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The History of the English Language Podcast
The History of the English Language Podcast episodes
- From Pasture to Parliament: The Journey of 'Commons'
Explore how the everyday noun ‘commons’ evolved from shared medieval fields into England’s House of Commons and beyond. This episode traces its Latin roots, Norman influence, feudal politics, and modern echoes in open‑source commons and digital culture.
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17 min - Shakespeare’s Vanishing Puns: How a Vowel Shift Drowned Wordplay
Explore how the Great Vowel Shift turned Shakespeare’s clever triple‑word puns into lost jokes, and see what printing and regional pronunciation shifts left behind. The episode traces phonological change from Early Modern English to today, revealing why we miss the humor of Malvolio, Falstaff, and Hamlet.
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16 min - From Sushi to Kawaii: How Japanese Loanwords Have Shaped Modern English
Explore how waves of Japanese loanwords—from sushi and karaoke in the 19th‑century to kawaii and anime slang in the internet age—have entered English. The episode traces the cultural, economic, and technological forces that pushed these terms across the Pacific and into everyday usage.
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16 min - The Word 'Check': From Persian Shah to Modern English
Explore how the chess term "check" migrated from Persian through Arabic and Old French into English, tracking its journey from a king’s threat on a board to a versatile everyday word. The episode uncovers linguistic pathways, cultural contacts, and the power of borrowing in shaping modern vocabulary.
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17 min - The Great Vowel Shift Explained: The Silent Phonological Revolution That Still Affects Modern English
From the late‑14th to early 18th centuries, England’s vowels leapt into new positions, turning words like ‘meet’ into /mi:t/ and leaving modern spelling oddly mismatched with pronunciation. Josh Linsk unpacks the causes, geography, and lasting legacy of the Great Vowel Shift, showing why English still feels a little off‑beat.
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19 min - The Compounding Engine: From Blackbird to Emoji Keyboard
In this episode we trace how English has continually merged words—from Old English compounds like blackbird to modern tech terms such as emoji keyboard—showing the linguistic, cultural and technological forces that keep the language evolving.
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16 min - The Birth of the Selfie: From Aussie Slang to Global Cultural Icon
We trace how a playful Australian internet forum coined ‘selfie’ in 2002, how smartphone cameras and social media amplified it, and how lexicographers captured it in the OED. The episode explores technology’s role in vocabulary diffusion, cultural meanings of self‑portraiture, and the broader implications for English evolving with new tools.
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15 min - Verner’s Law: How Stress Unveiled a Hidden Sound Change
From the medieval roots of Germanic speech to modern English, Verner’s Law reveals how a subtle shift in word stress turned silent consonants into voiced sounds. This episode traces Karl Verner’s discovery, its confirmation of Grimm’s Law, and the ripple effects on English vocabulary—from brother to mother—showing that hidden patterns drive language evolution.
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19 min - The Rise of the Perfect Have: How ‘Have’ Became an Auxiliary
In this episode we dig into the transformation of ‘have’ from a simple verb meaning "to hold" in Old English to the auxiliary that signals perfect aspect in modern English. We explore how linguistic, technological, and cultural forces—from medieval scribes and the printing press to digital media—shaped this shift, and what it reveals about English’s capacity for change.
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15 min - Virginia: From Elizabeth’s Title to America’s State
This episode traces how Sir Walter Raleigh christened a stretch of North America after Queen Elizabeth I, turning her moniker the “Virgin Queen” into the name of a colony and later a U.S. state. It explores the political motives, cartographic propaganda, and lasting linguistic legacy that keep Virginia alive in modern English.
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16 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.