Hey guys, welcome back to the Why Wars Happened History podcast, where you learn about the causes of wars and things like, why did it happen? Was it inevitable? Who was involved? Sometimes I go back hundreds of years just so we can understand what happened. And if you want to talk more about war, we also have authors, historians, war generals, royalty, actors, filmmakers, a whole bunch of people come on as guests.
And we talk about everything about before, during, and after war. So let's go!
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Welcome to the Why Wars Happened History podcast, where we have narrated war history episodes, and we also have episodes where we sit down with filmmakers, authors, historians, politicians, and we talk about wars in history.
Today's guest is Colin Gory. He has a PhD in Linguistics, which is very unique. Haven't had that on the show yet, and um, and that's also pretty rare. And he's known for [00:01:00] hosting language workshops and he's the author of the newsletter, the Dead Language Society, which I highly recommend. Go check it out. And today we're gonna be talking about all sorts of cool stuff.
We've got the Norman Conquest, we've got the Dane Law with the Vikings, and bunch of other stuff today. Um, so Colin, thank you so much for joining us.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, so one of the, one of the really cool things that you can see in, uh, history is how all of these different periods throughout time can change language. We, you know, trade obviously has an impact, but there's war too, and some of these things are just kind of lost a history. Maybe people don't know why English sounds eerily similar to French.
Um, so we're gonna be talking about that. Let's, um, let's start with talking about how you want to bring linguistics out of the ivory tower. Tell us about that a little bit.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Well, I think language is one of these things that is really close to [00:02:00] everyone. Everyone has a language that they speak that they've grown up with that's really close to their hearts. But at the same time, there are lots of things about language that we don't know, or maybe even more accurate to say would be that we don't know.
We know. Uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are all sorts of interesting connections and in fact, it's almost like being an archeologist, being able to dig in the origins of words and
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: that, um, you know, words that we might take for granted. Like, for example, the word Lord, you know, probably comes up a lot.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: studying war that talk about, you know, the Lord of this land, the lord of that land. This is a really interesting etymology. If you break it up in old English, it sounds a little different. It's so two syllables
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: But it in half, it's, which means loaf guard who guards the bread.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And so all of this amazing history. And you can think, you know, why would the, why would someone who guards the bread be the Lord?
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: well actually it does make a certain amount of sense, doesn't it? Because is the [00:03:00] person who is in charge of the food supply. This is what
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: for sustenance. Of course we're gonna be, uh, respectful and tip our hats to that person. So all of these things are hanging out in our everyday speech, and we might not know anything about them until we take a little look and see that, whoa, the, the traces of history are all over the words we say every day.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes. It is such a fascinating journey to go down. Uh, especially one of my favorites, all these different layers is the Norman Conquest, where you're like, why are there different words for the same thing? But one is like fancy sounding, like with food, you know, um, the, there's, um. Beef and, uh, you know, veal and, you know, all these different things.
And, um, why is the one that we're eating as opposed to one that that's the animal? They sound different and it has to do with this kind of thing. Um, but first let's bring it. All the way back to [00:04:00] Rome. Everybody's favorite. So, uh, let's talk about things like Caesar conquering ga and let's just kind of, can you kind of tell us a little bit about what the heck GA was as, uh, uh, like with especially language and was it, so did Caesar bring a lot of Latin, or did the soldiers bring a lot of German back?
And let's get into that.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Okay, so at the time of Caesar's, uh, campaigns in Gaul, the language spoken in most of that region, so Gaul, um. Modern day France, uh, the language spoken in most of that region would've been a language called Gish, um, sensibly enough. And this is a Celtic language, so it's related to, uh, say Welsh or Irish or Scottish Gallic distantly, but related. and. Even more distantly. It's related to Latin. And you can tell this because a lot of the, uh, so what the [00:05:00] Latin word for King is Rex, you know, like, like the dog's name
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, that's the word for king. Romans obviously don't love kings in most of their history
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the monarchy. But, um, but nevertheless, the word remains and it gives us words like regal, uh, today. Um, kingly. That's another one of those pairs where we have the two words that mean roughly the same thing. We'll talk about that later.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ooh, yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but okay, we have the Latin word Rex, which means king. Gauls have a word Rex, which means king, which you see in the
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of all of these sort of chieftains that Caesar fights against, like generates.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: end, it's the same word. this is one of the words that, um, that the Celtic languages, even today, uh, Irish, uh, ri is the word for king in Irish. So you can see
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Cool.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: these connections, they all go back ultimately to a common ancestor. So even though by the time of Caesar, they wouldn't have recognized those [00:06:00] similarities, modern linguists can look back and see, okay, that Gish and Latin are actually not so different in the end.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Interesting. And so how much, so we tend to think of like, you know, you hear about the Franks and people that later were in that area, and you're kind of like, well, what? But they were Germanic and what, how did that happen? What? That's a little bit of confusing thing.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Okay, let's, let's go from Caesar, uh, to say, Charlemagne, let's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: take all that history and then condense it down, especially linguistically. So Caesar comes in. Conquers Gaul. And, um, at that time, Latin becomes introduced into ga and it's used especially in cities. Uh, and Gish is re, you know, remains for quite a long time, especially in the countryside.
So you have this sort of bilingual situation where you have Latin speaking, spoken alongside Gish.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, and this happens, uh, and continues throughout the end of the Roman Empire. [00:07:00] No, uh, well end of the Roman Empire in the West, I should say. and yeah, I know that's a, that's a whole thing.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Tone debate. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: uh, don't get me started on that. Um, but sort of alongside the end of that Western empire and to a certain extent causing it, we have the, um, the migrations of Germanic speaking peoples in from, modern day Germany, but also Scandinavia. And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are peoples who are speaking an ancestor. The English language. Also an ancestor of the German language and ancestor of Dutch, ancestor of
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: these languages would not have been distinguished at this point, and so they were all speaking more or less mutually comprehensible dialect of some. Early Germanic language, and these Germanic peoples are mentioned a lot in, uh, Roman sources. The Romans fought against them a lot. They have this sort of frenemy sort of relationship with the Germanic peoples, especially the Franks are a good example.
