0:22

this is the south bank in London two thousand years ago if you had heard
0:30
a human voice around here the language would have been incomprehensible a
0:35
thousand years ago the English language had established its first base camp
0:41
today English circles the globe it inhabits the air we breathe
0:47
what started as a guttural tribal dialect seemingly isolated in a small island is now the
language of well over
0:54
a thousand million people around the world
1:06
you
1:17
you
1:24
the story of the English language is an extraordinary one it has the characteristics of a bold
and successful
1:31
adventure tenacity luck near extinction on more than one occasion
1:36
dazzling flexibility and an extraordinary power to absorb and it's still going on
1:42
new dialects new English's are evolving all the time all over the world
1:50
successive invasions introduced then threatened to destroy our language our
1:56
first program tells that story for 300 years English was forced
2:03
underground our second program tells how it survived and how it fought back
2:12
our third program will tell how the English language took on the power blocks of church and
state
2:19
1/4 how it became the language of Shakespeare in later programs were going
2:24
to leave these shores as English did to tell the story of how in America the language of one
great Empire became that
2:32
of another we'll go to the Caribbean where a variety of new part English
2:37
dialects took root India where English became a commanding unifying language in
2:44
a country of a thousand tons and Australia where a confident new English
2:50
was invented by a people many of whom had been expelled from their mother country
2:58
we'll travel through time to to explore how English in the 21st century has become the
International language of
3:05
business the language in which the world's citizens communicate
3:13
over the last 15 hundred years these small islands have achieved much that is
3:18
remarkable but in my view England's greatest success story of all is the
3:24
English language these programs are about the words we think in talking
3:30
right in singing the words that describe the life we live this is where we can
3:49
begin just after dawn in a foreign country on a flat shore by the North Sea
3:54
in what we now call the Netherlands
3:59
this is Friesland and it's in this part of the world that we can still hear the
4:05
modern language that we believe sounds closest to what the ancestor of English sounded
like fifteen hundred years ago
4:13
and this is the mouth of heaven to show her mouth have a thoughtful an orthodontic frost-
free idiot of some
4:20
yoga doc that for all on the groom in Friesland many people start their day listening to the
weather forecast from
4:26
popular weatherman Pete policeman and among the easy Eliza Vera dial some of his
words might sound
4:34
familiar like three and four frost and freeze and template tuition when the beta tray of the
fuel grab the enforced
4:41
at sea on that free is a mist and blue fearless the chorus of mist and Dunmore
4:47
and I might think what's in it blow in the loft the reason we can recognize these words is
that modern Frisian and
4:54
modern English can both be traced back to the same family the Germanic family
4:59
of languages and some words have stayed more or less the same down the centuries
5:05
butter bread cheese meal sleep boat snow
5:14
sea storm
5:21
the West Germanic tribes who invented these words were a warlike adventurous people
they'd been on the move through
5:29
Europe for the best part of a thousand years and now had settlements in what we would
call the lowlands of northern
5:34
Europe Holland Germany and Denmark but there were still greedy for land ready
5:40
to move on this is the island of terschelling the English coast is about
5:46
250 miles to the southwest behind me it was from these islands and the low-lying
5:51
frisian mainland that in the 5th century a Germanic tribe part of the family that also
contained Jutes Angles and Saxons
5:58
made sail to look for a better life and they took their language our language
6:03
with them whose mid-flow debar on Fran Radha Hayek
6:11
Stefan naka snella Cassini arc snood ever windin who thought with this early
6:19
oder lund gas öktem water bill reckon our soirees wind for draft the Germanic
6:29
tribes weren't the first to invade our shores more than 500 years before the Romans had
also come by sea to impose
6:36
their will now their empire had crumbled and they'd abandoned these islands leaving the
native tribes the Britons or
6:43
Celts to their fate this is Pevensey
6:49
castle an ancient Roman fort that used to stand on the very shoreline of the south coast the
chronicle of the period
6:56
reported in the year 491 Germanic invaders laid siege and slaughtered the
7:01
Celts had taken refuge here not one of them was left alive other kelsa did survive the
invasion a million or more
7:08
of them in England but there were a broken people the clue to their fate lies in the word the
Germanic tribe used
7:15
to describe them it was Willis a name that lives on in our modern languages Welsh 1,500
years ago
7:21
it meant both foreigner and slave the Celts became servants and followers
