0:00:12.789,0:00:23.726
[♪ choral music]

0:00:23.726,0:00:25.703
Narrator: This is the South Bank in London.

0:00:27.697,0:00:29.511
2,000 years ago,

0:00:29.511,0:00:31.565
if you'd heard a human voice around here,

0:00:31.565,0:00:35.721
the language would have been incomprehensible.

0:00:36.361,0:00:37.943
1,000 years ago,

0:00:37.943,0:00:42.206
the English language has established it's first base camp.

0:00:43.016,0:00:45.671
Today, English circles the globe.

0:00:45.671,0:00:48.057
It inhabits the air we breathe.

0:00:48.428,0:00:50.706
What started as a guttural, tribal dialect,

0:00:50.706,0:00:53.032
seemingly isolated in a small island,

0:00:53.032,0:00:56.633
is now the language of well over a 1,000 million people,

0:00:56.633,0:00:57.752
around the world.

0:00:58.001,0:01:25.101
[♪ instrumental]

0:01:25.101,0:01:26.480
The story of the English language

0:01:26.480,0:01:28.181
is an extraordinary one.

0:01:28.181,0:01:29.452
It has the characteristics

0:01:29.452,0:01:32.985
of a bold and successful adventure,

0:01:32.985,0:01:36.935
tenacity, luck, near extinction on more than one occasion,

0:01:36.935,0:01:38.347
dazzling flexibility,

0:01:38.347,0:01:40.832
and an extraordinary power to absorb,

0:01:40.832,0:01:42.792
and it's still going on.

0:01:42.792,0:01:45.094
New dialects, new Englishes,

0:01:45.094,0:01:46.619
are evolving all the time,

0:01:46.619,0:01:47.826
all over the world.

0:01:47.826,0:01:50.992
[♪ instrumental]

0:01:50.992,0:01:52.582
Successive invasions introduced,

0:01:52.582,0:01:55.087
then threatened to destroy our language.

0:01:56.236,0:01:58.982
Our first program tells that story.

0:02:01.595,0:02:02.479
For 300 years,

0:02:02.479,0:02:04.762
English was forced underground.

0:02:04.762,0:02:06.982
Our second program tells how it survived,

0:02:06.982,0:02:08.102
and how it fought back.

0:02:08.102,0:02:13.008
[♪ instrumental]

0:02:13.008,0:02:14.200
Our third program will tell

0:02:14.200,0:02:15.622
how the English language took on

0:02:15.622,0:02:18.068
the power blocks of church and state.

0:02:19.903,0:02:22.519
Our fourth, how it became the language of Shakespeare.

0:02:24.040,0:02:25.006
In later programs,

0:02:25.006,0:02:26.280
we're going to leave these shores

0:02:26.280,0:02:29.424
as English did, to tell the story of how in America,

0:02:29.424,0:02:31.293
the language of one great empire,

0:02:31.293,0:02:32.846
became that of another.

0:02:34.424,0:02:35.827
We'll go to the Caribbean,

0:02:35.827,0:02:39.278
where a variety of new part-English dialects took root.

0:02:41.175,0:02:42.544
India, where English became

0:02:42.544,0:02:44.506
a commanding, unifying language,

0:02:44.506,0:02:46.400
in a country of a 1,000 tongues.

0:02:48.518,0:02:49.578
And Australia,

0:02:49.578,0:02:50.943
where a confident new English

0:02:50.943,0:02:52.591
was invented by a people,

0:02:52.591,0:02:55.576
many of whom had been expelled from their mother country.

0:02:59.457,0:03:01.045
We'll travel through time too,

0:03:01.045,0:03:03.318
to explore how English in the 21st century

0:03:03.318,0:03:06.356
has become the international language of business.

0:03:06.356,0:03:09.300
The language in which the world's citizens communicate.

0:03:09.300,0:03:14.391
[♪ instrumental]

0:03:14.391,0:03:15.949
Over the last 1,500 years,

0:03:15.949,0:03:19.865
these small islands have achieved much that is remarkable.

0:03:20.545,0:03:21.662
But, in my view,

0:03:21.662,0:03:23.998
England's greatest success story of all,

0:03:23.998,0:03:25.852
is the English language.

0:03:27.614,0:03:29.918
These programs are about the words we think in,

0:03:29.918,0:03:32.489
talk in, write in, sing in.

0:03:32.489,0:03:35.427
The words that describe the life we live.

0:03:35.427,0:03:48.711
[♪ soft, ethereal music]

0:03:48.711,0:03:50.679
This is where we can begin.

0:03:50.679,0:03:51.539
Just after dawn,

0:03:51.539,0:03:52.786
in a foreign country,

0:03:52.786,0:03:53.871
on a flat shore,

0:03:53.871,0:03:55.354
by the North Sea.

0:03:56.132,0:03:58.865
In what we now call, The Netherlands.

0:04:00.888,0:04:02.253
This is Friesland,

0:04:02.253,0:04:03.799
and it's in this part of the world,

0:04:03.799,0:04:05.544
that we can still hear,

0:04:05.544,0:04:07.507
the modern language that we believe,

0:04:07.507,0:04:09.711
sounds closest to what the ancestor

0:04:09.711,0:04:10.932
of the English sounded like,

0:04:10.932,0:04:12.735
1,500 years ago.

0:04:14.177,0:04:22.982
(man speaking in foreign language)

0:04:22.982,0:04:23.792
Narrator: In Friesland,

0:04:23.792,0:04:25.163
many people start their day,

0:04:25.163,0:04:26.748
listening to the weather forecast,

0:04:26.748,0:04:27.679
from popular weatherman,

0:04:27.679,0:04:29.465
Piet Paulusma.

0:04:29.465,0:04:33.214
(man speaking in foreign language)

0:04:33.214,0:04:34.719
Narrator: Some of his words might sound familiar,

0:04:34.719,0:04:35.897
like three and four,

0:04:35.897,0:04:37.792
frost and freeze.

0:04:37.792,0:04:43.240
(man speaking in foreign language)

0:04:43.240,0:04:44.562
Narrator: Mist and blue.

0:04:44.562,0:04:50.829
(man speaking in foreign language)

0:04:50.829,0:04:53.044
The reason we can recognize these words,

0:04:53.044,0:04:53.952
is that modern Frisian,

0:04:53.952,0:04:54.943
and modern English,

0:04:54.943,0:04:58.230
can both be traced back to the same family,

0:04:58.230,0:05:00.373
the Germanic family of languages.

0:05:00.373,0:05:00.991
And some words,

0:05:00.991,0:05:02.263
have stayed more or less the same

0:05:02.263,0:05:03.573
down the centuries.

0:05:06.032,0:05:07.233
Butter.

0:05:07.233,0:05:08.203
Bread.

0:05:08.381,0:05:09.211
Cheese.

0:05:09.703,0:05:10.643
Meal.

0:05:11.031,0:05:11.962
Sleep.

0:05:12.325,0:05:13.030
Boat.

0:05:13.727,0:05:14.241
Snow.

0:05:15.037,0:05:15.432
Sea.

0:05:16.182,0:05:16.647
Storm.

0:05:17.568,0:05:22.327
[♪ ethereal music]

0:05:22.327,0:05:23.753
The west Germanic tribes

0:05:23.753,0:05:24.949
who invented these words

0:05:24.949,0:05:27.374
were a war-like, adventurous people.

0:05:28.616,0:05:30.232
They'd been on the move through Europe

0:05:30.232,0:05:31.757
for the best part of a 1,000 years,

0:05:31.757,0:05:33.626
and now has settlements in what we would call

0:05:33.626,0:05:35.779
the lowlands of Northern Europe,

0:05:35.779,0:05:37.420
Holland, Germany, and Denmark.

0:05:37.950,0:05:41.285
But they were still greedy for land, ready to move on.

0:05:42.272,0:05:44.233
This is the island of Terschelling.

0:05:44.973,0:05:48.984
The English coast is about 250 miles to the southwest behind me.

0:05:49.330,0:05:50.575
It is from these islands,

0:05:50.575,0:05:52.840
and the low lying Frisian mainland,

0:05:52.840,0:05:54.117
that in the 5th century,

0:05:54.117,0:05:55.340
a Germanic tribe,

0:05:55.340,0:05:57.016
part of the family that also contained

0:05:57.016,0:05:58.814
Jutes, Angles and Saxon's,

0:05:58.814,0:06:01.022
made sail to look for a better life.

