people in the upper classes, and thus if you heard your teachers speaking in that manner, you might want to emulate them. But I think this was largely a spontaneous development, based upon people's own desires for social mobility and how they thought they could achieve it. Those eager for their children to progress into the middle and upper classes could send them for addition instruction at elocution schools. Popular culture of the era give us an impression of this - and also ironically an impression that it was far from a universal trend - in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. Professor Henry Higgins is a lone man on a quest when he attempts to transform Eliza Doolittle via personal elocution lessons. It lay outside of the formal education system. I'd wager that the development of telephone communication, radio and television were the major drivers of homogenisation - although the received pronunciation that has developed and been adopted by many as a lingua fraca is quite different from the RP of the upper classes as they once spoke! In the end it was the middle class accents of the urbanised southern cities and towns which became dominant, as the need to speak like the gentry to get ahead evaporated. Ironically, schools in the UK now more actively impose rules of standard English - and critique use of dialect - than they did 100 years ago, via the National Curriculum and the way in which grammar is either promoted or proscribed. 'The policy and policing of language in schools' by Ian Cushing of Brunel University (CUP 2019) is a good summary of modern trends in this and the social and political impetus behind it.
I'm skeptical about young Simon's claim to be an RP speaker. For instance, he pronounces lot as lo', i.e. with a glottal stop. Having been raised in South East London a very long time ago, I still do so myself when speaking informally. But that ain't RP, mate.
I think standardization had something to do with it as well. The invention of things like dictionaries probably slowed down linguistic drift. Even back in Shakespeare's day there wasn't set in stone standard pronunciation. As for the Anglo-Saxon days there was probably variation between village to village. I think technology and the internet will ensure that modern english will exist in some form for quite a while.
Yes. There were definitely archaic features up until the 20th century and before standard education some very old forms likely existed all over. Standard orthography, standard education, mass media... who knows what will become of language longterm under these. I feel like all languages have been homogenising semantically in our age as with mass culture.
Being an American, I find this very interesting. I am from Minnesota, which was mainly settled by Scandinavians. Here we speak with a Scandinavian inflection. When I joined the Army in 2004, I was the only guy from Minnesota in our company. I got made fun a lot for how I talked, but I took pride in it.
I believe we english speakers got our sentence structure from old norse. Seeing as the they are quite similar. I reckon its from the time under the danelaw.
An intro video for me. I have no clue who you are or if what you are saying holds validity. Your voice, however, is very unique and has a calming effect. Just an observation.
Your English has much improved Baldrich.
lol!
He was just acting in that video. This one was posted before that video where he had the Anglo-Saxon accent
Matthew Theobald no shit, Sherlock.
How has Baldrich got improved by your English, Bom Trown?
Mark Perrie I think you mean No shit, Baldrich 😂
I prefer you as an Anglo Saxon. Get the sheet back on!
get it off, say I, and everything else to boot...
😄
I am a goodly woman who will spin and weave you a proper tunic.
Zimmit's FunHouse Adventure- oh yeah, the KKK still exists today, you’re never getting rid of them. And no, their leader is not in the White House, just for anyone that will try to make that case
studybeats do we not? 😂
“look at it from two angles”, or maybe two Saxons. 😂😂😂
Very good. 🤣
Nice play that man!👌🏻
Or why not 3.7 Jutes?
Heh
Or four Frisians
As a German living next to the Dutch border it is VERY easy to understand Old English. In German the bird is called Nachtigal. Nearly all words in "simple rural live", heaven and "easy weapons" come from German words. Shakespeare still used the swine (Schwein/pig) and hound (Hund) is our word for a dog.
We have Kuh (cow), Gans (goose), Acker (acre), Feld (field) Pflug (plough), Milch (milk), Sonne (sun) Mond (moon) Sterne (stars), Speer (spear) Schwert (sword), Axt (axe) and many more...
Most of the most common words in English come from native Old English roots, not from German - but it's definitely interesting to look at all of the English-German cognates, especially the ones where the connection is a bit blurry :)
If you are Plattdeutsch, your language is actually not that related to German and Dutch, and is closer to Old English.
@@simonroper9218 my surname is of olde English origin) 7th century Saxon England) Also originates from Devon aswell) so maybe that family who had that surname were Saxon invaders In Devon
@@joshuagreenslade3445 Old English, Dutch and German are all Germanic languages. I interpret him to be saying that the language spoken by the Plattdeutsch is closer to Old English than it is to modern German or Dutch. He is not saying it is not Germanic, just that it is not as close to modern German as it is to other Germanic varieties, specifically Old English. The concepts of German and Germanic are related but not the same.
@@joshuagreenslade3445 Nice 👍
Baldrik, your English is coming along so well
LOL I saw that video earlier today.
hahahahahhhahaha
HAHAHAHHA
Ex animo exactly!
I honestly thought this guy couldn't speak New English. I feel betrayed.
Guy: “Can you understand me?”
Baldrik: “Ja.”
Ja ich understande. Guten Tag
Bjowolf2 Jag kan svenska men jag förstår det inte lol. Danska eller norska?
