1 00:00:01,710 --> 00:00:05,120 This is the history of the English language. 2 00:00:05,120 --> 00:00:08,110 The saga of a language that wouldn't quit. 3 00:00:08,110 --> 00:00:10,910 Responding to invasion after invasion 4 00:00:10,910 --> 00:00:14,500 by snagging the conqueror's most useful words 5 00:00:14,500 --> 00:00:18,136 streamlining their grammar and becoming today's 6 00:00:18,136 --> 00:00:20,553 linguistic super power. 7 00:00:22,330 --> 00:00:25,090 Conquerors and conquered living together 8 00:00:25,090 --> 00:00:27,360 blended their languages. 9 00:00:27,360 --> 00:00:29,730 The result is a language that has doubled 10 00:00:29,730 --> 00:00:32,803 the vocabulary of any other language. 11 00:00:34,300 --> 00:00:36,840 Today, more people learn English 12 00:00:36,840 --> 00:00:39,793 as a second language than any other. 13 00:00:40,794 --> 00:00:43,544 (dramatic music) 14 00:00:48,651 --> 00:00:52,650 10,000 years ago when the last ice age was ending 15 00:00:52,650 --> 00:00:55,730 and ice was retreating global sea levels 16 00:00:55,730 --> 00:00:58,433 were 400 feet lower than today. 17 00:00:59,670 --> 00:01:03,790 Back then, you could've walked from Denmark to Britain 18 00:01:03,790 --> 00:01:05,313 without getting your feet wet. 19 00:01:06,380 --> 00:01:11,143 Across a flat plain that has since been called Doggerland, 20 00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:16,395 but as global sea levels slowly rose, 21 00:01:16,395 --> 00:01:20,078 Doggerland began to disappear beneath the waves, 22 00:01:20,078 --> 00:01:22,193 and the people retreated. 23 00:01:23,260 --> 00:01:26,470 They called themselves Pretani, 24 00:01:26,470 --> 00:01:28,873 from which we get the name Britain. 25 00:01:32,310 --> 00:01:35,180 Nomadic hunter gatherers who roamed across it 26 00:01:35,180 --> 00:01:38,983 spoke a language that was probably the forerunner of Celtic, 27 00:01:39,850 --> 00:01:42,943 which would've sounded something like this. 28 00:02:09,670 --> 00:02:13,060 It took almost 100 years of fierce fighting 29 00:02:13,060 --> 00:02:15,480 before the Romans finally gained control 30 00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:17,843 of the land they called Britannia. 31 00:02:19,560 --> 00:02:23,120 Of course the Romans brought their language with them. 32 00:02:23,120 --> 00:02:26,903 Latin, which sounded something like this. 33 00:02:58,195 --> 00:03:01,026 By 400 AD, Rome was collapsing, 34 00:03:01,026 --> 00:03:05,540 and a thuggish bunch of obscure Germanic tribes 35 00:03:05,540 --> 00:03:07,440 were looting their way through Europe. 36 00:03:08,500 --> 00:03:12,130 People were actually scavenging in Roman ruins 37 00:03:12,130 --> 00:03:16,920 to get the last few remnants of Roman consumer goods. 38 00:03:16,920 --> 00:03:19,943 So economically it was absolute devastation. 39 00:03:21,800 --> 00:03:23,760 Some of them turned their eyes 40 00:03:23,760 --> 00:03:27,770 to a large island known as Britannia, 41 00:03:27,770 --> 00:03:30,740 opening the door to a flood on invaders 42 00:03:30,740 --> 00:03:33,713 that would change British history forever. 43 00:03:35,210 --> 00:03:39,890 Over time, Jutes migrated from Northern Denmark, 44 00:03:39,890 --> 00:03:44,890 Angles from Southern Denmark, and Saxons from Germany. 45 00:03:49,770 --> 00:03:53,990 In 600 AD, Christianity began to return to Britannia 46 00:03:53,990 --> 00:03:56,733 for the first time since Roman times, 47 00:03:57,710 --> 00:04:01,303 and spread religion and literacy throughout the land. 48 00:04:05,704 --> 00:04:10,680 Unlike the occupying Romans, these invading Germanic tribes 49 00:04:10,680 --> 00:04:14,120 were also true immigrants who quickly settled 50 00:04:14,120 --> 00:04:15,533 into their adopted home. 51 00:04:18,920 --> 00:04:20,770 It was long thought that the invaders 52 00:04:20,770 --> 00:04:23,810 exterminated the Celts and their language, 53 00:04:23,810 --> 00:04:28,723 replacing Celtic with old English or Anglo-Saxon. 