Episode Highlights

Highlights

• After the Norman Conquest in 1066, French became the language of government, commerce, and educated society in England.
• English survived among the common folk, but added many French words side by side with English synonyms. Eventually, the French and English words differentiated by shades of meaning.
• New words also brought new ideas, such as "courtesy" and "honor" from the French tradition of chivalry.
• In the mid 14th century, the Great Plague touched off social upheaval that eventually helped restore English as the language of religion, commerce, law, and government.
• Middle English found its full flowering in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which used language to convey mood, tone, and character.

Questions to Consider

1. Melvyn Bragg notes many word pairs that have similar, but not quite identical meanings: "bit/morsel," "room/chamber," "answer/respond," "wish/desire." How do the meanings of those words differ for you, and how do you use them differently in everyday conversation?
2. Can you think of other word pairs that have different shades of meaning?
3. In the Middle Ages in Anglo-French households, children grew up bilingual, learning English from their mothers and French from their fathers. Can you think of examples where this phenomenon repeats itself today? What are its effects?
4. Can you think of contemporary writers, TV shows, or movies that use different dialects or variations in language to convey character?

Featured Experts

Kathryn Lowe University of Glasgow, Glasgow Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Highlights

• Maintaining that people had a right to read and interpret Scripture for themselves, not from church authorities, John Wycliffe organized an effort to translate the Bible into English directly from the Latin Vulgate in the 14th century.
• In 1526, William Tyndale's translation from Greek and Hebrew Scriptures appeared in England. Profoundly influential, it sparked political and religious turmoil that lasted until Henry VIII separated the Church of England from Rome.
• In 1611, the King James Bible was published and soon became the standard English Protestant translation. Using some deliberately antiquated words to convey authority, translators tuned their work to be read aloud.
• During the 15th and 16th centuries, spoken English underwent "the Great Vowel Shift," in which people primarily in the Midlands and south changed their pronunciation of long vowels. Printing had already established fairly standardized spellings before the shift occurred.

Questions to Consider

1. According to historians, the Protestant Reformation would not have occurred without translations of the Bible into common languages and the advent of print technology to "spread the Word." Do you agree or disagree? Why?
2. Imagine yourself as a 16th-century Roman Catholic bishop in England. How would you regard Tyndale's Bible? What would you do or say to keep your congregation from reading it?
3. The English Bibles found in hotel rooms, distributed by Gideon International, are the King James Version. In your opinion, why does this 400-year-old translation still hold such wide and deep appeal, despite dozens of other, more modern versions?
4. In this episode, we saw how English became an instrument of religious revolution. Can you think of modern situations in which language is a lever for social, political, or religious change?

Highlights

• At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, the English language exploded with new words. Sea trade imported words from 50 languages; classical scholarship brought words from Latin and Greek.
• The inkhorn controversy involved scholars such as John Cheke, who wanted to purge English of Latin, Greek, and other foreign words.
• Courtier poets such as Sir Philip Sidney composed verse for the sheer joy of language, expanding vocabulary and usage. Poetry became the benchmark of language.
• William Shakespeare and other Renaissance playwrights combined the rich, polished language of the courtiers with street slang to create broadly expressive works describing the human condition.

Questions to Consider

1. Queen Elizabeth I inspired English naval forces with a speech at Tilbury before they faced the Spanish Armada. Which speech has inspired you most in your lifetime?
2. Why do you suppose that the "purity" and "Englishness" of English became such a hot topic at the end of the 16th century? How would you defend or argue against Cheke's proposals?
3. Bragg focuses on Shakespeare's contributions to the language, noting that roughly 2,000 words commonly used today are first recorded in Shakespeare. Aside from Shakespeare's use of language, why do we still read and stage his plays today?
4. Who are your favorite poets? Can you recall some lines of poetry you enjoy?

Featured Experts

Katherine Duncan-Jones Somerville College, Oxford
John Barton Royal Shakespeare Company

Highlights

• The Puritans who settled Plimouth Plantation in the 17th century respected and protected the language, because English Scripture formed the foundation of their faith.
• In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Noah Webster's Blue-Backed Speller standardized spellings and Americanized pronunciations for generations of schoolchildren.
• Although East Coast residents considered themselves guardians of the language, American English grew vigorously through the 18th and 19th centuries, adding words from explorers, Native American tribes, frontiersmen, cowboys, gamblers, and African slaves.
• Dismissed as "vulgar" by its contemporary critics, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn captured the music of American dialects along the Mississippi River.

