The Story of English Episode Two: Native English Varieties

Episode two was mainly based on like how English came about in the (now) British Isles and France. I personally preferred episode one because it was more modern and relevant, but hey the old stuff is important too.

I though it was interesting that English was threatening survival of celtic languages in France, England, Scotland, and Wales in a similar way, it may be argued, as is it threatening the survival of other native languages around the world.

The fact that old English is taught like a foreign language was cool because listening to it in the film it didn't seem to foreign. It was semi understandable and very familiar sounding. The sounds were similar and recognizable but the meaning behind them was just missed. The Dutch and German tones are very evident and can be heard in the accent and pronunciation of old English. The quick old English grammar lesson that it is the "form of the words, not word order, which gives the sentence its meaning"(1). Also that it would be easy to make a sentence of words of anglo-saxon origin is cool because I probably use many words of anglo-saxon origin every day and have no idea.

Also a shoutout to Albert the Great because without him this blog post would probably sound a little different. If it weren't for him my language would be pretty much wiped out.

And I liked the story about the man (I couldn't understand his name, much less how to spell it. Erwin Belbie?) with the strong traditional yorkshire accent. It strange how he was finding it difficult to communicate with other English speakers because of the differences in accent because his was so strong. This relates back to a point in my previous post that really there is no correct or good English because even native English speakers have huge varieties in accent and vocabulary.

And it was pretty cool of them to just drop all the fancy endings and replace them with the 's. Definitely deeply appreciated.

1. "The Mother Tongue." The Story of English. Writ. Robert McCrum and Robert MacNeil. Dir. Vivian Ducat, Howard Reid. BBC MCML XXXVI. YouTube.