7:26
second-class citizens the only way up was to become part of the invaders tribes to adopt
their culture and their
7:34
language the Celts in their language were pushed to the margins
7:44
only a handful of words from the Celtic languages survived into modern English in the
North where I come from we have
7:52
crag meaning Rock Combe meaning deep valley and dialect words like brat and
7:59
brach for badger
8:09
there are traces in place-names the tour intro Penner spelled as top and how a
8:16
neighboring village to my own that comes from the Celtic folk peak the car of
8:24
Carlisle means a fortified place in the
8:31
south they left us the names of Tamils and Aven Dover and London but these were
8:37
fragments the language that prevailed was that of the victors by the end of
8:46
the sixth century these Germanic tribes occupied half of mainland Britain they
8:53
had divided into a number of kingdoms Kent Sussex Essex and Wessex denoting
8:59
the settlements of southern eastern and western Saxon tribes east anglia named
9:05
after the angles who gave England its name Mercer in the Midlands Northumbria
9:11
in the north throughout these areas many modern place names come from that
9:18
settlement or use the words they brought we live with them we live in them every day
9:27
the Inge in modern place-names means the people of
9:34
torn as in Whitley where I come from means enclosure or village Han means
9:45
farm which might surprise one or two Tottenham supporters
10:09
the Germanic tribes now settled around the country all spoke their own dialects from
among them when you merge one
10:16
language anglo-saxon or Old English and we all speak it every day fire strike is
10:22
none of them can really finish Armstrong even so hard I just need some youth from their
teammates really examine a language you
10:29
use today and you'll still find hundreds of words from a language over fifteen hundred years
old
10:34
keywords ready from the names we give family members to numbers think will win
10:41
- once there I'll drink to that I live in a West Ham sort of area and I
10:47
love got lower stem friends but for this game we'll be enemies for the home games I would
go with the guys we meet up in
10:54
the top Birds web site or with my daughter to other games and she's five at the moment
loves it loves singing the
11:01
songs nice ones anyway I was coming with my son so we're just going to get something to
eat first going to the
11:08
ground saving the atmosphere much to go there has been a few high scoring games over
the years then the highest B of a beat
11:14
than the sixth one repeat today one guy miss most of those words were from Old
11:19
English nouns like youth son daughter field friend home and ground
11:26
prepositions like in and on into by and from and and the are from Old English
11:33
all the numbers and verbs like drink come and go sing like and love but would
11:41
these words have sounded different all those years ago in a slightly quieter pub I asked
language expert quesillo
11:47
they sound a little different I mean the old English the Sun is soo new that's not so very
different game is Garmin
11:55
ground is groomed and and I noticed that Steve says his his daughter loves
12:01
singing songs she said that an old English it would be his doctor lover the
12:06
sanga's singing and you can see that that sounds pretty much like modern English so in
fact you can have a good
12:12
conversation in Old English oh yes you can indeed I mean each each word I'm saying now
is from Old English over any
12:20
estimate how many words there swirling around compared with how many words we have
now we think it was in the
12:25
region of 25,000 words I've compared up with an average destiny which maybe contains
only like hundred thousand
12:31
words it sounds pretty small but if you think about the fact that an average ly educated
person will probably have about
12:37
10,000 words and an active recovery there are plenty of words to go round
12:45
English took its first steps away from its tribal roots with the revival of Christianity new
Michelin hariom he
12:54
often reaches we art met Oda's mikta and his mood gathon we let us praise the
13:01
king of heavens when He willed the power of the creator and his conception the
13:06
work of the glorious father who created every wonder the eternal Lord he often
13:14
told flew harlech she tended
13:26
in 597 the monk and Pryor Augustine led a mission from Rome to Kent around the
13:33
same time Irish monks of the Celtic Church were establishing a presence in the north
within a century Christians
13:42
built churches and monasteries this isn't Paul's injera parts of which date from the 7th
century faith and
13:57
stone weren't the only things the Christian missionaries brought to the country they brought
the international
14:02
language of the Christian religion Latin Latin terms became part of the English
14:07
word horde Altera became altar a possible us became apostle mass monk and
14:13
verse and many others all come from the Latin this would become a pattern of English the
layering of words taken from
14:20
different source languages and from Latin to the English took their script
14:29