0:06:01.498,0:06:02.486
And they took their language,

0:06:02.486,0:06:04.912
our language, with them.

0:06:04.912,0:06:07.965
[♪ adventurous music]

0:06:07.965,0:06:28.634
(man speaking in foreign language)

0:06:29.192,0:06:31.774
The Germanic tribes weren't the first to invade our shores.

0:06:32.303,0:06:33.889
More than 500 years before,

0:06:33.889,0:06:36.828
the Romans had also come by sea to impose their will.

0:06:37.540,0:06:39.311
Now, their empire had crumbled,

0:06:39.311,0:06:40.991
and they'd abandoned these islands,

0:06:40.991,0:06:42.585
leaving the native tribes,

0:06:42.585,0:06:45.074
the Britains, or Celts to their fate.

0:06:48.706,0:06:50.105
This is Pevensey Castle.

0:06:50.105,0:06:51.728
An ancient Roman fort that used to stand

0:06:51.728,0:06:55.233
on the very shoreline of the south coast.

0:06:55.608,0:06:56.943
The chronicle of the period,

0:06:56.943,0:06:59.109
reported that in the year 491,

0:06:59.109,0:07:01.171
Germanic invaders laid siege

0:07:01.171,0:07:03.964
and slaughtered the Celts who had taken refuge here.

0:07:03.964,0:07:06.040
Not one of them was left alive.

0:07:06.040,0:07:08.200
Other Celts did survive the invasion,

0:07:08.200,0:07:09.774
a million or more of them in England,

0:07:09.774,0:07:11.486
but they were a broken people.

0:07:11.486,0:07:12.854
The clue to their fate,

0:07:12.854,0:07:14.944
lies in the word the Germanic tribe

0:07:14.944,0:07:16.375
used to describe them.

0:07:16.375,0:07:17.781
It was "walhaz,'

0:07:17.781,0:07:20.511
a name that lives on in our modern language as Welsh,

0:07:20.511,0:07:24.295
1500 years ago, it meant both foreigner and slave.

0:07:25.140,0:07:27.225
The Celts became servants and followers,

0:07:27.225,0:07:28.185
second-class citizens,

0:07:28.185,0:07:29.028
the only way up,

0:07:29.028,0:07:31.638
was to become part of the invader's tribes.

0:07:31.638,0:07:34.958
To adopt their culture, and their language.

0:07:34.958,0:07:37.683
[♪ meditative music]

0:07:37.683,0:07:40.251
The Celt's and their language were pushed to the margins.

0:07:44.511,0:07:46.876
Only a handful of words from the Celtic language

0:07:46.876,0:07:48.717
has survived into modern English.

0:07:50.357,0:07:51.795
In the north, where I come from,

0:07:51.795,0:07:54.521
we have crag, meaning rock,

0:07:55.670,0:07:57.535
combe, meaning deep valley,

0:07:57.973,0:08:01.218
and dialect words like brat and brock for badger.

0:08:01.218,0:08:10.347
[♪ meditative music]

0:08:10.347,0:08:12.098
There are traces in place names,

0:08:12.518,0:08:14.799
the "tor" in Torpenhow,

0:08:14.799,0:08:16.508
spelled as tor-pen-how,

0:08:16.508,0:08:17.783
a neighboring village to my own,

0:08:17.783,0:08:20.272
that comes from the Celtic for peak.

0:08:23.903,0:08:27.078
The "caer" of Carlisle, means a fortified place.

0:08:31.680,0:08:33.113
In the south, they left us the names of

0:08:33.113,0:08:36.414
Thames and Haven, Dover and London,

0:08:36.847,0:08:38.558
but these were fragments,

0:08:38.558,0:08:39.799
the language that prevailed

0:08:39.799,0:08:41.293
was that of the victors.

0:08:46.399,0:08:47.986
By the end of the 6th century,

0:08:47.986,0:08:51.412
these Germanic tribes occupied half of mainland Britain.

0:08:52.922,0:08:55.231
They had divided into a number of kingdoms,

0:08:55.231,0:08:59.183
Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Wessex,

0:08:59.183,0:09:00.303
denoting the settlements of

0:09:00.303,0:09:03.693
southern, eastern, and western Saxon tribes.

0:09:04.711,0:09:07.235
East Anglia, names after the Angles

0:09:07.235,0:09:08.311
who gave England it's name.

0:09:09.351,0:09:11.536
Mercia in the midlands,

0:09:11.536,0:09:13.392
Northumbria in the North.

0:09:15.232,0:09:16.380
Throughout these areas,

0:09:16.380,0:09:19.365
many modern place names come from that settlement,

0:09:19.365,0:09:21.172
or use the words they brought,

0:09:21.172,0:09:24.097
we live with them, we live in them, everyday.

0:09:24.097,0:09:29.095
[♪ pop music]

0:09:29.095,0:09:30.920
The "-ing" in modern place names

0:09:30.920,0:09:32.550
means the people of.

0:09:32.550,0:09:35.467
[♪]

0:09:35.467,0:09:38.080
"'Ton" as in Wigton where I come from,

0:09:38.080,0:09:39.816
means enclosure, or village.

0:09:44.626,0:09:47.120
"Ham" means farm,

0:09:47.120,0:09:50.480
which might surprise one or two Tottenham supporters.

0:09:50.480,0:09:52.271
[♪]

0:09:52.271,0:10:10.791
[♪ Battle Hymn of the Republic tune]

0:10:10.791,0:10:13.090
The Germanic tribes now settled around the country,

0:10:13.090,0:10:14.884
all spoke their own dialects,

0:10:14.884,0:10:16.231
from among them,

0:10:16.231,0:10:17.035
would emerge one language,

0:10:17.035,0:10:19.384
Anglo-Saxon, or Old English,

0:10:19.384,0:10:21.591
and we all speak it every day.

0:10:21.591,0:10:22.749
Man: They've got five strikers,

0:10:22.749,0:10:23.927
none of them can really finish

0:10:23.927,0:10:25.921
(mens voices overlapping)

0:10:25.921,0:10:27.878
Man: We just need some youth from (overlapping voices) really.

0:10:27.878,0:10:30.179
Narrator: Examine the language you use today,

0:10:30.179,0:10:32.160
and you'll still find hundreds of words

0:10:32.160,0:10:35.195
from a language over 1500 years old.

0:10:35.195,0:10:38.119
Keywords, ranging from the names we give family members,

0:10:38.119,0:10:39.143
to numbers.

0:10:39.143,0:10:41.320
(male voices overlapping)

0:10:41.320,0:10:42.752
Man: I think we'll win 2-1 today.

0:10:42.752,0:10:43.906
Man: I'll drink to that.

0:10:45.366,0:10:47.393
Man: I live in like a Westham area,

0:10:47.393,0:10:48.946
and I've got a lot of Westham friends,

0:10:48.946,0:10:51.013
but for this game, we'll be enemies.

0:10:51.013,0:10:52.023
Man: The home games,

0:10:52.023,0:10:53.794
I would go with the guys,

0:10:53.794,0:10:56.007
we meet up from the (indecipherable) website,

0:10:56.007,0:10:58.304
or with my daughter, to other games,

0:10:58.304,0:10:59.327
she's five at the moment,

0:10:59.327,0:11:02.095
she loves it, she loves singing the songs,

0:11:02.095,0:11:03.378
the nice ones anyway.

0:11:03.378,0:11:04.615
Man: I was coming with my son,

0:11:04.615,0:11:06.823
so we just go in to get something to eat first,

0:11:07.573,0:11:09.760
go into the grounds, stay with the atmosphere,

0:11:09.760,0:11:10.778
and watch the game.

0:11:11.183,0:11:13.078
There has been a few high scoring games over the years,

0:11:13.078,0:11:15.534
I think the highest we ever beat them was 6-1.

0:11:15.534,0:11:17.868
A repeat today wouldn't go amiss.

0:11:18.546,0:11:20.287
Narrator: Most of those words were from Old English,

0:11:20.287,0:11:23.668
nouns like "youth, son, daughter,"

0:11:23.668,0:11:26.661
"field, friend, home," and "ground."

0:11:26.661,0:11:30.577
Prepositions like "in, and on, into, by and from,"

0:11:30.577,0:11:33.685
"and" and "the" are from Old English,

0:11:33.685,0:11:34.715
all the numbers,

0:11:34.715,0:11:38.093
and verbs like "drink, come, and go"

0:11:38.093,0:11:40.494
"sing, like, and love."

