Episode 180: English on the Move

In the first decade of the 1600s, English speakers were on the move as they established the first permanent English settlement in North America. They also began a steady a migration to northern Ireland after an event known to history as ‘the Flight of the Earls.’ As these English speakers relocated to regions outside of Britian, they took their regional accents and dialects with them. In this episode, we’ll examine how those settlement patterns shaped the way English is spoken around the world.

TRANSCRIPT: EPISODE 180

7 thoughts on “Episode 180: English on the Move

  1. One of the things that I love about learning German — both High-German as well as the Bernese dialect of Swiss-German — is discovering the cognates and similarities with the English I grew up (Irish-English) as well as the Inner-City variant of English.
    The g-sound in German often becomes a y-sound in English (and kevin has surely told us what that sound-shift is called but I can not for the life recall it).
    In the centre of Dublin, the word ‘rain’ is pronounced in two syllables as ‘reyen’. This fits nicely with the German word ‘Regen’. Replace the ‘g’ with a ‘y’ and ‘Regen’ becomes ‘Reyen’. I can well imagine that people in London 400+ years ago said ‘reyen’ too.
    Another nice word in the English of the centre of Dublin is ‘childer’ (as opposed to ‘children’). In German it is ‘Kinder’. Both ‘n’ and ‘l’ are liquids and the sound change from ‘n’ to ‘l’ would not surprise me. In Switzerland there is a small city on the French-German language border by the name of ‘Biel’ (in ‘German’ and Bienne (in French).
    If you want to hear how English in the centre is/was spoken, listen to the singer Luke Kelly on YouTube: Luke Kelly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7LtwPXt36Y

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