the Angles Saxons frisians and Jutes who had become the English hadn't brought
14:34
script as we know it with them but runes
14:45
the runic alphabet was made up of symbols formed mainly of straight lines so the letters
could be carved into
14:51
stone or wood those were their media rather than parchment or paper though
15:00
this is a short poem most examples of runic writing that survived suggest runes were
mainly used for short
15:06
practical messages or graffiti the Latin
15:21
alphabet was different with its curves and bows it allowed words to be easily written using
pen and ink on two pages
15:28
of parchment or vellum which gathered together into a book could be widely circulated
15:48
Christianity brought the book to these shores verbum the word soon a native
16:05
culture of scholarship began to flower a culture based on Latin and in writing
16:14
the Magnificent Lindisfarne Gospels were created in the 8th century on the island
16:19
of Lindisfarne just off the northeast coast a few miles south at the monastery
16:26
of st. Paul's in djaro the great English monk and scholar bead born and educated in
Northumbria began writing the first
16:34
ever history of the english-speaking people he wrote of course in Latin the
16:41
language of scholarship the prevailing language among the people was still old
16:47
English but Latin this powerful medium was now amongst them now old English was
16:53
written down using the Latin alphabet while retaining some of the old runes as letters from
the 7th century we find
17:00
English itself written on parchment in a language and a script which was just about
recognized as our own
17:10
father who serve larf in here flu see gajala guard Norma Dean - cometh richer
17:18
Dean see Willow Dean's Watson he orphne and in ortho Clough Mussina of village
17:27
sellers today and forgive us shoulder ozra swami forgive on Shuga Museum and
17:35
inlaid with whiting Old English still a
17:40
march on other languages spoken in Europe at the time prayers were recorded and books
of the Bible translated the
17:47
laws of the land were written down and the language soon became capable of recording
and expressing an increasingly
17:53
wide and subtle range of human experience and in the right hands Old
18:00
English was now powerful and supple enough to take you to imaginary worlds fire the
blood be poetry what we got a
18:09
dinner in Yarra the woman field cooling a throne loon on so the spear days and
18:17
days gone by the Kings will rule them at courage and greatness we have heard of
18:23
those princes heroic campaigns
18:28
no one knows who composed the epic Beowulf sometime between the mid 7th and end of
the 10th century it's the first
18:35
great poem in the English language the beginning of a glorious tradition which will lead to
Chaucer Shakespeare and
18:41
Beyond the poem celebrates the glory days of the Germanic tribes epitomize in
18:47
the heroic warrior who gives the poem its name the power of the language can
18:53
be heard in this passage which introduces bales archenemy the monster Grendel with a
calm of Mordor under miss
19:03
Lee odham Grendel dongha quarters in off
19:09
the moors down through the mist bands God cursed Grendel came greedily looking
19:15
montes amongst kafir one of the bane of the race of men's roam fourths hunting
19:22
for a prey in the high corner to record our ring spurned and
19:27
joyless he journeyed on ahead and arrived at the ball on brand the bee
19:32
Allah who dig the Higa bargain was in his rage boiled over he ripped open the
19:38
mouth of the building maddening for blood he grabbed and mauled a man on his
19:45
bench bit into his bone wrappings bolted on his blood and gorged on him in loss
19:52
leaving the body utterly lifeless eaten up hand and foot
19:58
what does that tell us about English at that time Seamus what sort of language was it when
you came to do you think
20:03
this is a fully developed poetic language it's certainly fully developed poetic language it's
it's furrier is
20:10
capable of great elaboration but what struck me generally about Old English
20:16
from the moment I read the bits of the anglo-saxon Chronicle right through to Beowulf is it's
terrific for telling
20:21
what happened it's a wonderful sense of the indicative Moodle through it it's
20:26
terrific for action terrific for description there's a wonderful forthright capacity
20:35
to make up extra language in anglo-saxon
20:41
the words are very clear and direct bone and house for example bone house there
20:47
you have the house for the body a word for the body beautiful words for
20:54
instruments the harp is called glial BAM
20:59
the Glee beam the happy the happy wood or else the joy would in some cumin wudu
21:13
swords or shield the shield is the war board weak board that is a specific
21:22
poetic energy that's in the language the the ability to make compounds which is
21:29
still in German I guess that gives us a great beauty high excessive is the vocabulary I think
there 40,000 words
21:37
recorded in in Beowulf but a lot of the words repeat themselves in probably this
21:43
is in poetry more than in the prose if we heard an anglo-saxon speaker speaking
21:49