54 00:04:30,500 --> 00:04:32,620 With traditional stories that they drove 55 00:04:32,620 --> 00:04:34,820 all the Celts to the border so that the Celts ended up 56 00:04:34,820 --> 00:04:37,190 in Scotland, and you know, the outer edges of Scotland, 57 00:04:37,190 --> 00:04:40,330 and in Wales, in Cornwall, but in fact a lot of Celts 58 00:04:40,330 --> 00:04:42,150 did stay behind and they intermarried 59 00:04:42,150 --> 00:04:45,380 with the Germanic tribes. 60 00:04:45,380 --> 00:04:47,280 We know this now from archeological evidence, 61 00:04:47,280 --> 00:04:50,430 from biological evidence, you know genetic evidence. 62 00:04:50,430 --> 00:04:52,020 There was a lot of Celtic blood 63 00:04:52,020 --> 00:04:55,300 in England proper these days. 64 00:04:55,300 --> 00:04:59,070 The linguistic influence, however, is very very small. 65 00:04:59,070 --> 00:05:01,707 Apart from places names there's a lot of place name evidence 66 00:05:01,707 --> 00:05:05,319 because the names for any kind of towns, rivers, mountains 67 00:05:05,319 --> 00:05:09,903 would often stay the same and this is a typical thing. 68 00:05:12,290 --> 00:05:13,920 By the seventh century, 69 00:05:13,920 --> 00:05:17,040 the tribes had settled seven separate kingdoms 70 00:05:17,040 --> 00:05:19,230 who battled each other for the control 71 00:05:19,230 --> 00:05:22,197 of the place later called Englaland. 72 00:05:24,920 --> 00:05:28,080 It was a time when reading and writing flourished, 73 00:05:28,080 --> 00:05:31,040 particularly under Alfred the Great who reigned 74 00:05:31,040 --> 00:05:34,950 as King of Wessex toward the end of the ninth century. 75 00:05:34,950 --> 00:05:39,083 He was determined that people should be literate in English. 76 00:05:41,309 --> 00:05:45,010 One of the unusual things about England in this period 77 00:05:45,010 --> 00:05:48,060 is there's so much written in the vernacular, 78 00:05:48,060 --> 00:05:50,410 which was not the case on the continent at all. 79 00:05:50,410 --> 00:05:52,690 So you have beautiful works of English. 80 00:05:52,690 --> 00:05:56,500 This is the period where the Beowulf manuscript is written, 81 00:05:56,500 --> 00:05:59,840 and that's the most important work 82 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:01,563 of English in the whole period. 83 00:06:02,430 --> 00:06:06,580 Beowulf, set in sixth century Scandinavia 84 00:06:06,580 --> 00:06:10,643 is the oldest surviving long poem in Old English. 85 00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:39,710 Well, it is the quintessential statement 86 00:06:39,710 --> 00:06:42,453 of the Anglo-Saxon warrior ethos. 87 00:06:43,360 --> 00:06:47,060 So this is the hero fighting against the monster, 88 00:06:47,060 --> 00:06:51,090 trying to stave off the forces of chaos and darkness, 89 00:06:51,090 --> 00:06:52,883 and of course he can't. 90 00:06:54,040 --> 00:06:57,100 He dies in the end fighting the dragon, 91 00:06:57,100 --> 00:06:59,910 and that's pretty much the Anglo-Saxon world view. 92 00:06:59,910 --> 00:07:02,070 The dragon is going to do you in eventually, 93 00:07:02,070 --> 00:07:05,463 but people will sing your fame forever. 94 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:10,920 Beowulf is the most important surviving Old English poem 95 00:07:10,920 --> 00:07:12,750 and it is a heroic poem that 96 00:07:12,750 --> 00:07:15,540 it's a bit over 3,000 lines long 97 00:07:15,540 --> 00:07:17,983 and it is the one thing that people tend to think of 98 00:07:17,983 --> 00:07:20,433 when they think of great works in Old English. 