The History of English in 10 Minutes

'The History of English in 10 minutes' is a video-clip made up of 10 sections covering the evolution of the English language from its emergence up to the 21st Century: Anglo-Saxon, The Norman Conquest, Shakespeare, The King James Bible, The English of Science, English and Empire, The Age of the Dictionary, American English, Internet English and Global English.

You can find the transcript right below the video-clip.

© The Open University



The History of English in Ten Minutes

Anglo-Saxon 

  

The English language begins with the phrase ‘Up Yours Caesar!’ as the Romans leave Britain 

and a lot of Germanic tribes start flooding in, tribes such as the Angles and the Saxons – who 

together gave us the term Anglo-Saxon, and the Jutes – who didn’t. 

The Romans left some very straight roads behind, but not much of their Latin language. 

The Anglo-Saxon vocab was much more useful as it was mainly words for simple everyday 

things like ‘house’, ‘woman’, ‘loaf’ and ‘werewolf’. 

  

Four of our days of the week - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were named in 

honour of Anglo-Saxon gods, but they didn’t bother with Saturday, Sunday and Monday as 

they had all gone off for a long weekend. 

While they were away, Christian missionaries stole in bringing with them leaflets about jumble 

sales and more Latin. 

Christianity was a hit with the locals and made them much happier to take on funky new 

words like ‘martyr’, ‘bishop’ and ‘font’.  

Along came the Vikings, with their action-man words like ‘drag’, ‘ransack’, ‘thrust’ and ‘die’, 

and a love of pickled herring. They may have raped and pillaged but there were also into 

‘give’ and ‘take’ – two of around 2000 words that they gave English, as well as the phrase 

‘watch out for that man with the enormous axe.

The Norman Conquest 

1066. True to his name, William the Conqueror invades Britain, bringing new concepts from 

across the channel like the French language, the Doomsday book and the duty free Galois’s 

multipack.  

French was de rigeur for all official business, with words like ‘judge’, ‘jury’, ‘evidence’ and 

‘justice’ coming in and giving John Grisham’s career a kick-start.  Latin was still used ad 

nauseam in Church, and the common man spoke English – able to communicate only by 

speaking more slowly and loudly until the others understood him. 

Words like ‘cow’, ‘sheep’ and ‘swine’ come from the English-speaking farmers, while the a la 

carte versions - ‘beef’, ‘mutton’ and ‘pork’ - come from the French-speaking toffs  – beginning 

a long running trend for restaurants having completely indecipherable menus.  

The bonhomie all ended when the English nation took their new warlike lingo of ‘armies’, 

‘navies’ and ‘soldiers’ and began the Hundred Years War against France. 

It actually lasted 116 years but by that point no one could count any higher in French and 

English took over as the language of power.

Shakespeare 

As the dictionary tells us, about 2000 new words and phrases were invented by Shakespeare.  

He gave us handy words like ‘eyeball’, ‘puppy-dog’ and ‘anchovy’ - and more show-offy words 

like ‘dauntless’, ‘besmirch’ and ‘lacklustre’. He came up with the word ‘alligator’, soon after he 

ran out of things to rhyme with ‘crocodile’. And a nation of tea-drinkers finally took him to their 

hearts when he invented the ‘hobnob’. 

Shakespeare knew the power of catchphrases as well as biscuits. Without him we would 

never eat our ‘flesh and blood’ ‘out of house and home’ – we’d have to say ‘good riddance’ to 

‘the green-eyed monster’ and ‘breaking the ice’ would be ‘as dead as a doornail’. If you tried 

to get your ‘money’s worth’ you’d be given ‘short shrift’ and anyone who ‘laid it on with a 

trowel’ could be ‘hoist with his own petard’.   

Of course it’s possible other people used these words first, but the dictionary writers liked 

looking them up in Shakespeare because there was more cross-dressing and people poking 

each other’s eyes out. 

Shakespeare’s poetry showed the world that English was a language as rich vibrant language 

with limitless expressive and emotional power. And he still had time to open all those 

tearooms in Stratford.