under his roof to his companion we'd probably hear very a quicker a
21:55
different less elaborate language from Beowulf would you say was it is very clearly written
to be read aloud it's
22:01
certainly written to be read aloud the question that that agitates some
22:07
scholars as whether it was written you know but I think the general consensus
22:13
now is that by the time you get to bail of you have a writer dealing with a
22:18
traditional oral language what we Gardiner NER dawam
22:24
failed Kooning of from noon on who'sa are filling us Ellen from a dog
22:31
certainly you open the book what way gardenia and year document asks to be
22:36
uttered and there are many speeches in it and it comes off the tongue with with
22:41
terrific directness
22:51
Latin and Greek had created great bodies of literature in the classical past in
22:56
East Arabic and Chinese were being used in the eighth and ninth centuries languages of
poetry but at that time no
23:03
other language in the Christian world could match the achievement of the bear Wolford and
his anonymous contemporaries
23:10
Old English was flourishing the adventure was underway but while the
23:15
seeds of English had come from these frisian shores in the fifth century so now in the late
eighth century a
23:22
potential destroyer was repairing his battle fleet 500 miles or so to the
23:27
north
23:58
in the late 8th century the latin-based culture of scholarship which had grown
24:03
up in places like Lindisfarne and which had also been the cradle of old english faced
extinction from across the sea
24:20
these ruins are of the medieval monastery that stood on the island of Lindisfarne it was the
Vikings who
24:30
sacked and burnt a religious center that stood here before to these pagan pirates
24:38
rampaging out of their longships in 793 this great center of Christian piety and
24:43
scholarship a pivotal place in the survival of the word and the Gospels was
24:48
no more than an undefended treasure house the jewels that grace the books of the church
became baubles around a
24:55
vikings neck
25:02
today the Vikings may seem romantic re-enacting their rituals a good day out
25:07
over 12 centuries ago their arrival was not so cheerful to many it seemed to
25:15
signal the end for civilization
25:20
a year after raising Lindisfarne the Vikings returned and sacked Jarrow the
25:27
abbey where beed had been the greatest scholar in one of the finest libraries and
Christendom this stronghold of the
25:37
Latin word where English was also being written down uniquely among European dialects
was burned to the ground it's
25:44
books with it
26:00
it was the start of 70 years of attack during which the Vikings savaged this
26:06
eastern half of the country few stories survived of exactly where and when they
26:11
attacked perhaps chillingly because few were left to tell the tale but first the Raiders went
home with
26:17
their plunder then they decided to take the land itself in 865 the Vikings
26:23
landed a great army south of here in East Anglia
26:30
within five years the Viking invaders who are now called Danes controlled the north and
east of the country of the old
26:39
anglo-saxon kingdoms only Wessex still held out Old Norse the language of the
26:45
conquerors was spreading throughout the land Old English potentially faced the same fate
as the Celtic language it had
26:51
supplanted virtual oblivion English was in need of a champion and it found one
27:12
King Alfred statue stands here in Winchester the capital of his ancient kingdom of Wessex
he's the only monarch
27:18
in our history to be known as the Great and he's often been hailed as the savior of England
that may be debatable as the
27:25
idea of a single unified England didn't really exist in Alfred's day what is certain is that he
was a great defender
27:32
of the English language it was the Victorians who dubbed Alfred
27:39
the Great he was one of their darlings an English hero whose exploits were enthusiastically
woven into the fabric
27:46
of national myth but he very nearly didn't make it he come to the throne of
27:54
Wessex within a year of the first Danish attacks in the southeast and at first he could hardly
hold them back in 878 the
28:02
Danes were on what appeared to be a decisive battle at Chippenham in Wiltshire
28:14
alfred with only a few followers went on the run into the marshes of somerset moving as a
contemporary road under
28:22
difficulties through woods and into inaccessible places legend has Alfred
28:29
unrecognised taking shelter in a poor woman's cottage and being scolded for burning the
wheat and cakes he'd been
28:35
set to mind but the reality was less
28:41
cozy his situation was desperate and if Alfred's Kingdom fell the whole country
28:46
would be controlled and settled by conquerors whose language would inevitably crush
English but Alfred
28:58
proved to be an enterprising warrior and strategist running free in the Somerset Levels he
discovered the arts of
29:04
irregular warfare and mounted guerrilla attacks against the occupying forces of go thrown
the Danish invader
29:10
but he knew that wasn't going to be enough for were sex to be regained the Danes had to
be brought to battle and
29:16
