Podcast Recommendation: The History of English Podcast

Over about the past month and a half I have been listening to The History of English Podcast produced by Kevin Stroud. As I have listened I have discovered the answers to questions I have had about English for many years without knowing how to find out the answers. The content has been fascinating, and I am grateful to have discovered this collection of information.

I still have three released episodes that I have not listened to (109 - 111), but I feel confident enough to make this recommendation despite not having heard those episodes.

As Stroud explains in the first episode, plans to deliver essentially four volumes of the podcast, and is currently in the third of those volumes. The first is the ancient forebears of the English language from the Indo-European language through to the Germanic language spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who settled in England after conquering the Celtic peoples who had been living there. The second is an examination of Old English. Third is the Middle English period. And the fourth is planned to be a discussion of the Modern English period.

Many of my favorite episodes came from the pre-English and Old English episodes. But I continue the enjoy the middle English episodes as well.

One example of something I have learned from by listening to this podcast: I studied French in Junior High, and I have been studying Spanish for about a year and a half. These are both latin languages, and yet their words for cheese are drastically different. Queso in Spanish, and fromage in French. Of the two, queso is closer to the English word cheese despite French influencing English much more than Spanish has. Spanish is an older derivative language of Latin than French is, and took the word for cheese prior to the introduction of formed cheeses. English also had contact with Latin, and borrowed the same word around the same time. Later, formed cheeses were distinguished from unformed cheeses in Latin, and French adopted the word for formed cheeses as its generic word for cheese. This explains why the two latin languages have such different words for cheese, and why Spanish has a more closely related word for cheese than French does despite the greater influence of French on English overall.

I really cannot recommend this more highly. You will be edited by listening to this series. Please do check it out.