But the goths are another good example.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: [00:08:00] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: were Roman allies, sometimes Roman enemy, sometimes they act Rome. On one memorable occasion. Uh, but. Really what the goths and the other Germanic peoples wanted was more of a piece of the pie than to destroy Rome. Because if
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Rome, that's kind of like killing the golden goose.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: where all this wealth is flowing up from Mediterranean up into Northern Europe.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: want a piece of this pie, but unfortunately end up killing the golden goose. Uh, and uh, as a result, the Roman hegemony over Western Europe becomes broken. It becomes replaced by these successor kingdoms, which are often ruled by Germanic speakers.
And the Franks are one of these groups, and they come in and they create their kingdom in what was gall. And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh huh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: their, after them is now called France,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Frank
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but they spoke a Germanic language similar [00:09:00] to um, uh, actually ancestral to modern Dutch in.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: That's the
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Dutch. Alright,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: that's interesting. Okay, so, so we're talking about, so the, in the area of France eventually became this Germanic kind of speaking area, but by the, but going back when Caesar was there, it was this like Celtic kind of thing that wasn't Germanic yet. And
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so we
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: I see.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: We have the Celtic layer, then the Latin layer, and then on top of that, the Germanic layer.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Each time, it's never a complete replacement. So when the Romans come in, Latin becomes established, and more and more people speak it eventually, but Alish never dies out during that period.
It's always spoken, especially in the countryside. And then the Franks come in. But the Franks are not, uh, numerous enough to impose their language over everyone
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so they can impose their language in the places that are already mostly Germanic speaking,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the Netherlands as an example, [00:10:00] They can't really impose their language over all France.
And so what happens is you get a shift where they adopt the language of the conquered people.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: it's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: francs come in that gish eventually dies out, and you get more or less an ancestor to French, which is formed in the crucible of, um,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: All these things.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: speaking, GS and Franks trying to understand each other.
And so as
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: it's crazy.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: very different from Latin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, I, I remember going down the rabbit hole of like, what even is French, uh, made of you go like, sure, it's a Latin language, you know, but like I. What, how much of that, and you go into it and you're like, oh my God. So there's all this German in there, there's Celtic in there for sure, like Arabic and there's all these mishmash of things in there that are so different from Italian or something like that.
Um, so that's really cool, this history behind how that happened. And some of it was [00:11:00] war. A lot of it sounds like war, and a lot of it sounds like kind of just regular migration, economic migration too. That's interesting. Um, so did, did, okay. So the Caesar and his army were there for like 20 something years.
Did they bring a substantial amount of any language back or was it just like me, might as well never have been there.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: from
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what, like, did, did that language flow into Rome a little bit or change anything in Latin? A little bit.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, it, it didn't flow so much into the Latin spoken in Rome.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: there is one word that I can think of which is, uh, am, which becomes the word ambassador,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: uh, which I think comes from Gish. Um, but, uh, where it has an influence is more in the spoken Latin of ga.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: okay. That's cool.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the, the Latin as it's spoken and the Latin that you learn in score [00:12:00] two different things,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: just like the English you read in the newspaper, um, and the English that people actually speak. Could be very different from place to place. And so Latin was no different. There was a, a spoken version of Latin, which had all of its slang and all of of its particular ways of expressing things and pronouncing things often affected by the local language that was there before Latin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And that'd be different in different places.
And so there would've been a certain influence of Gish on that Latin as it was spoken in ga.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay. And before we move on from the Franks entirely, um, you called their linguistic legacy like a paradox. What do you mean by that?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Well, it's a paradox in this sense. You would expect that a conquering people would be able to impose its language on the
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: people. But instead, what happened was that, that the conquerors were conquered. Linguistically speaking, and so they end up speaking French. They were, in a way, a victim of their own success because they conquered [00:13:00] huge, vast swaths of territory, but couldn't populate it with frankish speakers and maybe didn't even want to necessarily, uh, so they ended up adopting the language of the people that they were ruling, which was this early form of what we'd later call French.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: That is interesting. That is so fascinating. And then of course the French change English later, so
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: What's,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: it's all these wheels of fortune, you know,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and there are words that go back and forth between them, back and forth between Germanic and romance and Germanic and romance
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: crazy.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: over again. It's, it's quite wild. But what's really interesting about French in particular, when you look at French now, you're actually seeing a language that's more. Latin, like then French would've been in the Middle Ages
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh huh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: during the Renaissance, French underwent a process of sort of deification. So they
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: rid of a lot of the words that they had taken from [00:14:00] Frankish. There are still many, but they got rid of a lot of them and replaced them with words that they reborrowed from Latin.
Because during this entire time, Latin was still a language that was used, uh, like more of a classical style of Latin. of the church. so
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: had this A, this access to Latin. And so you get cases where there are words that are from the sort of spoken slang, everyday street Latin and the fancy book Latin words, coexisting in French
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right, right. And we are gonna talk a little bit about that later. This is a really cool topic. Um, okay, so let's kind of get out of that a little bit and go over to the Vikings in England. Um, everybody knows a little bit about this, but. Uh, I think that a lot of people would be surprised to know that there was such a thing called the Dane Law, which was freaking huge.
