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The History of the English Language Podcast
The History of the English Language Podcast episodes
- Britain After Rome Withdraws: How Latin Loss Shaped Early English
Explore the collapse of Roman administration in Britain, the decline of Latin literacy, and how Celtic, Germanic, and monastic forces set the stage for Old English. The episode traces linguistic shifts, place‑name evolution, and early medieval trade networks that reshaped the island’s language landscape.
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18 min - School Etymology: From Scholē to Modern Classroom
In this episode we trace the word ‘school’ from its Greek root scholē meaning leisure and intellectual space, through Latin schola, Old English scōl, and into modern English. We explore how cultural shifts—from Roman rhetoric to Norman French dominance—shaped the term’s meaning and its global spread as a symbol of formal education.
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13 min - Silent K and GH: How 'Knight' Keeps Its Old English Ghost
Explore how the medieval word "knight" still bears silent letters that echo its Old English pronunciation. We trace the phonological shifts, orthographic conservatism, and dictionary decisions that left us with a spelling that sounds almost like it once did.
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20 min - From Hiccough to Holiday: Tracing English Through Orthography, Antiquarianism, and Culture
This episode follows the quirky spelling history of hiccough, explores William Camden’s antiquarian work that revived Anglo‑Saxon place names, and uncovers how the word holiday evolved from Old English *halig dæg* to today’s vacation culture—showing how printing, scholarship, and social change shape English.
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17 min - From Foolish to Fond: The Curious Journey of an English Adjective
In this episode, Josh Linsk explores the semantic shift of the adjective 'fond' from its 12th‑century sense of foolish or doting to the affectionate meaning we use today. He traces the word’s Old French roots, Middle English usage, Shakespearean influence, and how dictionaries recorded and codified this change.
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18 min - French Loanwords and the Rhythm of English: How Stress Shifted Through History
We trace how French loanwords reshaped the stress system of English—from Norman conquest through Middle English to today—examining why certain syllables keep their French cadence, how printers and dictionaries codified these patterns, and what that tells us about language change.
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17 min - From Dice Roll to High Card: The Linguistic Journey of "Ace"
Explore how the Latin word for ‘one’ evolved from a dice roll in medieval England, through French card games and 18th‑century gambling, to become the emblem of victory in modern slang and aviation. The episode traces cultural shifts, military usage, academic praise, and meme culture that kept "ace" alive across centuries.
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16 min - Brummie Accents: Birmingham’s Dialectal Evolution From Saxon Roots to TikTok
Explore the Brummie accent—its non‑rhotic vowels, bottle shift and double negatives—and how industrial migration, Irish and German influence, and social media have reshaped a regional voice. The episode traces the dialect from Mercian origins through the 19th‑century boom and into the digital era, showing how one city’s speech mirrors wider English change.
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17 min - Kenning Kompounders: How Anglo‑Saxon Metaphors Shape Modern English
Explore the world of kennings—compact Old English metaphors that still live in our modern compounds—and discover how this ancient compounding logic has kept English flexible and inventive for a millennium.
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14 min - Medieval Wool and the Birth of English Vocabulary
Explore how thirteenth‑century England’s booming wool industry seeded a rich branch of vocabulary—from ‘staple’ to ‘levy’—that still echoes in modern English. The episode traces economic drivers, linguistic borrowing, and the lasting legacy of medieval markets on today’s words.
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17 min
About The History of the English Language Podcast
From the publisher's feed
The History of the English Language Podcast, hosted by Josh Linsk, explores how English developed from its earliest roots into one of the world’s most widely spoken languages. Each episode traces the people, migrations, invasions, cultures, technologies, and historical events that shaped English vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and everyday speech.
The podcast follows the language through Old English, the Anglo-Saxon period, Viking influence, the Norman Conquest, Middle English, the Great Vowel Shift, Early Modern English, Shakespeare, the printing press, colonial expansion, American English, and the rise of English as a global language. Along the way, it examines where words came from, why meanings changed, how accents developed, and how English absorbed influences from Latin, French, Norse, Greek, and many other languages.
From ancient word origins to slang, dictionaries, dialects, literature, pronunciation, and modern language change, The History of the English Language Podcast brings together linguistics, history, etymology, culture, and the evolution of English for anyone fascinated by how the language became what it is today.