As the English Civil War raged in the 1640s, English grammarians wrote about several developments in the language, including a new sound appearing in the word “vision” and new ways of describing future actions and events. The military conflict was also shaping the language by contributing new terms to the lexicon. And a new sense of “self” was emerging, which had far-reaching consequences for philosophy, politics, and the English language. In this episode, we explore how these developments shaped the language we speak today and provided a vision of the future.
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May contain spoilers to the next episode…
Monty Python «Oliver Cromwell»
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBPf6P332uM&list=RDdBPf6P332uM&start_radio=1
Definitely a couple of spoilers. 🙂
I discovered history of English podcast a little while ago, and ive been religiously listening to about 5 episodes a week. I’m still only in episode 51, but I’ll get there :). Love your stuff! Just amazing! Keep up the great work! Is there a buy me a coffee link or something? Would love to show my appreciation!
You mention that an example of the present tense is “The horse jumps the fence”. To me, this seems more to apply to habitual action, e.g. “The horse jumps the fence every day”. To describe the actual present, “The horse is jumping the fence” seems more appropriate. Or am I not thinking enough about what the usage was in the past?
Pedant’s moment: “Present tense” is about grammar/conjugation not about whether the action is habitual or not.