Holonaut Danke dich mein freund!
@@Valhalla_Heathen Dansk 😎
D Hvad siger [seegh-er] han?
N Hva siger han?
S Vad säger [saygh-er] han?
"E" What says he?
Yes, you do - just think of it as a mix of distorted or misspelled Swedish & Pseudo English 😅
D Hvad skal vi [ve] give dem nu [noo*]?
E What shall we give them now?
D Kom her [heir]! Lad os [us] først [first] gå [go] ud igen [ee-gain] for at finde min fader [fa'th-er ! ] /
moder [ mo(u)'th-er ! ] / broder [bro(u)' th-er ! ] / søster [s'oe's-ter].
E Come here! Let us first go out again (for) to find my father / mother / brother / sister.
D Er [air] vi alle her allerede?
E Are we all here already?
Etc.
Bjowolf2 Åh så snyggt! Tack så mycket min vän, jag gillar danska också men min danska är inte bra. Danmark är underbart! 🇩🇰
Where is your ego? It is so very refreshing to see an intelligent young man being knowledgeable and engaging without treating us to parade of his\her empty headed ego on centre stage. Keep up the good work. It would be great to hear more of you.
The guy is a refreshing testament.
I whole heartedly agree. And my wife says he's cute. No wait, it was a cute accent. No, she's not saying that he's not cute, he is cute, but that his accent is pleasant...... Oh for god sakes woman! Make the post your damn self!
[Sounds of the phone being handled and a few hand slaps]
What I said was that I wish young men understood that being intelligent and well spoken is attractive, and it doesn't hurt if you're actually attractive too.
Oh, and let me add... I love this explanation of the etiology of the English language. It's very interesting and illuminating. Thank you very much!
[Yells over her shoulder]
Come git yer damn phone! (Mutters) heathen...
as if old people dont have ego
Exactly. There is no fluff in his videos either.
@@fairwitness7473 I second your wife's opinion.
I honestly thought this guy couldn't speak New English. I feel betrayed
Nay
He learnt it.
Neigh
He apparently learned it super fast
What is New English? Thanx...
“They couldn’t be bothered to learn all the subtleties, so they just didn’t” mood
Old English is waay easier to read and understand if you're German, because we still have all the inflectional case markings that Old English had. Also a lot of the OE words are a lot more similar to the German cognates than to the PDE equivalents.
This comes in really handy when you're a German studying English diachronic linguistics :D
macht man diachronie als eines der themen im anglizismusstudium?
aber ja, ich kann das bestätigen, deutsch zu können hilft wirklich gewaltig
@@Zeutomehr Ja, bei uns an der Uni hat man die Wahl zwischen diachronic linguistics und synchronic linguistics :) und kann außerdem Zusatzveranstaltungen zu Old English und Middle English belegen
Late reply but damn you know your stuff.
@@shauryaveerrajkumar3950 she is hot first and foremost
@@christophercolumbus8944 That's the only reason he said it
I think many people overlook the cultural and historical aspects of the English. As if English is the vanilla flavor and all the other cultures and languages are interesting. I think other people like to make English just a combination or alteration of other languages. Though that may be true, all languages are related, and English is just as valid of a language as any other. I find lots of people that are fascinated with ancient Rome or Persia or Scandinavia or Germany, and they geek out over the battles and lore and rituals and languages of these cultures, but few are interested in ancient England. This is just my experience here in the southern US, but I think it's a shame we overlook some cultural just because of their familiarity
There's no evidence that "all languages are related"
This is definitely an unfortunate phenomenon. It happens in other countries too, e.g. many Brazilians are less interested in their Portuguese roots and traditions because they're seen as being so familiar that it's "boring" and unexciting
English history and lore is plenty popular - in the fantasy genre, which distorts real history through a mythical lens. Ancient epics did the same thing for their cultures’ histories.
Your pronunciation is really good, you should do a Canterbury Tales series.
Here....here. I agree
This dude looks like he just got out of The Lord of the Rings movies.
Bro! I commented on another video "frooooddooo, no!" When was climbing around on some rocks cus omg it's so Lord of the rings (and yes, I mean it as a compliment)
This not these.
Its because he doesn't use any lighting in his videos.
He even ahs owls on staves behind him.
No he really looks like Sam from Frodo
I'm so gutted that you're not an Anglo Saxon ;)
@Collin Vail Modern Englishmen can be referred to as Anglo Saxon. We are the descendents of them.
@@sandrojones8068 And of the French, scandinavian, anything I forgot?
@@sjakierulez But they aren't the bulk of our DNA, just little bits added in, we are, for the most part unchanged from the Celts that conquered the island 4-5 thousand years ago. if you take a DNA test it will say for a typical Englishman 50-60%British (Celts) and the rest will be German (Saxons) with a small mix of Scandinavian and Norman DNA The reason for the small amount of German in the English is because even back then the Anglo Saxons were mostly Native British People who adopted the English culture and became mixed and Eventually true Anglo Saxon. a Pure Anglo Saxon is a mix of Briton and Germanic. the same goes for English people today, just because there might be up to 10% something else does not make them different. Especially when the Scandinavians were already so closely related to Saxons. if you want actually learn read up on it.