99 00:07:21,490 --> 00:07:23,740 But there are many other great works, too, 100 00:07:23,740 --> 00:07:26,410 and much of what we know about the history of Britain 101 00:07:26,410 --> 00:07:28,390 comes from this time period, 102 00:07:28,390 --> 00:07:31,030 and from the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, 103 00:07:31,030 --> 00:07:34,100 which were begun in the reign of King Alfred 104 00:07:34,100 --> 00:07:37,620 in the ninth century and continued to be written 105 00:07:37,620 --> 00:07:40,500 through the 12th century by different groups of monks 106 00:07:40,500 --> 00:07:45,330 in different monasteries and so we have examples 107 00:07:45,330 --> 00:07:48,010 of interesting events during these times, 108 00:07:48,010 --> 00:07:52,700 but one really important event for British history 109 00:07:52,700 --> 00:07:55,910 is recorded in 793. 110 00:07:55,910 --> 00:07:58,420 And the language spoken at the time 111 00:07:58,420 --> 00:08:01,083 would've sounded something like this. 112 00:08:34,050 --> 00:08:36,750 The heathen man were the vikings. 113 00:08:36,750 --> 00:08:39,460 They came from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, 114 00:08:39,460 --> 00:08:43,090 and they inhabited a region in the north of England mostly 115 00:08:43,090 --> 00:08:44,953 for about 200 years. 116 00:08:46,150 --> 00:08:47,770 Their language was Old Norse, 117 00:08:47,770 --> 00:08:49,980 which was a relative of Old English, 118 00:08:49,980 --> 00:08:52,810 and the closest relative of Old Norse 119 00:08:52,810 --> 00:08:55,713 in contemporary days now is Icelandic. 120 00:09:17,660 --> 00:09:19,600 The linguistic impact is huge 121 00:09:19,600 --> 00:09:23,490 because we have this very substantial body of words 122 00:09:23,490 --> 00:09:25,999 that come into English from the Vikings 123 00:09:25,999 --> 00:09:29,180 because so many Scandinavians settled in England 124 00:09:29,180 --> 00:09:31,260 and lived alongside the English 125 00:09:31,260 --> 00:09:36,087 that a lot of words got borrowed into English from Danish, 126 00:09:37,210 --> 00:09:39,753 and we're still using a lot of these words today. 127 00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:45,191 Vind auga which means wind-eye 128 00:09:45,191 --> 00:09:48,463 which became window in modern English. 129 00:09:50,510 --> 00:09:54,970 Rannasaka which means house-search became Ransack. 130 00:09:56,837 --> 00:10:01,020 Berserkr which means bear-shirt became berserk. 131 00:10:06,009 --> 00:10:09,080 Husbondi which means house-dweller 132 00:10:09,080 --> 00:10:11,683 which became husband in modern English. 133 00:10:13,900 --> 00:10:15,490 So for two centuries then, 134 00:10:15,490 --> 00:10:18,330 the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons lived together 135 00:10:18,330 --> 00:10:21,890 especially in this north and eastern area of England. 136 00:10:21,890 --> 00:10:25,930 They mingled, they married, and the Anglo-Saxon language 137 00:10:25,930 --> 00:10:29,340 absorbed many words from Old Norse 138 00:10:29,340 --> 00:10:32,070 including some of our most common words, 139 00:10:32,070 --> 00:10:36,850 they and their, them, but also many of the SK words 140 00:10:36,850 --> 00:10:39,463 in the English language like skill or ski. 141 00:10:40,314 --> 00:10:43,730 Then in the 11th century, however, 142 00:10:43,730 --> 00:10:48,470 the language received another important jolt really 143 00:10:48,470 --> 00:10:50,130 through a historical event. 144 00:10:50,130 --> 00:10:53,310 The invasion by the King of Norway, 145 00:10:53,310 --> 00:10:56,163 which is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. 146 00:11:22,399 --> 00:11:26,490 Harold Godwinson King raises north to Stamford 147 00:11:26,490 --> 00:11:31,438 and defeats the King of Norway and kills him, 148 00:11:31,438 --> 00:11:34,310 and then it's all good right, 149 00:11:34,310 --> 00:11:36,850 except that at that very moment, 150 00:11:36,850 --> 00:11:39,373 William the Conqueror is landing in the south. 151 00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:05,930 And slowly but surely through attrition, 152 00:12:05,930 --> 00:12:09,580 the shield wall of soldiers at the top of the hill 153 00:12:09,580 --> 00:12:11,860 where the Anglo-Saxons were was weakened, 154 00:12:11,860 --> 00:12:16,590 and that's when finally one last charge was successful, 155 00:12:16,590 --> 00:12:21,550 and the Anglo-Saxon King Harold was killed during the battle 156 00:12:21,550 --> 00:12:24,033 and with that the game was over. 157 00:12:42,200 --> 00:12:45,440 If Harold Godwinson had not had to go north 158 00:12:45,440 --> 00:12:48,220 and defeat the Scandinavian ruler, 159 00:12:48,220 --> 00:12:50,640 he would've been well placed to met the threat 160 00:12:50,640 --> 00:12:53,020 from William in the south. 