Lesson video

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Lesson Three of The Oral Tradition, with me, Miss Kuhivchak.

Today, we're going to be learning about the English language, and by that, I mean the history of English.

It's a language that we use every day, but we don't always think about where it comes from.

I'm going to take you through the history of English, the history of its origins, and also explain how it's changed over time.

I hope you enjoy.

For today's lesson, you are, as usual, going to need three things.

You're going to need a pen, something to write on, and your brain.

You can do the lesson without the pen and paper, but you can't do the lesson without your brain.

So hopefully you've got that.

If you don't have something to write with and something to write on, pause the video now, go off and get them, and then we will get started.

Today's agenda takes us through the history of the English language.

First, I'm going to explain how languages actually work.

Then we're going to talk about Old English.

We're going to talk about Middle English.

And we're going to talk about how both of those evolved and changed into modern English.

And then once we've done all of those things, as usual, there will be a little quiz to test your knowledge.

On the screen, you should see a beautiful and quite complex picture of what looks like a tree, and this is actually a language tree to show how different languages across the world interact with each other.

Languages don't exist on their own.

They are always related to other languages, and this is a diagram that shows you how certain languages relate to others.

If you look on the right hand side, you will see English, and you'll see that next to English are the languages that English is related to.

You'll see German, you'll see French, you'll see Dutch.

And I want you to look very carefully at the branch of the tree that it's on.

You will see that the branch of languages that English belongs to is called a Germanic language.

English actually has a lot in common with German.

That includes its vocabulary and the way some of its grammar works.

Obviously, it's not the same, but there are some similarities.

If you want to, you can pause the video and just have a really careful look at this picture, and see which languages you can spot.

If you speak another language at home, you might want to see where your language falls in this category.

I can see in the middle that there is Polish, which I speak with my parents, and it's next to Slovak and Czech, and actually they have a lot of words in common.

So it makes sense that they're related.

The history of English is quite a long one.

I want you to look at this timeline in the middle of the screen.

It goes from the year 800 BC all the way to 2000 AD, so that's the present day.

You might remember when we spoke about the oral tradition, one example I gave of an oral poem that was composed and learned off by heart was "The Odyssey." Now that is a poem that was learned and spoken in ancient Greece.

So it's not an English poem, but I put it on there to show you how long ago that poem was composed.

It's all the way at the end of that line.

"Beowulf," an Old English poem, we think was composed around 500 AD to about 800 AD.

So that's a 300-year gap where we think the poem would have been invented and spoken and sung and changed over time.

It eventually was written down, we think around 1000 AD, but again, we're not sure.

We don't know who the original author was because it was composed orally.

The next point on this timeline that I want you to look at is 1386, where we have something called "The Canterbury Tales." Now this is a period that we call Middle English, and this is a different sounding language to the Old English of "Beowulf," which is here, in this blue circle.

So this middle period of Middle English is when we notice some particular changes that come about and we're going to talk through those changes and how they sounded different.

The next arrow with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare, all the way over in 1597, is actually what we call modern English, though I know for us, 1597 doesn't feel modern at all.

Modern, we would normally think, is actually the next arrow where we've got "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in 1997.

However, we're going to talk through why modern English might not actually sound so modern.

Let's start with Old English, and you'll see on the side of the screen, an image which we saw last lesson.

I talked about how this was a story that we were going to discover together, and this story would have been told in Old English with a capital O and a capital E.

This is what was called a Germanic language.

Remember we saw on that tree, the fact that it was on a branch called Germanic, and this language was brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon invaders.

That's because what was being spoken in Britain at that time was the language of the Celts, a language which changed once the invaders came and brought over words with them.

Old English has a slightly different alphabet to the English that we speak today.

I'm going to show you an example, and you'll notice some new letters and new symbols, which we don't use anymore.

The most important text in Old English that we have today is the text of the poem "Beowulf." This is a story you might have heard already in some form, maybe in primary school, and this image on the side is an example of the kinds of things we think of when we think of "Beowulf." We think of Viking warriors.

We think of monsters.

We think of darkness.

It's a really exciting poem, and one that I hope you'll be able to read later.

I'm going to show you a little bit of what it looks like.

On the side of the screen, you will see here some text from the Old English poem "Beowulf." It's about the first 10 or 15 lines of the poem.

Now, looking at it, you might think, "Oh my goodness.