@@sjakierulez If you can't read this because of tldr then your loss but I'm just telling it as it is. Do your own research.
@@chaden9498 The Normans were a mix of Romanized Gauls, Franks and Nordics. Pretty much the British mix. Hard to impossible to dissect.
This totally reminds me of when I visited Kenya. I went with a Tanzanian who talked about how Kenyan's speak "bad" Swahili. From what I gather there are a lot of polyglots in that region of the world. Swahili and English are both a lingua franca in both countries, but everyone has their own tribal or ethnic language. I guess when you have many groups of people who don't share a native language the mutually intelligible language probably starts to shift and change more rapidly than it normally would. Maybe 200 years from now there will be a New Swahili that will be very different from what people speak today.
In my view, it starts off with an accent in any language which gradually changes the language as a whole. I myself can not speak any other language apart from English, though languages do fascinate me. As an example, English is quite a widely spoken language and so there are many accents with it. My grandmother can hardly understand anyone that speaks English unless it’s in a West Yorkshire or posh British accent. Where as my self being exposed to many different ways of speaking can understand pretty much anyone. I hope to one day work towards being bilingual.
This happens through a creolization process. Look it up on Wikipedia - Creole language. It's a remarkably predictable linguistic process.
Try understanding someone from South Australia. I had to listen very carefully to make out what was being said.
No he’s actually right, most swahili speakers speak a very bad swahili
@@snikrdoodls14 did you do it?
Many years ago I was walking up the stairs at home saying out loud "a", "e", "i", "o", "u" at each step. My kids asked me what was I doing. I said I was having a vowel movement. This was my great vowel shift.
I love these videos. I teach English in California and show these to my students.
I find this most interesting. I have been living in Germany for 50 years and have learned to hear and understand the many different inflections in the many dialects spoken. Language is always changing and I find it unfortunate that some modern forms of English try to simplify and reduce the richness of the language. Local dialects reveal the history behind speech. Don't lose them!
TV is what killed the local dialects, at least here in the United States.
I think there is always a natural, organic struggle between simplification and complication. For example, Spanish and Italian are grammatically easier than Latin.
Over time, there may be a build up of complexity (in English, I believe the build-up in complexity is the increase in vocabulary, rather than in grammar)
I've realised something very important recently when exploring other languages and cultures: How insufficient my understanding of my own native language really is. Your vids were an immeasurable help in this realisation. Thank you sir.
@@satunnainenkatselija4478 much like the latin and the rest of romance languages, they got stuck writing in vulgar latin for centuries past the romance language was already spoken in the day to day live but was still called latin, around 10th-12th you can see a drastic change on those writen languages to reflect the common usage.
"less and less" self corrects to "fewer". Good man, Baldric!
It's just like how modern written Icelandic looks almost like old Norse, jus a few added "u"s and diphthongs here and there and of course terms for modern things. But this is an illusion caused by the very conservative spelling of Icelandic. Modern Norwegian which is spelled very differently than old Norse (and of course has lost almost all traces of cases) in spoken form really not that much more different from spoken old Norse than Icelandic is. The two languages has simply diverged in different directions but besides some differences in rates of loanwords and loss of case, the sound changes has happened at about the same rate.
This is not really accurate. Icelandic spelling actually very accurately represents Icelandic phonology - unlike languages like French or English with complex historical spelling, with Icelandic if you know the spelling rules you know how any word is pronounced.
So, the fact that the spelling accurately represents modern Icelandic and also is extremely similar to ON means that Icelandic really has not changed much, as opposed to Norwegian, even in spoken form. It's not just cases, it's verb conjugation, gender, vocabulary and phonology as well.
Now of course Norwegian does preserve a handful of Old West Norse features lost in Icelandic, but those are very few. It's a bit like how English is overall a much less conservative language than German, but English does preserve some proto West Germanic features that German has lost.
I will say western Norwegian dialects have a lot of archaic forms of words from Old Norse versus standard Bokmål
@@Philoglossos "if you know the spelling rules" is [au]? is [œi]? is [ʏ] and is [ɪː]? is [ai]??? I swear someone threw all the vowel letters and digraphs into a hat while they were designing this system. And don't get me started on the consonant digraphs. Just because you can accurately pronounce a word from knowing the rules doesn't mean the language's phonological changes were conservative.
@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm Incredulity isn't an argument, and besides, none of those changes are particularly odd (mostly diphthongization and fronting of back vowels to front rounded vowels). The phonology of Icelandic really is quite conservative, and these sound shifts amount to not much greater than the differences between many modern varieties of English. If you don't believe me, check out the Ecolinguist video on Old Norse - in it, Dr. Jackson Crawford speaks in ON in the reconstructed pronunciation, and with an audible American accent at that, and yet he is perfectly understood by the Icelandic speaker.