Seriously, go look up a map if you've never heard of it before. This thing is like, I, it looks like it takes up half of England. [00:15:00] Um, so can you tell us what the heck that was, what was going on there? What languages were there
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Okay,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: we're talking about,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: yeah, let's, let's, um. the channel now,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: mm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: we're looking at what's now modern day England. Now, during Roman times, this was also occupied by the Romans, and a very similar situation happened there has happened in Gaul. So there was a Celtic language spoken there, and it had started to become replaced, uh, at least, especially in cities with Latin, but never completely replaced. what happened when the Empire fell, or was the process of it falling? Was that the Romans withdrew from Britain. And they were through their protection as well. And so it's debated exactly, exactly what circumstances were that led to this. But what happened was Germanic peoples also crossed over into what would be later called England.
And these peoples were called, uh, traditionally the angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. But what [00:16:00] the best way to think about them is, uh, a collection of tribes from, um, sort of. Southern Denmark, uh, and into maybe that northwestern part of Germany.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and they crossed over and they essentially established their dominion.
And in their case, the language won out. So the, there was a language shift in this region of Southern Britain, which would be called, which would be called England after them. And the Celtic language, um, went away. Or at least became limited to the far Western fringe, what we call whales and Cornwall today. So these, uh, are the descendants of the speakers of that Celtic language, uh, or at least linguistic descendants of the speakers of that Celtic language that was, uh, in Britain before Latin. And so you have these Germanic speakers and they speak a variety of dialects, but they're more or less mutually comprehensible.
After a little while, they start to, [00:17:00] uh, form a collective identity as what they called English.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the name of one of their tribes, which were the, the s
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and uh, then eventually they come to call themselves in Latin, at least the Anglo-Saxons. Um, they never called themselves that in English
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: But that was this a sort of a, a political identity that was adopted because they were soon joined after a few centuries they were joined by, uh, other Germanic speaking peoples, the Danes.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are Scandinavians, uh, from, from Denmark and uh, and Norway, depending on where you are, uh, in Britain, you know, it's sort of whatever, the closest one. To you, that's who you're gonna get rated by.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, of course.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are the people we know, uh, know as the Vikings, uh, uh, is a word that more or less translates to pirate.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so it's not that all of the people in Scandinavia were Vikings, but if you were in England, the ones you would encounter would be Vikings.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes, yes.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so this [00:18:00] starts to happen in the late eighth century and continues until sort of the mid 11th century. So we're thinking around seven. 90 to, um, 10 66. We'll talk about that year,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: particular in
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Super big ear. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but that's really the last gasp of these, um, Scandinavian incursions into England.
And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: is that they really wipe the floor with the English for a long time, uh, until you get to, uh, uh, the reign of a king named Alfred the Great. And he was a king of one of the kingdoms. So England wasn't unified at this, at this time. He was the king of one of the kingdoms, which is called Wessex.
Um. Wessex means West Saxons. Uh, so he was the king of, of that group. And he essentially, um, brought the Danes to, uh, uh, brought their expansion to a halt and sort of formalized relations with them and said, okay, let's come up with a way. I mean, he fought them quite a bit too,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: in the end, he came up [00:19:00] with a, a treaty, which established Danish Over part of England, a Danish rule,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: this part is called the Dane Law. For that reason. It's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Naturally.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: in which Danish law held sway.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And in fact, the word law itself is a Danish lone word. It's a lone word. Yeah. It means that which is laid down.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Cool. That's so fascinating. So it, it, so, okay, so it was a way to. Put somewhat of a end, final end to all of these like constant, constant, uh, invasions and incursions from the north. Um, and okay, so I am really interested to know how much English was spoken in the Dane law. Was it English with Danish influences or was it Danish with English influences?
What are we talking about?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So the rating that happened at gave way to [00:20:00] settlement. So the first Danes that came were just interested in stealing things and burning things and you know, that sort of the pillaging. Uh, lifestyle,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Classic.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but bef, but before too long, they began to settle as well. so the din law had a mixture of speakers of English, old English, uh, so a very early form of English, one that we're not able to comprehend when we hear it or read it today.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, no.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and old Norse, which is the language that the Dane spoke. And so these were spoken side by side, uh, side by side with each other, and they were. it's debated whether the two would've been able to understand each other easily, but with some effort they would've been able to understand each other.
Because these languages are both Germanic languages. They're not so distant from one another.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: endings. Um, but most of the words are recognizable. And so if you're living with neighbors who speak this language, you could probably work out a way of communicating and
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: your son might marry one of their daughters and [00:21:00] you know.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the communities start to blend together and words start to pass back and forth. in the end, the English language ran out because the Dane law came to an end and.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: rule was established over that, uh, territory once again, but there was a lot of Danish influence that remains in the English has spoken in those regions.
And place names are a really big, um, a really big, uh, tell for where the Dayin law was actually. You can make a, a map and you look for certain place name elements, like place names that end in BBY.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: this comes from an old norward meaning settlement.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ooh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you see that BY,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the din law.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh wow, that's really cool. Interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Grimsby, the,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of the grim one,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: oh my God, that is so cool. Wow. Okay. And so, and so in the areas where the Dane Law was, can you today see a [00:22:00] difference in maybe the dialect spoken in that part of England where it's like, that sounds a little bit influenced by the North.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you can, so the problem is we're in this. Age of mass communication now.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: a lot of these traditional dialects have unfortunately receded or died out.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: look back at old recordings or speak to old people who are, you know, maybe old rural people who haven't traveled a lot, you might hear some of these things.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, there are some words that, uh, that have stuck around, especially in places like Yorkshire that would be a part of the Dane
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Do you have any examples?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, I'm wondering if, there's one caveat, which is that. The dialect that of English that was spoken there
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: actually quite similar to old nor so it's sometimes hard to, uh, to
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: But, um, but I can give you tons of examples of words that came into modern English,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: we speak that are [00:23:00] of old nor origin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: love to hear it.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so one example is, um, uh, basically any word that has a, uh, an sk at the start. So Sky. As an example, uh, sky skirt, um, skull, these sk words did not exist in old English, by and large, but they did in old nor.
