The History of the English Language Podcast

This episode unpacks the history of h-dropping in English, tracing its roots from Old English through the Norman Conquest and into modern dialects. We explore how the silent h became a marker of class, identity, and stigma—and what that reveals about language change and social dynamics.

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This episode explores how the Norse settlers who arrived in northern England during the Viking Age left a lasting imprint on the Yorkshire dialect. We trace Old Norse loanwords, place‑name suffixes like –by and –wick, and phonological traits that survive today, while also looking at later layers from Norman French, Scots, and industrial innovation.

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In this episode we trace the ampersand’s journey from its Latin roots as a ligature for "et" to its brief status as a 27th alphabet letter in Victorian schools, and finally to its modern role as punctuation and pop‑culture icon. We explore how scribes, printers, educators, and even early digital media shaped this symbol’s identity across centuries of English use.

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Explore the quirky process of back‑formation that turned the noun editor into the verb edit, and how this linguistic trick reflects deeper patterns of change in English—from phonological shifts to cultural innovation. The episode traces the origins, spread, and impact of these word‑level transformations across centuries.

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This episode traces the journey of ‘hamburger’ from a German city name to a productive suffix in modern English, exploring rebracketing, folk etymology, dictionary standardization, and digital memes. We look at how speakers, printers, lexicographers, and social media have shaped the word’s evolution—and what that reveals about language change.

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In this episode we trace how English evolved across a dialect continuum from Yorkshire to Scotland, how colonial forces shaped Hong Kong English, and how Shakespeare’s terse stage directions reveal a functional language that survived printing and AI. We examine the social, political, and technological forces that have kept English alive and adaptable.

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This episode traces the word ‘pilgrim’ from its Latin roots as a foreigner through medieval pilgrimage culture, the English Separatists aboard the Mayflower, to its modern role as an American cultural symbol and tech brand name. We explore how religious devotion, colonial migration, and marketing intersected to shape its meaning and usage across centuries.

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From the stone staircases of 17th‑century New Amsterdam to modern Manhattan streets, discover how the word ‘stoop’ survived a political takeover and became embedded in everyday English. We trace its Dutch origins, architectural influence, and lasting cultural impact on New York’s urban landscape.

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This episode traces the quirky orthographic legacy of love, son, and come—why English keeps an ‘o’ where a modern speaker would expect a ‘u’. We dig into medieval minims, printing presses, dictionary canon, and how a simple visual tweak became a stubborn spelling norm.

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In this episode we follow three pivotal English words—‘will’, ‘knave’, and ‘good’—from their Old English roots to modern usage, uncovering how social change, the Norman conquest, Shakespearean drama, and linguistic phenomena like suppletion have reshaped meaning, spelling, and function over centuries.

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