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[♪ choral music]

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Narrator: This is the South Bank in London.

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2,000 years ago,

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if you'd heard a human voice around here,

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the language would have been incomprehensible.

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1,000 years ago,

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the English language has established it's first base camp.

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Today, English circles the globe.

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It inhabits the air we breathe.

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What started as a guttural, tribal dialect,

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seemingly isolated in a small island,

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is now the language of well over a 1,000 million people,

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around the world.

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[♪ instrumental]

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The story of the English language

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is an extraordinary one.

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It has the characteristics

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of a bold and successful adventure,

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tenacity, luck, near extinction on more than one occasion,

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dazzling flexibility,

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and an extraordinary power to absorb,

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and it's still going on.

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New dialects, new Englishes,

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are evolving all the time,

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all over the world.

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[♪ instrumental]

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Successive invasions introduced,

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then threatened to destroy our language.

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Our first program tells that story.

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For 300 years,

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English was forced underground.

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Our second program tells how it survived,

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and how it fought back.

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[♪ instrumental]

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Our third program will tell

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how the English language took on

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the power blocks of church and state.

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Our fourth, how it became the language of Shakespeare.

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In later programs,

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we're going to leave these shores

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as English did, to tell the story of how in America,

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the language of one great empire,

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became that of another.

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We'll go to the Caribbean,

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where a variety of new part-English dialects took root.

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India, where English became

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a commanding, unifying language,

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in a country of a 1,000 tongues.

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And Australia,

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where a confident new English

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was invented by a people,

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many of whom had been expelled from their mother country.

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We'll travel through time too,

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to explore how English in the 21st century

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has become the international language of business.

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The language in which the world's citizens communicate.

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[♪ instrumental]

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Over the last 1,500 years,

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these small islands have achieved much that is remarkable.

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But, in my view,

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England's greatest success story of all,

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is the English language.

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These programs are about the words we think in,

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talk in, write in, sing in.

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The words that describe the life we live.

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[♪ soft, ethereal music]

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This is where we can begin.

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Just after dawn,

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in a foreign country,

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on a flat shore,

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by the North Sea.

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In what we now call, The Netherlands.

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This is Friesland,

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and it's in this part of the world,

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that we can still hear,

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the modern language that we believe,

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sounds closest to what the ancestor

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of the English sounded like,

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1,500 years ago.

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(man speaking in foreign language)

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Narrator: In Friesland,

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many people start their day,

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listening to the weather forecast,

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from popular weatherman,

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Piet Paulusma.

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(man speaking in foreign language)

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Narrator: Some of his words might sound familiar,

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like three and four,

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frost and freeze.

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(man speaking in foreign language)

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Narrator: Mist and blue.

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(man speaking in foreign language)

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The reason we can recognize these words,

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is that modern Frisian,

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and modern English,

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can both be traced back to the same family,

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the Germanic family of languages.

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And some words,

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have stayed more or less the same

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down the centuries.

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Butter.

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Bread.

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Cheese.

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Meal.

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Sleep.

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Boat.

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Snow.

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Sea.

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Storm.

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[♪ ethereal music]

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The west Germanic tribes

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who invented these words

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were a war-like, adventurous people.

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They'd been on the move through Europe

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for the best part of a 1,000 years,

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and now has settlements in what we would call

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the lowlands of Northern Europe,

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Holland, Germany, and Denmark.

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But they were still greedy for land, ready to move on.

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This is the island of Terschelling.

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The English coast is about 250 miles to the southwest behind me.

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It is from these islands,

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and the low lying Frisian mainland,

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that in the 5th century,

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a Germanic tribe,

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part of the family that also contained

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Jutes, Angles and Saxon's,

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made sail to look for a better life.

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And they took their language,

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our language, with them.

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[♪ adventurous music]

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(man speaking in foreign language)

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The Germanic tribes weren't the first to invade our shores.

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More than 500 years before,

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the Romans had also come by sea to impose their will.

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Now, their empire had crumbled,

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and they'd abandoned these islands,

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leaving the native tribes,

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the Britains, or Celts to their fate.

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This is Pevensey Castle.

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An ancient Roman fort that used to stand

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on the very shoreline of the south coast.

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The chronicle of the period,

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reported that in the year 491,

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Germanic invaders laid siege

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and slaughtered the Celts who had taken refuge here.

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Not one of them was left alive.

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Other Celts did survive the invasion,

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a million or more of them in England,

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but they were a broken people.

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The clue to their fate,

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lies in the word the Germanic tribe

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used to describe them.

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It was "walhaz,'

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a name that lives on in our modern language as Welsh,

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1500 years ago, it meant both foreigner and slave.

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The Celts became servants and followers,

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second-class citizens,

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the only way up,

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was to become part of the invader's tribes.

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To adopt their culture, and their language.

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[♪ meditative music]

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The Celt's and their language were pushed to the margins.

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Only a handful of words from the Celtic language

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has survived into modern English.

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In the north, where I come from,

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we have crag, meaning rock,

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combe, meaning deep valley,

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and dialect words like brat and brock for badger.

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[♪ meditative music]

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There are traces in place names,

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the "tor" in Torpenhow,

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spelled as tor-pen-how,

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a neighboring village to my own,

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that comes from the Celtic for peak.

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The "caer" of Carlisle, means a fortified place.

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In the south, they left us the names of

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Thames and Haven, Dover and London,

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but these were fragments,

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the language that prevailed

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was that of the victors.

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By the end of the 6th century,

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these Germanic tribes occupied half of mainland Britain.

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They had divided into a number of kingdoms,

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Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Wessex,

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denoting the settlements of

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southern, eastern, and western Saxon tribes.

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East Anglia, names after the Angles

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who gave England it's name.

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Mercia in the midlands,

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Northumbria in the North.

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Throughout these areas,

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many modern place names come from that settlement,

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or use the words they brought,

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we live with them, we live in them, everyday.

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[♪ pop music]

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The "-ing" in modern place names

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means the people of.

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[♪]

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"'Ton" as in Wigton where I come from,

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means enclosure, or village.

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"Ham" means farm,

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which might surprise one or two Tottenham supporters.

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[♪]

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[♪ Battle Hymn of the Republic tune]

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The Germanic tribes now settled around the country,

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all spoke their own dialects,

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from among them,

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would emerge one language,

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Anglo-Saxon, or Old English,

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and we all speak it every day.

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Man: They've got five strikers,

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none of them can really finish

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(mens voices overlapping)

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Man: We just need some youth from (overlapping voices) really.

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Narrator: Examine the language you use today,

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and you'll still find hundreds of words

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from a language over 1500 years old.

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Keywords, ranging from the names we give family members,

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to numbers.

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(male voices overlapping)

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Man: I think we'll win 2-1 today.

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Man: I'll drink to that.

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Man: I live in like a Westham area,

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and I've got a lot of Westham friends,

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but for this game, we'll be enemies.

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Man: The home games,

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I would go with the guys,

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we meet up from the (indecipherable) website,

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or with my daughter, to other games,

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she's five at the moment,

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she loves it, she loves singing the songs,

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the nice ones anyway.

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Man: I was coming with my son,

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so we just go in to get something to eat first,

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go into the grounds, stay with the atmosphere,

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and watch the game.

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There has been a few high scoring games over the years,

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I think the highest we ever beat them was 6-1.

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A repeat today wouldn't go amiss.

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Narrator: Most of those words were from Old English,

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nouns like "youth, son, daughter,"

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"field, friend, home," and "ground."

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Prepositions like "in, and on, into, by and from,"

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"and" and "the" are from Old English,

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all the numbers,

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and verbs like "drink, come, and go"

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"sing, like, and love."

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But would these words have sounded different all those years ago?

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In a slightly quieter pub,

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I ask language expert Katie Lowe.

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Katie: They sound a little different,

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I mean the Old English for "son"

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is (pronunciation) "sunu."

255
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That's not so very different.

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"Game" is (pronunciation) "gamen,"

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"ground" is (pronunciation) "grund."

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And I notice that Steve says that

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his daughter loves singing songs,

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if you said that in Old English,

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it would be

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[speaks sentence in Old English]

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and you can see that sounds pretty much like modern English.

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Narrator: So in fact, you can have a good conversation in Old English.

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Katie: Oh, yes you can indeed.

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I mean, each word I'm saying now,

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is from Old English.

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Narrator: Do you have any estimate of how many words

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there were swirling around,

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compared with how many words we have now?

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

272
00:12:27,559 --> 00:12:29,542
Compare that with an average desk dictionary,

273
00:12:29,542 --> 00:12:31,846
which maybe contains something like 100,000 words,

274
00:12:31,846 --> 00:12:33,400
it sounds pretty small.