defeated the fighting men of Wessex had been scattered but in the spring of 87 night Alfred
sent out a call for the men
29:23
of the Shire foods the county armies to join him around 4000 men mainly from
29:28
Wiltshire and Somerset armed only with battle axes and throwing spears responded to the
call they mustered at
29:34
Egberts stone were trackways and ridgeway's met 48 hours later they advanced shields
drumming against the
29:42
danish army of 5000 holding high ground at athens ooon on the western edge of soars
reply contemporary English
29:50
accounts described the battle that followed as a slaughter and a rout of the Danes by the
West Saxons modern
29:56
historians question that but there's no doubt that Alfred prevailed his crown and his
kingdom were secured and more
30:04
importantly for our story so is the English language
30:13
the Dane surrendered the leader was baptized as a Christian and Alfred's crucial victory
was memorialized here in
30:20
Russia in an earlier version of a great white horse carved into the land deep saved
30:35
alfred left an even more significant mark on the country he signed a peace treaty with the
danes
30:41
which established a border running up through the country from the thames to the old
roman road of watling street the
30:48
land to the north and east to be known as the Danelaw would be under Danish rule the
land to the south and west
30:54
would be for the English no one was to cross the line unless to trade in the
31:05
course of time because of Alfred's peace treaty when Danes in English met they didn't do
so to fight but to do business
31:12
even to intermarry communities mixed and
31:18
so did the languages in English rather than being engulfed by the Danes language began
to absorb it I'm in the
31:30
market town of Hexham in the northeast of England maps of the area showed just how
widespread the Danish settlement was
31:40
place names ending in by reveal the Danish name for farm for denotes a
31:48
village sweet a portion of land the births marriages
31:58
and deaths pages of the local paper feature lots of names owning in son that was a Danish
way of making a name by
32:05
adding to the name of the father just on this page I can see Harrison Gibson
32:12
Hudson Robson Sanderson Dickenson Simpson Dickinson again and Watson and
32:20
school where I was just across the country there was a Pattinson a Johnson a role in some
not another Dixon outside
32:27
in the street you can see the same thing on shop signs everywhere
32:33
even give the centuries of people moving around the country names ending in Sun are still
far more common in what were
32:40
the Danish territories of the north and west than they are in the south and east but all you
can hear the echoes of the
32:46
Danes Old Norse language in the way people speak surely Allah and of the the
32:54
Sailor man lemme Carolyn it's a little field on its own really sensors are back down by the
side of it looks down to a
33:01
little water in the structure looking a second down by the you know don't bite you're not
going if you it's like a
33:07
little isolation feely Johnny it's only a couple of acres the whole thing interests me see if
you sheep showed
33:13
would love it for debate today there some Old Norse word stayed in the local
33:18
dialect of the north words like Beck for stream and Garth for paddock as a boy Rick and I
remember
33:26
hearing and using dialect words like Slattery for shower slate for slippery yet for gait lab
Philippe yech for oaken
33:34
yam for home as in arzga and young pure nose heard in Wigton every night of the
33:39
week and there are many others but the influence of Old Norse wasn't just local
33:45
or on the country over time hundreds of Norse words entered the mainstream of
33:50
English and we still use them every day the SK sound is a characteristic of Old
33:57
Norse and English borrowed words like score and sky and skive as well as
34:02
perhaps a thousand others including anger bull freckle knife neck root skull
34:10
and window
34:18
sometimes we're both Old Norse and Old English had a word for the same thing both
words lived on in English each
34:25
taking on a slightly different meaning where Old English said craft Old Norse said skill for
an English hide the North
34:33
said skin in Oldham she was sick in Norse you're ill here was another
34:42
example of English as extraordinary ability to absorb to take in words from other languages
adding them to its word
34:49
hoard increasing the richness and flexibility of the vocabulary I think
34:54
that the point about my cover is how much it astonishes by its ordinary nature words like
law egg husband leg
35:03
LLL die ugly all these words are from Old Norse and yet you wouldn't
35:09
necessarily think they were foreign at all most astounding of all I think other pronouns they
there and then those are
35:16
also from Old Norse an in terms of grammar in a way they simplified English
35:22
didn't they took it away from its Germanic roots these probably true to say that Old Norse
affects the English
35:27
language more than any other visit actually leads to a restructuring of the language Old
English form sentences and
35:34
not by word order as we do but by tacking on endings on to the ends of
