the history of English in ten minutes
chapter one anglo-saxon or whatever
happened to the Jutes
the English language begins with the
phrase up your Caesar as the Romans
leave Britain and a lot of Germanic
tribes start flooding in tribes such as
the angles and the Saxons who together
gave us the term anglo-saxon and the
Jews didn't the Romans left some very
straight roads behind but not much of
their Latin language the anglo-saxon
vocab was much more useful as it was
mainly words for simple everyday things
like house woman loaf and will for of
our days of the week were named in honor
of anglo-saxon gods they didn't bother
with Saturday Sunday and Monday
has it all gone off for a long weekend
while they're away Christian
missionaries stolen bringing with them
leaflets about jumble sales and Latin
Christianity was a hit with the locals
and made them much happy to take on
funky new words from Latin like martyr
Bishop and font along came the Vikings
with their action-man words like drag
ransack fast and die they may have raped
and pillaged but they were also in to
give and take two of around 2000 words
they gave English as well as the phrase
watch out for that man with the enormous
backs
chapter 2 the Norman Conquest or excuse
my English 1066 true to his name William
the conquerer invades England bringing
new concepts from across the channel
like the French language the Domesday
book and the duty-free galas multipack
French was de rigueur for all official
business
with words like judge jury evidence and
justice coming in and giving John
Grisham's career a kickstart Latin was
still used at nauseam in church but the
common man spoke English able to
communicate only by speaking more slowly
and loudly until the others understood
him or words like cow sheep and swine
come from the english-speaking farmers
while the ala carte versions beef mutton
and pork come from the french-speaking
top beginning a long-running trend for
restaurants having completely
indecipherable menus all in all the
English absorbed about 10,000 new words
from the Normans though they still
couldn't grasp the rules of cheek
kissing the bone army all ended when the
English nation took their new warlike
lingo of armies navies and soldiers and
began the Hundred Years War against
France
it actually lasted 116 years but by that
point no one could count any higher in
French and English took over as the
language of power
Chapter three Shakespeare or a plaque on
both his houses as the dictionary tells
us about 2,000 new words and phrases
were invented by William Shakespeare
he gave us handy words like eyeball
puppy dog and anchovy and more showoff
he words like thoughtless this merge and
black luster he came up with the word
alligator soon after he ran out of
things to rhyme with crocodile and a
nation of tea drinkers finally took him
to their hearts when he invented the
hobnob Shakespeare knew the power of
catchphrases as well as biscuits without
him we would never eat our flesh and
blood out of house and home
would have to say good riddance to the
green-eyed monster and breaking the ice
will be as dead as a doornail if you try
to get your money's worth you'd be given
short shrift
and anyone who laid it on with a trial
could be pushed with his own petard of
course it's possible other people use
these words first
but the dictionary writers liked looking
them up in Shakespeare because there was
more cross-dressing
and people's taking each other's eyes
out Shakespeare's poetry showed the
world that English was a rich vibrant
language with limitless expressive and
emotional power and he still had time to
open all those tea rooms in Stratford
chapter for the King James Bible all let
there be light reading in 1611 the
powers that be turned the world upside
down with a labor of love a new
translation of the Bible
a team of scribes with the wisdom of
Sullivan went the extra mile to make
King James translation all things to all
men whether from their hearts desire to
fight the good fight or just for the
Luka this sexy new Bible went from
strength to strength getting to the root
of the madden in a language even the
salt of the earth could understand the
writing wasn't on the wall it was in
handy little books with fire and
brimstone preachers reading it in every
Church its words and phrases took root
to the ends of the earth or at least the
ends of Britain the King James Bible is
the book that taught us that a leopard
can't change its spots that a bird in
the hand is worth two in the bush
that a wolf in sheep's clothing is
harder to spot than you would imagine
and how annoying it is to have a fly in
your ointment in fact just as Jonathan
begat Maribel and Maribel beget Myka the
King James Bible began a whole glossary
of metaphor and morality that still
shapes the way English is spoken today
Armand
chapter 5 the English of science or how
to speak with gravity before the 17th
century scientists weren't really
recognized possibly because lab coats
had yet to catch on but suddenly Britain
was full of physicists there was Robert
Hooke Robert Boyle and even some people
not called Robert like Isaac Newton the
Royal Society was formed out of the
invisible College after they put it down
somewhere and couldn't find it again at
first they worked in Latin after sitting
through Newton's story about the poem
falling to the terror from the Arbor for
the umpteenth time the bright sparks
realized they all spoke English and they
could transform our understanding of the
universe much quicker by talking in
their own language but science was
discovering things faster than they
could name them words like opposite
gravity electricity and pendulum had to
be invented just to stop their meetings
turning to an endless game of charades
like teenage boys the scientists
suddenly became aware of the human body
coining new words like cardiac and
tonsil ovary and sternum and the
invention of penis and vagina made sex
education classes a bit easier to follow
though clitoris was still a source of
confusion
Chapter six English and Empire or the