275
00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:34,647
But if you think about the fact that

276
00:12:34,647 --> 00:12:36,547
an average educated person

277
00:12:36,547 --> 00:12:38,440
would probably have about 10,000 words

278
00:12:38,440 --> 00:12:39,654
in their active vocabulary,

279
00:12:39,654 --> 00:12:41,088
there are plenty of words to go round.

280
00:12:41,088 --> 00:12:46,189
[♪ choral music]

281
00:12:46,189 --> 00:12:48,745
Narrator: English took it's first steps away from it's tribal roots

282
00:12:48,745 --> 00:12:51,032
with the revival of Christianity.

283
00:12:51,968 --> 00:13:00,941
(man speaking in foreign language)

284
00:13:00,941 --> 00:13:02,930
Man: Let us praise the King of Heaven,

285
00:13:03,670 --> 00:13:05,135
the power of the Creator,

286
00:13:05,135 --> 00:13:06,908
and his conception.

287
00:13:07,184 --> 00:13:08,702
The work of the Glorious Father,

288
00:13:08,702 --> 00:13:11,258
who created every wonder,

289
00:13:11,258 --> 00:13:13,337
the Eternal Lord.

290
00:13:13,337 --> 00:13:27,142
[♪]

291
00:13:27,142 --> 00:13:30,130
Narrator: In 597, the monk and prior Augustine,

292
00:13:30,130 --> 00:13:32,276
led a mission from Rome to Kent.

293
00:13:33,352 --> 00:13:34,345
Around the same time,

294
00:13:34,345 --> 00:13:36,187
Irish monks of the Celtic church,

295
00:13:36,187 --> 00:13:38,303
were establishing a presence in the North.

296
00:13:40,940 --> 00:13:41,933
Within a century,

297
00:13:41,933 --> 00:13:44,703
Christians built churches and monasteries.

298
00:13:44,703 --> 00:13:46,281
This is St. Paul's in Jarrow,

299
00:13:46,281 --> 00:13:49,680
parts of which, date from the 7th century.

300
00:13:56,837 --> 00:13:59,511
Faith and stone weren't the only things

301
00:13:59,511 --> 00:14:01,440
the Christian missionaries brought to the country.

302
00:14:01,440 --> 00:14:04,688
They brought the international language of the Christian religion.

303
00:14:04,688 --> 00:14:05,811
Latin.

304
00:14:05,811 --> 00:14:08,920
Latin terms became part of the English word hoard,

305
00:14:08,920 --> 00:14:10,714
Altare became alter,

306
00:14:10,714 --> 00:14:12,393
apostulus became apostle,

307
00:14:12,393 --> 00:14:13,953
mass, monk, and verse,

308
00:14:13,953 --> 00:14:16,064
and many others, all come from the Latin.

309
00:14:16,064 --> 00:14:17,991
This would become a pattern of English,

310
00:14:17,991 --> 00:14:19,553
the layering of words,

311
00:14:19,553 --> 00:14:21,686
taken from different source languages,

312
00:14:21,686 --> 00:14:23,336
and from Latin too,

313
00:14:23,336 --> 00:14:25,855
the English took their script.

314
00:14:25,855 --> 00:14:30,733
[♪ choral music]

315
00:14:30,733 --> 00:14:32,952
The Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes,

316
00:14:32,952 --> 00:14:34,001
who would become the English,

317
00:14:34,001 --> 00:14:36,114
hadn't brought script as we know it,

318
00:14:36,114 --> 00:14:38,384
with them, but Runes.

319
00:14:46,160 --> 00:14:47,161
The Runic alphabet,

320
00:14:47,161 --> 00:14:48,671
was made up of symbols,

321
00:14:48,671 --> 00:14:50,451
formed mainly of straight lines,

322
00:14:50,451 --> 00:14:52,928
so that the letters could be carved into stone or wood.

323
00:14:54,518 --> 00:14:55,735
Those were their media,

324
00:14:55,735 --> 00:14:57,760
rather than parchment or paper.

325
00:15:00,170 --> 00:15:01,743
Though this is a short poem,

326
00:15:01,743 --> 00:15:04,112
most examples of Runic writing that survived,

327
00:15:04,112 --> 00:15:05,880
suggests Runes were mainly used for

328
00:15:05,880 --> 00:15:08,568
short, practical messages, or grafiti.

329
00:15:11,297 --> 00:15:21,801
(Gregorian monk chanting)

330
00:15:21,801 --> 00:15:23,303
The Latin alphabet was different,

331
00:15:23,303 --> 00:15:24,515
with it's curves and bows,

332
00:15:24,515 --> 00:15:27,920
it allowed words to be easily written using pen and ink

333
00:15:27,920 --> 00:15:30,095
onto pages of parchment or velum,

334
00:15:30,095 --> 00:15:31,937
which gathered together, into a book,

335
00:15:31,937 --> 00:15:33,747
could be widely circulated.

336
00:15:33,747 --> 00:15:49,164
[♪]

337
00:15:49,164 --> 00:15:52,464
Christianity brought the book to the east shores.

338
00:15:54,512 --> 00:15:56,387
Verbum, the word.

339
00:16:05,242 --> 00:16:08,014
Soon a native culture of scholarship began to flower,

340
00:16:08,014 --> 00:16:10,467
a culture based on Latin and on writing.

341
00:16:11,088 --> 00:16:15,849
[♪ chanting continues]

342
00:16:15,849 --> 00:16:17,655
The magnificent Lindisfarne Gospels

343
00:16:17,655 --> 00:16:19,026
were created in the 8th century,

344
00:16:19,026 --> 00:16:22,588
on the island of Lindisfarne, just off the northeast coast.

345
00:16:24,918 --> 00:16:26,135
A few miles south,

346
00:16:26,135 --> 00:16:28,411
at the monastery of St. Paul's in Jarrow,

347
00:16:28,411 --> 00:16:31,280
the great English monk and scholar, Bede,

348
00:16:31,280 --> 00:16:33,213
born and educated in Northumbria,

349
00:16:33,213 --> 00:16:37,087
began writing the first ever history of the English speaking people.

350
00:16:37,087 --> 00:16:40,454
[♪ chanting continues]

351
00:16:40,454 --> 00:16:41,918
He wrote, of course in Latin,

352
00:16:41,918 --> 00:16:43,776
the language of scholarship.

353
00:16:45,291 --> 00:16:47,025
The prevailing language among the people,

354
00:16:47,025 --> 00:16:48,426
was still Old English.

355
00:16:48,773 --> 00:16:50,579
But Latin, this powerful medium,

356
00:16:50,579 --> 00:16:51,784
was now amongst them.

357
00:16:52,311 --> 00:16:54,680
Now, Old English was written down,

358
00:16:54,680 --> 00:16:56,479
using the Latin alphabet,

359
00:16:56,479 --> 00:16:59,437
while retaining some of the old Runes as letters.

360
00:16:59,437 --> 00:17:00,711
From the 7th century,

361
00:17:00,711 --> 00:17:03,266
we find English itself written on parchment,

362
00:17:03,266 --> 00:17:04,470
in a language and a script,

363
00:17:04,470 --> 00:17:07,744
we can just about recognize as our own.

364
00:17:08,519 --> 00:17:11,540
[♪ chanting continues]

365
00:17:11,540 --> 00:17:39,210
(man speaking in foreign language: The Lord's Prayer]

366
00:17:39,210 --> 00:17:40,220
With writing,

367
00:17:40,220 --> 00:17:41,661
Old English stole a march

368
00:17:41,661 --> 00:17:44,248
on other languages spoken in Europe at the time.

369
00:17:44,248 --> 00:17:47,494
Prayers were recorded, and books of the Bible translated,

370
00:17:47,494 --> 00:17:49,274
the laws of the land were written down,

371
00:17:49,274 --> 00:17:51,382
and the language soon became capable

372
00:17:51,382 --> 00:17:52,888
of recording and expressing

373
00:17:52,888 --> 00:17:56,768
and increasingly wide and subtle range of human experience.

374
00:17:56,768 --> 00:17:59,110
[♪ intense music]

375
00:17:59,110 --> 00:18:00,200
And in the right hands,

376
00:18:00,200 --> 00:18:02,856
Old English was now powerful and supple enough

377
00:18:02,856 --> 00:18:06,976
to take you to imaginary worlds, fire the blood, be poetry.

378
00:18:07,606 --> 00:18:15,495
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

379
00:18:15,495 --> 00:18:19,249
Man: So, the Spear-Danes, and days gone by,

380
00:18:19,249 --> 00:18:22,824
and the kings who rule them have courage and greatness.

381
00:18:22,824 --> 00:18:26,497
We have heard of those prince's heroic campaigns.

