Episode 89: ‘I Before E’ and All That

The History of English Podcast

Kevin Stroud

History, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 6.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2017

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

During the Middle English period, scribes developed a variety of spelling innovations to distinguish the sound of the various vowels. Some of those innovations were borrowed from French, and some were native to English. In this episode, we explore those spelling … Continue reading →

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.
0:15.6	This is Episode 89, I before E and all that.
0:20.6	In this episode, we're going to continue our look at Middle English Vals, and we'll
0:25.3	see how scribes tried to represent those sounds with a limited alphabet.
0:30.5	They had to figure out how to stretch the letters to represent different sounds.
0:35.2	In the process, they came up with a lot of spelling innovations that we still use today.
0:40.2	So this time, we'll look at those innovations.
0:43.6	But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is HistoryofEnglishPodcast.com
0:50.7	and you can reach me by email at kevinathistoryofenglishpodcast.com
0:56.5	and I'm on Twitter at EnglishHistPod.
1:00.4	Also, I have a couple of quick announcements before we get started.
1:04.5	First, I want to tell you about a new podcast that focuses on etymology.
1:09.3	It's called Anymology and it's put together by Colleen Patrick Gujro.
1:14.1	The theme of the podcast is the history of animal-related words and expressions.
1:19.5	I thought you might find that interesting, so just look for that podcast wherever you
1:23.3	get your podcast.
1:25.5	And I also wanted to give you a quick update about this podcast as well.
1:30.7	Sometime back, I mentioned in passing that I had a general plan to tell the story of
1:34.7	English in about 100 episodes.
1:38.3	And apparently, quite a few of you remembered that statement, because several of you have
1:42.3	reached out to me recently to inquire if that was still the plan.
1:46.5	After all, I'm only about 10 episodes away from that goal.
	...

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