35:40
things like articles and pronouns and nouns and what happens is through
35:45
contact with a pretty similar language a lot of these inflectional endings start to lose their
distinctive nature and
35:52
actually this is a process that we can see happening fairly early on in the anglo-saxon
period so the language is prone to do that but contact with north
35:59
language just speed eases up gave it a shove towards modernity can you give us a very
simple example of that yes let's
36:07
take a simple sentence like and the King gave horses to his men that would be something
like in Old English say
36:13
chimney gave blank an his guru now in Old English you didn't tend to have a
36:19
preposition like to instead you could use a special ending which kind of meant to his men
36:26
and that would be um a um ending and you just tack that onto the end of the noun
36:32
for man so you'd have Ghulam um ending now the plural for the word
36:38
for horse you will say gave horses to his men would be have an N on it so every blonde
can unfortunately towards
36:46
the end of the old english period we start to see that um ending becoming more and more
indistinct and we see
36:53
spellings like GU man a n just the same as blank and a n it's obvious that the
37:02
king is more likely to give horses to his men men men to his horses but you can see that
there's a potential there
37:08
for difficulties and so we start to see and prepositions being used in place of
37:15
those endings which has become indistinct spoken English survived the
37:24
Danish invasion but as the ninth century drew to a close the written culture was
37:30
in a ruinous State and King Alfred was concerned when Alfred looked at the
37:36
state of his kingdom he was appalled the scholars in the monasteries had once made
England the greatest powerhouse of
37:42
Christian teaching in Europe but a hundred and fifty years had passed since the High days
of bead and the scholarly
37:48
tradition had declined hastened on its way by a century of Viking reigns in all
37:54
the country Alfred could barely find a handful of priests who could read and understand
Latin and if they couldn't
37:59
understand Latin they couldn't pass on the teachings of the religious books that told people
how to lead virtuous
38:05
lives they couldn't save souls where the written word had once flourished alfred
38:11
now found only chronic spiritual sickness he looked for a cure one way
38:16
was to educate more clergy in latin but that wasn't enough he hit on a more radical solution
a solution that hinged
38:23
not on Latin but on English and he took English to new heights of achievement
38:30
in the preface to his own translation of Pope Gregory's pastoral care alfred
38:36
wrote I remembered how before it was all ravaged and burned I'd seen how the
38:41
churches throughout all England stood filled with treasures and books and there was also a
multitude of God's
38:47
servants who had very little benefit from those books because they couldn't understand
anything of them since they
38:53
were not written in that own language
38:59
their own language was of course English Alfred didn't want to do away with Latin
39:04
but he realized that it would be far easier to teach people to read books written in the
language they spoke the
39:10
best scholars could then go on to learn Latin and join Holy Orders the rest would still have
access to scholarship
39:17
and spiritual guidance but it would be written in English here in his capital
39:28
city of Winchester Alfred drew up a plan it was an extraordinarily imaginative
39:35
project to promote literacy and restore the English language
39:50
we should he wrote translate certain books which are most necessary for all
39:55
men to know into the language that we can all understand and also arrange it as with
God's help we very easily can if
40:02
we have peace so that all the youth of freemen now among the English people will have
the means to be able to devote
40:08
themselves to it may be set to study for as long as they're of no other use until
40:14
the time that able to read English writing well Alfred had five books of
40:21
religious instruction philosophy and history translated from Latin into English a laborious
and costly
40:26
undertaking copies were sent out to the 12 bishops
40:32
of his kingdom for their wisdom to be spread as widely as possible to each
40:39
bishop to emphasize the importance and value of the project Alfred sent a costly pointer
used to
40:46
underline the text this is the Alfred jewel
40:51
many historians believe that it formed the head of one of those pointers crafted in Crystal
and amylin gold it
40:58
was discovered in 1693 in Somerset and is now on show at the Ashmolean Museum
41:03
in Oxford it's inscribed Alfred had me made in English Alfred the Great had
41:13
made the English language to jewel in his crown
41:22
here in Winchester Alford had established what was effectively a publishing house other
projects he
41:29
undertook included the commissioning of the anglo-saxon Chronicle detailing hundreds of
years of history Alfred died
41:36
in 899 one of his legacies was an English language which is more prestigious and widely