382
00:18:26,497 --> 00:18:30,061
[♪ death-like music]

383
00:18:30,061 --> 00:18:31,290
No one knows who composed

384
00:18:31,290 --> 00:18:32,888
the epic Beowulf, sometime between the

385
00:18:32,888 --> 00:18:35,147
mid 7th and the 10th century.

386
00:18:35,147 --> 00:18:38,005
It's the first great poem in the English Language.

387
00:18:38,005 --> 00:18:39,688
The beginning of a glorious tradition

388
00:18:39,688 --> 00:18:40,752
which would lead to Chaucer,

389
00:18:40,752 --> 00:18:42,835
Shakespeare and beyond.

390
00:18:43,745 --> 00:18:45,465
The poem celebrates the glory days

391
00:18:45,465 --> 00:18:47,207
of the Germanic tribes,

392
00:18:47,207 --> 00:18:50,986
optimizing the heroic warrior who gives the poem it's name.

393
00:18:52,456 --> 00:18:55,042
The power of a language can be heard in this passage,

394
00:18:55,042 --> 00:18:57,247
which introduces Beowulf's archenemy,

395
00:18:57,247 --> 00:18:59,112
the monster Grendel.

396
00:19:01,102 --> 00:19:08,861
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

397
00:19:08,861 --> 00:19:12,661
Man: In off the moors, down through the mist-bands,

398
00:19:12,661 --> 00:19:16,040
God cursed Grendel came greedily loping.

399
00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:19,290
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

400
00:19:19,290 --> 00:19:21,601
Man: The bane of the race of men roamed forth,

401
00:19:21,601 --> 00:19:24,745
hunting for a prey in the high hall.

402
00:19:24,745 --> 00:19:27,431
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

403
00:19:27,431 --> 00:19:29,664
Man: Spurned and joyless, he journeyed on ahead,

404
00:19:29,664 --> 00:19:32,095
and arrived at the bawn.

405
00:19:32,095 --> 00:19:35,519
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

406
00:19:35,519 --> 00:19:37,122
Man: Then his rage boiled over,

407
00:19:37,122 --> 00:19:39,117
he ripped open the mouth of the building,

408
00:19:39,117 --> 00:19:40,913
maddening for blood.

409
00:19:40,913 --> 00:19:43,810
[♪ dramatic music]

410
00:19:43,810 --> 00:19:46,544
He grabbed and mauled a man on his bench,

411
00:19:46,544 --> 00:19:48,847
bit into his bone lappings,

412
00:19:48,847 --> 00:19:50,490
bolted down his blood,

413
00:19:50,490 --> 00:19:53,006
and gorged on him in lumps,

414
00:19:53,006 --> 00:19:56,198
leaving the body utterly lifeless,

415
00:19:56,198 --> 00:19:58,503
eaten up, hand and foot.

416
00:19:59,192 --> 00:20:01,987
Narrator: What does that tell us about English at that time, Seamus?

417
00:20:01,987 --> 00:20:03,881
What kind of language was it when you came to it?

418
00:20:03,881 --> 00:20:05,992
Do you think this is a fully developed poetic language?

419
00:20:05,992 --> 00:20:08,679
Seamus: It's certainly a fully developed poetic language.

420
00:20:08,679 --> 00:20:12,596
It's capable of great elaboration.

421
00:20:12,596 --> 00:20:16,298
But what struck me generally about Old English

422
00:20:16,298 --> 00:20:18,786
from the moment I read the bits of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,

423
00:20:18,786 --> 00:20:19,840
right through to Beowulf,

424
00:20:19,840 --> 00:20:23,107
is it's terrific for telling what happened.

425
00:20:23,107 --> 00:20:26,712
It's a wonderful sense of the indicative mood all through it.

426
00:20:26,712 --> 00:20:30,228
It's terrific for action, terrific for description.

427
00:20:30,228 --> 00:20:32,866
[♪ light chords]

428
00:20:32,866 --> 00:20:35,769
There's a wonderful forthright capacity to make up

429
00:20:35,769 --> 00:20:38,755
extra language in Anglo-Saxon.

430
00:20:42,489 --> 00:20:45,223
The words are very clear and direct,

431
00:20:45,223 --> 00:20:47,664
"ban and hus" for example, bone-house,

432
00:20:47,664 --> 00:20:49,713
there you have the house for the body,

433
00:20:49,713 --> 00:20:50,832
the word for the body.

434
00:20:53,462 --> 00:20:55,756
Beautiful words for instruments,

435
00:20:55,756 --> 00:21:01,512
the harp is called "gleo-bem", the glee-beam.

436
00:21:01,512 --> 00:21:05,960
The happy wood, or else the joy wood,

437
00:21:05,960 --> 00:21:08,985
"gomen-wudu."

438
00:21:13,832 --> 00:21:19,207
Swords, or shield, a shield is the war-board, wig-bord."

439
00:21:21,227 --> 00:21:23,482
That is a specific poetic energy

440
00:21:23,482 --> 00:21:24,816
that's in the language.

441
00:21:24,816 --> 00:21:29,049
The ability to make compounds,

442
00:21:29,049 --> 00:21:30,914
which is still in German I guess,

443
00:21:30,914 --> 00:21:33,036
it gives it a great beauty.

444
00:21:33,036 --> 00:21:34,824
Narrator: How extensive is the vocabulary?

445
00:21:34,824 --> 00:21:39,407
Seamus: I think there are 40,000 words recorded in Beowulf.

446
00:21:39,407 --> 00:21:41,536
But, a lot of the words repeat themselves,

447
00:21:41,536 --> 00:21:45,946
in this is more in the poetry than in the prose,

448
00:21:45,946 --> 00:21:48,844
if we heard an Anglo-Saxon speaker speaking,

449
00:21:48,844 --> 00:21:52,880
under his roof to his companion,

450
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:55,218
we'd probably hear a very quicker,

451
00:21:55,218 --> 00:21:58,440
a different less elaborate language from Beowulf.

452
00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:01,340
Narrator: Would you say it is very clearly written to be read aloud?

453
00:22:01,340 --> 00:22:04,861
Seamus: It's certainly written to be read aloud,

454
00:22:04,861 --> 00:22:07,848
the question that agitates some scholars

455
00:22:07,848 --> 00:22:09,739
is whether it was written, you know?

456
00:22:09,739 --> 00:22:13,935
But, I think the general consensus now is that

457
00:22:13,935 --> 00:22:15,472
by the time you get to Beowulf,

458
00:22:15,472 --> 00:22:20,788
you have a writer, dealing with a traditional oral language.

459
00:22:20,788 --> 00:22:32,384
(man speaking in foreign language: Beowulf)

460
00:22:32,384 --> 00:22:34,167
Seamus: Certainly, you open the book,

461
00:22:34,167 --> 00:22:36,511
[speaks the first lines of Beowulf]

462
00:22:36,511 --> 00:22:37,668
asks to be uttered,

463
00:22:37,668 --> 00:22:39,168
there are many speeches in it,

464
00:22:39,168 --> 00:22:43,752
and it comes off the tongue with terrific directness.

465
00:22:43,752 --> 00:22:51,693
[♪ dramatic music]

466
00:22:51,693 --> 00:22:54,640
Narrator: Latin and Greek had created great bodies of literatiure

467
00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:56,352
in the classical past.

468
00:22:56,352 --> 00:22:58,408
In the East, Arabic and Chinese,

469
00:22:58,408 --> 00:23:00,669
were being used in the 8th and 9th century,

470
00:23:00,669 --> 00:23:02,160
as languages of poetry.

471
00:23:02,160 --> 00:23:03,228
But, at that time,

472
00:23:03,228 --> 00:23:05,653
no other language in the Christian world

473
00:23:05,653 --> 00:23:08,416
could match the achievement of the Beowulf poet,

474
00:23:08,416 --> 00:23:10,725
and his anonymous contemporaries.

475
00:23:10,725 --> 00:23:12,646
Old English was flourishing.

476
00:23:12,646 --> 00:23:14,739
The adventure was underway,

477
00:23:14,739 --> 00:23:16,916
but while the siege of English

478
00:23:16,916 --> 00:23:19,848
had come from these Frisian shores in the 5th century,

479
00:23:19,848 --> 00:23:22,480
so now in the late 8th century,

480
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:25,625
a potential destroyer was preparing his battle fleet,

481
00:23:25,625 --> 00:23:28,456
500 miles or so to the North.

482
00:23:28,456 --> 00:23:50,664
[♪ ominous music]

483
00:23:50,664 --> 00:23:59,784
[♪ music becomes motivated]

484
00:23:59,784 --> 00:24:01,381
In the late 8th century,

485
00:24:01,381 --> 00:24:03,026
the Latin based culture of scholarship

486
00:24:03,026 --> 00:24:05,419
which had grown up in places like Lindisfarne,

487
00:24:05,419 --> 00:24:07,692
and which had also been the cradle of Old English

488
00:24:07,692 --> 00:24:10,889
faced extinction from across the sea.