Or we could just take an actual sentence and compare:
Old Norse: [uːlvr̩ heːt maðr̩, sonr̩ bjaːlva ok halːbeɾu, doːttur uːlfs ins oːarɣa]
vs
Icelandic: [ulvʏr hjet maðʏr, sonʏr pjawlva oɣ hatɬpeɾʏ, towʰtʏr ulfs ɪns owarɣa]
Like come on, if you think these changes are big enough to significantly impede intelligibility after a bit of exposure, you're kidding yourself.
Video is a year old and it's getting so popular now. UA-cam algorithm ;)
Was thinking the same, 8 months in the future now.
This theory makes a lot of sense, I'm a native Spanish speaker, I've been in the UK for a decade now and I've always been interested in languages and history to me your theory explains the crazy difference between old English and modern English, as a Spanish speaker I can read any text in Spanish even from the 9th century and nothing really has changed other that some letters would have sounded more Italian than Spanish like the letter "z" I can even understand most words in any Latin text although I couldn't understand the context or what the text actually says but I have tried to understand old English and I've always found it fascinating how different it is to modern English, it's a language I'd like to learn.
Keep up the good work
I'd like to thank whoever it was who gave us one definitive article....
Thank the Vikings.
Cries in italian
Same here
I hate to be this person, but I assume by you using 'whomever' you want to use proper formal speech. In your sentence there, it should be 'whoever it was', not 'whomever it was'. The pronoun who(m)ever inflects based on _its_ case _in_ the noun phrase, not on the case of the noun phrase. The noun phrase itself may be the accusative object of 'I'd like to thank x', but whoever would be the nominative subject (or in this case a compliment) in the phrase 'it was x'.
If you don't give a damn about proper formal speech, sorry to waste your time. I swear I'm only half this annoying irl 😝
@@aislingoda6026 oh yeah hahaha, just a bit annoying sorry haha
In the Early Middle English poem "The Owl and the Nightingale" that was supposedly written in the twelfth or thirteenth century (shortly after the death of King Henry, but it is uncertain whether Henry II. or Henry III. was addressed in the poem), there are still used inflected articles and a grammatical gender, for example "of thare ule" (of the owl, feminine gender) and "thes monnes earen" (the man's ears, masculine gender).
You get some declensions in the King James Bible too
I love this poem, thanks for mentioning it! Both interesting from a language perspective and entertaining from a literature perspective. I believe it's thought to have been originally written in Kentish, a very distinct and linguistically conservative dialect in Middle English (kept grammatical gender until the 1300s), although the surviving copies have been “translated” to other dialects.
This is the most pleasing framing I have ever seen on UA-cam
My thoughts exactly! Something very eerie about it. Love it
I really appreciate the lighting in the video. It creates a cozy atmosphere. I feel like I’m watching a professionally made film.
His videos are beautiful
Trying to learn old english while we're in lockdown. Never found languages easy but old english seems to be very forgiving in interpretation and usage.
I haven't studied Old English at all, but this is so fun. What a nerd-out.
I'm reading your last name as a placeholder for a kenning you'll eventually decide on.
Improving your modern English, I see. You're doing well, baldric!
As a struggling foreign language student, I've often wondered how modern English lost gender for nouns and the need, for example, for agreement of adjectives. I think your hypothesis is very compelling, and the best I've heard to date (not that it seems to get discussed much)! Many thanks.
My German teacher once told us "Middle English and Middle German are different but Old English and Old German are pretty much the same"
Your videos are great! So informative, and well thought out. More please!
There may be another reason for the rapid change when the Vikings and Normans took over. It is likely there existed a class difference in Anglo-Saxon Britain with those people of Celtic orign speaking a more pidgeon version of Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Saxon nobility speaking and wrote a more classical and pure version of Saxon. When the Vikings and Normans invaded and replaced the Anglo-Saxon nobility, the Anglo-Saxon nobility would have been removed, and the pidgeon version of Anglo-Saxon spoken by the common people (which was not written down previously) would have taken over as the official version of Anglo-Saxon. In addition pidgeon Norse and later French that the newcomers would have added to English.
This idea makes perfect sense, that's the same theory we hold to explain the rapid shift from Vulgar Latin to Romance Languages.
pidgin
I think the language should be named British. Old English is English.
There were no doubt some British people who could read and write in 500 A.D. but a lot of what was written would be destroyed by the invaders. And the result is that there are lots of gaps in the historical record. People tended to think that the Celts were all pushed into the west, like the elves in The Lord of the Rings. And what we get between 500 and 1066 A.D. is the story of the Anglo-Saxon nobility, written in classical Anglo-Saxon as you said. Bede's histories are from an Anglo-Saxon point of view. But it's likely that in the great hall where Beowulf was first recited, there were people whom we would call Celts, perhaps with class distinctions in place. Yet at the time of Alfred the Great, there were also Welshmen who owned property in the kingdom of Wessex. They might have spoken Old English but with Celtic grammar.
@@MrGX200 I made a comment about how the Celtic languages in France were influenced by Latin, and how they influenced Latin as well.
The development of Twitter in 1398 really caused a major linguistic shift.
I think Norman French becoming the language of nobility in England after 1066 had the biggest influence on English dropping case and gender.