0:11:41.194,0:11:43.983
But would these words have sounded different all those years ago?

0:11:43.983,0:11:45.828
In a slightly quieter pub,

0:11:45.828,0:11:48.621
I ask language expert Katie Lowe.

0:11:48.621,0:11:49.867
Katie: They sound a little different,

0:11:49.867,0:11:51.357
I mean the Old English for "son"

0:11:51.357,0:11:52.827
is (pronunciation) "sunu."

0:11:52.827,0:11:54.097
That's not so very different.

0:11:54.097,0:11:55.896
"Game" is (pronunciation) "gamen,"

0:11:55.896,0:11:58.542
"ground" is (pronunciation) "grund."

0:11:58.542,0:12:00.414
And I notice that Steve says that

0:12:00.414,0:12:03.057
his daughter loves singing songs,

0:12:03.057,0:12:04.580
if you said that in Old English,

0:12:04.580,0:12:05.088
it would be

0:12:05.088,0:12:08.824
[speaks sentence in Old English]

0:12:08.824,0:12:12.256
and you can see that sounds pretty much like modern English.

0:12:12.256,0:12:14.186
Narrator: So in fact, you can have a good conversation in Old English.

0:12:14.186,0:12:15.614
Katie: Oh, yes you can indeed.

0:12:15.614,0:12:18.446
I mean, each word I'm saying now,

0:12:18.446,0:12:20.032
is from Old English.

0:12:20.032,0:12:21.475
Narrator: Do you have any estimate of how many words

0:12:21.475,0:12:23.113
there were swirling around,

0:12:23.113,0:12:24.543
compared with how many words we have now?

0:12:24.543,0:12:27.559
Katie: We think it was in the region of around 25,000 words.

0:12:27.559,0:12:29.542
Compare that with an average desk dictionary,

0:12:29.542,0:12:31.846
which maybe contains something like 100,000 words,

0:12:31.846,0:12:33.400
it sounds pretty small.

0:12:33.400,0:12:34.647
But if you think about the fact that

0:12:34.647,0:12:36.547
an average educated person

0:12:36.547,0:12:38.440
would probably have about 10,000 words

0:12:38.440,0:12:39.654
in their active vocabulary,

0:12:39.654,0:12:41.088
there are plenty of words to go round.

0:12:41.088,0:12:46.189
[♪ choral music]

0:12:46.189,0:12:48.745
Narrator: English took it's first steps away from it's tribal roots

0:12:48.745,0:12:51.032
with the revival of Christianity.

0:12:51.968,0:13:00.941
(man speaking in foreign language)

0:13:00.941,0:13:02.930
Man: Let us praise the King of Heaven,

0:13:03.670,0:13:05.135
the power of the Creator,

0:13:05.135,0:13:06.908
and his conception.

0:13:07.184,0:13:08.702
The work of the Glorious Father,

0:13:08.702,0:13:11.258
who created every wonder,

0:13:11.258,0:13:13.337
the Eternal Lord.

0:13:13.337,0:13:27.142
[♪]

0:13:27.142,0:13:30.130
Narrator: In 597, the monk and prior Augustine,

0:13:30.130,0:13:32.276
led a mission from Rome to Kent.

0:13:33.352,0:13:34.345
Around the same time,

0:13:34.345,0:13:36.187
Irish monks of the Celtic church,

0:13:36.187,0:13:38.303
were establishing a presence in the North.

0:13:40.940,0:13:41.933
Within a century,

0:13:41.933,0:13:44.703
Christians built churches and monasteries.

0:13:44.703,0:13:46.281
This is St. Paul's in Jarrow,

0:13:46.281,0:13:49.680
parts of which, date from the 7th century.

0:13:56.837,0:13:59.511
Faith and stone weren't the only things

0:13:59.511,0:14:01.440
the Christian missionaries brought to the country.

0:14:01.440,0:14:04.688
They brought the international language of the Christian religion.

0:14:04.688,0:14:05.811
Latin.

0:14:05.811,0:14:08.920
Latin terms became part of the English word hoard,

0:14:08.920,0:14:10.714
Altare became alter,

0:14:10.714,0:14:12.393
apostulus became apostle,

0:14:12.393,0:14:13.953
mass, monk, and verse,

0:14:13.953,0:14:16.064
and many others, all come from the Latin.

0:14:16.064,0:14:17.991
This would become a pattern of English,

0:14:17.991,0:14:19.553
the layering of words,

0:14:19.553,0:14:21.686
taken from different source languages,

0:14:21.686,0:14:23.336
and from Latin too,

0:14:23.336,0:14:25.855
the English took their script.

0:14:25.855,0:14:30.733
[♪ choral music]

0:14:30.733,0:14:32.952
The Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes,

0:14:32.952,0:14:34.001
who would become the English,

0:14:34.001,0:14:36.114
hadn't brought script as we know it,

0:14:36.114,0:14:38.384
with them, but Runes.

0:14:46.160,0:14:47.161
The Runic alphabet,

0:14:47.161,0:14:48.671
was made up of symbols,

0:14:48.671,0:14:50.451
formed mainly of straight lines,

0:14:50.451,0:14:52.928
so that the letters could be carved into stone or wood.

0:14:54.518,0:14:55.735
Those were their media,

0:14:55.735,0:14:57.760
rather than parchment or paper.

0:15:00.170,0:15:01.743
Though this is a short poem,

0:15:01.743,0:15:04.112
most examples of Runic writing that survived,

0:15:04.112,0:15:05.880
suggests Runes were mainly used for

0:15:05.880,0:15:08.568
short, practical messages, or grafiti.

0:15:11.297,0:15:21.801
(Gregorian monk chanting)

0:15:21.801,0:15:23.303
The Latin alphabet was different,

0:15:23.303,0:15:24.515
with it's curves and bows,

0:15:24.515,0:15:27.920
it allowed words to be easily written using pen and ink

0:15:27.920,0:15:30.095
onto pages of parchment or velum,

0:15:30.095,0:15:31.937
which gathered together, into a book,

0:15:31.937,0:15:33.747
could be widely circulated.

0:15:33.747,0:15:49.164
[♪]

0:15:49.164,0:15:52.464
Christianity brought the book to the east shores.

0:15:54.512,0:15:56.387
Verbum, the word.

0:16:05.242,0:16:08.014
Soon a native culture of scholarship began to flower,

0:16:08.014,0:16:10.467
a culture based on Latin and on writing.

0:16:11.088,0:16:15.849
[♪ chanting continues]

0:16:15.849,0:16:17.655
The magnificent Lindisfarne Gospels

0:16:17.655,0:16:19.026
were created in the 8th century,

0:16:19.026,0:16:22.588
on the island of Lindisfarne, just off the northeast coast.

0:16:24.918,0:16:26.135
A few miles south,

0:16:26.135,0:16:28.411
at the monastery of St. Paul's in Jarrow,

0:16:28.411,0:16:31.280
the great English monk and scholar, Bede,

0:16:31.280,0:16:33.213
born and educated in Northumbria,

0:16:33.213,0:16:37.087
began writing the first ever history of the English speaking people.

0:16:37.087,0:16:40.454
[♪ chanting continues]

0:16:40.454,0:16:41.918
He wrote, of course in Latin,

0:16:41.918,0:16:43.776
the language of scholarship.

0:16:45.291,0:16:47.025
The prevailing language among the people,

0:16:47.025,0:16:48.426
was still Old English.

0:16:48.773,0:16:50.579
But Latin, this powerful medium,

0:16:50.579,0:16:51.784
was now amongst them.

0:16:52.311,0:16:54.680
Now, Old English was written down,

0:16:54.680,0:16:56.479
using the Latin alphabet,

0:16:56.479,0:16:59.437
while retaining some of the old Runes as letters.

0:16:59.437,0:17:00.711
From the 7th century,

0:17:00.711,0:17:03.266
we find English itself written on parchment,

0:17:03.266,0:17:04.470
in a language and a script,

0:17:04.470,0:17:07.744
we can just about recognize as our own.

0:17:08.519,0:17:11.540
[♪ chanting continues]

0:17:11.540,0:17:39.210
(man speaking in foreign language: The Lord's Prayer]

0:17:39.210,0:17:40.220
With writing,

0:17:40.220,0:17:41.661
Old English stole a march

0:17:41.661,0:17:44.248
on other languages spoken in Europe at the time.

