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

This is episode 20, The Early Germanic Tribes.

In this episode, I'm going to look at the emergence of the first Germanic tribes in northern

Europe.

So we'll be looking at the peoples and the languages which gave birth to English.

That means that from this point forward in the podcast, we'll be establishing a continuum

from the original Germanic language spoken by those northern European tribes to the Germanic

dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, to middle English, and then ultimately modern English.

So this is really the prelude to Old English, and that means that it's the last chapter

in our look at the development of pre-English.

Of course, we'll continue to look at outside influences like Latin and French and Old

Norse, but from this point on, we'll be looking at those languages as outside influences

on this continuum from the original Germanic language to modern English.

But before I begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is History of English

Podcasts.com, and my email address is kevinathistoryofenglishpodcasts.com, and also I wanted to remind

you that I do have a Twitter account, which is at English HIST POD, that's H-I-S-T-P-O-D,

and also I'm still working on that alphabet series.

I have everything recorded.

I just need to edit it now and figure out how I'm going to make it available, so I'll

keep you updated on that, and hopefully that'll be available very shortly.

Now in this episode, I want to examine where the Germanic tribes came from, and how they

came to occupy Central Europe east of the Rhine.

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