So all of these, all these skull words come from from old Norse, whereas that end in g are very frequently from old Norse like egg.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Yeah, the word egg is an old nors form in, um, in old English, if we had, uh, maintained the old English version, we'd call them ease. Have
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: my God. That's so, that's not as good as egg?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: it's not as good as egg, although it had a
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: No.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: plural form.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: um, this is something that, uh, the, the first printer in England, William Caxton, tells an anecdote about he's, he's worried about, you know, standardizing what form of the language he's gonna print.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: he tells an anecdote about [00:24:00] talking, uh, someone who's ordering eggs at an inn or something, and he says, uh, ais, ais,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: I.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: do you mean. You know, I, sorry, I don't speak French is essentially what they say 'cause they don't know what he's saying. because for them the word for egg is aen. Uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: What?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: yeah, which would've become that e form that I was mentioning before. So it may have been e in the singular and ein in the plural, which might redeem the word a little bit for
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh, little bit, but still not as good.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh, I see. Yeah. Oh, that's so weird. Um, I mean, it makes sense, but like I'm glad that egg won out 'cause Yeah. Um. Okay, so we're, are we talk, so God, I, I remember reading about how. There's this interesting layer of different words for kind of the same concept, and you could see some of it being Danish and [00:25:00] some of it being English, kind of like, um, sick and Ill, or I, God, I'm, I'm drawing to blank on like other stuff right now.
But is that, is that normal or is that just like a weird thing that happened with English and nor, or is that kind of just something you see everywhere? I.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Everywhere where you see this, um, contact.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: um, you also see this contact in, in places like. know, east Asia, for instance, uh, Japan had contact with Chinese, which was a prestigious language for them, is the language of, of high culture for a long time. And so Japanese has taken a lot of words from Chinese, but at the same time, they've also retained Japanese words.
And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: situation where you get two words that roughly refer to the same context. Uh, same concept rather, but you use them in different context because one has a more sort of. lofty feel to it
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: feel to it. Uh, an example, uh, for English would [00:26:00] be, would be this kingly regal distinction
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: brotherly, fraternal. These words mean the same thing technically, but you would use them in very different contexts. And this is
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: that comes with this, uh, language contact situation. Uh, where you have, you have options, you can sort of dial up or down the formality depending on. Which one of those words you use?
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right. Or like, uh, sisterhood versus sorority or something like that. Like that is interesting. Um, well, I guess, so that brings me to the Norman Conquest. Um, so we're jumping forward in time a little bit. The year 10 66. Big year for England. Tell us a little bit about what was going on with, uh, the language, at least with that.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So. to 10 66, the political power in England, outside of the Dane Law for the period when it existed, uh, [00:27:00] was held by, uh, kingdoms and rulers who spoke early forms of English. So, uh, a form that we call Old English. And, uh, for literature fans, this is the language that Beowulf has written in, uh, a very great poem, uh, and a lot of fun. They spoke a, you know, a little less, um, of a poetic form perhaps, but they, they spoke old English.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: after 10 66, the rulers of England come to be speakers of a form of French called Norman French, is an interesting story. The Normans themselves are a group of people who spoke French, but they are the 10 descendants of Vikings as well.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right. The Northman Norman Liz. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Exactly. And so
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: did was more or less the same as what Alfred did in England,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: them an area where they could rule. And the deal was you stopped raid us, sit down, rule there, that's your land, and protect us from your friends back [00:28:00] home.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: it worked out in that case. And, uh, to some dynastic, um. Astic entanglements. The Normans, uh, specifically William of Normandy, has a claim to the English throne.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And when, uh, when the King of England, Edward the Confessor dies, uh, without an heir, then there's a scramble. And, uh, a local, uh, family of potentates in England claim the throne. The A Dain claims the throne and William of Normandy claims the throne.
And so there's a lot of fighting and in the end, the one who wins out is William Normandy, AKA William the Conqueror. Because yeah, he conquered
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of Hastings in 10 66. Uh, and when he takes over, he brings in all his buddies from Normandy who speak a form, an early form of French called Norman French. they take over and they. [00:29:00] Remake the government in, uh, the language of French. so all of the scribes that were trained under the old, uh, the old regime, uh, they get replaced by French scribes. Uh, the people who are in charge of everything get replaced, be replaced by French speakers. And as a result, English kind of goes underground a
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: time because. is not an age of mass literacy, not an age where writing is particularly cheap to do and producing books. So as a result, we don't have a lot of English texts from this period when the French are on top of the heap.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: that's a bummer.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: It's a bummer. We have a few and we can sort of guess what's going on, but it's not until, um, a few hundred years later, uh, in, uh, roughly the 14 hundreds where we start to get this real resurgence of English literature and people like Chaucer, and the Canterbury Tales and
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: a book that some people may have heard of. Um, but during that period when the French, uh, [00:30:00] are in charge, changes too. just a little bit harder to see. so English starts to take on a lot of the aspects of French, a lot of vocabulary from French. And, uh, it also, it's no longer standard language, there's no one there keeping it the way it was.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: I see. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: when it was, uh, when the, uh, English speakers were ruling and they were producing their laws in English and things like that. They had an incentive to sort of write in a particular way, and there was a standard and not a standard in the sense that we have today where, you know, there's mass education and people are taught to spell and, and speak in a
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but there was. A greater deal of uniformity in the, in the writing. And so if you were from a different part of the country, you would be trained to write in one dialect, the West Saxon dialect because of Alfred,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And that goes away when French becomes used. So the French is all [00:31:00] very nice and standard, but the English is wild.