0:17:44.248,0:17:47.494
Prayers were recorded, and books of the Bible translated,

0:17:47.494,0:17:49.274
the laws of the land were written down,

0:17:49.274,0:17:51.382
and the language soon became capable

0:17:51.382,0:17:52.888
of recording and expressing

0:17:52.888,0:17:56.768
and increasingly wide and subtle range of human experience.

0:17:56.768,0:17:59.110
[♪ intense music]

0:17:59.110,0:18:00.200
And in the right hands,

0:18:00.200,0:18:02.856
Old English was now powerful and supple enough

0:18:02.856,0:18:06.976
to take you to imaginary worlds, fire the blood, be poetry.

0:18:07.606,0:18:15.495
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

0:18:15.495,0:18:19.249
Man: So, the Spear-Danes, and days gone by,

0:18:19.249,0:18:22.824
and the kings who rule them have courage and greatness.

0:18:22.824,0:18:26.497
We have heard of those prince's heroic campaigns.

0:18:26.497,0:18:30.061
[♪ death-like music]

0:18:30.061,0:18:31.290
No one knows who composed

0:18:31.290,0:18:32.888
the epic Beowulf, sometime between the

0:18:32.888,0:18:35.147
mid 7th and the 10th century.

0:18:35.147,0:18:38.005
It's the first great poem in the English Language.

0:18:38.005,0:18:39.688
The beginning of a glorious tradition

0:18:39.688,0:18:40.752
which would lead to Chaucer,

0:18:40.752,0:18:42.835
Shakespeare and beyond.

0:18:43.745,0:18:45.465
The poem celebrates the glory days

0:18:45.465,0:18:47.207
of the Germanic tribes,

0:18:47.207,0:18:50.986
optimizing the heroic warrior who gives the poem it's name.

0:18:52.456,0:18:55.042
The power of a language can be heard in this passage,

0:18:55.042,0:18:57.247
which introduces Beowulf's archenemy,

0:18:57.247,0:18:59.112
the monster Grendel.

0:19:01.102,0:19:08.861
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

0:19:08.861,0:19:12.661
Man: In off the moors, down through the mist-bands,

0:19:12.661,0:19:16.040
God cursed Grendel came greedily loping.

0:19:16.040,0:19:19.290
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

0:19:19.290,0:19:21.601
Man: The bane of the race of men roamed forth,

0:19:21.601,0:19:24.745
hunting for a prey in the high hall.

0:19:24.745,0:19:27.431
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

0:19:27.431,0:19:29.664
Man: Spurned and joyless, he journeyed on ahead,

0:19:29.664,0:19:32.095
and arrived at the bawn.

0:19:32.095,0:19:35.519
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

0:19:35.519,0:19:37.122
Man: Then his rage boiled over,

0:19:37.122,0:19:39.117
he ripped open the mouth of the building,

0:19:39.117,0:19:40.913
maddening for blood.

0:19:40.913,0:19:43.810
[♪ dramatic music]

0:19:43.810,0:19:46.544
He grabbed and mauled a man on his bench,

0:19:46.544,0:19:48.847
bit into his bone lappings,

0:19:48.847,0:19:50.490
bolted down his blood,

0:19:50.490,0:19:53.006
and gorged on him in lumps,

0:19:53.006,0:19:56.198
leaving the body utterly lifeless,

0:19:56.198,0:19:58.503
eaten up, hand and foot.

0:19:59.192,0:20:01.987
Narrator: What does that tell us about English at that time, Seamus?

0:20:01.987,0:20:03.881
What kind of language was it when you came to it?

0:20:03.881,0:20:05.992
Do you think this is a fully developed poetic language?

0:20:05.992,0:20:08.679
Seamus: It's certainly a fully developed poetic language.

0:20:08.679,0:20:12.596
It's capable of great elaboration.

0:20:12.596,0:20:16.298
But what struck me generally about Old English

0:20:16.298,0:20:18.786
from the moment I read the bits of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,

0:20:18.786,0:20:19.840
right through to Beowulf,

0:20:19.840,0:20:23.107
is it's terrific for telling what happened.

0:20:23.107,0:20:26.712
It's a wonderful sense of the indicative mood all through it.

0:20:26.712,0:20:30.228
It's terrific for action, terrific for description.

0:20:30.228,0:20:32.866
[♪ light chords]

0:20:32.866,0:20:35.769
There's a wonderful forthright capacity to make up

0:20:35.769,0:20:38.755
extra language in Anglo-Saxon.

0:20:42.489,0:20:45.223
The words are very clear and direct,

0:20:45.223,0:20:47.664
"ban and hus" for example, bone-house,

0:20:47.664,0:20:49.713
there you have the house for the body,

0:20:49.713,0:20:50.832
the word for the body.

0:20:53.462,0:20:55.756
Beautiful words for instruments,

0:20:55.756,0:21:01.512
the harp is called "gleo-bem", the glee-beam.

0:21:01.512,0:21:05.960
The happy wood, or else the joy wood,

0:21:05.960,0:21:08.985
"gomen-wudu."

0:21:13.832,0:21:19.207
Swords, or shield, a shield is the war-board, wig-bord."

0:21:21.227,0:21:23.482
That is a specific poetic energy

0:21:23.482,0:21:24.816
that's in the language.

0:21:24.816,0:21:29.049
The ability to make compounds,

0:21:29.049,0:21:30.914
which is still in German I guess,

0:21:30.914,0:21:33.036
it gives it a great beauty.

0:21:33.036,0:21:34.824
Narrator: How extensive is the vocabulary?

0:21:34.824,0:21:39.407
Seamus: I think there are 40,000 words recorded in Beowulf.

0:21:39.407,0:21:41.536
But, a lot of the words repeat themselves,

0:21:41.536,0:21:45.946
in this is more in the poetry than in the prose,

0:21:45.946,0:21:48.844
if we heard an Anglo-Saxon speaker speaking,

0:21:48.844,0:21:52.880
under his roof to his companion,

0:21:52.880,0:21:55.218
we'd probably hear a very quicker,

0:21:55.218,0:21:58.440
a different less elaborate language from Beowulf.

0:21:58.440,0:22:01.340
Narrator: Would you say it is very clearly written to be read aloud?

0:22:01.340,0:22:04.861
Seamus: It's certainly written to be read aloud,

0:22:04.861,0:22:07.848
the question that agitates some scholars

0:22:07.848,0:22:09.739
is whether it was written, you know?

0:22:09.739,0:22:13.935
But, I think the general consensus now is that

0:22:13.935,0:22:15.472
by the time you get to Beowulf,

0:22:15.472,0:22:20.788
you have a writer, dealing with a traditional oral language.

0:22:20.788,0:22:32.384
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

0:22:32.384,0:22:34.167
Seamus: Certainly, you open the book,

0:22:34.167,0:22:36.511
[speaks the first lines of Beowulf]

0:22:36.511,0:22:37.668
asks to be uttered,

0:22:37.668,0:22:39.168
there are many speeches in it,

0:22:39.168,0:22:43.752
and it comes off the tongue with terrific directness.

0:22:43.752,0:22:51.693
[♪ dramatic music]

0:22:51.693,0:22:54.640
Narrator: Latin and Greek had created great bodies of literatiure

0:22:54.640,0:22:56.352
in the classical past.

0:22:56.352,0:22:58.408
In the East, Arabic and Chinese,

0:22:58.408,0:23:00.669
were being used in the 8th and 9th century,

0:23:00.669,0:23:02.160
as languages of poetry.

0:23:02.160,0:23:03.228
But, at that time,

0:23:03.228,0:23:05.653
no other language in the Christian world

0:23:05.653,0:23:08.416
could match the achievement of the Beowulf poet,

0:23:08.416,0:23:10.725
and his anonymous contemporaries.

0:23:10.725,0:23:12.646
Old English was flourishing.

0:23:12.646,0:23:14.739
The adventure was underway,

0:23:14.739,0:23:16.916
but while the siege of English

0:23:16.916,0:23:19.848
had come from these Frisian shores in the 5th century,

0:23:19.848,0:23:22.480
so now in the late 8th century,

0:23:22.480,0:23:25.625
a potential destroyer was preparing his battle fleet,

0:23:25.625,0:23:28.456
500 miles or so to the North.

0:23:28.456,0:23:50.664
[♪ ominous music]

0:23:50.664,0:23:59.784
[♪ music becomes motivated]

0:23:59.784,0:24:01.381
In the late 8th century,

0:24:01.381,0:24:03.026
the Latin based culture of scholarship

0:24:03.026,0:24:05.419
which had grown up in places like Lindisfarne,

0:24:05.419,0:24:07.692
and which had also been the cradle of Old English

0:24:07.692,0:24:10.889
faced extinction from across the sea.

