Welcome to the History of English podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 183, The Fabric of Our Lives.

This time, as we work our way through the story of English,

we're going to continue to look at English contact with India and the Far East. We'll explore

the first formal contact between England and Japan, and we'll examine how the discovery of a

certain fabric changed the course of history and shaped the modern world, for good and bad.

We'll also conclude the story of William Shakespeare with his death and the destruction of the

Globe Theater. And along the way, we'll see how all of those events shaped the English language.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is

History of Englishpodcast.com.

And you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes at patreon.com

slash history of English.

And one quick note before we begin.

I concluded the last episode with the arrival of the English East India Company in India

in the year 1612.

And the next episode of the podcast will focus on a manuscript that was prepared in the year

1619 by an English schoolmaster named Alexander Gill.

His manuscript examined English spelling and pronunciation in the early 1600s, and the timing

of that next episode is important because we're beginning to focus on the spread of English

around the world.

So Gill's manuscript provides an overview of what the language sounded like shortly before

the various regional dialects began to emerge in the 1700s and 1800s.

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