What on earth is this? This looks nothing like English." However, if you take your time to carefully scam through this paragraph, you might start to notice some words that look familiar.

So I'd like you to take some time just to look through this text and see how many words you can spot that look identical to English, and how many you think look similar to the English that we speak today.

Now, if you looked carefully, you should have noticed quite a few words that you would recognise.

In the first sentence, we've got the word in.

Going down and we see the words he, under, him, and to and sprang, all of which are identical to the modern English that we use.

If you looked for words that are actually similar, you'll have noticed even more that look a little bit familiar.

We have waes and aefter, along with sende and drugon, which look a little bit like was, after, send, and dragon.

This tells us that even though this language is very old and very foreign-looking, it actually is the basis for the English that we speak today, and these are words that we still use.

Now, here's a little quiz for you.

Based on the facts you've learned already and the bit of "Beowulf" that you've seen, I would like you to work out which of these statements are true or false.

Get your pen and write numbers one to five, and next to it, write T or F with each statement, and then we will check them together.

Statement one.

Old English is a Celtic language.

Statement two.

Old English has the same alphabet as modern English, but with some small changes.

Number three.

It's easy to understand Old English because it's basically the same as our language.

Number four.

The most important poem in Old English is "The Odyssey." And number five.

Some of the words in Old English have stayed the same in modern English.

Pause, have a careful think, which of these statements are true or false? Checking your answers.

Statement one was false.

Old English is not a Celtic language.

If you remember the tree from the beginning of this PowerPoint, you'll have seen that it was on the Germanic branch.

It's not a Celtic language.

Number two was true.

Old English has the same alphabet, but with some small changes.

There were letters in there that would have been new to you.

Number three was false.

It's not easy to understand Old English.

As you could tell from looking at the beginning of "Beowulf," you weren't able to tell what most of the words were.

Just a couple seemed the same.

Number four, I hope you got, was false.

The most important poem in Old English is not "The Odyssey." "The Odyssey" was composed in ancient Greek.

The most important part in Old English is of course the epic "Beowulf." And number five was true.

Some of the words in Old English have stayed the same as modern English.

Well done if you got all of those right.

Now, we've looked at "Beowulf" in Old English.

We're now going to move to the next type of English called Middle English.

We're looking at a more modern version that changed over time.

Middle English, as you can probably tell by the picture, is no longer associated with kind of Vikings and monsters.

Middle English is the era of knights and castles.

Middle English contained a lot more French vocabulary.

That was seen as a more sophisticated development.

The reason for that was another invasion.

We talked about Anglo-Saxon invaders in Old English.

This new kind of language was influenced by the Normans during the Norman conquest.

They brought their French language and lots of new words with them.

The alphabet lost some of the letters that we saw in Old English, and looks a lot more similar to ours, but isn't yet identical.

That doesn't happen 'til much later.

And the most important text in Middle English is probably Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," a long, long poem with lots and lots of different stories put into one poem, which is something we'll also talk about later.

Now, one of the wonderful things about Middle English and this new French vocabulary was it meant there were more words to describe things.

English vocabulary became much, much richer after the invasion of the Normans.

I'm going to show you some examples on the left of the screen to help you understand how this worked.

In this table, you have got a list of animals in English with cow, calf, sheep, and pig.

And when the Normans came, they brought their own words for these animals, which became part of English, too.

On the right hand side, you'll see boeuf, veau, moutton, and porc, which of course other French words for the English animals.

That meant that suddenly, you had an English word for an animal and a French word to describe the kind of meat that could be eaten, which gives us the modern words, beef, veal, mutton, and pork.

This was also an example of how the French Norman invaders really liked their food, and felt that the English ought to have more words to describe the things that they were eating.

So next time you eat one of these meats, if you do eat meat, think about the fact that until the Normans came, there was only one word to describe the animal and the meat.

There was no distinction.

And after that, there became the option to talk about the meat of the animal, as well as the name of the animal itself.

That meant that English became a lot richer.

It had more vocabulary to describe things.

Now, here's a little quiz for you.

One of these statements is not true.

I'm going to read them to you, and I'd like you to pause and think about the correct answer.

Option one.

Middle English was influenced by Norman invaders.

Option two.

The most important Middle English text is "The Canterbury Tales." Option three.

The Middle English alphabet was identical to our modern alphabet.

And option four.

Middle English developed a richer and broader vocabulary.

Which of these is not true? Well, the correct answer.