Questions to Consider

1. In this episode, Bragg emphasizes the egalitarianism of English: if something needs saying, the language will adopt it, regardless of its origin in a social class. A farmer or a cowboy can coin a word as easily as a statesman or a scholar. Do you agree or disagree? Do you think language is more or less egalitarian today than it was in the 19th century?
2. Why do you think some slang words stick in the language ("bootleg," "okay"), and others fade away as fads?
3. In the American South, white children often picked up black dialects from their nannies, just as medieval Anglo-French children picked up English from their mothers or nursemaids. Have you or members of your family had similar experiences? If so, what effect did they have on your relationship with language later in life?

Featured Experts

Marquetta Goodwine, a.k.a. Queen Quet Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, St. Helena Island, S.C.

Highlights

• During the Enlightenment, new words came into English from science, technology, and commerce.
• In 1690, philosopher John Locke proposed that agreeing on common definitions would end disputes among mankind. Similarly idealistic impulses prompted the Royal Society to seek simple, straightforward English for scientific treatises.
• In 1755, Dr. Samuel Johnson published his authoritative but idiosyncratic dictionary, containing about 43,000 words.
• Reflecting widespread concern about the state of English, Jonathan Swift mounted a campaign to "freeze" the language so that future generations could understand contemporary writers.
• In the mid 1700s, elocutionists such as Thomas Sheridan sought to standardize pronunciations and grammar and thereby eliminate distinctions of class and region by language.

Questions to Consider

1. Some Jamaicans want to make Patois the nation's official language and require its formal teaching in schools. What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of such a policy? Can you think of similar movements elsewhere?
2. Many people seek to preserve vanishing tongues such as Welsh and Native American languages. Do you think such efforts are worthwhile? Why or why not?
3. What steps can a society take to keep a vanishing language alive among its population?
4. In this episode, we've seen how English evolved differently in different countries. On a smaller scale, has language evolved within your family or social group? For example, have you coined new words or used a word in a peculiar sense that people outside your family or social circle wouldn't understand? What are the effects of speaking a micro-dialect?

Featured Experts

Kate Burridge Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Hubert Devenish University of the West Indies

Highlights

• British adventures abroad produced "new" English languages in India, the Caribbean, and Australia.
• In India, English became a double-edged sword, sowing the seeds of independence by introducing Western ideas of freedom and democracy but also serving as an instrument of colonialism and repression.
• In the Caribbean, English blended with local languages to form Creole dialects distinctive to each island.
• Australian English developed its own character, shaped by the regional and criminal backgrounds of the first settlers.

Questions to Consider

1. Some Jamaicans want to mak e Patois the nation's official language and require its formal teaching in schools. What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of such a policy? Can you think of similar movements elsewhere?
2. Many people seek to preserve vanishing tongues such as Welsh and Native American languages. Do you think such efforts are worthwhile? Why or why not?
3. What steps can a society take to keep a vanishing language alive among its population?
4. In this episode, we've seen how English evolved differently in different countries. On a smaller scale, has language evolved within your family or social group? For example, have you coined new words or used a word in a peculiar sense that people outside your family or social circle wouldn't understand? What are the effects of speaking a micro-dialect?

Featured Experts

Kate Burridge Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Hubert Devenish University of the West Indies

Highlights

• During the 20th century, American English was influenced by southern blacks migrating to northern cities and central and eastern Europeans immigrating to the States.
• America's economic might, military success in two world wars, and export of movies and other forms of pop culture contributed to the spread of English around the globe.
• English has become a truly global language, spoken to some degree by about a third of the world's population. It continues to change and grow as it interacts with other languages.

Questions to Consider

1. Do you agree or disagree with Bragg's observation that Americans have developed a "classless" language–an everyday informality that doesn't betray a person's social standing?
2. How have movies and TV influenced the way that you personally use language? Has the explosion of the Internet and e-mail changed the way that you read and write?
3. What do you think of prescriptive efforts to protect language, such as France's prohibiting the introduction of English words where French equivalents exist?
4. Bragg notes how ethnic diversity is changing English in places such as the British Isles and Singapore. How is cultural diversity changing American English today?

Featured Experts

Jane Stuart-Smith University of Glasgow
John Simpson Chief Editor, Oxford English Dictionary