161 00:12:53,020 --> 00:12:55,000 So without that other invasion, 162 00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,773 the Norman conquest probably would not have succeeded. 163 00:13:00,730 --> 00:13:03,218 King Harold's defeat marked the end 164 00:13:03,218 --> 00:13:05,281 of the Anglo-Saxon period and the beginning 165 00:13:05,281 --> 00:13:06,960 of the Norman conquest. 166 00:13:06,960 --> 00:13:09,870 The term Norman comes from Norsemen, 167 00:13:09,870 --> 00:13:11,830 which is the term for those who inhabited 168 00:13:11,830 --> 00:13:14,760 the northern part of France which hadn't been itself 169 00:13:14,760 --> 00:13:18,930 invaded by the vikings but when William came over, 170 00:13:18,930 --> 00:13:22,370 and he replaced the aristocracy existing then 171 00:13:22,370 --> 00:13:25,380 with his own people and the language spoken 172 00:13:25,380 --> 00:13:28,950 at the top was then a dialect of French. 173 00:13:28,950 --> 00:13:31,730 So there was then a tri-lingle society 174 00:13:31,730 --> 00:13:33,800 with French being spoken by the king 175 00:13:33,800 --> 00:13:38,800 and court in aristocracy and Latin being used by the church 176 00:13:39,123 --> 00:13:42,140 and in administrative realms, 177 00:13:42,140 --> 00:13:45,190 and then English used by everybody else. 178 00:13:45,190 --> 00:13:48,700 So at this point, English is still continuing 179 00:13:48,700 --> 00:13:53,700 to absorb to itself other languages, and during this period, 180 00:13:53,860 --> 00:13:57,160 it's estimated that about 10,000 words from French 181 00:13:57,160 --> 00:14:00,173 were picked up and absorbed into English. 182 00:14:01,350 --> 00:14:03,710 The change to English due to 183 00:14:03,710 --> 00:14:06,400 the Norman conquest is enormous. 184 00:14:06,400 --> 00:14:10,060 English was already becoming the language of the people, 185 00:14:10,060 --> 00:14:14,433 and this actually speeds up language change, 186 00:14:15,300 --> 00:14:18,130 and then you get this huge influx 187 00:14:18,130 --> 00:14:23,030 of words from Norman French, and so that's why we basically 188 00:14:23,030 --> 00:14:25,160 have a huge vocabulary in English. 189 00:14:25,160 --> 00:14:27,430 We have a vocabulary twice the size 190 00:14:27,430 --> 00:14:29,340 of most other European languages 191 00:14:29,340 --> 00:14:32,350 because we have two words for everything. 192 00:14:32,350 --> 00:14:34,520 We have a Germanic word and a French word 193 00:14:34,520 --> 00:14:36,150 for almost anything. 194 00:14:36,150 --> 00:14:39,570 The French words tended towards aristocratic 195 00:14:40,645 --> 00:14:45,170 and courtly things such as crown, castle, prince, duke. 196 00:14:47,060 --> 00:14:50,730 Lowly tradesmen still went by their Anglo-Saxon terms 197 00:14:50,730 --> 00:14:55,730 like shoemaker and baker while more esteemed tradesmen 198 00:14:56,060 --> 00:15:00,853 enjoyed French names like tailor and merchant, 199 00:15:01,830 --> 00:15:05,740 and food on the hoof kept his Anglo-Saxon farm names 200 00:15:07,379 --> 00:15:11,330 like cow, calf, and swine but once it reached 201 00:15:11,330 --> 00:15:16,330 the high class table, it was the French beef, veal and pork. 202 00:15:19,320 --> 00:15:21,400 The largest portion of words in English 203 00:15:21,400 --> 00:15:24,830 are in fact of romance origin from Latin or French. 204 00:15:24,830 --> 00:15:27,640 The most common ones, however, are Old English. 