Lu: Hello again, and welcome back to Britain under the microscope. Hello, Anlan.
An: Hello, everyone.
Lu: So, Anlan, what are we going to talk about today?
An: Well, today we are gonna talk a little bit about the history of English.
Lu: That sounds like a huge topic.
An: Well, it is. So this is gonna be part one of something that we hope it's going to be 5 episodes.
Lu: 5 episodes.
An: In total.
Lu: About the history of English. Here, we are talking about English as a language.
An: Yes, because to understand English, it's important to understand its history, it's important to understand where the words come from, where all the influences come from in English. So today, we could start by talking about the beginning of the English.
Lu: The very beginning of English. I was wondered English is such a world language now, there's huge number of people who can speak English and use English to communicate. Did it start up as a major language?
An: No, not at all. English was only spoken in a small area of where is now Great Britain and it's also a quiet recent language. You think about the 2000 years ago, if you went to England, this is something like what you would've heard.
Lu: OK, that's 2000 years ago, that's how people sounded like.
An: Well, similar to this, this is actually Welsh （古威爾士語）. This is a language spoken in Wales, and Welsh comes from the original language that the ancient Britons used to speak.
Lu: So, as an English person, do you understand these at all?
An: Not at all.
Lu: So, it's a completely different language.
An: A completely different language. Most English people, we can understand maybe French or German a few words, but Welsh is...we just can't understand it unless studying it at school in Wales.
Lu: So now people in Wales, do they still speak Welsh or do they speak English?
An: Oh, they speak both, but if you go to school in Wales, you'll have to learn Welsh as well.
Lu: So that's when it started 2000 years ago.
An:Well, 2000 years ago, the Romans （古羅馬人）were in Britain. So you have the Romans who spoke Latin（拉丁文）, and you have the ancient Britons who spoke something like what we just heard.
Lu: So where does English, as we know it, come from then? Is it a combination of these two languages?
An: No, English actually comes from Denmark or northern Germany.
Lu: from Denmark （丹麥文）? I once thought it was the other way round. I thought it was new Danish borrowed English words, so it's not.
An: No, English is closely related to German and Dutch and other northern European languages. It's what we call Germanic language （日耳曼語族）. That's because around 500 A.D. the Jutes, the Saxons and the Anglos …
Lu: These are three different peoples, the Jutes, the Saxons and the Anglos.
An: So, they all migrated to Anglo-land…
Lu: Anglo-land, the Anglo's.
An: Yeah, which became …
Lu: England.
An: There you go.
Lu: And that was in …
An: That was around 500 A.D. So, English itself is only about 1500 years old.
Lu: So you just said the ancient Britons, they spoke something like Welsh, so where did they go after that?
An: Well, the ancient Britons went to the western Britain where mainly lived in Wales, quite a few went out to Scotland and Cornwall.
Lu: Oh that's where they kept their language.
An: Well, that's where we would say the Celtic people （凱爾特人）。So, for example, Scotland, Wales, they distinct the different countries from England, different culture, different traditions and different languages in many cases.
Lu: Yeah very interesting.
An: But if you went back to England 500 AD., The language they spoke wasn't modern English, it was old English.

Lu: So, is it a bit like 古漢語and 漢語？
An: It's a little bit further.
Lu: So it's even more different.
An: Yes, that's because if you listen to old English or Anglo-Saxon, it actually sounds more like German more than English.
Lu: Because it was a Germanic language, so is English still influenced by Anglo-Saxon?
An: Yeah, very much so, but 25% of English vocabulary comes from old English, so many of these are the basic words. so for example, Reod.
Lu: Red. was that old German?
An: That was old English.
Lu: Yeah, but came from Germanic languages.
An: Yeah.
Lu: Give me another one.
An: Grene.
Lu: Green.
An: Geolu.
Lu: Geolu, no, that's too difficult a word, could you say that again?
An: Geolu.
Lu: I don't know, I give up.
An: yellow.
Lu: Yellow? It doesn't have a /j/ sound.
An: Yes, that is a /g/ sound, Geolu. And Mordor-mother.
Lu: Mother? Okay.
An: Faedor.
Lu: Father. So that's what old English sounded like.
An: Yeah, roughly. My accents are not that great, my pronunciation is not that good in old English.
Lu: Do we have any audio records of old English of how they sounded like?
An: Well, people works how it was sound like mostly from when the first poem that was written in English. This is called Beowulf.
Lu: Beowulf, it was made into a TV show.
An: Yeah, and also a film. So, this I want to send to a little clear from Beowulf. See, how much you could understand?
Lu: And that's in old English?
An: yes, it's in old English.
Lu: OK
Lu: I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound like anything even remotely related to English, sounds more like German. I can hear words like curlic, like king I assume. So it doesn't sound like modern English at all.
An: The pronunciation is completely changed, but if you see it written, you may be able to understand one or two words.
Lu: So why has it changed? Why don't people sound like that anymore?
An: Well, that's we are gonna talk about in the next lesson.
Lu: Oh, so that's a cliff hanger, you do know how to keep us waiting.
An: So, in next episode, we are going to talk a little bit about how this language changed and how it became more recognizable.
Lu: Specially, if you think of the modern English, it has a lot of words from French.
An: And that's for what we could be looking it up in the next episode.
Lu: Brilliant! Can't wait. so that would be off from today's episode and we'll see you next time.
An: Bye for now.
Lu: Bye.

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