It, you know, every dialect is different. It changes relatively rapidly. And so when it reemerges, uh. To be called middle English now as opposed to old English. It's very different from old English
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: A lot of the endings have been lost and a lot of new French words have come in. And as a result, you can really quite easily read, um, middle English,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: That's the Shakespeare, the Shakespearean, that's the middle English kind of that you're talking about.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: a little bit later. Uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: is early modern English,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay. Okay. Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: an event that happens, um, roughly the. Uh, it's roughly the start of printing that
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah. Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: matches it off. That's the historical event that you can point to, um, in the late, uh, late 15th century. Uh, but also there's a big linguistic change, which is called the great vowel shift that sets these
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: yeah, these, these two apart.
So basically the great vowel shift is, um, the [00:32:00] vowels of middle English made sense. And I, so when we look at, um. So you speak some other languages,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: some other European languages.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you know how when you're learning other languages and you have to learn that the vowel that we spell A and we say A
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: not
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: could that, why does that ah, sound a in English?
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of the great vowel shift where all of the pronunciations of, uh, a particular set of vowels radically changed. And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: spelling unfortunately was standardized before that happened. So it's a bit of a, you know, bad luck on our part, but, um,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but that's what we use to, uh, mark the difference between middle and modern English.
And so Shakespeare's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: other side of that
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: on the other side. Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: uh, so his stuff is even more comprehensible to us. But, uh, if you read Chaucer, say the Canterbury Tales, it's a lot more, uh, easy to understand than if you hear it. If you hear it, it's like, well, what's going on here? [00:33:00] All those vowels have changed
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but if you read it, okay.
I recognize these words, a lot of the same words that we use now, and the grammar is very similar,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Things like, uh, if I remember remembering my lessons from that where things like wife used to be, we, and, um, I, again drawing a blank on, are there other examples of like this battle shift that you can give us?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So, um, a good example would be, name would've been. Nam or nama?
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay. That makes sense.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: wife would've been, we house would've been s
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: yeah.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: there are, there are a few other, so those, but those are the ones that are the most striking.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: So reading it, you're like, I get what this is all about. And hearing it, you're like, what are you saying to me right now? Interesting. Um, and so, okay, so the norming conquest 10 66, over time, we're talking like, um, I. All of the laws had to be written in French [00:34:00] and all of the, anytime you went to court or did anything officially, it was French.
And that was like all the nobility, the English nobility kind of got kicked out of their positions and replaced by Frenchmen. And every, the lofty higher upper class all spoke French. Um, so, okay, so English is a dramatic language because of the rules about how. It goes together how to use words and because of its origins.
But what do you think about the estimates that English words themselves are like 30 something percent French, 30 something percent Latin, which means the majority of our words are Latin based. Is that accurate?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Yeah, that's, uh, well, the, the precise numbers, you could probably debate endlessly,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but basically, yes, that's correct.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, but the, the devil's in the details because it depends on how you count words. So if you
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: up a dictionary of English,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you just count words and find their [00:35:00] origins, then you will see, uh, statistics like that. However, if you go through the words that people actually speak by frequency.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: It is a very different picture
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: almost all of the most common words core Germanic words.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: interesting. Okay, so, okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: eat, you know, all core Germanic, if
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: something like, um, government priorities, advance education, those are all going to be either French or Latin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: See the lofty words? Yeah, that is very interesting. And that, okay, so then that brings us to the idea of vulgar, which is such an interesting concept. Um, I'd love to ask you about that a little bit, where you have like. You're studying the etymology of a word, the the origin of where words come from, and you're like, this is vulgar Latin, vulgar English.
Tell us about that. What, what are we looking at here?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So vulgar Latin is one [00:36:00] of these, uh, it's a very useful term, but it sometimes gets you in trouble with people because they, they, they don't like it. I'll, I'll outline what it means first, and then I'll outline why people don't, some people don't like it as so vulgar Latin refers to the spoken Latin. So in Latin just means sort of the rabble, the
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: people. Uh, so vulgar means popular common every day. Um, and so it's a, it's a way to distinguish the kind of Latin that gave rise to the romance languages versus the kind of Latin you study in Latin class,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and Cicero. Uh, and there are some pretty substantial differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and uh, and just sort of sentence construction. between these two, but you can consider it like very similar to how you, how different English is if you take an exact literal, uh, record of what someone says versus if someone sits down and makes a formal, wants to write a [00:37:00] formal academic article.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: gonna be very different. The pronunciation will be different, more casual in speech. Um, there'll be different words used. There will be different, you know, a lot less complexity of grammar, from the point of view of, you know, how many clauses are you stacking next to each other to make this
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: in speech. People tend to say, and then, and then, and then, and then.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: great. Right?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: than notwithstanding the, in as much as we, you know, these
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: very written constructions that you see, so that Latin was similar. Um, and the spoken version is what people refer to as vulgar Latin. The reason some people don't like that phrase is it gives the impression that the, the aristocrats were speaking
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the finest Latin, which is probably not the case. They were
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: shelf Latin.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, so they, they may have had their different, you know. Different diction, but it's not that they didn't have any of these features of spoken Latin. So
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: sometimes say, oh, don't use the word vulgar Latin, but it's very [00:38:00] clear what it means. So I still use it.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh, okay, because it, you're right, it does give across that thing of a class divide where you're like, oh, the people are on the street speaking this version, and then up in the. Mansion or whatever, they're speaking enough. But that wasn't really the case, is what you're saying. Like that's not what vulgar is.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: It's in
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the even aristocrats were speaking had features in their speech that we associate with vulgar Latin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah, ah, okay. And do you see this across other non-Latin languages? Like there's a formal way of speaking or writing Welsh as opposed to just on the street like it's. Is that universal?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, it's universal. Wherever there's a kind of, um, literary culture.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm. Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, so what happens with literary cultures is people really fixate on the usage of a particular author. In a particular time.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: [00:39:00] so you see this, uh, I'll, I'll use just to take an example from the other side of the world, use China as an example. So China had a form of, uh, the language which is called classical Chinese. And it is based on the language as it was written at a particular time in ancient China around the time of Confucius. And in fact, Confucius's works are some of the ones that people look to. And imitate to create this written standard of the language that continues over the centuries. But at that time, it's probably not something that anyone speaks. It's a written form only, and then their speech is more vulgar. Chinese, or,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: vernacular Chinese. And then, but because it's not written, we don't know a lot about it.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Until the very, very modern period when people say, what, why are we doing this?