Agreed. During this period, English became a form of French creole. Over 10,000 borrow words came into English from Norman French and the grammar was greatly simplified.
disekjoumoer Norman French didn’t have case which might have helped drop it in English but it did have gender.
Only nobility spoke french, the peasant in the farm did not have contact with french, by the time norms conquer England the declination of cases was already happening.
@@BFRandall Do you really think the Ænglisc everyman toiling in the fields adopted swathes of French words because their landlords got replaced by foreigners? These words took centuries to seep into the language.
@@BFRandall
I love modern English. I know all of the "Anglish" purveyors and Anglo-Saxon types will hate me, but I think of the Norman Conquest as an overall positive.
Refreshing low key editing. Very high quality content too especially compared to other channels on related topics. This channel is setting a new high standard.
Brilliant, Simon ... thank you! ... Absolutely fascinating !!!
Wait. This is the anglo saxon guy from the anglo saxon old English interview video. That was an actor????
No, he learned english after that.
@@patrickmuller4953 ur Joking right?
Go to the og vid and read the description
@@CSSP_1188 yes.
He was just acting as old english guy
I have to say, within just a few short videos you've made me look at my own language in a brand new light. Thank you. I never felt English to be that interesting of a language. I kind of feel ashamed because it's the only language I can speak fluently & I'm not even that great at it. I guess that's the product of living in America.
the history of the english language is storied and fascinating. if the british isles had never been repeatedly invaded after the anglo-saxons settled there, and if the british had never created a world empire and invaded just about every land on the earth, english today would likely sound a lot closer to old english (and to modern german, dutch, etc) than it does now
I love it when people can simplify alot of information in a video. Subscribed
Hi Simon,
Love your videos, just come across them now.
I’m an emerging screenwriter in York and have just written a short screenplay “DEAPPENUNG” as part of the BFI Network Northern Exposure scheme, about a Celtic Christian missionary meeting a pagan priestess.
I’ve attempted to translate it into Old English, but not knowing much about Old English academically or linguistics in general, I’m sure it’s pretty error-strewn. I’ve contacted a few academics up here in the north to see if anyone could recommend a keen student to have a look over it, but no joy so far. I was wondering if you might be inclined. It’s 7 pages (not solely dialogue!), 10 with Modern English subtitles.
I thought it best to stick to Old English for both characters, rather than getting mixed up in Old Norse or even Brythonic.
Good luck, sounds interesting.
One of the most extraordinary youtube channels. I salute you, sir.
Now this is educational like your other vids. We need more of these. I would love to learn our old language.
There was a brief glimmer where I thought you were going to say that a lot of people are suggesting that the reason for the sudden shift was aliens (extraterrestrial aliens, not Scandinavian aliens)
You've now convinced me that that is the actual reason
What are the origins of your surname? Lol because many names of English origin came about because of the families profession like "Carter" or "Smith" etc were your ancestors badass or what? Lol
Richard Hacker oh, you mean the Nordic aliens? LOL
@@simonroper9218 The famous Great Vowel Shift was probably due to French speaking kings, noblemen and their families etc. having to pick up English after 3 - 400 years of linguistic dominance - a sort of full scale reality version of the hilarious BBC comedy 'Allo, 'Allo 😂
@@leehitt4704 No, the Normannic ones - they kept on speaking "French" for over 300 years after , before they had to pick up English for real - and of course they got all their vowels wrong just like they do today 😅
Dude, you are the Brian Cox of Linguistics.
I stumbled onto your vids and I am loving them. So very cool. Please keep going, I'm mesmerized. 🧠🤘
You've a new subscriber here. Great communication/presenting on show and I thank you for the information. I'm Irish and I picked the native language back up in the last year.
It's very interesting when you start to understand why we speak the way we do.
Keep up the good work 🙌🏻
@blackswan20 very interesting reading m'chara.
What I found from when I started my irish journey again (I had 14 years teaching in school prior as withing Irish education system it's mandatory). As a pupil and student we never had the real understanding of the VSO structure only 9% of languages use this) along with pronunciation, mutation rules. I find that once you get a grasp of the underlying rules it flows off the tongue and combines quite elegantly. I'm not near fluent yet but with time that day shall come.
My tip for anyone picking up a language would be to listen to native music for pronunciation and vocab.
I've read that the Vikings became more Irish than us once they settled and inter-married. Same happened with the first batch of saxons who came over here to plunder. Couple of hundred years later they were referred to as the 'old English' who all spoke Gaelic and fought against the crown.
@blackswan20 will do 🙌🏻👍🏻
btw, i'm a Flemish speaker & when you speak "old Anglo-Saxon" i can pretty understand everything you're saying.
wow
Soo where are you from
@Anglus Patria oh ok😆
WOW. That's pretty interesting. I had no idea that the Flemish language and Anglo-Saxon English language had words in common. I can tell you that from the few words I know in Flemish I am in turn able to understand and pronounce (better) words in Scots Gaelic.
So, on the flipside of your statement would I be correct in assuming that as a Flemish speaker you may not be able to understand much modern British English?