489
00:24:10,889 --> 00:24:21,312
[♪]

490
00:24:21,312 --> 00:24:23,686
These ruins are of the Medieval monastery

491
00:24:23,686 --> 00:24:26,980
that stood on the island of Lindisfarne.

492
00:24:30,032 --> 00:24:32,143
It was the vikings who sacked and burned

493
00:24:32,143 --> 00:24:34,743
the religious center that stood here before.

494
00:24:36,736 --> 00:24:38,107
To these Pagan pirates,

495
00:24:38,107 --> 00:24:41,163
rampaging out of their longships in 793,

496
00:24:41,163 --> 00:24:45,064
this great center of Christian piety and scholarship,

497
00:24:45,064 --> 00:24:48,547
a pivotal place in the survival of the Word and the Gospels,

498
00:24:48,547 --> 00:24:51,103
was no more than an undefended treasure house.

499
00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:53,565
The jewels that graced the books of the church

500
00:24:53,565 --> 00:24:56,547
became barbells around a viking's neck.

501
00:24:56,547 --> 00:25:02,897
[♪ intense, motivated music]

502
00:25:02,897 --> 00:25:04,983
Today, the vikings may seem romantic,

503
00:25:04,983 --> 00:25:07,285
reenacting their rituals a good day out.

504
00:25:08,345 --> 00:25:09,495
Over 12 centuries ago,

505
00:25:09,495 --> 00:25:11,866
their arrival was not so cheerful.

506
00:25:11,866 --> 00:25:14,160
(bell ringing)

507
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:17,770
To many, it seemed the signal to the end for civilization.

508
00:25:17,770 --> 00:25:21,785
(fire crackling)

509
00:25:22,157 --> 00:25:24,263
A year after raising Lindisfarne,

510
00:25:24,263 --> 00:25:27,280
the vikings returned, and sacked Jarrow,

511
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:29,677
the abbey where Bede had been the greatest scholar,

512
00:25:29,677 --> 00:25:32,712
in one of the finest libraries in Christendom.

513
00:25:36,385 --> 00:25:38,121
This stronghold of the Latin word,

514
00:25:38,121 --> 00:25:40,595
where English was also being written down,

515
00:25:40,595 --> 00:25:42,665
uniquely among European dialects,

516
00:25:42,665 --> 00:25:44,618
was burned to the ground,

517
00:25:44,618 --> 00:25:45,706
it's books with it.

518
00:25:45,706 --> 00:25:49,199
(fire crackling)

519
00:25:49,199 --> 00:26:01,311
[♪ haunting voices]

520
00:26:01,969 --> 00:26:03,929
It was a start of 70 years of attack,

521
00:26:03,929 --> 00:26:08,280
during which the vikings savaged this easten half of the country.

522
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:11,769
Few stories survive of exactly where and when they attacked,

523
00:26:11,769 --> 00:26:15,520
perhaps chillingly because few were left to tell the tale.

524
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:18,831
At first, the raiders went home with their plunder,

525
00:26:18,831 --> 00:26:21,431
then they decided to take the land itself.

526
00:26:21,431 --> 00:26:24,296
In 865, the vikings landed a great army

527
00:26:24,296 --> 00:26:26,819
south of here, in East Anglia.

528
00:26:26,819 --> 00:26:31,680
[♪]

529
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:34,760
Within 5 years, the viking invaders who are now called Danes,

530
00:26:34,760 --> 00:26:37,720
controlled the North and East of the country.

531
00:26:39,024 --> 00:26:40,735
Of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,

532
00:26:40,735 --> 00:26:43,105
only Wessex still held out.

533
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:45,883
Old Norse, the language of the conquerors,

534
00:26:45,883 --> 00:26:47,952
was spreading throughout the land.

535
00:26:48,330 --> 00:26:51,690
Old English, potentially faced the same fate of the Celtic language

536
00:26:51,690 --> 00:26:53,120
it had supplanted,

537
00:26:53,120 --> 00:26:54,703
virtual oblivion.

538
00:26:56,136 --> 00:26:58,300
English, was in need of a champion.

539
00:26:59,390 --> 00:27:01,028
And it found one.

540
00:27:01,028 --> 00:27:13,303
[♪ triumphant music]

541
00:27:13,303 --> 00:27:15,628
King Alfred's statue stands here in Winchester,

542
00:27:15,628 --> 00:27:17,865
the capital of his aged kingdom of Wessex.

543
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:20,985
He's the only monarch in our history to be known as "the Great"

544
00:27:20,985 --> 00:27:23,753
and he's often been hailed as the savior of England,

545
00:27:23,753 --> 00:27:27,788
that may be debatable as the idea of a single unified England,

546
00:27:27,788 --> 00:27:30,126
didn't really exist in Alfred's day.

547
00:27:30,126 --> 00:27:34,561
What is certain, is that he was a great defender of the English language.

548
00:27:34,561 --> 00:27:37,699
[♪ somber music]

549
00:27:37,699 --> 00:27:40,768
It was the Victorians who dubbed Alfred, the Great.

550
00:27:41,208 --> 00:27:42,827
He was one of their darlings,

551
00:27:42,827 --> 00:27:44,357
an English hero, whose exploits

552
00:27:44,357 --> 00:27:47,826
were enthusiastically woven into the fabric of national myth.

553
00:27:49,602 --> 00:27:51,560
But, he very nearly didn't make it.

554
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:55,146
He'd come to the throne of Wessex,

555
00:27:55,146 --> 00:27:58,398
within a year of the first Danish attacks in the Southeast,

556
00:27:58,398 --> 00:28:01,065
and at first, he could hardly hold them back.

557
00:28:01,911 --> 00:28:04,217
In 878, the Danes won what appeared

558
00:28:04,217 --> 00:28:06,986
to be a decisive battle at Chippenham in Wiltshire.

559
00:28:06,986 --> 00:28:14,892
[♪ mischievous music]

560
00:28:14,892 --> 00:28:16,783
Alfred, with only a few followers,

561
00:28:16,783 --> 00:28:19,708
went on the run into the marshes of Somerset.

562
00:28:19,708 --> 00:28:21,575
Moving as a contemporary wrote,

563
00:28:21,575 --> 00:28:24,032
"Under difficulties, through wood,

564
00:28:24,032 --> 00:28:26,304
and into inaccessible places."

565
00:28:28,511 --> 00:28:30,914
Legend has Alfred, unrecognized,

566
00:28:30,914 --> 00:28:33,186
taking shelter in a poor woman's cottage,

567
00:28:33,186 --> 00:28:37,246
and being scolded for burning the wheaten cakes he'd been set to mind.

568
00:28:39,845 --> 00:28:42,155
But, the reality was less cozy.

569
00:28:42,155 --> 00:28:44,068
His situation was desperate,

570
00:28:44,068 --> 00:28:45,962
and if Alfred's kingdom fell,

571
00:28:45,962 --> 00:28:48,451
the whole country would be controlled and settled

572
00:28:48,451 --> 00:28:52,520
by conquerors whose language would inevitably crush English.

573
00:28:57,786 --> 00:29:01,107
But, Alfred proved to be an enterprising warrior and strategist,

574
00:29:01,107 --> 00:29:03,278
running free in the Somerset levels

575
00:29:03,278 --> 00:29:05,835
he discovered the arts of irregular warfare,

576
00:29:05,835 --> 00:29:08,460
and mounted guerrilla attacks against the occupying

577
00:29:08,460 --> 00:29:11,341
forces of Guthrum, the Danish invader.

578
00:29:11,341 --> 00:29:13,158
But he knew that wasn't going to be enough.

579
00:29:13,158 --> 00:29:14,982
For Wessex to be regained,

580
00:29:14,982 --> 00:29:17,681
the Danes had to be brought to battle and defeated.

581
00:29:17,681 --> 00:29:20,468
The fighting men of Wessex had been scattered,

582
00:29:20,468 --> 00:29:22,007
but in the spring of 878,

583
00:29:22,007 --> 00:29:24,587
Alfred sent out a call for the men of the Shirefords,

584
00:29:24,587 --> 00:29:26,779
the county armies, to join him.

585
00:29:26,779 --> 00:29:29,975
Around 4,000 men, many from Wiltshire and Somerset,

586
00:29:29,975 --> 00:29:32,757
armed only with battle axes and throwing spears,

587
00:29:32,757 --> 00:29:34,357
responded to the call.

588
00:29:34,357 --> 00:29:36,153
They mustered at Egbert's Stone,

589
00:29:36,153 --> 00:29:38,444
where trackways and rigdeways met.

