Summary:
For my portion of "The Story of English" I had Section 3: Muse with Fire. This section explored how are language has evolved from Shakespearean language and Biblical speak as well - specifically from King James and the impact that these influences has had on the development of the English Language as we know it today.
The English Language began over here in America when the first settlers traveled across the seas. The language originally derived from parts of Greek and Latin as well. However, the famous play write and poet, William Shakespeare made an enormous impact on the English Language. Shakespeare is said to have known and used 34,000 words in his vocabulary - mind you that this is double today what the average well-educated person knows and uses today. In addition to his wide vocabulary, Shakespeare also played around with a lot of tones in his plays some tones/speak include: philosophical, love, pigen, and heroic. Back in his time, this was unheard of (and in a way still is today) to have an author be so various in his genres that he writes. He introduced many words to the English Language such as "accommodation", "premeditated", and "obscene". He is also known to have invented more words than anyone who as ever lived; therefore, meaning that he is a huge contributor to our language as we know it today. I know for a fact that I have used all three of these words before and little did I know that Shakespeare invented them. There are many more words that he made up these are just a few examples, but it is just interesting to know that he made up a lot of words that we use on a day-to-day basis.
Anglo-Saxon speak is quite different than what we are used to today. They are rich with their vowel and usually don't pronounce the "r" sound after the vowel (much like a lot of the East Coasters today - like New York, Maine, and Massachusetts). Interestingly enough this type of language is still spoken today in places like Oxford and Stratford - they still hold the original speech patterns that were spoken from the beginning.
The translation of the Bible had a major impact on our language as well. It also added many words to our vocabulary (about 8,000 if I am not mistaken). Since then, the Bible has been translated again to reflect our speech today. For example, a section from King James was written originally much more poetic than the updated translated version. Just because that is not how we talk and interpret things anymore.
In 1584 was when the first boat came overseas and we borrowed a lot of Native American terms such as "bury the hatchet", "tomahawk", and "go on the war path"- meaning that they too contributed to the English Language. As more ships came into the new world they created Jamestown and these people became the official first English speaking Americans, and many people today on the East Coast speak how the Jamestown people spoke.
People who live on the small island called Tanger Island - known as "Tangerines" - purely speak in the old English today. They pronounce "on" as "arn" and "sink" as "zink". These people are the first cousins to the original people of Jamestown and because it is such a tight knit and small community on an island the culture and language here is very sheltered. They have had no outside influence so there language has had no need to change. Their way of life is very old school, it is a huge fishing community and it is expected of the young adults that once they are done with school they are to start working on the boats helping with the fishing. This is a great example of how a community today still holds true to the Shakespearean and Bible language.
East Anglea (sp?) is where Anglo-Saxon is spoken regularly. To me it sounded like a mixture between Irish and English accents. They draw out their vowel - bargain= baaaaagan"- and they drop the "r" after the vowel (much like the East Coast accents as I mentioned before). Another example of their speech is "risban" which translates to what we call "wristband". The people of East Anglea also use a variety of old words - words that we have dropped from out everyday use.
All of these accents have derived heavily from Shakespearean terms and King James and the Biblical terms as well.
My Response:
I really enjoyed this section of "The Story of English". The part that interested me the most was the Shakespeare portion. I had no idea that his vocabulary was so large and what a huge impact he made on our language today. Last semester I took a Shakespeare class and I always thought of it as completely different language, but after watching this it made me realize that it is not all THAT different it just sounds different and they patterns of things are a little different as well. I also did not know that he made up a lot of language - I was really impressed by that because a lot of it is words we use today. Overall, I found it interesting how these things made an impact on our language. I have never really thought about the origin of where the language came from even though I use it everyday. I am interested to see what other people have watched and reported about.
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