@@trojanette8345 Well, i can't speak for everyone else, but understanding Modern English is not a problem at all.
These vids are fascinating and your delivery is so natural and relaxed.
Thank you so much. Tack så mycket.
He's very protective of his RP I've noticed lol
The Norman period where Norman French became a new prestige language, especially as a written language, in addition to Latin, probably also was a factor in loosening the standards of Old Language, and in turn, accelerating the language change at the vernacular level. As the vernacular gained prestige over Norman French, its outcome was congealed relatively quickly with the development of the printing press. Great videos!
I was about to make the same comment but I will leave it to you. The Norman conquest and the need for the two people to communicate certainly facilitated a simplified language.
@@sidibill What is even just as fascinating is how the quickly evolving Old English vernacular version fused so much Norman French into the vocabulary, making the new language so incredibly different from what was there just 200 hundred years before.
Agreed. English became an oral, French Creole. It was not written again till Chaucer.
@@BFRandall I would not got anywhere near from such claim. French influence was huge, but English was still English.
But the Old English inflexion system was already in decay as evidenced by errors in writing. The mass migration of Norse speakers had a greater effect precisely because the two languages were close in vocabulary but divergent in grammar. Middle English was was a pidgin which then absorbed first Norman French and Latin words.
In a old church on the Isle of Wight I found an old inscription above the entrance...made a photo and sent it to a friend in Island. It is actually islandic..old norse....
One example of the differences, but the similarities would be "to have"
habban (OE) and hafa (ON):
OE: ic hæbbe, þu hæfst, hé/héo/hit hæfþ, wé/gé/híe habbaþ
ON: ek hefi, þu hefir, hann/honn/þat hefir, vér hǫfum, þér hafið, hie hafa
OE collapsed the plural together like Old Saxon and Old Frisian, while ON collapsed the 2nd and 3rd person singular, which today is reflected in the single present inflection in all continental Scandinavian Germanic languages. With those two languages competing, it's not too difficult to see how they could collapse together into:
ME: ich have, þu hast, he/sse, sche/it haþ, and we/ye/þey haþ, haveþ, have, or haven (see Saxon for the variations they have in dialect to this day). In the north of England, they said and some still do, from what I heard, "I haves, we haves, they haves," with the 'es' ending being simply the present tense indicative marker.
I feel like I watch a lot of videos on languages like old Norse / old English and I’m surprised that I haven’t discovered your channel until now! Thank you for the great videos :)
Listen to The History of English Podcast to learn an amazing amount of detail about the foundation and evolution of English over the millenia. Great podcast!
Always wondered about this question- thanks for shedding some light on it.
I was dumped here after falling into a clickhole and found it interesting an credible enough to watch the entire thing. Now thanks to Mr. Roper I am interested in learning more. Not now though - I'm going to jump into another c'hole
Ha... me too.
Same here!😂
Is this a click hole pit stop??? I'm off as well cheers
Very interesting channel. Nice to know that there is at least one person out there who cares to dispel myths and inform people nowadays about the origins of English.
There is a history video on UA-cam about this saying that Old English was almost extinct by Normanic French. French was so much in the rise that today England would speak French, had there not been the Pest. The Pest spread in the French speaking towns whereas the now Old English countryside was not affected. Then so many French speaking nobles had died, they allowed the court for justice the first time in English.
Not the pest, pride was the downfall of Norman French. They were embarrassed about how the Parisians regarded them, for the first time in a long time, the aristocracy and nobles started to use English. King John lost Normandy in 1204, and our Norman rulers began to think of themselves as Englishman more than anything else over time.
Bloody fascinating young man.... I’m loving th8s Channel
1650s Nightingale is just straight up a modern Irish accent haha
1400s sounds a lot like German to me.
Philboh8 sounds pure Geordie to me.
Not at all.
@@elliotvernon7971 sounds like a very Munster accent to me. (I'm Irish btw)
1750s is south west
Wow Baldric! You're Modern English has improved so much. That's great.
I heard from someone that before the rise of a very affluent class in and around S.East England that the language was universally(?) rhotic, and it is only with the rise of this class and their desire to distinguish themselves as higher class created the new pronounciation.
Ah I don't know. I suspect that it was probably more like that in regions other than the south-east, where due to court etc people would have had to travel there and most likely adopted the accent in order to fit in. These people would have been obviously very wealthy, being aristocrats primarily, but as the expansion of industry and the growth of the middle class happened, people probably started doing it more broadly and then bringing their new accents back with them, creating a new image of class as involving accents as well as simply titles and wealth. People don't generally change their accents to disassociate with others generally, but they do alter their accents in order to become part of an 'in-group'. It's similar to the theory behind Communication Accommodation Theory, where people prefer similar accents, and people are more likely to imitate the accents of those they wish to gain approval of.
Why your channel popped up per you tube..I have no clue..but I must say, I am thoroughly enjoying this! 👍 😉
Simon Roper succeeds in infecting people with his passion for languages and history. Glorious stuff.
this randomly popped into my recommended lol, but I must say that your voice is so nice to listen to!!