0:24:10.889,0:24:21.312
[♪]

0:24:21.312,0:24:23.686
These ruins are of the Medieval monastery

0:24:23.686,0:24:26.980
that stood on the island of Lindisfarne.

0:24:30.032,0:24:32.143
It was the vikings who sacked and burned

0:24:32.143,0:24:34.743
the religious center that stood here before.

0:24:36.736,0:24:38.107
To these Pagan pirates,

0:24:38.107,0:24:41.163
rampaging out of their longships in 793,

0:24:41.163,0:24:45.064
this great center of Christian piety and scholarship,

0:24:45.064,0:24:48.547
a pivotal place in the survival of the Word and the Gospels,

0:24:48.547,0:24:51.103
was no more than an undefended treasure house.

0:24:51.440,0:24:53.565
The jewels that graced the books of the church

0:24:53.565,0:24:56.547
became barbells around a viking's neck.

0:24:56.547,0:25:02.897
[♪ intense, motivated music]

0:25:02.897,0:25:04.983
Today, the vikings may seem romantic,

0:25:04.983,0:25:07.285
reenacting their rituals a good day out.

0:25:08.345,0:25:09.495
Over 12 centuries ago,

0:25:09.495,0:25:11.866
their arrival was not so cheerful.

0:25:11.866,0:25:14.160
(bell ringing)

0:25:14.160,0:25:17.770
To many, it seemed the signal to the end for civilization.

0:25:17.770,0:25:21.785
(fire crackling)

0:25:22.157,0:25:24.263
A year after raising Lindisfarne,

0:25:24.263,0:25:27.280
the vikings returned, and sacked Jarrow,

0:25:27.280,0:25:29.677
the abbey where Bede had been the greatest scholar,

0:25:29.677,0:25:32.712
in one of the finest libraries in Christendom.

0:25:36.385,0:25:38.121
This stronghold of the Latin word,

0:25:38.121,0:25:40.595
where English was also being written down,

0:25:40.595,0:25:42.665
uniquely among European dialects,

0:25:42.665,0:25:44.618
was burned to the ground,

0:25:44.618,0:25:45.706
it's books with it.

0:25:45.706,0:25:49.199
(fire crackling)

0:25:49.199,0:26:01.311
[♪ haunting voices]

0:26:01.969,0:26:03.929
It was a start of 70 years of attack,

0:26:03.929,0:26:08.280
during which the vikings savaged this easten half of the country.

0:26:08.280,0:26:11.769
Few stories survive of exactly where and when they attacked,

0:26:11.769,0:26:15.520
perhaps chillingly because few were left to tell the tale.

0:26:15.520,0:26:18.831
At first, the raiders went home with their plunder,

0:26:18.831,0:26:21.431
then they decided to take the land itself.

0:26:21.431,0:26:24.296
In 865, the vikings landed a great army

0:26:24.296,0:26:26.819
south of here, in East Anglia.

0:26:26.819,0:26:31.680
[♪]

0:26:31.680,0:26:34.760
Within 5 years, the viking invaders who are now called Danes,

0:26:34.760,0:26:37.720
controlled the North and East of the country.

0:26:39.024,0:26:40.735
Of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,

0:26:40.735,0:26:43.105
only Wessex still held out.

0:26:43.720,0:26:45.883
Old Norse, the language of the conquerors,

0:26:45.883,0:26:47.952
was spreading throughout the land.

0:26:48.330,0:26:51.690
Old English, potentially faced the same fate of the Celtic language

0:26:51.690,0:26:53.120
it had supplanted,

0:26:53.120,0:26:54.703
virtual oblivion.

0:26:56.136,0:26:58.300
English, was in need of a champion.

0:26:59.390,0:27:01.028
And it found one.

0:27:01.028,0:27:13.303
[♪ triumphant music]

0:27:13.303,0:27:15.628
King Alfred's statue stands here in Winchester,

0:27:15.628,0:27:17.865
the capital of his aged kingdom of Wessex.

0:27:18.200,0:27:20.985
He's the only monarch in our history to be known as "the Great"

0:27:20.985,0:27:23.753
and he's often been hailed as the savior of England,

0:27:23.753,0:27:27.788
that may be debatable as the idea of a single unified England,

0:27:27.788,0:27:30.126
didn't really exist in Alfred's day.

0:27:30.126,0:27:34.561
What is certain, is that he was a great defender of the English language.

0:27:34.561,0:27:37.699
[♪ somber music]

0:27:37.699,0:27:40.768
It was the Victorians who dubbed Alfred, the Great.

0:27:41.208,0:27:42.827
He was one of their darlings,

0:27:42.827,0:27:44.357
an English hero, whose exploits

0:27:44.357,0:27:47.826
were enthusiastically woven into the fabric of national myth.

0:27:49.602,0:27:51.560
But, he very nearly didn't make it.

0:27:53.800,0:27:55.146
He'd come to the throne of Wessex,

0:27:55.146,0:27:58.398
within a year of the first Danish attacks in the Southeast,

0:27:58.398,0:28:01.065
and at first, he could hardly hold them back.

0:28:01.911,0:28:04.217
In 878, the Danes won what appeared

0:28:04.217,0:28:06.986
to be a decisive battle at Chippenham in Wiltshire.

0:28:06.986,0:28:14.892
[♪ mischievous music]

0:28:14.892,0:28:16.783
Alfred, with only a few followers,

0:28:16.783,0:28:19.708
went on the run into the marshes of Somerset.

0:28:19.708,0:28:21.575
Moving as a contemporary wrote,

0:28:21.575,0:28:24.032
"Under difficulties, through wood,

0:28:24.032,0:28:26.304
and into inaccessible places."

0:28:28.511,0:28:30.914
Legend has Alfred, unrecognized,

0:28:30.914,0:28:33.186
taking shelter in a poor woman's cottage,

0:28:33.186,0:28:37.246
and being scolded for burning the wheaten cakes he'd been set to mind.

0:28:39.845,0:28:42.155
But, the reality was less cozy.

0:28:42.155,0:28:44.068
His situation was desperate,

0:28:44.068,0:28:45.962
and if Alfred's kingdom fell,

0:28:45.962,0:28:48.451
the whole country would be controlled and settled

0:28:48.451,0:28:52.520
by conquerors whose language would inevitably crush English.

0:28:57.786,0:29:01.107
But, Alfred proved to be an enterprising warrior and strategist,

0:29:01.107,0:29:03.278
running free in the Somerset levels

0:29:03.278,0:29:05.835
he discovered the arts of irregular warfare,

0:29:05.835,0:29:08.460
and mounted guerrilla attacks against the occupying

0:29:08.460,0:29:11.341
forces of Guthrum, the Danish invader.

0:29:11.341,0:29:13.158
But he knew that wasn't going to be enough.

0:29:13.158,0:29:14.982
For Wessex to be regained,

0:29:14.982,0:29:17.681
the Danes had to be brought to battle and defeated.

0:29:17.681,0:29:20.468
The fighting men of Wessex had been scattered,

0:29:20.468,0:29:22.007
but in the spring of 878,

0:29:22.007,0:29:24.587
Alfred sent out a call for the men of the Shirefords,

0:29:24.587,0:29:26.779
the county armies, to join him.

0:29:26.779,0:29:29.975
Around 4,000 men, many from Wiltshire and Somerset,

0:29:29.975,0:29:32.757
armed only with battle axes and throwing spears,

0:29:32.757,0:29:34.357
responded to the call.

0:29:34.357,0:29:36.153
They mustered at Egbert's Stone,

0:29:36.153,0:29:38.444
where trackways and rigdeways met.

0:29:38.444,0:29:40.717
48 hours later, they advanced,

0:29:40.717,0:29:44.439
shields drumming against the Danish army of 5,000,

0:29:44.439,0:29:46.734
holding high ground at Ethandune,

0:29:46.734,0:29:48.600
on the western edge of Salisbury Plain.

0:29:49.332,0:29:50.686
Contemporary English accounts

0:29:50.686,0:29:52.353
describe the battle that followed

0:29:52.353,0:29:54.613
as a slaughter, and a route of the Danes,

0:29:54.613,0:29:55.979
by the West Saxons.

