Hello and welcome to contemplations and today I am on my own and I'm going to be talking about

the origins of the English language and in particular in part one

I'm going to be looking at the sort of early Celtic language, Latin, and then moving on to

old English, which is the language that the Anglo-Saxons spoke.

And then in the next part, I'll be talking about

the Viking influences, the Norman influences,

and then middle and early modern English all the way up until the present day and also of course the

influences of foreign words in colonial times that have entered our vocabulary because

it's quite surprising how many there are.

So this is a very important topic actually because if you want to resist the linguistic

subversion that some of the left do, you need a good understanding of the English

language how it works.

And particularly if you learn its history, it gives you a greater appreciation for how it is today, and it makes it all the more

egregious that they're trying to subvert meanings of words which remain the same for nearly thousands of years, I suppose you could say but there is a rich

poetry in history in learning about the history of the English language and it gives you a much better

understanding of how language functions more generally because there are lots of

interplay between competing powers and you can see how language ebbs and flows certain words come into favour, others fall out of favour,

and hopefully this appreciation will lead you to being able to better select words that appropriately articulate what you're trying to say.

And of course, learning a history of England, which this story is inextricably linked with is also very important I think because

it's one of the most significant nations in human history and I know I'm a bit biased about that but I mean come on most of the world

speaks English now I think approaching half of all of the people on earth speak the language that I'm speaking to you in now and so its significance cannot be understated.

So there are lots of notable periods in English history and I just wanted to briefly go through some of the time

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