The Middle English alphabet was identical to our model alphabet.

That isn't true.

There were still some differences between the alphabet we use today and the alphabet that was being used in mediaeval England.

It wasn't quite as different as Old English, but it would still be a little bit strange to us to look at today.

Well done, if you got that right.

That was a bit tricky.

We've talked about "Beowulf," the Old English poem.

We've talked about Middle English and how that changed with the French invasion.

We're now thinking about the modern period, and you'll see the circle on the screen actually encompasses about 500 years of history, which to us doesn't seem very modern, but I'm going to explain that in the next section.

You'll see on the screen possibly a familiar face.

This is an image of William Shakespeare.

In Shakespeare's time, language developed again, and we have a period of what is called early modern English.

It's not really that modern, because we're starting in the 1500s, but there were enough changes in language by then for people to decide that this was a complete change that needed its own name.

What happened was something called the Great Vowel Shift, and that meant that the way that words were pronounced was changed and it sounded a lot more familiar to what we speak today.

And another change was when we started to use the Latin alphabet, the same one that we use today, the same one that we write with, the same one that I'm typing with.

And that of course, to us, seems very familiar indeed.

To look at examples of early modern English, the best example that would be used would of course be Shakespeare's plays, that are taught over and over again.

However, when we read Shakespeare's plays, we still aren't always familiar with the vocabulary.

One example that seems a bit strange to us, and that doesn't seem very modern, is on this slide.

You can see "Sonnet 18," a poem by William Shakespeare.

The first two lines of it, I've pulled out and put in the white box.

It says, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate." In this sonnet, which is a love poem, Shakespeare is addressing the object of his love and saying, "Shall I compare you to a summer's day?" And then decides, actually, that the objective of his love is better than a summer's day.

And in bold, you'll see the words thee and thou, which, of course, in modern modern English would be you and you.

This is because early modern English kept the idea of a formal and an informal pronoun, which is very like French, where you use a plural or a singular to address somebody, depending on how well you know them.

Thou is an informal pronoun.

It's used to show intimacy with another person.

It's someone that you know well, like a family member, and is distinct to you, which is to somebody whom you are showing respect.

This is occasionally still used today, particularly in the North of England, but it's mainly died out of common use in modern English.

In fact, it's usually really only used if you want to be extremely formal to somebody, or could be found in texts like the Bible, which still has this old-fashioned quality in certain translations.

On the whole, we use you for the singular and the plural.

We don't use thee and thou anymore.

That custom didactic in the 17th century, to give us the kind of English that we speak today.

That has been a whistle-stop tour of three kinds of English.

We've talked about Old English, we've talked about Middle English, and we've talked about modern English.

I would like you to just quickly write down one fact about each type of English we've covered today.

Now, you will see quickly bullet pointed on the screen some of the facts you might have remembered.

Old English was influenced by the Anglo-Saxons.

It had a different alphabet.

Difficult for us to read.

It's the language of the epic poem "Beowulf," and it's what we call a Germanic language because it's closely related to German.

Middle English was changed by Norman invaders and used French.

It created a broader vocabulary for English people to use, that was seen as more sophisticated, and it's the language of the poem "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Modern English is from the 1500s onwards.

It used the Latin alphabet.

The Great Vowel Shift meant that pronunciation changed, and Shakespeare's plays are written in modern English.

Now, well done if you've got any of those and you might even have some extra thoughts that I haven't thought of.

So well done for being able to think about these different kinds of language, which for us seem very far away, but this is the origin of the English that we speak today, and the origin of all the poems, plays, and literature that you're going to be reading throughout your time in English at school.

So to recap, we've talked about how languages work, the fact that languages are related to each other.

We talked about Old English and its history from the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons.

We've talked about Middle English and its French origins to modern English in the present day.

And when you've finished, I hope you'll remember all of this and be able to fill in the quiz that I'd given to you.

Well, this brings us to the end of today's lesson.

And in fact, the end of the topic of the oral tradition.

Really well done on all the fantastic learning you've done for these lessons.

Now remember, at the end, complete the quiz, just to quickly review all the learning that you've done.

If you're able, please take a picture of your work and ask a parent or carer to share it with your teacher so they can see all of your lovely work.

And if you're able, ask your parent or carer to take a picture and share it with Oak National on Twitter so that I can see all of your lovely learning as well.

All that remains for me to say is thank you so much for listening and enjoy the rest of your learning for today.