Sun never sets on the English language
with English making its name as the
language of science the bible and
shakespeare britain decided to take it
on tour asking only for land wealth
natural resources total obedience to the
crown and a few local words in return
they went to the caribbean looking for
gold and a chance to really unwind
discovering the barbecue the canoe and a
pretty good recipe for rum punch they
also brought back the word cannibal to
make their trip sound more exciting in
india there was something for everyone
yoga to help you stay in shape while
pretending to be spiritual if that
didn't work there was the cummerbund to
hide the form and if you couldn't even
make it up the stairs without turning
crimson they have the bungalow meanwhile
in africa they picked up words like
voodoo and zombie kicking off the TV
horror film from australia english took
the words nugget boomerang and walkabout
and effect the whole concept of chained
pubs all in all between toppling
Napoleon and the First World War the
British Empire gobbled up around ten
million square miles four hundred
million people and nearly a hundred
thousand gin and tonics leaving new
varieties of English to develop all over
the globe
Chapter seven the age of the dictionary
or the definition of a hopeless task
with English expanding in all directions
along came a new breed of men called
lexicographers who wanted to put an end
to this Anarchy a word they defined as
what happens when people spell words
slightly differently from each other one
of the greatest was dr. Johnson whose
Dictionary of the English language took
him nine years to write it was 18 inches
tall and contained forty two thousand
seven hundred and seventy three entries
meaning that even if you couldn't read
it was still pretty useful if you wanted
to reach a high shelf for the first time
when people were calling you a pickle
herring a job an owl or a doodle
you could understand exactly what they
meant and you'd have the consolation of
knowing they were all using the standard
spelling try as he might to stop them
words kept being invented and in 1857 a
new book was started that would become
the oxford english dictionary it took
another seventy years to be finished off
the first editor resigned to be an
archbishop the second died of TB and the
third was so boring that half his
volunteers quit and one of them ended up
in an asylum it eventually paid in 1928
and it's continued to be revised ever
since proving the whole idea even
stopped people making up words is
complete snuffed bumble
chapter 8 American English or not
English but somewhere in the ballpark
from the moment brits first landed in
America they needed names for all the
new plants and animals so they borrowed
words like raccoon squash and moose from
the Native Americans as well as most of
their territory waves of immigrants fed
America's hunger for words the Dutch
came sharing coleslaw and cookies Tories
are a lot of the relaxed attitude to
drugs later the Germans arrived selling
pretzels from delicatessens and the
Italians arrived with their pizza their
pasta and their mafia just like mama
used to make America spread a new
language of capitalism getting everyone
worried about the break-even and the
bottom line whether they were blue chip
or white collar the commuter needed a
whole new system of freeways subways and
parking lots and quickly before words
like merger and downsizing could be
invented American English drifted back
across the pond as Brits got the hang of
their cool movies and their groovy jazz
there even some old forgotten English
words that lived on in America so they
carried on using fall faucets diapers
and candy while the Brits moved on to
autumn taps nappies and NHS dental care
chapter nine internet English or
language reverts to type in 1972 the
first email was sent
soon the internet arrived a free global
space to share information ideas and
amusing pictures of cats before the
Internet English changed through people
speaking it but the net brought typing
back into fashion and hundreds of cases
of repetitive strain injury nobody had
ever had to download anything before let
alone use a toolbar and the only time
someone set up a firewall it ended with
a massive insurance claim and a huge
pile of charred wallpaper conversations
were getting shorter than the average
attention span why bother writing a
sentence when an abbreviation would do
and leave you more time to blog poke and
reboot when your hard drive crashed in
my humble opinion became IMHO by the way
became bTW and if we're honest that
life-threatening accident was pretty
hilarious simply became fail some
changes even passed into spoken English
for your information people frequently
asked questions like how can lol means
laugh out loud and lots of love if
you're gonna complain about that then
you g2 BK
chapter 10 global English or whose
language is it anyway in the 1500 years
since the Romans left Britain English
has shown a unique ability to absorb
evolved invade and if we're honest steal
after foreign settlers got it started it
grew into a fully fledged language all
of its own before leaving home and
traveling the world first via the high
seas then via the high-speed broadband
connection pilfering words from over 350
languages and establishing itself as a
global institution all this despite a
written alphabet that bears no
correlation to how it sounds and a
system of spelling that even Dan Brown
couldn't decipher right now around 1.5
billion people speak English of these
about a quarter and native speakers a
quarter speak it as their second
language and half are able to ask for
directions to a swimming pool there's
English which is Hindi English Chinglish
which is chinese-english and singlish
which is singaporean english and not
that bit where they speak in musicals so
in conclusion the language has got so
little to do with England these days it
may well be time to stop calling things
if someone does think up a new name for
it it should probably be in Chinese