The History of the English Language in Ten Animated Minutes

Yes­ter­day, the Open Uni­ver­si­ty released ‘The His­to­ry of Eng­lish in 10 Min­utes,’ a wit­ty ani­mat­ed sequence that takes you through 1600 years of lin­guis­tic his­to­ry. The Vikings gave us “give” and “take.” Shake­speare added anoth­er 2,000 words and expres­sions to the mix. The British Empire (see video above) then brought the evolv­ing Eng­lish lan­guage to new lands, cre­at­ing new vari­eties of Eng­lish world­wide. And so the sto­ry con­tin­ues. You can find this series fea­tur­ing the voice of Clive Ander­son on iTunes or YouTube. We’ve includ­ed links to each YouTube chap­ter right below. Many thanks to Cather­ine for the heads up…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s Your Eng­lish? British v. Cana­di­an Rap Bat­tle

Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages


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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.