Why do we have this completely different way of writing from speaking? And so then
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: start to, uh, then they start to write more like they speak.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: [00:40:00] Interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: movement happens. So you see this in, um, you see this in China, you see this in in Europe with the, um, the rise of the vernaculars. So Dante being one of the first to saying, Hey, is actually this language that we speak that's not Latin is worth writing in. And we can
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, that's very interesting. And okay, so before we close off anything, I do wanna talk a little bit about just war in general, where there is. You see language shifts from war and conquering and all these are huge events, um, but you also see language shifts from intermarriage and trade and things. Would you say that one trade versus war one is more influential in language shifts than the other?
They kind of no way to know.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Well, it, it depends on what happens with the war. So if a war is fought then you get a status quo, no territory [00:41:00] changes hands, you may get some particular words come in from that war, but it's not likely to a huge change.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, however, if you get conquest
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: great.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of war, you start to see, I mean, we saw this example talking about the francs. With the, um, with the Normans. Now, in both of those cases, their language didn't end up winning out, but it had an effect on the other language.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the case of the, uh, the English, the birth of the English language, uh, the Celtic languages ended up losing out in favor of what would become old English. So it
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: either way, but there's, uh, often a, an effect
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of the language that didn't sort of make it. And, and the reason for that is because there's a hierarchy of the two languages. There's one that's sort of got the power and one that doesn't. But
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: is, you know, even the rich people who have the power need someone to take care of their kid. And maybe that person is a native speaker of the language that's not so prestigious, and that's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: [00:42:00] Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: kid learns all sorts of words from their nanny, and then that kid grows up and thinks, well, there's nothing wrong with those words. And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: along to their kids. And so this can happen as well. Or you might get situations where one group, uh, a member of the conquering people, um, marry or maybe not marry, but um, end up having children in some way. Not always, uh, in a positive way necessarily, but, uh, with, um, members of the Concord people. Uh, and this is something that people talk about, uh, perhaps happening in the distant prehistory of Europe a lot. And as a result, you know, there are concessions made. There are, um, there are accommodations. One person tries to speak the other person's language and maybe does it imperfectly, and then passes that imperfect understanding of the language onto their children, and things change that way.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are many different opportunities for language to change through conquest. Not all lovely to think about, but [00:43:00] they, you know, they happen.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Trade on the other hand, is not as hierarchical. It results in situations which are not as hierarchical.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, now there are certainly often a hierarchy, but what you get with trade is often the emergence of, um, pigeon languages. And a pigeon language is a language that's sort of, you know, I don't speak your language. You don't speak my language. one of us is in charge here. I can't make you speak my
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: me speak yours. What we wanna do is trade. And so we'll make do, I'll learn a few of yours. You learn a few of mine, and we'll make, we'll have a very kind of make
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Fascinating.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: we can get along with to trade. Then what happens is, uh, often you will get children who grow up hearing that and they flesh it out into a, what's called a Creole language.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, and so. Then you can get things that are kind of, uh, like more full fledged languages, so to speak. [00:44:00] I, I, I should hesitate to, I hesitate to say full fledged languages because you know who's to say.
But, um, uh, but this can happen and this happens often through trade.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: That is so, so are there any like widely used pigeon languages around that just kind of took root?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Mm-hmm. Yeah. There
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: I.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: um. One of them? Uh, no, and I'd have to, I'd have to ponder my, uh, my geography, but I'll give you some names. Um, talk pieing, uh, is a widely spoken pigeon language. Um, it means talk pigeon,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh my God.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: is thought to come from the word business. So talk business.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh my God. That's really interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: that is, that is spoken today, uh, I think fairly widely, but for the life of me, I can never remember where.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh, yeah. And for, for our listeners out there, we're not talking pigeon, the bird. It's like P-I-D-G-E-N or something like that. Pigeon is that? Am I. So, um, no, not the, not spelled like the word and we're not talking [00:45:00] about the word. That's a different thing. Um, so that's interesting. It definitely sounds like, uh, conquest and war has somewhat of an impact, but it's, it's sta it feels like languages evolve more lastingly through necessity or just.
Person to person interactions of trade or just marriage or whatever relationships that is interesting and um,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: even French, stop being spoken in England.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: ah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And war actually had a part to play in that
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the English were, well, they lost Normandy eventually,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: um, under the reign of King John.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, for which reason he's not very popular among others. Uh, but uh, then the English fought the French game in the a hundred years war, and as a
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: they started to up with their own sort of separate identity and this aristocracy that had been speaking French, they speak, they're also speaking English for a long time
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And hey, aren't we all English? Right? We're [00:46:00] speaking French. So then you start to get this, uh, resurgence of English identity that leads into this, the English Renaissance and the era of Shakespeare and all
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of thing. And the really, uh, eff fluorescence of English literature once again.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: And wasn't that, uh, Edward ii that was like, Hey, I'm gonna actually give speeches in English and I'm gonna make English the official language. And it was kind of controversial, but kind of popular, but kind of controversial at a time to make English, the official language of England. Uh, something like that.