I’m in nerd-love.
Me too, & I love your username too! Yay for Irish Gods!
Beth&793 😉
@@lughlamhfhada Hehehe! Taking a random guess that you might know what the 793 in my username refers to?
Beth&793 No idea. Is that a year?
@@lughlamhfhada Yep, 793 AD, 1st Viking raid in England, of the monastery of Lindisfarne... Best known Viking-y date I can think of.
You are a TRUE teacher.
Wow, you've got great videos for sure! Thumbs up and well done. Thanks for uploading! =)
Simon, you are so knowledgeable and a great teacher. Thank you for your work.
I would have thought that one of main reasons why Middle English is so different from Old English is the Norman Conquest.
When William the Conqueror became King if England, he initiated a language policy in which the most high status language was Latin, and the next most high status language was Norman French. The various dialects of English and Old Norse had very low status. For centuries very little was written in English, and the former standard of Wessex English was no more importance than any other form of English.
The reason why some form of English survived was down to a number of factors.
1) Even though the English language had no status, the vast majority of people in England spoke dialects of English and old Norse dialects.
2) The hundred years war, in which the King of England claimed to be King of France but was not accepted as such. This caused England to be less connected to France and made English speaking more acceptable to the nobility.
3) The black death. This gave low status people more status.
Because of these factors English (combined with Old Norse) dialects became more high profile, but because of the long period in the dark, the Old English dialects combined with the Old Norse dialects combined with aspects of French. So whereas old English was a purely Germanic language, middle and modern English is a hybrid language with words of Germanic and Romance origin. Also some of the words of Germanic origin are come from Old English and some from Old Norse.
This is quite a thorough and profound explanation for the development of modern English. It’s quite fascinating to behold.
Oh, you beat me to it. I should have read the comments before commenting myself!
i don’t think middle and modern english are hybrid languages though, especially middle english, middle english still seems very germanic in speech
I’ve just come across your videos and it’s been lovely to remember that which I’d forgotten / thank you
The plagues as well decimated whole towns this affected communication and narrowed the dialects
Fascinating stuff thank you . You make it really come alive .
Oh, and I'm a fan of the immigrant factor being the cause for much of the simplification. Once saw/read something about the Scandinavian immigrants being responsible for the adoption of "s" for most plurals, getting rid of all the crazy "eyen" but still leaving a few like "children", "oxen" etc.
What's your take on that? Well documented or only theory?
If the plural -s was a result of Scandinavians, we would probably see it in other modern Germanic languages, but we don't. We do see it in Romance languages though, which means the -s could have been picked up from the Normans conquering England. (Coincidentally, the Norman conquest of England marks the switch between Old English and Middle English...)
@@haha69sexnumber Seems that -as was a common plural ending well before the Normans arrived. Check this link if you're interested. www.etymonline.com/word/-s
Latin had accusative plurals in -as, os, -es, -us and -es (in the 1st to 5th declensions) for masculine and feminine nouns, and these led to the French and Spanish (but not Italian) plurals in -s.
When noun cases and genders disappeared from the hybrid Anglo-Norse language it must have been easier for Middle English to follow the Norman-French system.
Plurals in -en are still disappearing: who says "shoon" or "hosen" any more? "Brethren" have been pushed out by "brothers," but "children" persist. "E'en" (eyes) remain in old ballads. "Eier" (plural of "eyes" meaning "eggs") is long extinct.
I don’t know why, but I find this really facinating.
Very good video, you need more subs!
Thanks, I appreciate it :) It's good to see people interested in the subject
I'm glad I discovered your channel.
Why at points does this sound like an apology video?
English is a mistake that's why 😂
@Anglus Patria I'm very proud of my English (and Welsh) heritage and fascinated by its history - but then you come along, Anglus Patria, with your racist bollocks and fuck it up for all of us.
Always interesting to hear a simplified, conversation if you will, explination regarding the evolution of the English language; especially as it is in a constant state of flux and words are still being redefined in both meaning as well as pronunciation.
I feel like he should have a glass of brandy in his hand and terrier dozing at his feet.
I just stumbled across your videos yesterday and first of all, I would like to give my deepest thanks and gratitude to this work! It is really hard to work out how language has changed when you really see it as a spoken and (!) written language. Many linguistics, philologists and people who studied their own "modern" version of poetry, etc. etc. really miss the fact, that there has always been regional dialects, accents, even influences of other languages that were solemnly having impact on one single district, because of whatever reasons - be it trade or just having a lot of foreigners in said community because of being a trade outpost and such things.
I also wanted to say something to you as a native German speaker. In modern German language, there are two main styles of German, the "Hochdeutsch" (High German) and the "Niederdeutsch" (Lower German) which - linguistically spoken - have nothing to do with modern high German as a language spoken today but are merely two categories of regional dialects spoken above the Rhine and below the Rhine and how they developed. For example you used the word nightingale in modern English language and looked how it has changed over the years. The 14th century style of pronounciation is quite similar to how you would say it in modern German (Nachtigall - pronounced like the old English way, without the "e" at the end). There are a lot of English words that share these similarities, such as nightmare (Nachtmahr - a word not commonly used in modern German but was very common until the 17th century) and such.
