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

This is episode 53, The End of Endings.

This time, we're going to explore how the language of the Vikings began to change the grammar

of English in the north of England.

Specifically, we'll look at how the language of the Vikings contributed to the loss of

inflectional endings, and we'll examine how that impacted the ultimate history of the

language.

These changes eventually spread throughout Britain, and they marked the beginning of the transition

from Old English grammar to Middle English grammar.

As we'll see, this gradual transition was underway at least a century before the Normans arrived

in 1066.

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

EnglishPodcast.com.

And my email address is kevinathistoryofenglishpodcast.com.

Also I continue to work on the transcripts for the old episodes.

I haven't posted them yet, but I hope to have them up shortly.

And I concluded the last episode by discussing the Old English word with, which originally

meant against.

Listener Candia contributed a very good example of a modern English word which retains that

original meaning, the word withdrawal.

As we saw a few episodes back, draw originally meant to pull, and it's cognate with the

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