I remember.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: I, I'm not, I don't remember the dates on that, but, uh, there was one point when, uh, parliament started to accept speeches in English, and
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: sort of watershed moment. I.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Interesting. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: a, a, a language of power once again,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Like you say, like you.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: given it up.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, you, you, you take it as a given now, oh, English is spoken in England, but it wasn't always that way and it wasn't so clear cut and very interesting. Um, okay, so before we close off here again, my, my, [00:47:00] I'd like to talk about huge debates on whatever topic my guest has an expertise in.
So the big general debate in linguistics is. What are your thoughts on the prescriptive versus descriptive language debate? Is language laid out and kind of changes over time? That's how we should do it, or does it just go however we say it should go and that's how we make it.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Okay, so this is an interesting, interesting debate and I don't know if I, uh, have the same opinion as, as most linguists. So I'll lay it out and I'll see if what people think so as. I think we have to distinguish between two approaches to language, linguists, study language, more or less in a scientific fashion as a sort of objective study that they're not, they don't have opinions about, they're not trying to control, it's not engineering,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: science.
So you know, you, you don't. Really involve yourself in trying to make it go one way or another. You're just interested in what's going on, as a result, you end up taking a descriptive [00:48:00] approach as you would for anything else,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: scientifically. Um, and as a result, uh, linguists have become, associated with this descriptive approach to language, and it's something that we often teach in introductory linguistics classes because most people come into. A linguistics class, say if they encounter for the first time in university, uh, basically not knowing what it means to study language scientifically. And so they might think, oh, this is about, you know, they're just gonna try and correct me for putting prepositions at the end of the word.
No, that's not really what we're doing. We're interested in what goes on so that we can understand more deeply what goes on in the human mind or, or in society or in history. We wanna understand these things and so as a result, you don't interfere with the experiment, uh, however. The prescriptive approach to language is something that I think everyone has. We all have opinions about language, so prescriptive saying language should be this way or
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: way. Uh, and this could even be a, a small matter of [00:49:00] taste. You know, I don't like the way that this sounds, I'd prefer it to be like this.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, and all linguists do this. All linguists have this. This is the sort of the citizen. Uh, approach to language
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: scientist.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you, you're a citizen of the, the, the Republic of English, you know, as an English speaker. and so you have opinions about how it should go and you have opinions about what you like about what's going on now and what you don't like, and everyone has those opinions, including linguists.
But they try and think ideally set 'em aside when they're doing their scientific work.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right. So interesting
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: and.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: about constructivism. You might say, I just think it exists and we have to accept it, but we have to be mindful of when we're using it and whether it's appropriate to do so.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes. And one of the more, one of the more, um, recent examples of this kind of like blur over what even is, language is the word literally, [00:50:00] which I. Has for a very long time. So it, the definition was always like word for word, you know, like no other interpretation or exaggeration or whatever it's word for word.
But for a very long time we're just kind of, oh, literally the biggest pizza I've ever seen. Or you know, like we just use it in a non-literary way, and now it means. Not literally just, and so it's like that kind of thing of like, should we describe how it happened or should we just say, no, don't do this.
And it's an interesting debate, you know?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, there's also an element of futility in a lot of these
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Like by the time that people get upset about them, they're almost like a, a fe complete.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: do? It's already happened, so you can, you know, write a letter to the editor or something. But other than that,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: not likely to be with you.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah, yeah. The dictionary is like, we're just telling you what somebody might mean, not, not telling you what you have to think of it. We're just like giving you, you know, something to understand. [00:51:00] That's interesting. Okay, so what can people, what kind of eras or what kind of things can people learn about in your newsletter, the Dead Language Society and your workshops too?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So what, um, what I cover with the Dead Language Society is the entire sweep of the history of English. Uh, from the present day, going all the way back into prehistoric times, uh, all the way back to, um. This hypothetical ancestor language, uh, proto Indo-European. So it's a big 6,000 year sweep of history. A lot of interesting stuff happens, and, and I, I give myself a little wiggle, ru I say a guided tour through the history of the English language and its relatives.
So I've got lots, uh, I've got
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: So
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: My, my
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: asterisk. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: I can still talk about things like French, 'cause uh, I enjoy doing that as well. Um, but just due to the, um, due to my own, uh, particular interests, I focus a lot on. The old English period, which is, uh, I think a, a period that needs to be better understood by modern English speakers because it's there where we [00:52:00] see a lot of the roots of our language.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: that pre 10, 66 period where you get the literature like Beowulf and uh, um, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A lot of amazing poetry. Uh, it's a, it's a beautiful period, uh, that I think, uh, it, it does take a little bit of training to learn to read it, but,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: It is diff it's hard. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Um, okay. Well, uh, thank you so much again for Colin Gory. Thank you so much again for coming on the show and answering all these language questions. Um, yeah. Thank you.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Oh, thank you very much, Emily. It's been a pleasure.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Alright, bye.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Bye.
And we talk about everything about before, during, and after war. So let's go!
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Welcome to the Why Wars Happened History podcast, where we have narrated war history episodes, and we also have episodes where we sit down with filmmakers, authors, historians, politicians, and we talk about wars in history.
Today's guest is Colin Gory. He has a PhD in Linguistics, which is very unique. Haven't had that on the show yet, and um, and that's also pretty rare. And he's known for [00:01:00] hosting language workshops and he's the author of the newsletter, the Dead Language Society, which I highly recommend. Go check it out. And today we're gonna be talking about all sorts of cool stuff.
We've got the Norman Conquest, we've got the Dane Law with the Vikings, and bunch of other stuff today. Um, so Colin, thank you so much for joining us.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, so one of the, one of the really cool things that you can see in, uh, history is how all of these different periods throughout time can change language. We, you know, trade obviously has an impact, but there's war too, and some of these things are just kind of lost a history. Maybe people don't know why English sounds eerily similar to French.