The King James Bible 

In 1611 ‘the powers that be’ ‘turned the world upside down’ with a ‘labour of love’ – a new 

translation of the bible. A team of scribes with the ‘wisdom of Solomon’ - ‘went the extra mile’ 

to make King James’s translation ‘all things to all men’, whether from their ‘heart’s desire’ ‘to 

fight the good fight’ or just for the ‘filthy lucre’.  

This sexy new Bible went ‘from strength to strength’, getting to ‘the root of the matter’ in a 

language even ‘the salt of the earth’ could understand. ‘The writing wasn’t on the wall’, it was 

in handy little books and with ‘fire and brimstone’ preachers reading from it in every church, its 

words and phrases ‘took root’ ‘to the ends of the earth’ – well at least the ends of Britain. 

The King James Bible is the book that taught us that ‘a leopard can’t change its spots’, that ‘a 

bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, that ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ is harder to spot 

than you would imagine, and how annoying it is to have ‘a fly in your ointment’.  

In fact, just as ‘Jonathan begat Meribbaal; and Meribbaal begat Micah. And Micah begat 

Pithon’, the King James Bible begat a whole glossary of metaphor and morality that still 

shapes the way English is spoken today. Amen.

The English of Science 

Before the 17th Century scientists weren’t really recognised – possibly because lab-coats had 

yet to catch on. 

But suddenly Britain was full of physicists – there was Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle – and 

even some people not called Robert, like Isaac Newton. The Royal Society was formed out of 

the Invisible College – after they put it down somewhere and couldn’t find it again. 

At first they worked in Latin. After sitting through Newton’s story about the ‘pomum’ falling to 

the ‘terra’ from the ‘arbor’ for the umpteenth time, the bright sparks realised they all spoke 

English and could transform our understanding of the universe much quicker by talking in 

their own language. 

But science was discovering things faster than they could name them. Words like ‘acid’, 

‘gravity’, ‘electricity and ‘pendulum’ had to be invented just to stop their meetings turning into 

an endless game of charades. 

Like teenage boys, the scientists suddenly became aware of the human body – coining new 

words like ‘cardiac’ and ‘tonsil’, ‘ovary’, and ‘sternum’ - and the invention of ‘penis’ (1693), 

‘vagina’ (1682) made sex education classes a bit easier to follow. Though and ‘clitoris’ was 

still a source of confusion.

English and Empire 

With English making its name as the language of science, the Bible and Shakespeare, Britain 

decided to take it on tour. 

Asking only for land, wealth, natural resources, total obedience to the crown and a few local 

words in return.  

They went to the Caribbean looking for gold and a chance to really unwind – discovering the 

‘barbeque’, the ‘canoe’ and a pretty good recipe for rum punch. They also brought back the 

word ‘cannibal’ to make their trip sound more exciting.  

In India there was something for everyone.  ‘Yoga’ – to help you stay in shape, while 

pretending to be spiritual.  If that didn’t work there was the ‘cummerbund’ to hide a paunch 

and - if you couldn’t even make it up the stairs without turning ‘crimson’ – they had the 

‘bungalow’.  

Meanwhile in Africa they picked up words like ‘voodoo’ and ‘zombie’ – kicking off the teen 

horror film – and even more terrifying, they brought home the world’s two most annoying 

musical instruments – the ‘bongo’ and the ‘banjo’. 

From Australia, English took the words ‘nugget’, ‘boomerang’ and ‘walkabout’ - and in fact the 

whole concept of chain pubs. 

Between toppling Napoleon (1815) and the first World War (1914), the British Empire gobbled 

up around 10 millions square miles, 400 million people and nearly a hundred thousand gin 

and tonics, leaving new varieties of English to develop all over the globe.

The Age of the Dictionary 

With English expanding in all directions, along came a new breed of men called 

lexicographers, who wanted to put an end to this anarchy – a word they defined as ‘what 

happens when people spell words slightly differently from each other’. 

One of the greatest was Doctor Johnson, whose ‘Dictionary of the English Language’ which 

took him 9 years to write. 

It was 18 inches tall and 20 inches wide – and contained 42,773 entries – meaning that even 

if you couldn’t read, it was still pretty useful if you wanted to reach a high shelf. 