205 00:15:27,640 --> 00:15:28,940 If you look at, let's say, 206 00:15:30,047 --> 00:15:31,629 the 100 most common words in English, 207 00:15:31,629 --> 00:15:32,740 the majority of those are from Old English, 208 00:15:32,740 --> 00:15:34,660 including all the ones that we would find 209 00:15:34,660 --> 00:15:36,290 the most familiar short words 210 00:15:36,290 --> 00:15:37,570 that are part of our language. 211 00:15:37,570 --> 00:15:39,000 These are words that have been part of the language 212 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:41,203 as long as it has been spoken as English. 213 00:15:48,320 --> 00:15:51,810 Words like bad and good and for body parts, 214 00:15:51,810 --> 00:15:56,470 from head to foot, words like love and strong, 215 00:15:56,470 --> 00:15:58,480 and road and apple. 216 00:15:58,480 --> 00:15:59,620 These are all from Old English. 217 00:15:59,620 --> 00:16:01,338 These are words that have been a part 218 00:16:01,338 --> 00:16:03,860 of the language as long as it has been spoken as English. 219 00:16:03,860 --> 00:16:07,450 Now in terms of literature, that's where the English excel 220 00:16:07,450 --> 00:16:12,140 because they produce people like Sir Geoffrey Chaucer 221 00:16:12,140 --> 00:16:16,441 who is the great poet of this period. 222 00:16:16,441 --> 00:16:21,441 He made a blend between English and French vocabulary 223 00:16:22,270 --> 00:16:27,250 a normal part of the English literary scene. 224 00:16:27,250 --> 00:16:29,350 Whose best known work of Chaucer's is 225 00:16:29,350 --> 00:16:31,150 of course The Canterbury Tales, 226 00:16:31,150 --> 00:16:33,910 and in this work Chaucer does something 227 00:16:33,910 --> 00:16:35,400 with the language, too. 228 00:16:35,400 --> 00:16:39,280 He sets himself up to have stories told by characters 229 00:16:39,280 --> 00:16:42,330 from all ranks of society and in doing that 230 00:16:42,330 --> 00:16:45,190 brings in this richness that represents, you know, 231 00:16:45,190 --> 00:16:46,890 the state of English at this time. 232 00:16:50,970 --> 00:16:53,810 Sir Chaucer was writing in more or less a London English, 233 00:16:53,810 --> 00:16:56,367 a southern English and that's the English 234 00:16:56,367 --> 00:16:59,102 that led to what we speak nowadays, 235 00:16:59,102 --> 00:17:04,102 so it is still very different, but if you look at Chaucer, 236 00:17:05,300 --> 00:17:07,960 you will recognize many of the words. 237 00:17:07,960 --> 00:17:12,053 You will understand the grammatical patterns in general. 238 00:17:13,710 --> 00:17:16,760 The general prologue of The Canterbury Tales 239 00:17:16,760 --> 00:17:19,280 describes the beautiful spring morning 240 00:17:19,280 --> 00:17:23,610 in which Chaucer falls in with a group of Sundry folk, 241 00:17:23,610 --> 00:17:26,843 making a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury. 242 00:18:04,620 --> 00:18:08,890 So the opening lines here are so fresh. 243 00:18:08,890 --> 00:18:11,700 That fresh spring opening is leading forth 244 00:18:11,700 --> 00:18:13,840 into this collection of stories 245 00:18:13,840 --> 00:18:16,260 that's so varied and diverse. 246 00:18:16,260 --> 00:18:18,150 It's also a kind of fresh opening 247 00:18:18,150 --> 00:18:20,373 for English literature at this time. 248 00:18:21,360 --> 00:18:23,570 Middle English by Chaucer's time 249 00:18:23,570 --> 00:18:27,100 was changing so rapidly in different parts of the country 250 00:18:27,100 --> 00:18:30,990 that many Englishman from the north could not understand 251 00:18:30,990 --> 00:18:34,570 their compatriots in the south of the country, 252 00:18:34,570 --> 00:18:36,950 but the dominance of London meant 253 00:18:36,950 --> 00:18:40,570 that London English became Chaucer's English 254 00:18:40,570 --> 00:18:45,210 and eventually fully modern English. 255 00:18:45,210 --> 00:18:47,900 Chaucer's manuscript circulated quite widely. 256 00:18:47,900 --> 00:18:49,940 We know that and many manuscripts are again 257 00:18:49,940 --> 00:18:53,690 the handwritten copies of literary text and other text, 258 00:18:53,690 --> 00:18:57,090 but a major event was to happen in the mid 15th century 259 00:18:57,090 --> 00:19:00,083 with the invention of the printing press. 