A Short History of the English Language

History of the English Language

Do you remember, back at school, when you’d walk into the classroom and see a TV set up and you’d know, with a surge of joy, today’s class was going to be a video?

Today is one of those days.

Behold, a wonderful little video from the Open University that gives us the history of the English language in about ten minutes. It’s animated and narrated brilliantly and addresses such questions as

-How did we wind up with such a mish mash of Latin,
-French and German (and loads of other languages we’ve brushed up against)?
-How many words did we get from the Normans?
-What did Shakespeare do to the English language, apart from provide angst for high school students?
-What did the King James translation do to the English language?
-How did English come to be the dominant language?
-What about the American English (or as the video says – American English, not really English, but somewhere in the ballpark)?
-What effect has the internet had on English? And now, that it’s so global …

whose language is it anyway?

It is a clever, informative and very funny video. Pour a coffee and check it out, you will learn so much. I certainly did.