590
00:29:38,444 --> 00:29:40,717
48 hours later, they advanced,

591
00:29:40,717 --> 00:29:44,439
shields drumming against the Danish army of 5,000,

592
00:29:44,439 --> 00:29:46,734
holding high ground at Ethandune,

593
00:29:46,734 --> 00:29:48,600
on the western edge of Salisbury Plain.

594
00:29:49,332 --> 00:29:50,686
Contemporary English accounts

595
00:29:50,686 --> 00:29:52,353
describe the battle that followed

596
00:29:52,353 --> 00:29:54,613
as a slaughter, and a route of the Danes,

597
00:29:54,613 --> 00:29:55,979
by the West Saxons.

598
00:29:55,979 --> 00:29:57,794
Modern historians question that,

599
00:29:57,794 --> 00:30:00,770
but there is no doubt that Alfred prevailed.

600
00:30:01,274 --> 00:30:03,320
His crown, and his kingdom were secure,

601
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:05,499
and more importantly for our story,

602
00:30:05,499 --> 00:30:07,211
so was the English language.

603
00:30:07,211 --> 00:30:14,480
[♪ triumphant music]

604
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:15,913
The Danes surrendered,

605
00:30:15,913 --> 00:30:17,785
their leader was baptized as a Chrisitan,

606
00:30:17,785 --> 00:30:19,651
and Alfred's crucial victory

607
00:30:19,651 --> 00:30:21,461
was memorialized here in Wiltshire,

608
00:30:21,461 --> 00:30:24,187
in an earlier version of a great white horse,

609
00:30:24,187 --> 00:30:26,600
carved into the land he'd saved.

610
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:36,238
[♪]

611
00:30:36,238 --> 00:30:39,657
Alfred left an even more significant mark on the country,

612
00:30:39,657 --> 00:30:41,436
he signed a peace treaty with the Danes,

613
00:30:41,436 --> 00:30:42,600
which established a border

614
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:43,784
running up through the country,

615
00:30:43,784 --> 00:30:47,440
from the Thames, to the old Roman road of Watling Street.

616
00:30:48,183 --> 00:30:49,493
The land to the north and the east

617
00:30:49,493 --> 00:30:51,135
to be known as the Danelaw,

618
00:30:51,135 --> 00:30:52,380
would be under Danish rule,

619
00:30:52,380 --> 00:30:54,431
the land to the south and west,

620
00:30:54,431 --> 00:30:55,893
would be for the English.

621
00:30:55,893 --> 00:30:57,907
No one was to cross the line,

622
00:30:57,907 --> 00:31:00,090
unless to trade.

623
00:31:01,592 --> 00:31:05,883
(street life sounds)

624
00:31:05,883 --> 00:31:06,700
In the course of time,

625
00:31:06,700 --> 00:31:08,520
because of Alfred's peace treaty,

626
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:10,101
when Danes and English met,

627
00:31:10,101 --> 00:31:13,415
they didn't do so to fight, but to do business.

628
00:31:13,415 --> 00:31:14,726
Even to intermarry.

629
00:31:17,536 --> 00:31:18,616
Communities mixed,

630
00:31:18,616 --> 00:31:20,634
and so did the languages,

631
00:31:20,634 --> 00:31:23,927
English, rather than being engulfed by the Dane's language,

632
00:31:23,927 --> 00:31:25,779
began to absorb it.

633
00:31:29,785 --> 00:31:31,756
I'm in the market town of Hexum,

634
00:31:31,756 --> 00:31:33,520
in the Northeast of England.

635
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:34,599
Maps of the area,

636
00:31:34,599 --> 00:31:37,960
show just how widespread the Danish settlement was.

637
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:41,007
[♪ pompous music]

638
00:31:41,007 --> 00:31:42,444
Place names ending in "-by"

639
00:31:42,444 --> 00:31:44,440
reveal the Danish name for farm,

640
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:49,326
"-thorpe" denotes a village,

641
00:31:49,495 --> 00:31:51,631
"-thwaite" a portion of land.

642
00:31:51,631 --> 00:31:58,416
[♪]

643
00:31:58,416 --> 00:32:00,825
The births, marriages, and deaths pages of the local paper,

644
00:32:00,825 --> 00:32:03,440
feature lots of names ending in "-son."

645
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:05,487
That was a Danish was of making a name.

646
00:32:05,487 --> 00:32:07,384
By adding to the name of the Father.

647
00:32:07,384 --> 00:32:08,471
Just on this page,

648
00:32:08,471 --> 00:32:13,160
I can see, Harrison, Gibson-Hudson,

649
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:14,438
Robson,

650
00:32:14,438 --> 00:32:15,391
Sanderson,

651
00:32:15,391 --> 00:32:16,916
Dickinson,

652
00:32:16,916 --> 00:32:17,944
Simpson,

653
00:32:17,944 --> 00:32:19,190
Dickinson again,

654
00:32:19,190 --> 00:32:20,580
and Watson.

655
00:32:21,070 --> 00:32:21,916
In the school where I was,

656
00:32:21,916 --> 00:32:22,911
just across the country,

657
00:32:22,911 --> 00:32:24,387
there was a Patterson, a Johnson,

658
00:32:24,387 --> 00:32:26,262
a Rolandson, and another Dickinson.

659
00:32:26,852 --> 00:32:28,244
Outside of the street,

660
00:32:28,244 --> 00:32:31,583
you can see the same thing on shop signs everywhere.

661
00:32:34,443 --> 00:32:37,230
Even given centuries of people moving around the country,

662
00:32:37,230 --> 00:32:40,320
names ending in "-son" are still far more common,

663
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:42,144
in what were the Danish territories in the

664
00:32:42,144 --> 00:32:45,238
North and West in area, and the South and the East.

665
00:32:45,238 --> 00:32:46,760
Above all, you can hear the echos of the

666
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:48,472
Danes old Norse language,

667
00:32:48,472 --> 00:32:50,549
in the way people speak.

668
00:32:50,549 --> 00:32:57,000
(man speaking indecipherable)

669
00:32:57,000 --> 00:32:58,520
Man: It's a little field on it's own,

670
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:00,280
Willy says there's a deck down by the side of it,

671
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:02,329
goes down through a little wood.

672
00:33:02,329 --> 00:33:06,774
Man: ...down by, down in that little guard thing is it...

673
00:33:06,774 --> 00:33:08,321
Man: It's like a little isolation,

674
00:33:08,321 --> 00:33:12,024
feel it's only, it's only a couple of acres the whole thing.

675
00:33:12,024 --> 00:33:13,874
Man: Interesting to see if your sheep sort of..

676
00:33:13,874 --> 00:33:16,261
[indecipherable]

677
00:33:16,261 --> 00:33:18,443
Narrator: Some old Norse words stayed

678
00:33:18,443 --> 00:33:20,297
in the local dialects of the North,

679
00:33:20,677 --> 00:33:22,604
words like beck for stream,

680
00:33:22,604 --> 00:33:24,547
and garth for paddock.

681
00:33:25,165 --> 00:33:26,134
As a boy in Wickham,

682
00:33:26,134 --> 00:33:28,160
I remember hearing amusing dialect words like,

683
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:31,175
slattery for shower, slape for slippery,

684
00:33:31,175 --> 00:33:35,280
yet for gate, lub for leap, yeck for oak, and yam for home,

685
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:37,144
as in "I's going yam."

686
00:33:37,144 --> 00:33:40,224
Pure Norse, heard in Wickham, every night of the week.

687
00:33:40,224 --> 00:33:41,784
And there were many others.

688
00:33:44,087 --> 00:33:46,846
But the influence of old Norse wasn't just local,

689
00:33:46,846 --> 00:33:48,260
all around the country, over time,

690
00:33:48,260 --> 00:33:51,585
hundreds of Norse words entered the mainstream of English.

691
00:33:51,585 --> 00:33:53,667
And we still use them everyday.

692
00:33:55,534 --> 00:33:58,085
The 'sk' sounds are characteristic of old Norse,

693
00:33:58,085 --> 00:33:59,610
and English borrowed words like,

694
00:33:59,610 --> 00:34:02,708
skor, and sky, and skifa,

695
00:34:02,708 --> 00:34:04,657
as well as perhaps a thousand others,

696
00:34:04,657 --> 00:34:12,803
including anger, bowl, freckle, knife, neck, root, scowl, and window.

697
00:34:19,384 --> 00:34:21,998
Sometimes, where both old Norse and old English

698
00:34:21,998 --> 00:34:23,514
had a word for the same thing,

699
00:34:23,514 --> 00:34:25,373
both words lived on in English,

700
00:34:25,373 --> 00:34:28,083
each taking on a slightly different meaning.

701
00:34:28,398 --> 00:34:29,840
Where old English said craft,

702
00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:31,871
old Norse said skill.

703
00:34:32,190 --> 00:34:35,194
For an English hyde, the Norse said skin.

