Episode 96: What's the Earliest English Word?

What do you think the earliest English word was? How could we possibly look for such a thing, and what do the possible options tell us about early English history and the movement of peoples in the early medieval period? We tackle these questions, in an episode about Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Celts, Tacitus, Bede, and more.Reminder: Mark will be running another session of his Speakeasy seminar course, The Origins of English: Learning to Think Like an Etymologist, which is open to anyone who’s interested. Registration is now open at Speakeasy.com for the session running on Sunday afternoons (Eastern time) from September 12th October 3rd. Recipe for Old English cocktailEarliest English Word videoJabzy’s Anglo-Saxon Invasion videoThe Early Greek Alphabets: Origin, Diffusion, chpt 4 by Rosalind ThomasC. Krebs, A MOST DANGEROUS BOOK: TACITUS’ GERMANIA FROM THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE THIRD REICH. London: W.W.Norton & Co., 2011. Other sourcesWhy do Poles call Italy WŁOCHY? (video)Bonus episode about the term “Anglo-Saxon” from December 2019Transcript of this episodeThis episode on YouTubeOur Patreon pageRedbubble storeThis podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International LicenseThe Endless Knot RSS