read than ever
41:42
before there was nothing to compare with this range of written vernacular history
41:48
philosophy poetry anywhere else in mainland Europe English was out on its own by the
middle of the 11th century
41:54
English seemed secure but now other invaders were waiting in the wings and
42:00
English was about to face its greatest threat ever
42:20
this place the old Roman for dependency was a faithful one for the English language it was
here among other places
42:27
that the Frisians and other Germanic tribes had made landfall in the 5th century and
introduced their own
42:33
language now in 1066 another wave of invaders was landing the Normans when in
42:41
1066 William Duke of Normandy sailed with his army to claim the English throne he was
sure he had right on his
42:47
side the English King Edward the Confessor had spent many years in
42:53
Normandy and in that time contemporary sources say had come to regard William as a
brother or even a son and it named
43:00
him as his successor sensing his impending death and fearing rebellion at
43:07
home the childless Edward had dispatched Harold Godwinson his wife's brother and his
Earl of Essex the richest and most
43:13
powerful of the English Lords to Normandy to pledge loyalty to William
43:20
this Harold did swearing on two caskets of holy relics
43:28
but when Edward did die howled supported by the English nobility had himself crown in
Westminster Abbey on
43:35
the very day that Edward was laid to rest there
43:40
- the truculent and ruthless William this was an affront invasion with
43:45
maximum force the only possible response
44:03
the armies met here near Hastings this
44:11
is the sport where traditionally Harold fell fatally pierced through the eye with an arrow the
sight was later named
44:23
after the engagement but it's named not with an English word like fight but with
44:29
a word from the language of the Norman Victor's battle Harold would be the last
44:38
english-speaking King of England for three centuries on Christmas Day 1066
44:43
William was crowned in Westminster Abbey in a service conducted in English and Latin
William spoke French throughout
44:55
a new king and a new language were in authority in England enemy castle
45:07
castle was one of the first French words to enter the English language the Normans built a
chain of them to
45:13
impose their rule on the country this magnificent castle at Rochester was one
45:18
of the first to be fortified in stone
45:25
by blood the Normans were from the same stock as the Norseman who'd invaded in
45:31
earlier centuries but they no longer spoke a Germanic language rather would we call old
French which had grown from
45:37
Latin roots many of the words they spoke would have been very strange to the native
English but would quickly become
45:44
unpleasantly familiar our words are me Archer soldier garrison and guard all
45:52
come from the conquering Norman French French was the language that spelled out
45:58
the architecture of the new social order crown throne and Court Juke Baron and
46:04
nobility peasant vassal servant the word govern comes from French as do Liberty
46:10
Authority obedience and traitor the Normans took the law into their own hands felony arrest
warrant justice
46:18
judge and jury all come from French and so do accuse acquit sentence condemned
46:25
prison and jail it's been estimated that
46:31
in the three centuries after the conquest about ten thousand French words colonized the
English language they
46:37
didn't all come in immediately but the conquest opened a conduit of French vocabulary that
remain open on and off
46:42
ever since today French words are all around us city market
46:50
Porter here we are lock one fabulous salmon weighs about 14 pound it is a fabulous fish
we've got some fabulous
46:57
makkal they've come out from Aberdeen next door the oysters they come from the Essex
coast soul pork sausage bacon
47:08
oranges but juicy leathers grape tart biscuit sugar cream fry vinegar nearly
47:23
500 words dealing with food cooking and eating alone entered English from French just a
fraction of the imports which
47:30
would enrich the English word hoard in the centuries after the Norman Conquest
47:41
within 20 years of taking control of the country William sent his officers out to
47:46
take stock of his kingdom the monks of Peterborough who were still recording
47:52
the events of history in English in the anglo-saxon Chronicle noted disapprovingly they're
not one piece of
47:58
land escaped the survey not even an ox or a cow or a pig
48:16
the Doomsday Book there are in fact two volumes show us how complete the Norman
48:22
takeover of English land was and how widespread their influence and their language the
Norman settlement had
48:31
concentrated the wealth of England more than ever before or since the native ruling class
from before the conquest
48:36
had been slaughtered banished or disinherited in favor of William's followers half of the
country was in the
48:43
hands of just a hundred and ninety men half of that was helped the English language had
been forced underground it
48:50
would take 300 years for it to re-emerge and when he did he would have changed
dramatically