0:29:55.979,0:29:57.794
Modern historians question that,

0:29:57.794,0:30:00.770
but there is no doubt that Alfred prevailed.

0:30:01.274,0:30:03.320
His crown, and his kingdom were secure,

0:30:03.320,0:30:05.499
and more importantly for our story,

0:30:05.499,0:30:07.211
so was the English language.

0:30:07.211,0:30:14.480
[♪ triumphant music]

0:30:14.480,0:30:15.913
The Danes surrendered,

0:30:15.913,0:30:17.785
their leader was baptized as a Chrisitan,

0:30:17.785,0:30:19.651
and Alfred's crucial victory

0:30:19.651,0:30:21.461
was memorialized here in Wiltshire,

0:30:21.461,0:30:24.187
in an earlier version of a great white horse,

0:30:24.187,0:30:26.600
carved into the land he'd saved.

0:30:26.600,0:30:36.238
[♪]

0:30:36.238,0:30:39.657
Alfred left an even more significant mark on the country,

0:30:39.657,0:30:41.436
he signed a peace treaty with the Danes,

0:30:41.436,0:30:42.600
which established a border

0:30:42.600,0:30:43.784
running up through the country,

0:30:43.784,0:30:47.440
from the Thames, to the old Roman road of Watling Street.

0:30:48.183,0:30:49.493
The land to the north and the east

0:30:49.493,0:30:51.135
to be known as the Danelaw,

0:30:51.135,0:30:52.380
would be under Danish rule,

0:30:52.380,0:30:54.431
the land to the south and west,

0:30:54.431,0:30:55.893
would be for the English.

0:30:55.893,0:30:57.907
No one was to cross the line,

0:30:57.907,0:31:00.090
unless to trade.

0:31:01.592,0:31:05.883
(street life sounds)

0:31:05.883,0:31:06.700
In the course of time,

0:31:06.700,0:31:08.520
because of Alfred's peace treaty,

0:31:08.520,0:31:10.101
when Danes and English met,

0:31:10.101,0:31:13.415
they didn't do so to fight, but to do business.

0:31:13.415,0:31:14.726
Even to intermarry.

0:31:17.536,0:31:18.616
Communities mixed,

0:31:18.616,0:31:20.634
and so did the languages,

0:31:20.634,0:31:23.927
English, rather than being engulfed by the Dane's language,

0:31:23.927,0:31:25.779
began to absorb it.

0:31:29.785,0:31:31.756
I'm in the market town of Hexum,

0:31:31.756,0:31:33.520
in the Northeast of England.

0:31:33.520,0:31:34.599
Maps of the area,

0:31:34.599,0:31:37.960
show just how widespread the Danish settlement was.

0:31:37.960,0:31:41.007
[♪ pompous music]

0:31:41.007,0:31:42.444
Place names ending in "-by"

0:31:42.444,0:31:44.440
reveal the Danish name for farm,

0:31:47.280,0:31:49.326
"-thorpe" denotes a village,

0:31:49.495,0:31:51.631
"-thwaite" a portion of land.

0:31:51.631,0:31:58.416
[♪]

0:31:58.416,0:32:00.825
The births, marriages, and deaths pages of the local paper,

0:32:00.825,0:32:03.440
feature lots of names ending in "-son."

0:32:03.440,0:32:05.487
That was a Danish was of making a name.

0:32:05.487,0:32:07.384
By adding to the name of the Father.

0:32:07.384,0:32:08.471
Just on this page,

0:32:08.471,0:32:13.160
I can see, Harrison, Gibson-Hudson,

0:32:13.160,0:32:14.438
Robson,

0:32:14.438,0:32:15.391
Sanderson,

0:32:15.391,0:32:16.916
Dickinson,

0:32:16.916,0:32:17.944
Simpson,

0:32:17.944,0:32:19.190
Dickinson again,

0:32:19.190,0:32:20.580
and Watson.

0:32:21.070,0:32:21.916
In the school where I was,

0:32:21.916,0:32:22.911
just across the country,

0:32:22.911,0:32:24.387
there was a Patterson, a Johnson,

0:32:24.387,0:32:26.262
a Rolandson, and another Dickinson.

0:32:26.852,0:32:28.244
Outside of the street,

0:32:28.244,0:32:31.583
you can see the same thing on shop signs everywhere.

0:32:34.443,0:32:37.230
Even given centuries of people moving around the country,

0:32:37.230,0:32:40.320
names ending in "-son" are still far more common,

0:32:40.320,0:32:42.144
in what were the Danish territories in the

0:32:42.144,0:32:45.238
North and West in area, and the South and the East.

0:32:45.238,0:32:46.760
Above all, you can hear the echos of the

0:32:46.760,0:32:48.472
Danes old Norse language,

0:32:48.472,0:32:50.549
in the way people speak.

0:32:50.549,0:32:57.000
(man speaking indecipherable)

0:32:57.000,0:32:58.520
Man: It's a little field on it's own,

0:32:58.520,0:33:00.280
Willy says there's a deck down by the side of it,

0:33:00.280,0:33:02.329
goes down through a little wood.

0:33:02.329,0:33:06.774
Man: ...down by, down in that little guard thing is it...

0:33:06.774,0:33:08.321
Man: It's like a little isolation,

0:33:08.321,0:33:12.024
feel it's only, it's only a couple of acres the whole thing.

0:33:12.024,0:33:13.874
Man: Interesting to see if your sheep sort of..

0:33:13.874,0:33:16.261
[indecipherable]

0:33:16.261,0:33:18.443
Narrator: Some old Norse words stayed

0:33:18.443,0:33:20.297
in the local dialects of the North,

0:33:20.677,0:33:22.604
words like beck for stream,

0:33:22.604,0:33:24.547
and garth for paddock.

0:33:25.165,0:33:26.134
As a boy in Wickham,

0:33:26.134,0:33:28.160
I remember hearing amusing dialect words like,

0:33:28.160,0:33:31.175
slattery for shower, slape for slippery,

0:33:31.175,0:33:35.280
yet for gate, lub for leap, yeck for oak, and yam for home,

0:33:35.280,0:33:37.144
as in "I's going yam."

0:33:37.144,0:33:40.224
Pure Norse, heard in Wickham, every night of the week.

0:33:40.224,0:33:41.784
And there were many others.

0:33:44.087,0:33:46.846
But the influence of old Norse wasn't just local,

0:33:46.846,0:33:48.260
all around the country, over time,

0:33:48.260,0:33:51.585
hundreds of Norse words entered the mainstream of English.

0:33:51.585,0:33:53.667
And we still use them everyday.

0:33:55.534,0:33:58.085
The 'sk' sounds are characteristic of old Norse,

0:33:58.085,0:33:59.610
and English borrowed words like,

0:33:59.610,0:34:02.708
skor, and sky, and skifa,

0:34:02.708,0:34:04.657
as well as perhaps a thousand others,

0:34:04.657,0:34:12.803
including anger, bowl, freckle, knife, neck, root, scowl, and window.

0:34:19.384,0:34:21.998
Sometimes, where both old Norse and old English

0:34:21.998,0:34:23.514
had a word for the same thing,

0:34:23.514,0:34:25.373
both words lived on in English,

0:34:25.373,0:34:28.083
each taking on a slightly different meaning.

0:34:28.398,0:34:29.840
Where old English said craft,

0:34:29.840,0:34:31.871
old Norse said skill.

0:34:32.190,0:34:35.194
For an English hyde, the Norse said skin.

0:34:35.194,0:34:36.710
In old English you were sick,

0:34:36.710,0:34:38.547
in Norse you were ill.

0:34:42.447,0:34:44.792
Here was another example of English's extraordinary

0:34:44.792,0:34:46.005
ability to absorb

0:34:46.005,0:34:48.036
to take in words from other languages,

0:34:48.036,0:34:50.206
adding them to its word hoard,

0:34:50.206,0:34:53.485
increasing the richness and flexibility of the vocabulary.

0:34:54.313,0:34:56.400
Katie: I think that the point about vocabulary,

0:34:56.400,0:34:59.670
is how much it astonishes by its ordinary nature,

0:34:59.670,0:35:07.063
words like, lore, egg, husband, leg, ill, die, ugly,

0:35:07.063,0:35:08.942
all these words are from old Norse,

0:35:08.942,0:35:12.149
and yet you wouldn't necessarily think they were foreign at all.

0:35:12.149,0:35:13.234
Most astounding of all,

0:35:13.234,0:35:16.272
I think are the pronouns: they, there, and then.