260 00:19:00,930 --> 00:19:04,080 The printing press meant that writing was available 261 00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:07,240 to many more people and that is generally 262 00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:08,620 true throughout Europe. 263 00:19:08,620 --> 00:19:10,610 There was a much more widespread access 264 00:19:10,610 --> 00:19:12,599 to writing of all kinds. 265 00:19:12,599 --> 00:19:16,310 So when a bright young playwright named William Shakespeare 266 00:19:16,310 --> 00:19:20,231 began to make a name for himself later in the 16th century, 267 00:19:20,231 --> 00:19:24,003 he had an audience who could understand what he was saying. 268 00:19:25,340 --> 00:19:27,100 Had Shakespeare been born 80 years 269 00:19:27,100 --> 00:19:31,830 before he was born in 1564, 270 00:19:31,830 --> 00:19:34,480 we probably wouldn't be talking about him today. 271 00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:39,053 He arrived just in time for the success of the printed book, 272 00:19:40,030 --> 00:19:42,680 and he arrived just in time for professional theater, 273 00:19:45,850 --> 00:19:49,120 which meant that people would be able to hear his words, 274 00:19:49,120 --> 00:19:52,380 the words of his actors without necessarily 275 00:19:52,380 --> 00:19:55,030 having to travel to a court setting, 276 00:19:55,030 --> 00:19:59,283 or some kind of elite environment of performance. 277 00:20:01,850 --> 00:20:06,850 Friends, Romans, Countryman, lend me your ears. 278 00:20:07,420 --> 00:20:09,933 I come to bury Cesar, not to praise him. 279 00:20:11,310 --> 00:20:13,560 The evil that men do lives after them. 280 00:20:13,560 --> 00:20:16,060 The good is oft interred with their bones. 281 00:20:16,060 --> 00:20:18,363 So let it be with Cesar. 282 00:20:19,570 --> 00:20:21,210 It was a form of entertainment 283 00:20:21,210 --> 00:20:23,480 that really hadn't been in England. 284 00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:25,870 There'd been Roman theaters 1,000 years earlier, 285 00:20:25,870 --> 00:20:27,410 but this was a new initiative. 286 00:20:27,410 --> 00:20:28,823 It was a new media form. 287 00:20:29,800 --> 00:20:32,951 This story shall the good man teach his son. 288 00:20:32,951 --> 00:20:36,830 And Crispin Crispy and shall near go by 289 00:20:36,830 --> 00:20:40,210 from this day to the ending of the world, 290 00:20:40,210 --> 00:20:42,803 but we in it shall be remember it. 291 00:20:44,100 --> 00:20:48,323 We few, we happy few. 292 00:20:50,720 --> 00:20:52,113 We band of brothers. 293 00:20:53,950 --> 00:20:56,010 For he today that sheds his blood with me 294 00:20:56,010 --> 00:20:57,370 shall be my brother. 295 00:20:57,370 --> 00:21:01,370 Be ye near so vile this day shall gentle his condition. 296 00:21:01,370 --> 00:21:04,350 And gentlemen in England now a bed shall think themselves 297 00:21:04,350 --> 00:21:08,220 a curse they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap 298 00:21:08,220 --> 00:21:10,100 while any speak that fought with us 299 00:21:10,100 --> 00:21:12,598 upon Saint Crispin's Day. 300 00:21:12,598 --> 00:21:14,120 Yeah. 301 00:21:14,120 --> 00:21:15,860 It's often said that Shakespeare coined 302 00:21:15,860 --> 00:21:17,640 some very very large number of words, 303 00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:19,100 you know, thousands of words. 304 00:21:19,100 --> 00:21:21,160 Very large numbers are thrown around, 305 00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:23,353 and people use examples of these different words 306 00:21:23,353 --> 00:21:24,913 that Shakespeare coined. 307 00:21:26,340 --> 00:21:28,390 To us looking at his plays, 308 00:21:28,390 --> 00:21:31,140 sometime you feel like a bird watcher. 309 00:21:31,140 --> 00:21:36,140 You're keeping your eye for these really rare odd creatures. 