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

This is Episode 50, a unified family of English speakers.

In this episode, we're going to look at how the Anglo-Saxons conquered the Danes and reclaimed the Danes law.

In the process, the traditional barrier between the Danes law and the Anglo-Saxons began to break down,

and all of the English-speaking people of Britain finally became unified under a single monarch.

This was the beginning of the nation-state of England.

It was also the beginning of the process by which the Norse language of the Danes began to spread

around the island and began to mix with Old English beyond the Danes law.

This process was also a family affair.

As the unified nation of England began to emerge in the 10th century,

it did so thanks to the children and grandchildren of Alfred.

Those children and grandchildren worked together to defeat the Danes and establish

Westsex rule over the newly-unified kingdom.

They also married many of the leading rulers of Western Europe.

Within a couple of generations after Alfred's death, it was hard to find a territory in England,

France or Germany that didn't have some type of family connection to Alfred.

So one of the underlying themes of this episode is family and family relationships.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the Beowulf audiobook is available through iTunes,

Amazon.com, and the website, historyofenglishpodcast.com.

And I haven't mentioned it lately, but if you listen to the podcast through iTunes,

let me encourage you to include a few comments or a quick review there.

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