For the first time, when people were calling you ‘a pickle herring’ (a jack-pudding; a merryandrew; a zany; a buffoon), a ‘jobbernowl (loggerhead; blockhead) or a ‘fopdoodle’ (a fool; an 

insignificant wretch) – you could understand exactly what they meant – and you’d have the 

consolation of knowing they all used the standard spelling. 

Try as he might to stop them, words kept being invented and in 1857 a new book was started 

which would become the Oxford English Dictionary. It took another 70 years to be finished 

after the first editor resigned to be an Archbishop, the second died of TB and the third was so 

boring that half his volunteers quit and one of the ended up in an Asylum.  

It eventually appeared in 1928 and has continued to be revised ever since – proving the 

whole idea that you can stop people making up words is complete snuffbumble.

American English 

From the moment Brits landed in America they needed names for all the plants and animals 

so they borrowed words like ‘raccoon’, ‘squash’ and ‘moose’ from the Native Americans, as 

well as most of their territory. 

Waves of immigrants fed America’s hunger for words. The Dutch came sharing ‘coleslaw’ and 

‘cookies’ – probably as a result of their relaxed attitude to drugs.  Later, the Germans arrived 

selling ‘pretzels’ from ‘delicatessens’ and the Italians arrived with their ‘pizza’, their ‘pasta’ and 

their ‘mafia’, just like mamma used to make. 

America spread a new language of capitalism – getting everyone worried about the 

‘breakeven’ and ‘the bottom line’, and whether they were ‘blue chip’ or ‘white collar’. The 

commuter needed a whole new system of ‘freeways’, ‘subways’ and ‘parking lots’ – and 

quickly, before words like ‘merger’ and ‘downsizing’ could be invented.  

American English drifted back across the pond as Brits ‘got the hang of’ their ‘cool movies’, 

and their ‘groovy’ ‘jazz’.  There were even some old forgotten English words that lived on in 

America.  So they carried on using ‘fall’, ‘faucets’, ‘diapers’ and ‘candy’, while the Brits moved 

on to ‘autumn’, ‘taps’, ‘nappies’ and NHS dental care.

Internet English 

In 1972 the first email was sent. Soon the Internet arrived – a free global space to share 

information, ideas and amusing pictures of cats. 

Before then English changed through people speaking it – but the net brought typing back 

into fashion and hundreds of cases of repetitive strain syndrome.  

Nobody had ever had to ‘download’ anything before, let alone use a ‘toolbar’ - 

And the only time someone set up a ‘firewall’, it ended with a massive insurance claim and a 

huge pile of charred wallpaper. 

Conversations were getting shorter than the average attention span – why bother writing a 

sentence when an abbreviation would do and leave you more time to ‘blog’, ‘poke’ and 

‘reboot’ when your ‘hard drive’ crashed?  

‘In my humble opinion’ became ‘IMHO, ‘by the way’ became ‘BTW and ‘if we’re honest that 

life-threatening accident was pretty hilarious!’ simply became ‘fail’. 

Some changes even passed into spoken English. For your information people frequently 

asked questions like “how can ‘LOL’ mean ‘laugh out loud’ and ‘lots of love’? But if you’re 

going to complain about that then UG2BK

Global English 

In the 1500 years since the Roman’s left Britain, English has shown an unique ability to 

absorb, evolve, invade and, if we’re honest, steal.  After foreign settlers got it started, it grew 

into a fully-fledged language all of its own, before leaving home and travelling the world, first 

via the high seas, then via the high speed broadband connection, pilfering words from over 

350 languages and establishing itself as a global institution. All this despite a written alphabet 

that bears no correlation to how it sounds and a system of spelling that even Dan Brown 

couldn’t decipher.  

Right now around 1.5 billion people now speak English. Of these about a quarter are native 

speakers, a quarter speak it as their second language, and half are able to ask for directions 

to a swimming pool.   

Modern hybrids of English have really caught on.  There’s Hinglish – which is Hindi-English, 

Chinglish – which is Chinese-English and Singlish – which is Singaporean English – and not 

that bit when they speak in musicals. 

So in conclusion, the language has got so little to do with England these days it may well be 

time to stop calling it ‘English’. But if someone does think up a new name for it, it should 

probably be in Chinese. 

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