Transcription
[Music] hello i'm chris and welcome to london but before we move from big bend to the london eye i need to send a tweet. only a few years ago, a tweet was something only birds did. now everybody's tweeting, often using tech speak or emoticons.
but the inventiveness of the english language is nothing new. it has been evolving for over 1600 years. in ad 43, the romans invaded britain, conquering the indigenous celts and taking over most of the country.
[Music] in ad 409, they left and around 50 years later, several tribes from around northern germany, including the angles, the saxons and the jute, better known as the anglo-saxons, started to move in. they settled in the east but unlike the romans, the anglo-saxons didn't set out to conquer. they shared many things with the celts, including language. unlike latin, which had never really caught on with the locals, people started using anglo-saxon terms for lots of everyday things like man, woman and friend.
but then latin made a comeback. this time, it didn't arrive with roman soldiers. it arrived with christian monks. christianity became very popular with the locals and introduced a whole new alphabet and religious vocabulary.
then the vikings arrived in around 800 ad. [Applause] their warrior spirit was reflected in their language. they raced through the country, ransacking towns and villages, armed with knives and clubs. they took land, goods and slaves, but they gave english around 2,000 words.
[Music] the vikings and the anglo-saxons battled for almost 300 years until the english king harold won the battle of stamford bridge. but only three weeks later, the unlucky harold was killed by william the conqueror, a norman from france, at the battle of hastings.
[Music] william became the king of england and started building castles all over the country. [Music] french became the language of the wealthy elite. it was the native tongue of all princes, dukes, barons and dames. but english remained the language of the peasants. farmers herded cows and sheep, which were anglo-saxon words. but the nobility ate beef and mutton, which were french words.
[Music] over the next 300 years, the two languages mixed until english eventually won. album with 10,000 new words from the french. [Music] this richer language was the perfect plaything for poets and playwrights, and one literary genius contributed more than most.
[Music] william shakespeare wrote 38 plays and 150 poems. he also coined around 2,000 new words and his turn of phrase transformed the entire language. [Music] the 16th century was also the age of discovery, and for britain, this meant the birth of an empire that stretched across the globe. the british colonialists often used native words, and soon words like safari from the african language swahili, pyjamas from the urdu language in india, and boomerang from the native australian language daruc, had entered the language.
[Music] but the country that had the most impact on english was america. the newly independent america needed a new type of english, american english. american english kept many of the old english words, so today english curtains are still american drapes. english wardrobes are american closets.
[Music] and english trousers are american pants. [Music] but the language changed a lot too. the father of american english was noah webster. he created a new dictionary which simplified the spelling of lots of complicated english words. he also introduced uniquely american words like squash, chowder and skunk. by the 20th century, there were two main types of english: british english and american english.
[Music] but throughout the 20th century, both continued to change and borrow from one another, especially with the invention of computers and the internet. suddenly, we needed new words to describe our blogs, posts and of course, tweets. today, english is truly global. there are around 375 million native speakers and about 1.5 billion people learn it as a foreign language. but it is always changing and shifting to suit our needs. today, the english vocabulary has over 170,000 words and counting. we are inventing new words every day, and if we don't know them, we just google them on our smartphones or send a tweet.