0:35:16.272,0:35:18.875
Those are also from old Norse.

0:35:18.875,0:35:20.329
Narrator: And in terms of grammar,

0:35:20.329,0:35:22.632
in a way, they simplified English, didn't they?

0:35:22.632,0:35:24.610
They took it away from its Germanic roots.

0:35:24.610,0:35:26.222
Katie: I think it's probably true to say that

0:35:26.222,0:35:28.026
old Norse effects the English language

0:35:28.026,0:35:29.521
more than any other.

0:35:29.521,0:35:32.476
Because it actually leads to a restructuring of the language.

0:35:32.476,0:35:34.780
Old English forms sentences,

0:35:34.780,0:35:36.454
not by word order,

0:35:36.454,0:35:37.547
as we do,

0:35:37.547,0:35:40.520
but by tacking on endings to the ends of things like,

0:35:40.520,0:35:43.269
articles and pronouns, and nouns,

0:35:43.269,0:35:45.483
and what happens is,

0:35:45.483,0:35:48.207
through contact with a pretty similar language,

0:35:48.207,0:35:50.088
a lot of these inflectional endings

0:35:50.088,0:35:52.316
start to lose their distinctive nature.

0:35:52.316,0:35:53.411
And actually this is a process,

0:35:53.411,0:35:55.175
we can see happening fairly early on

0:35:55.175,0:35:56.512
in the Anglo-Saxon period,

0:35:56.512,0:35:58.814
so the language is prone to do that.

0:35:58.814,0:36:00.152
But, contact with Norse languages,

0:36:00.152,0:36:04.145
speeded it up, gave it a shove towards modernity.

0:36:04.145,0:36:06.235
Narrator: Can you give us a very simple example of that?

0:36:06.235,0:36:08.400
Katie: Yes. Let's take a simple sentence like,

0:36:08.400,0:36:11.566
The king gave horses to his men.

0:36:11.566,0:36:12.880
That would be something like in old English,

0:36:12.880,0:36:17.697
(speaking in Old English).

0:36:17.697,0:36:18.651
Now in old English,

0:36:18.651,0:36:21.545
you didn't tend to have a preposition like "to"

0:36:21.545,0:36:23.570
instead you could use a special ending,

0:36:23.570,0:36:26.625
which kind of meant "to his men."

0:36:26.625,0:36:30.395
And that would be a "-um" ending.

0:36:30.395,0:36:33.602
And you just tack that onto the end of the noun for man.

0:36:33.602,0:36:35.332
So you'd have "gumum."

0:36:35.332,0:36:37.120
"-um" ending.

0:36:37.120,0:36:39.559
Now, the plural for the word for horse,

0:36:39.559,0:36:41.640
if you want to say "gave horses to his men,"

0:36:41.640,0:36:43.201
would be have an "an" on it,

0:36:43.201,0:36:45.595
so it would be "blancan."

0:36:45.595,0:36:47.694
Now fortunately, towards the end of the old English period,

0:36:47.694,0:36:50.199
we start to see that "-um" ending

0:36:50.199,0:36:52.999
becoming more and more indistinct.

0:36:52.999,0:36:57.176
And we see spellings like "guman," "an."

0:36:57.176,0:37:00.704
Just the same as blancan, an.

0:37:01.224,0:37:03.926
It's obvious that the king is more likely to give

0:37:03.926,0:37:07.325
more horses to his men, than men to his horses,

0:37:07.325,0:37:10.565
but you can see that there is a potential there for difficulties.

0:37:10.565,0:37:14.608
And so we start to see prepositions being used,

0:37:14.608,0:37:18.184
in place of those endings which had become indistinct.

0:37:22.674,0:37:25.391
Narrator: Spoken English survived the Danish invasion,

0:37:26.851,0:37:28.777
but as the 9th century drew to a close,

0:37:28.777,0:37:31.539
the written culture was in a ruinous state,

0:37:31.539,0:37:33.681
and King Alfred was concerned.

0:37:36.003,0:37:37.944
When Alfred looked at the state of his kingdom,

0:37:37.944,0:37:39.231
he was appalled.

0:37:39.231,0:37:40.600
The scholars in the monasteries

0:37:40.600,0:37:42.750
had once made England the greatest powerhouse

0:37:42.750,0:37:44.460
of Christian teaching in Europe,

0:37:44.460,0:37:47.623
but 150 years had passed since the high days of Bede,

0:37:47.623,0:37:50.392
and the scholarly tradition had declined,

0:37:50.392,0:37:54.001
hastened on its way by a century of Viking reign.

0:37:54.001,0:37:54.967
In all the country,

0:37:54.967,0:37:57.019
Alfred could barely find a handful of priests

0:37:57.019,0:37:59.375
who could read and understand Latin.

0:37:59.375,0:38:00.842
And if they couldn't understand Latin,

0:38:00.842,0:38:03.602
they couldn't pass on the teachings of the religious books,

0:38:03.602,0:38:06.701
that told people how to lead virtuous lives.

0:38:06.701,0:38:08.232
They couldn't save souls.

0:38:08.232,0:38:10.539
Where the written word has once flourished,

0:38:10.539,0:38:14.021
Alfred now found only chronic spiritual sickness,

0:38:14.021,0:38:16.328
he looked for a cure.

0:38:16.328,0:38:19.214
One way was to educate more clergy in Latin,

0:38:19.214,0:38:20.764
but that wasn't enough.

0:38:20.764,0:38:22.720
He needed a more radical solution,

0:38:22.720,0:38:24.679
a solution that hinged not on Latin,

0:38:24.679,0:38:26.176
but on English.

0:38:26.176,0:38:29.468
And he took English to new heights of achievement.

0:38:29.468,0:38:32.312
[♪ choral music]

0:38:32.312,0:38:33.984
In the preface to his own translation of

0:38:33.984,0:38:35.912
Pope Gregory's pastoral care,

0:38:35.912,0:38:36.678
Alfred wrote,

0:38:36.678,0:38:40.911
"I remembered how, before it was all ravaged and burned,"

0:38:40.911,0:38:43.192
"I'd seen how the churches throughout all Englands,'

0:38:43.192,0:38:45.401
"stood filled with treasures and books."

0:38:45.401,0:38:48.160
"And there was also a multitude of God's servants,"

0:38:48.160,0:38:50.080
"who had very little benefit from those books,"

0:38:50.080,0:38:52.727
"because they couldn't understand anything of them, "

0:38:52.727,0:38:55.423
"since they were not written in their own language."

0:38:55.423,0:39:00.383
[♪]

0:39:00.383,0:39:02.360
Narrator: Their own language was of course English.

0:39:02.360,0:39:04.510
Alfred didn't want to do away with Latin,

0:39:04.510,0:39:06.737
but he realized that it would be far easier

0:39:06.737,0:39:10.033
to teach people to read books written in the language that they spoke.

0:39:10.033,0:39:11.266
The best scholars,

0:39:11.266,0:39:12.912
could then go on to learn Latin,

0:39:12.912,0:39:14.592
an join Holy orders.

0:39:14.592,0:39:17.205
The rest, would still have access to scholarship

0:39:17.205,0:39:18.402
and spiritual guidance,

0:39:18.402,0:39:20.711
but it would be written in English.

0:39:20.711,0:39:27.959
[♪ triumphant music]

0:39:27.959,0:39:30.119
Here, in his capital city of Winchester,

0:39:30.119,0:39:32.315
Alfred drew up a plan.

0:39:33.285,0:39:35.862
It was an extraordinarily imaginative project,

0:39:35.862,0:39:38.824
to promote literacy, and restore the English language.

0:39:38.824,0:39:50.933
[♪]

0:39:50.933,0:39:53.947
" We should," he wrote, "translate certain books,"

0:39:53.947,0:39:56.208
"which are most necessary for all men to know,"

0:39:56.208,0:39:58.783
"into the language that we can all understand."

0:39:58.783,0:40:01.296
"And also arrange it, as with God's help,"

0:40:01.296,0:40:02.977
"we very easily can, if we have peace,"

0:40:02.977,0:40:05.056
"so that all the youth of free men,"

0:40:05.056,0:40:06.488
"now among the English people,"

0:40:06.488,0:40:09.381
"will have the means to be able to devote themselves to it,"

0:40:09.381,0:40:14.089
"maybe set to study, for as long as they are of no other use,"

0:40:14.089,0:40:17.848
"until a time, they're able to read English writing well."

