First published at 07:19 UTC on October 22nd, 2018.
The Adventure of English is a British television series (ITV) on the history of the English language presented by Melvyn Bragg as well as a companion book, written by Bragg. The series ran in 2003.
The series and the book are cast as an adventure s…
MORE
The Adventure of English is a British television series (ITV) on the history of the English language presented by Melvyn Bragg as well as a companion book, written by Bragg. The series ran in 2003.
The series and the book are cast as an adventure story, or the biography of English as if it were a living being, covering the history of the language from its modest beginnings around 500 AD as a minor Germanic dialect to its rise as a truly established global language.
In the television series, Bragg explains the origins and spelling of many words based on the times in which they were introduced into the growing language that would eventually become modern English.
Episode 2
Bragg discusses how class also affected the use of English, especially in the time of William the Conqueror and for approximately 300 years after his reign; during this period, only the French language and Latin were used in state affairs and by the aristocracy, while English remained in use with the lower peasant classes.
LESS