310 00:21:37,320 --> 00:21:39,910 I can think of Shakespeare writing entire scenes 311 00:21:39,910 --> 00:21:42,670 so that he gets to use a word in a new way 312 00:21:42,670 --> 00:21:45,800 because he loves it and his audience loves it. 313 00:21:45,800 --> 00:21:47,846 We're finding out that a lot things 314 00:21:47,846 --> 00:21:49,890 that we thought Shakespeare's the first user of 315 00:21:49,890 --> 00:21:52,134 in fact were in use earlier by other people, 316 00:21:52,134 --> 00:21:55,230 which is no slight on Shakespeare. 317 00:21:55,230 --> 00:21:57,180 It doesn't mean he was not a great author. 318 00:21:57,180 --> 00:21:59,060 It just means that he's not the only author 319 00:21:59,060 --> 00:22:01,440 to write in English at that time. 320 00:22:01,440 --> 00:22:03,550 I think that's just terrific 321 00:22:03,550 --> 00:22:07,447 because even if Shakespeare's word count goes down, 322 00:22:07,447 --> 00:22:10,160 his creativity and cunning goes up. 323 00:22:10,160 --> 00:22:13,970 You know, he was like I think he was like a magpie. 324 00:22:13,970 --> 00:22:17,430 He just kept his eyes out for very clever things 325 00:22:17,430 --> 00:22:19,470 that people were saying and then he would just steal it. 326 00:22:19,470 --> 00:22:21,670 Shakespeare was a terrific thief 327 00:22:22,678 --> 00:22:25,520 in that part of his creativity was in keeping an eye out 328 00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:28,483 for things that he could just say I'll take that. 329 00:22:31,210 --> 00:22:32,920 Just think about the world Shakespeare 330 00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:34,760 is beginning to work in. 331 00:22:34,760 --> 00:22:37,450 He's got global trade beginning. 332 00:22:37,450 --> 00:22:39,850 The beginnings of science. 333 00:22:39,850 --> 00:22:42,790 Incredible religious tension. 334 00:22:42,790 --> 00:22:44,280 This was a period of great growth 335 00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:46,240 in the English vocabulary. 336 00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:50,134 Again, even more words coming in from romance languages, 337 00:22:50,134 --> 00:22:53,240 increasing trade with other countries, 338 00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:55,120 so an influence of words from Dutch 339 00:22:55,120 --> 00:22:57,323 or German coming into English. 340 00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:01,647 We have the sense right now, 341 00:23:01,647 --> 00:23:03,150 and this is a very important thing. 342 00:23:03,150 --> 00:23:05,390 People say like, well, right now we have 343 00:23:05,390 --> 00:23:07,710 all these words coming in from the internet 344 00:23:07,710 --> 00:23:09,400 and this is a huge influence of life. 345 00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:11,600 We've never seen anything like this before. 346 00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:14,383 Well, 50 years ago were saying the space program, 347 00:23:14,383 --> 00:23:16,210 you know, so important. 348 00:23:16,210 --> 00:23:18,065 We have never seen an influence 349 00:23:18,065 --> 00:23:19,110 like this in language before. 350 00:23:19,110 --> 00:23:21,610 100 years before that railways. 351 00:23:21,610 --> 00:23:22,570 You know, it was incredible, 352 00:23:22,570 --> 00:23:24,190 technological development we've never seen. 353 00:23:24,190 --> 00:23:26,100 In fact, the farther you go back, 354 00:23:26,100 --> 00:23:27,760 the more you see that in fact technology 355 00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:30,510 has always been an extremely important part of English. 356 00:23:32,560 --> 00:23:34,760 There was technological innovation. 357 00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:37,140 There was increasing explorations, 358 00:23:37,140 --> 00:23:41,023 so words associated with other very distant cultures. 