The funny thing is, as a native (modern) German speaker I would really say I understand Old English far better than Medieval German or even Old German (from around 7th - 12th century).
Well, you have my deepest respect and please continue this great work!
(Sorry if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes)
"nichtinghale" is my new favourite word.
Sidenote: the German word is "Nachtigall"; "Nacht" = night
@@jeanvaljean7266 Ja Mensch, ich kann Deutsch sprechen
@@bp837 *Mann. Niemand sagt "Mensch" in diesem Kontext. Mensch bedeutet human.
@@unusveritas4122 Einverstanden
4:39 that actually remids me of some of the Internet grammar we see around today....😂
RP is the end result of the Norman French based aristocratic accent being aspirationally imitated by the lower classes. Modern RP has lost it's French sounding pronunciations. French speakers and the Queen pronounce land in much the same way. Queen... leeyand, French... Leeyond. RP... land.
Love your presentations! More please!
It didn't have to be that way though, I think we see Modern Day English as given, when it is but a development state.
i would love to see a dissection of that “frogge biþ a smale beastie” video!
btw, I've never heard that RP was an invented accent, but that it was systematically imposed through the school system throughout the country, homogenizing the speech of the educated, and leaving regional accents to the working classes.
I would consider this an understandable myth. There is little evidence that the Victorian state primary school system contained formal elocution lessons within its curriculum - which focused upon the 'three Rs'. It is plausible that in certain cases children were exposed to RP during dictation lessons due to their teacher being educated at a school, university or training college where RP was spoken. However, a majority of schools were staffed by people expressing themselves in regional accents - including the South East, where RP of that era (as opposed to today's RP) was not the local dialect.
What makes the idea of RP becoming imposed via schooling understandable is, firstly, that it was of course seen as socially desirable to sound like people in the upper classes, and thus if you heard your teachers speaking in that manner, you might want to emulate them. But I think this was largely a spontaneous development, based upon people's own desires for social mobility and how they thought they could achieve it. Those eager for their children to progress into the middle and upper classes could send them for addition instruction at elocution schools. Popular culture of the era give us an impression of this - and also ironically an impression that it was far from a universal trend - in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. Professor Henry Higgins is a lone man on a quest when he attempts to transform Eliza Doolittle via personal elocution lessons. It lay outside of the formal education system.
I'd wager that the development of telephone communication, radio and television were the major drivers of homogenisation - although the received pronunciation that has developed and been adopted by many as a lingua fraca is quite different from the RP of the upper classes as they once spoke! In the end it was the middle class accents of the urbanised southern cities and towns which became dominant, as the need to speak like the gentry to get ahead evaporated.
Ironically, schools in the UK now more actively impose rules of standard English - and critique use of dialect - than they did 100 years ago, via the National Curriculum and the way in which grammar is either promoted or proscribed. 'The policy and policing of language in schools' by Ian Cushing of Brunel University (CUP 2019) is a good summary of modern trends in this and the social and political impetus behind it.
I'm skeptical about young Simon's claim to be an RP speaker. For instance, he pronounces lot as lo', i.e. with a glottal stop. Having been raised in South East London a very long time ago, I still do so myself when speaking informally. But that ain't RP, mate.
Your English is delightful.
I think standardization had something to do with it as well. The invention of things like dictionaries probably slowed down linguistic drift. Even back in Shakespeare's day there wasn't set in stone standard pronunciation. As for the Anglo-Saxon days there was probably variation between village to village.
I think technology and the internet will ensure that modern english will exist in some form for quite a while.
Yes. There were definitely archaic features up until the 20th century and before standard education some very old forms likely existed all over. Standard orthography, standard education, mass media... who knows what will become of language longterm under these. I feel like all languages have been homogenising semantically in our age as with mass culture.
This video is a fantastic introduction to old and middle English for my British Literature students--thank you so much for making it!
I'm really glad it's up to the standard! Thank you :)
*Camera cuts*
*Different angle*
"We have to look this at 2 angles"
So glad I found your videos. 👍
Being an American, I find this very interesting. I am from Minnesota, which was mainly settled by Scandinavians. Here we speak with a Scandinavian inflection. When I joined the Army in 2004, I was the only guy from Minnesota in our company. I got made fun a lot for how I talked, but I took pride in it.
Idk what brought me here but your voice..... I think people can fall asleep listening to your voice
I believe we english speakers got our sentence structure from old norse. Seeing as the they are quite similar. I reckon its from the time under the danelaw.
well both languages are germanic
@@mylerwilson4879 well yes
@@mylerwilson4879 Well, High German is also germanic, but has a very different syntactic structure compared to the Scandinavian languages and English.
Very pleased to have found your channel. We share a passion as well as a name.
Wow, I saw a video of you two days ago and I couldn’t speak a lick of English. Now look at you
An intro video for me. I have no clue who you are or if what you are saying holds validity. Your voice, however, is very unique and has a calming effect. Just an observation.