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

language.

This is episode 31, Saxons, Franks, and other West Germans.

Over the last few episodes, we've explored the Anglo-Saxon migrations to Britain.

But the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Freesians were only a few of the tribes in northern Europe

who spoke closely related languages called the West Germanic languages.

The tribes who spoke those other West Germanic languages back in continental Europe, they

ultimately gave us modern languages like German, Dutch, and Freesian, and they influenced

the development of early French as it evolved from Latin.

In fact, despite their linguistic differences, the modern nation-states of France and Germany

can both be traced back to these West Germanic tribes.

So in this episode, we're going to briefly turn our attention back to the continent to

explore what happened to these West German cousins of the Anglo-Saxons.

These events will help us to see how English fits in within this subfamily of Germanic

languages, and will also discover the roots of some modern English words which originated

from these tribes.

And ultimately, the events of this episode will set the stage for later events in France,

which will have a huge impact on English after the year 1066.

So let's turn our attention to these other West Germans, and let's begin where we left

off last time in Britain.

Over the last couple of episodes, we looked at the fifth and sixth centuries in Britain.

This time frame represents the period during which a large portion of Britain passed from

...