359 00:23:41,023 --> 00:23:44,760 You know, including wide range in both cultural things 360 00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:48,390 and physical descriptions and names for animals 361 00:23:48,390 --> 00:23:51,270 from other places that were just being discovered, 362 00:23:51,270 --> 00:23:53,223 and these were all being written about. 363 00:23:54,580 --> 00:23:56,150 So the scruffy dialects 364 00:23:56,150 --> 00:23:58,800 of the Anglo-Saxon brutes that survived 365 00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:02,250 the Vikings pummeling and the Normans invasion 366 00:24:02,250 --> 00:24:05,060 was now freely moving about the world 367 00:24:05,060 --> 00:24:07,337 growing and gorging on new words 368 00:24:07,337 --> 00:24:11,133 as the British empire spread to the corners of the world. 369 00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:15,950 It was also importing a hoard 370 00:24:15,950 --> 00:24:20,243 of unexpected treasures, words. 371 00:24:24,178 --> 00:24:25,610 The modern English enjoys the rich 372 00:24:25,610 --> 00:24:27,520 and extensive vocabulary it does now 373 00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:30,940 because it's been so flexible throughout its history. 374 00:24:30,940 --> 00:24:32,740 Like a snowball rolling down a hill, 375 00:24:32,740 --> 00:24:36,210 it's just absorbed useful words into it, 376 00:24:36,210 --> 00:24:38,633 and it's been very capacious and flexible. 377 00:24:40,130 --> 00:24:42,330 The result is a language that has adopted words 378 00:24:42,330 --> 00:24:44,780 from just about every era of civilization 379 00:24:44,780 --> 00:24:46,293 in every country in the world. 380 00:24:47,908 --> 00:24:52,823 From Latin which comprises almost 30% of our vocabulary. 381 00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:59,423 From French also accounting for nearly 30% of our words. 382 00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:03,110 Germanic words are the source 383 00:25:03,110 --> 00:25:05,100 of over a quarter of our vocabulary, 384 00:25:05,100 --> 00:25:06,750 and include those that originated 385 00:25:06,750 --> 00:25:08,883 during the Norse and Old English era. 386 00:25:10,630 --> 00:25:11,753 Greek words. 387 00:25:17,570 --> 00:25:18,973 Arabian words. 388 00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:21,683 Indian words. 389 00:25:22,550 --> 00:25:23,563 Chinese words. 390 00:25:25,350 --> 00:25:27,910 And a surprising large number of everyday words 391 00:25:27,910 --> 00:25:29,060 come from proper names. 392 00:25:32,030 --> 00:25:35,980 So we are in a globally connected world 393 00:25:35,980 --> 00:25:39,210 where English is the lingua franca. 394 00:25:39,210 --> 00:25:42,230 So in the realm of science or technology 395 00:25:42,230 --> 00:25:46,580 or for practical purposes for medicine and for literature, 396 00:25:46,580 --> 00:25:48,420 and for communication of all kinds. 397 00:25:48,420 --> 00:25:50,750 Of course English is the language 398 00:25:50,750 --> 00:25:53,380 that we can count on to be spoken 399 00:25:53,380 --> 00:25:56,060 in more places in the world than ever. 400 00:25:56,060 --> 00:25:58,450 Well I think that the future of the language is good. 401 00:25:58,450 --> 00:26:01,048 You know, there are a lot of interesting things 402 00:26:01,048 --> 00:26:02,210 that are going to keep happening. 403 00:26:02,210 --> 00:26:04,710 We will keep absorbing words from different cultures. 404 00:26:04,710 --> 00:26:08,200 There will be technological innovations. 405 00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:11,570 And its evolution continues everyday. 406 00:26:11,570 --> 00:26:16,570 I wonder what the Celts, or Julius Cesar, or the Vikings, 407 00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:22,040 King Alfred, William the Conqueror, Geoffrey Chaucer, 408 00:26:22,420 --> 00:26:26,063 or William Shakespeare would have made of this. 409 00:26:27,430 --> 00:26:30,883 In case you were wondering, here's a translation, 410 00:26:33,380 --> 00:26:37,163 but then you knew that, didn't you? 411 00:26:37,163 --> 00:26:39,913 (dramatic music)