In the early 1600s, several landmark events shaped the history of England and determined how and where the English language would be spoken in the centuries that followed. The period from 1602-1605 saw the end of the Elizabethan era, the unification of the crowns of England and Scotland, the authorization of the King James Version of the Bible, the Gunpowder Plot, and the first English description of New England. The period also produced a literal ‘defining moment’ with the publication of the first English dictionary. In this episode, we explore those defining moments and examine how they shaped the future of English. We also explore several plays by William Shakespeare that are also dated to this period. Works discussed in this episode include:
‘Twelfth Night’ – William Shakespeare
‘Othello’ – William Shakespeare
‘A Table Alphabeticall’ – Robert Cawdrey
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I understand the situation well. I lived in Japan for 3 years and my Japanese came along to a good degree while I was there. Although I knew the three main politeness of the verbs (da — dictionary form, desu — standard polite & de gozaimasu — standard formal), I stuck with the standard polite form most of the time and standard formal when asking for things in shops, restaurants and so on as well as talking to those senior to me. The boys in the lower secondary school where I taught often spoke a cruder version of Japanese (as is not uncommon with teenage boys) but I rarely succumbed to their (politeness) level.
Now I live in Switzerland and learning German & Swiss German at 33 was harder for me than Japanese was at 24. I was corrected for a long time by my wife whenever I used the informal ‘du’-form with her 100 year old grandmother.
English does make it grammatically easier but those learning English have to learn to get the intonation of the politeness level correct. It is, in many ways, a worse trade off for easier grammar.
Hey thanks for making me accept the crazy way my dad kept making “you” plural. Drove me crazy, thought it was PA Dutch coming through. But your explanation is probably more to point. His version was “ younze “ (or “ye uh nz” one syllable) which was not or your list.
Thanks for another fascinating episode. I was interested in the way “invest” has developed and I wondered if its use as in “investing a castle”, laying siege to it, was connected.
Incidentally, re your comments about the confusions with Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, in the 1960s I saw an excellent production at the Old Vic in London (the forerunner of the National Theatre) where Viola was played by Judi Dench and Sebastian by her brother Jeffery Dench.
Yes, “invest” in the sense of a siege developed from the sense of “invest” as clothing. According to the OED, the word “invest” as clothing led to a sense of ‘to wrap, envelop, surround or enclose with something.’ That sense is recorded in the mid-1500s. From there, the sense of the word was extended to troops that surrounded an enemy town or encampment to prevent escape or fortification.
And thanks for the note about Judi Dench and her brother. I had never heard that before.
Excellent episode as always. I was particularly interested in the disappearance of the familiar second person form. Are there any theories as to why it has been retained by other European languages. The reasons given for its disappearance in England make perfect sense, but I don’t understand why they would not equally apply in other countries. We’re there some peculiarly English factors at play.
M
In my research, I didn’t come across any explanations for the retention of the familiar second person pronoun form in other European languages. I am sure historical linguists have theories or ideas about that, but I am not sure what they are.
Norwegian and Swedish for example use the familiar second person form to address everybody, so why would they get rid of it when the formal you is seldom used nowadays? If the familiar second person form is widely used, I suppose it means that people saw fit to use it in their own social context and still do.
Just yesterday in a café in Darwen, Lancashire my wife and I were asked by the waitress “Do youse want sugar in your tea”. I was tempted to direct her to your podcast.
You’ll hear that in Dublin too. ‘Ye’ for the second person plural is also sometimes said.
I just found this podcast and I’m starting from the start, so I’m way back in 2017, but I wanted to post on the most recent in case Kevin is more likely to read this. Most of what I know of philology is through Tolkien, indeed the reason I know the word philologist itself from him, and older forms of English from some of the most obvious literature – Beowulf, Chaucer, and Mallory. I’m so looking forward to listening through what looks like it will be a few hundred hours of podcasts on long commutes. Thank you for making these and for continuing after so long.