0:40:19.851,0:40:22.292
Narrator: Alfred had 5 books of religious instruction,

0:40:22.292,0:40:23.496
philosophy, and history,

0:40:23.496,0:40:25.502
translated from Latin into English.

0:40:25.502,0:40:27.752
A laborious and costly undertaking.

0:40:30.973,0:40:33.792
Copies were sent out to the 12 bishops of his kingdom,

0:40:33.792,0:40:36.280
for their wisdom to be spread as widely as possible.

0:40:39.813,0:40:40.573
To each bishop,

0:40:40.573,0:40:43.200
to emphasize the importance and value of the project,

0:40:43.200,0:40:45.137
Alfred sent a costly pointer,

0:40:45.137,0:40:47.568
used to underline the text.

0:40:49.424,0:40:51.804
This is the Alfred Jewel,

0:40:51.814,0:40:55.751
many historians believe that it formed the head of one of those pointers.

0:40:56.688,0:40:58.959
Crafted in crystal, and enameled in gold,

0:40:58.959,0:41:01.662
it was discovered in 1693, in Somerset,

0:41:01.662,0:41:05.110
and is now on show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

0:41:05.438,0:41:08.150
It's inscribed, "Alfred had me made,"

0:41:08.150,0:41:09.342
in English.

0:41:11.962,0:41:14.430
Alfred the great, had made the English language

0:41:14.430,0:41:16.670
the jewel in his crown.

0:41:17.480,0:41:23.801
(church bells ringing)

0:41:23.801,0:41:24.866
Here in Winchester,

0:41:24.866,0:41:26.841
Alfred had established what was effectively

0:41:26.841,0:41:28.575
a publishing house.

0:41:28.575,0:41:30.480
Other projects he undertook included,

0:41:30.480,0:41:33.065
the commissioning of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle,

0:41:33.065,0:41:35.800
detailing hundreds of years of history.

0:41:35.800,0:41:37.854
Alfred died in 899,

0:41:37.854,0:41:40.095
one of his legacies was an English language

0:41:40.095,0:41:42.303
which was more prestigious and widely read,

0:41:42.303,0:41:44.015
than ever before.

0:41:44.015,0:41:45.663
There was nothing to compare

0:41:45.663,0:41:47.776
with this range of written vernacular,

0:41:47.776,0:41:49.108
history, philosophy, poetry,

0:41:49.108,0:41:51.339
anywhere else in mainland Europe.

0:41:51.339,0:41:53.767
English was out on its own.

0:41:53.767,0:41:55.350
By the middle of the 11th century,

0:41:55.350,0:41:57.216
English seemed secure,

0:41:57.216,0:41:59.908
but now, other invaders were waiting in the wings,

0:41:59.908,0:42:04.296
and English was about to face its greatest threat ever.

0:42:04.296,0:42:21.489
[♪]

0:42:21.489,0:42:24.154
This place, the old Roman fort at Pevensey,

0:42:24.154,0:42:26.269
was a fateful one for the English language,

0:42:26.269,0:42:28.086
it was here, among other places,

0:42:28.086,0:42:30.032
that the Frisians, and other Germanic tribes,

0:42:30.032,0:42:32.027
had made land form in the 5th century,

0:42:32.027,0:42:34.048
and introduced their own language.

0:42:34.048,0:42:38.124
Now, in 1066, another wave of invaders was landing

0:42:38.124,0:42:39.594
the Normans.

0:42:41.120,0:42:43.178
When in 1066, William, Duke of Normandy

0:42:43.178,0:42:45.751
sailed with his army to claim the English throne,

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he was sure he had right on his side.

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The English king, Edward the Confessor,

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has spent many years in Normandy,

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and in that time, contemporary sources say,

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had come to regard William as a brother,

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or even a son, and had named him as his successor.

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Sensing his impending death,

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and fearing rebellion at home,

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the childless Edward had dispatched

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Harold Godwinson, his wife's brother,

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and his Earl of Essex,

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the richest and most powerful of the English lords.

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to Normandy, to pledge loyalty to William.

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This Harold did, swearing on two caskets of Holy relics.

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But, when Edward did die,

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Harold, supported by the English nobility,

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had himself crowned in Westminster Abbey,

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on the very day that Edward was laid to rest there.

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To the truculent and ruthless William,

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this was an affront.

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Invasion with maximum force, the only possible response.

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[♪ battle music]

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The armies met here, near Hastings.

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This is the spot, where traditionally,

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Harold fell, fatally pierced through the eye with an arrow.

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[♪ somber]

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The site was later named after the engagement.

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But, it's name, not with an English word, like fight,

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but with a word from the language of the Norman victors,

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Battle.

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Harold would be the last

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English speaking king of England for 3 centuries.

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On Christmas day, 1066,

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William was crowned in Westminster Abbey,

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in a service conducted in English and Latin.

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William, spoke French throughout.

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A new king, and a new language,

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were in authority in England.

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Enemy.

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Castle.

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Castle, was one of the first French words

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to enter the English language.

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The Normans built a chain of them,

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to impose their rule on the country.

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This magnificent castle at Rochester,

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was one of the first to be fortified in stone.

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[♪ dramatic music]

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By blood, the Normans were from the same stock

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as the Norse men, who'd invaded in earlier centuries.

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But, they no longer spoke a Germanic language,

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rather what we call old French,

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which had grown from Latin roots.

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Many of the words they spoke

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would have been very strange to the native English,

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but would quickly become unpleasantly familiar.

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Our words, army, archer, soldier, garrison, and guard,

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all come from the conquering Norman French.

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French was the language that spelled out

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the architecture of the new social order.

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Crown, throne, and court, duke, baron, and nobility,

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peasant, vessel, servant.

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The word govern comes from French,

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as do liberty, authority, obedience, and traitor.

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The Normans took the law into their own hands.

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Felony, arrest, warrant, justice, judge, jury,

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all come from French.

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And so do accuse, acquit, sentence, condemn, prison, and jail.

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It's been estimated,

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that in the 3 centuries after the conquest,

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about 10,000 French words colonized the English language.

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They didn't all come in immediately.

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But, the conquest opened a conduit of French vocabulary,

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that should remain open, on and off, ever since.

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Today, French words are all around us.

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[♪ Parisian music]

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City, market, porter,

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Man: Here we are, we've got one fabulous salmon.

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Weighs about 14 pounds.

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He's a fabulous fish.

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We've got some fabulous mackerel,

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they've come out from Aberdeen.

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Next, over to the oysters, they come from the Essex coast,

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Sole.

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[♪]

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Narrator: Pork, sausage, bacon.

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Man: Fruit, oranges, the juicy lemons.

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Narrator: Grape, tart, biscuit, sugar.

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Man: Creme.

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Narrator: Fry.

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Vinegar.

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Nearly 500 words dealing with food,

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cooking, and eating alone entered English

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from French, just a fraction of the imports

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which would enrich the English word hoard,

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in the centuries after the Norman conquest.

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[♪ Parisian music continues]

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When in 20 years of taking control of the country,

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William sent his officers out to take stock of his kingdom.

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The monks of Peterborough,

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who were still recording the events of history,

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in English in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle,

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noted disapprovingly,

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that not one piece of land escaped the survey,

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not even an ox, or a cow, or a pig.

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[♪ somber music]

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The Doomsday book, there are in fact 2 volumes,

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show us how complete the Norman takeover

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of the English land was,

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and how widespread their influence and their language.

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The Norman settlement

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had concentrated the wealth of England

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more than ever before or since.

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The native ruling class from before the conquest,

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had been slaughtered, banished, or disinherited,

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in favor of William's followers.

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Half of the country was in the hands of just 190 men,

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half of that was held by just 11 men.

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And not one of these great land owners spoke English.

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(man speaking in foreign language)

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When this record of the country was drawn up,

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it was written in Latin,

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not Norman French,

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and certainly not English.

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(man speaking in foreign language)

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Between them, French and Latin

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had become the languages

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of state, law, the church, and history itself, in England.

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[♪]

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The writing of English became increasingly rare,

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even the Anglo-Saxon chronicle

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gutted into silence.

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(man speaking in foreign language)

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The language of Alfred and the Beowulf poet,

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had lost all prestige that it had slowly built up.

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In a country of 3 languages,

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English was now a poor third, bottom of the pile.

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The English language had been forced underground.

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It would take 300 years for it to re-emerge,

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and when it did, it would have changed dramtically.

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[♪]