704
00:34:35,194 --> 00:34:36,710
In old English you were sick,

705
00:34:36,710 --> 00:34:38,547
in Norse you were ill.

706
00:34:42,447 --> 00:34:44,792
Here was another example of English's extraordinary

707
00:34:44,792 --> 00:34:46,005
ability to absorb

708
00:34:46,005 --> 00:34:48,036
to take in words from other languages,

709
00:34:48,036 --> 00:34:50,206
adding them to its word hoard,

710
00:34:50,206 --> 00:34:53,485
increasing the richness and flexibility of the vocabulary.

711
00:34:54,313 --> 00:34:56,400
Katie: I think that the point about vocabulary,

712
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,670
is how much it astonishes by its ordinary nature,

713
00:34:59,670 --> 00:35:07,063
words like, lore, egg, husband, leg, ill, die, ugly,

714
00:35:07,063 --> 00:35:08,942
all these words are from old Norse,

715
00:35:08,942 --> 00:35:12,149
and yet you wouldn't necessarily think they were foreign at all.

716
00:35:12,149 --> 00:35:13,234
Most astounding of all,

717
00:35:13,234 --> 00:35:16,272
I think are the pronouns: they, there, and then.

718
00:35:16,272 --> 00:35:18,875
Those are also from old Norse.

719
00:35:18,875 --> 00:35:20,329
Narrator: And in terms of grammar,

720
00:35:20,329 --> 00:35:22,632
in a way, they simplified English, didn't they?

721
00:35:22,632 --> 00:35:24,610
They took it away from its Germanic roots.

722
00:35:24,610 --> 00:35:26,222
Katie: I think it's probably true to say that

723
00:35:26,222 --> 00:35:28,026
old Norse effects the English language

724
00:35:28,026 --> 00:35:29,521
more than any other.

725
00:35:29,521 --> 00:35:32,476
Because it actually leads to a restructuring of the language.

726
00:35:32,476 --> 00:35:34,780
Old English forms sentences,

727
00:35:34,780 --> 00:35:36,454
not by word order,

728
00:35:36,454 --> 00:35:37,547
as we do,

729
00:35:37,547 --> 00:35:40,520
but by tacking on endings to the ends of things like,

730
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,269
articles and pronouns, and nouns,

731
00:35:43,269 --> 00:35:45,483
and what happens is,

732
00:35:45,483 --> 00:35:48,207
through contact with a pretty similar language,

733
00:35:48,207 --> 00:35:50,088
a lot of these inflectional endings

734
00:35:50,088 --> 00:35:52,316
start to lose their distinctive nature.

735
00:35:52,316 --> 00:35:53,411
And actually this is a process,

736
00:35:53,411 --> 00:35:55,175
we can see happening fairly early on

737
00:35:55,175 --> 00:35:56,512
in the Anglo-Saxon period,

738
00:35:56,512 --> 00:35:58,814
so the language is prone to do that.

739
00:35:58,814 --> 00:36:00,152
But, contact with Norse languages,

740
00:36:00,152 --> 00:36:04,145
speeded it up, gave it a shove towards modernity.

741
00:36:04,145 --> 00:36:06,235
Narrator: Can you give us a very simple example of that?

742
00:36:06,235 --> 00:36:08,400
Katie: Yes. Let's take a simple sentence like,

743
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:11,566
The king gave horses to his men.

744
00:36:11,566 --> 00:36:12,880
That would be something like in old English,

745
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:17,697
(speaking in Old English).

746
00:36:17,697 --> 00:36:18,651
Now in old English,

747
00:36:18,651 --> 00:36:21,545
you didn't tend to have a preposition like "to"

748
00:36:21,545 --> 00:36:23,570
instead you could use a special ending,

749
00:36:23,570 --> 00:36:26,625
which kind of meant "to his men."

750
00:36:26,625 --> 00:36:30,395
And that would be a "-um" ending.

751
00:36:30,395 --> 00:36:33,602
And you just tack that onto the end of the noun for man.

752
00:36:33,602 --> 00:36:35,332
So you'd have "gumum."

753
00:36:35,332 --> 00:36:37,120
"-um" ending.

754
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:39,559
Now, the plural for the word for horse,

755
00:36:39,559 --> 00:36:41,640
if you want to say "gave horses to his men,"

756
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:43,201
would be have an "an" on it,

757
00:36:43,201 --> 00:36:45,595
so it would be "blancan."

758
00:36:45,595 --> 00:36:47,694
Now fortunately, towards the end of the old English period,

759
00:36:47,694 --> 00:36:50,199
we start to see that "-um" ending

760
00:36:50,199 --> 00:36:52,999
becoming more and more indistinct.

761
00:36:52,999 --> 00:36:57,176
And we see spellings like "guman," "an."

762
00:36:57,176 --> 00:37:00,704
Just the same as blancan, an.

763
00:37:01,224 --> 00:37:03,926
It's obvious that the king is more likely to give

764
00:37:03,926 --> 00:37:07,325
more horses to his men, than men to his horses,

765
00:37:07,325 --> 00:37:10,565
but you can see that there is a potential there for difficulties.

766
00:37:10,565 --> 00:37:14,608
And so we start to see prepositions being used,

767
00:37:14,608 --> 00:37:18,184
in place of those endings which had become indistinct.

768
00:37:22,674 --> 00:37:25,391
Narrator: Spoken English survived the Danish invasion,

769
00:37:26,851 --> 00:37:28,777
but as the 9th century drew to a close,

770
00:37:28,777 --> 00:37:31,539
the written culture was in a ruinous state,

771
00:37:31,539 --> 00:37:33,681
and King Alfred was concerned.

772
00:37:36,003 --> 00:37:37,944
When Alfred looked at the state of his kingdom,

773
00:37:37,944 --> 00:37:39,231
he was appalled.

774
00:37:39,231 --> 00:37:40,600
The scholars in the monasteries

775
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:42,750
had once made England the greatest powerhouse

776
00:37:42,750 --> 00:37:44,460
of Christian teaching in Europe,

777
00:37:44,460 --> 00:37:47,623
but 150 years had passed since the high days of Bede,

778
00:37:47,623 --> 00:37:50,392
and the scholarly tradition had declined,

779
00:37:50,392 --> 00:37:54,001
hastened on its way by a century of Viking reign.

780
00:37:54,001 --> 00:37:54,967
In all the country,

781
00:37:54,967 --> 00:37:57,019
Alfred could barely find a handful of priests

782
00:37:57,019 --> 00:37:59,375
who could read and understand Latin.

783
00:37:59,375 --> 00:38:00,842
And if they couldn't understand Latin,

784
00:38:00,842 --> 00:38:03,602
they couldn't pass on the teachings of the religious books,

785
00:38:03,602 --> 00:38:06,701
that told people how to lead virtuous lives.

786
00:38:06,701 --> 00:38:08,232
They couldn't save souls.

787
00:38:08,232 --> 00:38:10,539
Where the written word has once flourished,

788
00:38:10,539 --> 00:38:14,021
Alfred now found only chronic spiritual sickness,

789
00:38:14,021 --> 00:38:16,328
he looked for a cure.

790
00:38:16,328 --> 00:38:19,214
One way was to educate more clergy in Latin,

791
00:38:19,214 --> 00:38:20,764
but that wasn't enough.

792
00:38:20,764 --> 00:38:22,720
He needed a more radical solution,

793
00:38:22,720 --> 00:38:24,679
a solution that hinged not on Latin,

794
00:38:24,679 --> 00:38:26,176
but on English.

795
00:38:26,176 --> 00:38:29,468
And he took English to new heights of achievement.

796
00:38:29,468 --> 00:38:32,312
[♪ choral music]

797
00:38:32,312 --> 00:38:33,984
In the preface to his own translation of

798
00:38:33,984 --> 00:38:35,912
Pope Gregory's pastoral care,

799
00:38:35,912 --> 00:38:36,678
Alfred wrote,

800
00:38:36,678 --> 00:38:40,911
"I remembered how, before it was all ravaged and burned,"

801
00:38:40,911 --> 00:38:43,192
"I'd seen how the churches throughout all Englands,'

802
00:38:43,192 --> 00:38:45,401
"stood filled with treasures and books."

803
00:38:45,401 --> 00:38:48,160
"And there was also a multitude of God's servants,"

804
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:50,080
"who had very little benefit from those books,"

805
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:52,727
"because they couldn't understand anything of them, "

806
00:38:52,727 --> 00:38:55,423
"since they were not written in their own language."

807
00:38:55,423 --> 00:39:00,383
[♪]

808
00:39:00,383 --> 00:39:02,360
Narrator: Their own language was of course English.

