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

This is episode 66, Broken Promises and the Eve of Conquest.

In this episode, we're going to look at the life and times of William of Normandy, the

man who conquered England.

William's influence on the history of England is well known and well documented.

But what often gets overlooked is his influence on the English language.

For more than five centuries prior to the Norman Conquest, the English language had been

a heavily inflected Germanic language with a Germanic vocabulary.

But William's conquest of England wiped away much of that old language.

A new form of English would slowly emerge from the ashes.

And that means that William of Normandy is one of the most important figures in the

overall history of English.

And this is his story.

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

And you can always reach me directly at Kevin at historyofenglishpodcast.com.

And I'm on Twitter at English HIST POD.

So let's turn to this episode and the life and times of William of Normandy.

And let's begin where we left off last time, in the year 1035.

As I noted last time, that was the year in which William's father died while on a pilgrimage

to Jerusalem.

His father was Robert, Duke of Normandy.

And before leaving on that pilgrimage, Robert had designated his young illegitimate son,

...