809
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:04,510
Alfred didn't want to do away with Latin,

810
00:39:04,510 --> 00:39:06,737
but he realized that it would be far easier

811
00:39:06,737 --> 00:39:10,033
to teach people to read books written in the language that they spoke.

812
00:39:10,033 --> 00:39:11,266
The best scholars,

813
00:39:11,266 --> 00:39:12,912
could then go on to learn Latin,

814
00:39:12,912 --> 00:39:14,592
an join Holy orders.

815
00:39:14,592 --> 00:39:17,205
The rest, would still have access to scholarship

816
00:39:17,205 --> 00:39:18,402
and spiritual guidance,

817
00:39:18,402 --> 00:39:20,711
but it would be written in English.

818
00:39:20,711 --> 00:39:27,959
[♪ triumphant music]

819
00:39:27,959 --> 00:39:30,119
Here, in his capital city of Winchester,

820
00:39:30,119 --> 00:39:32,315
Alfred drew up a plan.

821
00:39:33,285 --> 00:39:35,862
It was an extraordinarily imaginative project,

822
00:39:35,862 --> 00:39:38,824
to promote literacy, and restore the English language.

823
00:39:38,824 --> 00:39:50,933
[♪]

824
00:39:50,933 --> 00:39:53,947
" We should," he wrote, "translate certain books,"

825
00:39:53,947 --> 00:39:56,208
"which are most necessary for all men to know,"

826
00:39:56,208 --> 00:39:58,783
"into the language that we can all understand."

827
00:39:58,783 --> 00:40:01,296
"And also arrange it, as with God's help,"

828
00:40:01,296 --> 00:40:02,977
"we very easily can, if we have peace,"

829
00:40:02,977 --> 00:40:05,056
"so that all the youth of free men,"

830
00:40:05,056 --> 00:40:06,488
"now among the English people,"

831
00:40:06,488 --> 00:40:09,381
"will have the means to be able to devote themselves to it,"

832
00:40:09,381 --> 00:40:14,089
"maybe set to study, for as long as they are of no other use,"

833
00:40:14,089 --> 00:40:17,848
"until a time, they're able to read English writing well."

834
00:40:19,851 --> 00:40:22,292
Narrator: Alfred had 5 books of religious instruction,

835
00:40:22,292 --> 00:40:23,496
philosophy, and history,

836
00:40:23,496 --> 00:40:25,502
translated from Latin into English.

837
00:40:25,502 --> 00:40:27,752
A laborious and costly undertaking.

838
00:40:30,973 --> 00:40:33,792
Copies were sent out to the 12 bishops of his kingdom,

839
00:40:33,792 --> 00:40:36,280
for their wisdom to be spread as widely as possible.

840
00:40:39,813 --> 00:40:40,573
To each bishop,

841
00:40:40,573 --> 00:40:43,200
to emphasize the importance and value of the project,

842
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:45,137
Alfred sent a costly pointer,

843
00:40:45,137 --> 00:40:47,568
used to underline the text.

844
00:40:49,424 --> 00:40:51,804
This is the Alfred Jewel,

845
00:40:51,814 --> 00:40:55,751
many historians believe that it formed the head of one of those pointers.

846
00:40:56,688 --> 00:40:58,959
Crafted in crystal, and enameled in gold,

847
00:40:58,959 --> 00:41:01,662
it was discovered in 1693, in Somerset,

848
00:41:01,662 --> 00:41:05,110
and is now on show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

849
00:41:05,438 --> 00:41:08,150
It's inscribed, "Alfred had me made,"

850
00:41:08,150 --> 00:41:09,342
in English.

851
00:41:11,962 --> 00:41:14,430
Alfred the great, had made the English language

852
00:41:14,430 --> 00:41:16,670
the jewel in his crown.

853
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:23,801
(church bells ringing)

854
00:41:23,801 --> 00:41:24,866
Here in Winchester,

855
00:41:24,866 --> 00:41:26,841
Alfred had established what was effectively

856
00:41:26,841 --> 00:41:28,575
a publishing house.

857
00:41:28,575 --> 00:41:30,480
Other projects he undertook included,

858
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:33,065
the commissioning of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle,

859
00:41:33,065 --> 00:41:35,800
detailing hundreds of years of history.

860
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:37,854
Alfred died in 899,

861
00:41:37,854 --> 00:41:40,095
one of his legacies was an English language

862
00:41:40,095 --> 00:41:42,303
which was more prestigious and widely read,

863
00:41:42,303 --> 00:41:44,015
than ever before.

864
00:41:44,015 --> 00:41:45,663
There was nothing to compare

865
00:41:45,663 --> 00:41:47,776
with this range of written vernacular,

866
00:41:47,776 --> 00:41:49,108
history, philosophy, poetry,

867
00:41:49,108 --> 00:41:51,339
anywhere else in mainland Europe.

868
00:41:51,339 --> 00:41:53,767
English was out on its own.

869
00:41:53,767 --> 00:41:55,350
By the middle of the 11th century,

870
00:41:55,350 --> 00:41:57,216
English seemed secure,

871
00:41:57,216 --> 00:41:59,908
but now, other invaders were waiting in the wings,

872
00:41:59,908 --> 00:42:04,296
and English was about to face its greatest threat ever.

873
00:42:04,296 --> 00:42:21,489
[♪]

874
00:42:21,489 --> 00:42:24,154
This place, the old Roman fort at Pevensey,

875
00:42:24,154 --> 00:42:26,269
was a fateful one for the English language,

876
00:42:26,269 --> 00:42:28,086
it was here, among other places,

877
00:42:28,086 --> 00:42:30,032
that the Frisians, and other Germanic tribes,

878
00:42:30,032 --> 00:42:32,027
had made land form in the 5th century,

879
00:42:32,027 --> 00:42:34,048
and introduced their own language.

880
00:42:34,048 --> 00:42:38,124
Now, in 1066, another wave of invaders was landing

881
00:42:38,124 --> 00:42:39,594
the Normans.

882
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:43,178
When in 1066, William, Duke of Normandy

883
00:42:43,178 --> 00:42:45,751
sailed with his army to claim the English throne,

884
00:42:45,751 --> 00:42:49,040
he was sure he had right on his side.

885
00:42:50,122 --> 00:42:52,188
The English king, Edward the Confessor,

886
00:42:52,188 --> 00:42:53,896
has spent many years in Normandy,

887
00:42:53,896 --> 00:42:56,009
and in that time, contemporary sources say,

888
00:42:56,009 --> 00:42:58,743
had come to regard William as a brother,

889
00:42:58,743 --> 00:43:02,360
or even a son, and had named him as his successor.

890
00:43:04,477 --> 00:43:06,145
Sensing his impending death,

891
00:43:06,145 --> 00:43:07,832
and fearing rebellion at home,

892
00:43:07,832 --> 00:43:09,677
the childless Edward had dispatched

893
00:43:09,677 --> 00:43:11,761
Harold Godwinson, his wife's brother,

894
00:43:11,761 --> 00:43:13,188
and his Earl of Essex,

895
00:43:13,188 --> 00:43:15,515
the richest and most powerful of the English lords.

896
00:43:15,515 --> 00:43:18,606
to Normandy, to pledge loyalty to William.

897
00:43:21,087 --> 00:43:25,120
This Harold did, swearing on two caskets of Holy relics.

898
00:43:29,017 --> 00:43:30,555
But, when Edward did die,

899
00:43:30,555 --> 00:43:32,827
Harold, supported by the English nobility,

900
00:43:32,827 --> 00:43:35,050
had himself crowned in Westminster Abbey,

901
00:43:35,050 --> 00:43:38,017
on the very day that Edward was laid to rest there.

902
00:43:41,230 --> 00:43:43,097
To the truculent and ruthless William,

903
00:43:43,097 --> 00:43:45,064
this was an affront.

904
00:43:45,301 --> 00:43:48,751
Invasion with maximum force, the only possible response.

905
00:43:48,751 --> 00:44:04,180
[♪ battle music]

906
00:44:04,180 --> 00:44:06,912
The armies met here, near Hastings.

907
00:44:11,615 --> 00:44:13,118
This is the spot, where traditionally,

908
00:44:13,118 --> 00:44:16,864
Harold fell, fatally pierced through the eye with an arrow.

909
00:44:16,864 --> 00:44:22,412
[♪ somber]

910
00:44:22,412 --> 00:44:25,202
The site was later named after the engagement.

911
00:44:25,865 --> 00:44:28,976
But, it's name, not with an English word, like fight,

912
00:44:28,976 --> 00:44:32,079
but with a word from the language of the Norman victors,

913
00:44:32,079 --> 00:44:32,824
Battle.

914
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:38,548
Harold would be the last

915
00:44:38,548 --> 00:44:41,571
English speaking king of England for 3 centuries.

916
00:44:42,434 --> 00:44:44,463
On Christmas day, 1066,

917
00:44:44,463 --> 00:44:46,607
William was crowned in Westminster Abbey,

918
00:44:46,607 --> 00:44:49,280
in a service conducted in English and Latin.

919
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:51,903
William, spoke French throughout.

920
00:44:56,086 --> 00:44:57,921
A new king, and a new language,

921
00:44:57,921 --> 00:44:59,483
were in authority in England.

922
00:45:02,350 --> 00:45:03,478
Enemy.

923
00:45:04,771 --> 00:45:06,021
Castle.

924
00:45:07,925 --> 00:45:09,992
Castle, was one of the first French words

925
00:45:09,992 --> 00:45:11,981
to enter the English language.

926
00:45:11,981 --> 00:45:13,152
The Normans built a chain of them,

927
00:45:13,152 --> 00:45:15,316
to impose their rule on the country.

928
00:45:16,184 --> 00:45:17,703
This magnificent castle at Rochester,

929
00:45:17,703 --> 00:45:20,520
was one of the first to be fortified in stone.

930
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:26,794
[♪ dramatic music]

931
00:45:26,794 --> 00:45:29,160
By blood, the Normans were from the same stock

932
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:32,236
as the Norse men, who'd invaded in earlier centuries.

933
00:45:32,236 --> 00:45:34,665
But, they no longer spoke a Germanic language,

934
00:45:34,665 --> 00:45:37,200
rather what we call old French,

935
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:39,258
which had grown from Latin roots.

936
00:45:39,917 --> 00:45:40,904
Many of the words they spoke

937
00:45:40,904 --> 00:45:43,392
would have been very strange to the native English,

938
00:45:43,392 --> 00:45:46,565
but would quickly become unpleasantly familiar.

939
00:45:47,355 --> 00:45:52,234
Our words, army, archer, soldier, garrison, and guard,

940
00:45:52,234 --> 00:45:55,112
all come from the conquering Norman French.

941
00:45:55,928 --> 00:45:58,280
French was the language that spelled out

942
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:00,670
the architecture of the new social order.

943
00:46:00,670 --> 00:46:05,512
Crown, throne, and court, duke, baron, and nobility,

944
00:46:05,512 --> 00:46:07,752
peasant, vessel, servant.

945
00:46:07,752 --> 00:46:09,400
The word govern comes from French,

946
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:13,246
as do liberty, authority, obedience, and traitor.

947
00:46:13,886 --> 00:46:16,002
The Normans took the law into their own hands.

948
00:46:16,002 --> 00:46:19,424
Felony, arrest, warrant, justice, judge, jury,

949
00:46:19,424 --> 00:46:20,904
all come from French.

950
00:46:22,884 --> 00:46:28,241
And so do accuse, acquit, sentence, condemn, prison, and jail.

951
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:31,247
It's been estimated,

952
00:46:31,247 --> 00:46:33,056
that in the 3 centuries after the conquest,

953
00:46:33,056 --> 00:46:36,944
about 10,000 French words colonized the English language.

954
00:46:36,944 --> 00:46:38,759
They didn't all come in immediately.

955
00:46:38,759 --> 00:46:41,672
But, the conquest opened a conduit of French vocabulary,

956
00:46:41,672 --> 00:46:44,317
that should remain open, on and off, ever since.

957
00:46:44,317 --> 00:46:46,835
Today, French words are all around us.

958
00:46:46,835 --> 00:46:48,489
[♪ Parisian music]

959
00:46:48,489 --> 00:46:51,937
City, market, porter,

960
00:46:52,167 --> 00:46:54,077
Man: Here we are, we've got one fabulous salmon.

961
00:46:54,077 --> 00:46:55,823
Weighs about 14 pounds.

962
00:46:55,823 --> 00:46:56,982
He's a fabulous fish.

963
00:46:56,982 --> 00:46:58,072
We've got some fabulous mackerel,

964
00:46:58,072 --> 00:46:59,589
they've come out from Aberdeen.

965
00:46:59,589 --> 00:47:01,697
Next, over to the oysters, they come from the Essex coast,

966
00:47:01,697 --> 00:47:02,732
Sole.

967
00:47:02,732 --> 00:47:04,298
[♪]

968
00:47:04,298 --> 00:47:07,538
Narrator: Pork, sausage, bacon.

969
00:47:07,538 --> 00:47:10,982
Man: Fruit, oranges, the juicy lemons.

970
00:47:10,982 --> 00:47:15,062
Narrator: Grape, tart, biscuit, sugar.

971
00:47:15,062 --> 00:47:16,334
Man: Creme.

972
00:47:18,164 --> 00:47:18,999
Narrator: Fry.

973
00:47:21,739 --> 00:47:22,859
Vinegar.

974
00:47:23,749 --> 00:47:25,645
Nearly 500 words dealing with food,

975
00:47:25,645 --> 00:47:27,760
cooking, and eating alone entered English

976
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:29,993
from French, just a fraction of the imports

977
00:47:29,993 --> 00:47:32,440
which would enrich the English word hoard,

978
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:34,245
in the centuries after the Norman conquest.

979
00:47:34,245 --> 00:47:38,730
[♪ Parisian music continues]

980
00:47:42,510 --> 00:47:44,804
When in 20 years of taking control of the country,

981
00:47:44,804 --> 00:47:47,974
William sent his officers out to take stock of his kingdom.

982
00:47:50,133 --> 00:47:51,209
The monks of Peterborough,

983
00:47:51,209 --> 00:47:53,177
who were still recording the events of history,

984
00:47:53,177 --> 00:47:55,153
in English in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle,

985
00:47:55,153 --> 00:47:56,907
noted disapprovingly,

986
00:47:56,907 --> 00:47:59,797
that not one piece of land escaped the survey,

987
00:47:59,797 --> 00:48:03,239
not even an ox, or a cow, or a pig.

988
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:17,720
[♪ somber music]

989
00:48:17,720 --> 00:48:19,907
The Doomsday book, there are in fact 2 volumes,

990
00:48:19,907 --> 00:48:22,653
show us how complete the Norman takeover

991
00:48:22,653 --> 00:48:24,375
of the English land was,

992
00:48:24,375 --> 00:48:27,326
and how widespread their influence and their language.

993
00:48:29,986 --> 00:48:31,015
The Norman settlement

994
00:48:31,015 --> 00:48:32,753
had concentrated the wealth of England

995
00:48:32,753 --> 00:48:34,952
more than ever before or since.

996
00:48:34,952 --> 00:48:36,912
The native ruling class from before the conquest,

997
00:48:36,912 --> 00:48:39,743
had been slaughtered, banished, or disinherited,

998
00:48:39,743 --> 00:48:41,861
in favor of William's followers.

999
00:48:41,861 --> 00:48:45,351
Half of the country was in the hands of just 190 men,

1000
00:48:45,351 --> 00:48:49,196
half of that was held by just 11 men.

1001
00:48:50,575 --> 00:48:53,254
And not one of these great land owners spoke English.

1002
00:48:56,084 --> 00:49:01,935
(man speaking in foreign language)

1003
00:49:01,935 --> 00:49:03,569
When this record of the country was drawn up,

1004
00:49:03,569 --> 00:49:04,663
it was written in Latin,

1005
00:49:04,663 --> 00:49:06,145
not Norman French,

1006
00:49:08,385 --> 00:49:10,288
and certainly not English.

1007
00:49:11,064 --> 00:49:13,303
(man speaking in foreign language)

1008
00:49:13,303 --> 00:49:14,631
Between them, French and Latin

1009
00:49:14,631 --> 00:49:15,752
had become the languages

1010
00:49:15,752 --> 00:49:19,812
of state, law, the church, and history itself, in England.

1011
00:49:19,812 --> 00:49:25,539
[♪]

1012
00:49:25,539 --> 00:49:27,836
The writing of English became increasingly rare,

1013
00:49:27,836 --> 00:49:30,258
even the Anglo-Saxon chronicle

1014
00:49:30,258 --> 00:49:31,624
gutted into silence.

1015
00:49:33,424 --> 00:49:39,554
(man speaking in foreign language)

1016
00:49:39,554 --> 00:49:41,826
The language of Alfred and the Beowulf poet,

1017
00:49:41,826 --> 00:49:45,624
had lost all prestige that it had slowly built up.

1018
00:49:45,624 --> 00:49:47,039
In a country of 3 languages,

1019
00:49:47,039 --> 00:49:51,559
English was now a poor third, bottom of the pile.

1020
00:49:59,704 --> 00:50:02,472
The English language had been forced underground.

1021
00:50:02,752 --> 00:50:05,360
It would take 300 years for it to re-emerge,

1022
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:08,579
and when it did, it would have changed dramtically.

1023
00:50:09,102 --> 00:50:42,554
[♪]