Um, so we're gonna be talking about that. Let's, um, let's start with talking about how you want to bring linguistics out of the ivory tower. Tell us about that a little bit.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Well, I think language is one of these things that is really close to [00:02:00] everyone. Everyone has a language that they speak that they've grown up with that's really close to their hearts. But at the same time, there are lots of things about language that we don't know, or maybe even more accurate to say would be that we don't know.
We know. Uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are all sorts of interesting connections and in fact, it's almost like being an archeologist, being able to dig in the origins of words and
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: that, um, you know, words that we might take for granted. Like, for example, the word Lord, you know, probably comes up a lot.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: studying war that talk about, you know, the Lord of this land, the lord of that land. This is a really interesting etymology. If you break it up in old English, it sounds a little different. It's so two syllables
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: But it in half, it's, which means loaf guard who guards the bread.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And so all of this amazing history. And you can think, you know, why would the, why would someone who guards the bread be the Lord?
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: well actually it does make a certain amount of sense, doesn't it? Because is the [00:03:00] person who is in charge of the food supply. This is what
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: for sustenance. Of course we're gonna be, uh, respectful and tip our hats to that person. So all of these things are hanging out in our everyday speech, and we might not know anything about them until we take a little look and see that, whoa, the, the traces of history are all over the words we say every day.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes. It is such a fascinating journey to go down. Uh, especially one of my favorites, all these different layers is the Norman Conquest, where you're like, why are there different words for the same thing? But one is like fancy sounding, like with food, you know, um, the, there's, um. Beef and, uh, you know, veal and, you know, all these different things.
And, um, why is the one that we're eating as opposed to one that that's the animal? They sound different and it has to do with this kind of thing. Um, but first let's bring it. All the way back to [00:04:00] Rome. Everybody's favorite. So, uh, let's talk about things like Caesar conquering ga and let's just kind of, can you kind of tell us a little bit about what the heck GA was as, uh, uh, like with especially language and was it, so did Caesar bring a lot of Latin, or did the soldiers bring a lot of German back?
And let's get into that.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Okay, so at the time of Caesar's, uh, campaigns in Gaul, the language spoken in most of that region, so Gaul, um. Modern day France, uh, the language spoken in most of that region would've been a language called Gish, um, sensibly enough. And this is a Celtic language, so it's related to, uh, say Welsh or Irish or Scottish Gallic distantly, but related. and. Even more distantly. It's related to Latin. And you can tell this because a lot of the, uh, so what the [00:05:00] Latin word for King is Rex, you know, like, like the dog's name
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, that's the word for king. Romans obviously don't love kings in most of their history
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the monarchy. But, um, but nevertheless, the word remains and it gives us words like regal, uh, today. Um, kingly. That's another one of those pairs where we have the two words that mean roughly the same thing. We'll talk about that later.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ooh, yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but okay, we have the Latin word Rex, which means king. Gauls have a word Rex, which means king, which you see in the
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of all of these sort of chieftains that Caesar fights against, like generates.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: end, it's the same word. this is one of the words that, um, that the Celtic languages, even today, uh, Irish, uh, ri is the word for king in Irish. So you can see
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Cool.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: these connections, they all go back ultimately to a common ancestor. So even though by the time of Caesar, they wouldn't have recognized those [00:06:00] similarities, modern linguists can look back and see, okay, that Gish and Latin are actually not so different in the end.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Interesting. And so how much, so we tend to think of like, you know, you hear about the Franks and people that later were in that area, and you're kind of like, well, what? But they were Germanic and what, how did that happen? What? That's a little bit of confusing thing.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Okay, let's, let's go from Caesar, uh, to say, Charlemagne, let's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: take all that history and then condense it down, especially linguistically. So Caesar comes in. Conquers Gaul. And, um, at that time, Latin becomes introduced into ga and it's used especially in cities. Uh, and Gish is re, you know, remains for quite a long time, especially in the countryside.
So you have this sort of bilingual situation where you have Latin speaking, spoken alongside Gish.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, and this happens, uh, and continues throughout the end of the Roman Empire. [00:07:00] No, uh, well end of the Roman Empire in the West, I should say. and yeah, I know that's a, that's a whole thing.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Tone debate. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: uh, don't get me started on that. Um, but sort of alongside the end of that Western empire and to a certain extent causing it, we have the, um, the migrations of Germanic speaking peoples in from, modern day Germany, but also Scandinavia. And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are peoples who are speaking an ancestor. The English language. Also an ancestor of the German language and ancestor of Dutch, ancestor of
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: these languages would not have been distinguished at this point, and so they were all speaking more or less mutually comprehensible dialect of some. Early Germanic language, and these Germanic peoples are mentioned a lot in, uh, Roman sources. The Romans fought against them a lot. They have this sort of frenemy sort of relationship with the Germanic peoples, especially the Franks are a good example.
But the goths are another good example.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: [00:08:00] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: were Roman allies, sometimes Roman enemy, sometimes they act Rome. On one memorable occasion. Uh, but. Really what the goths and the other Germanic peoples wanted was more of a piece of the pie than to destroy Rome. Because if
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Rome, that's kind of like killing the golden goose.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: where all this wealth is flowing up from Mediterranean up into Northern Europe.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: want a piece of this pie, but unfortunately end up killing the golden goose. Uh, and uh, as a result, the Roman hegemony over Western Europe becomes broken. It becomes replaced by these successor kingdoms, which are often ruled by Germanic speakers.
And the Franks are one of these groups, and they come in and they create their kingdom in what was gall. And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh huh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: their, after them is now called France,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Frank
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but they spoke a Germanic language similar [00:09:00] to um, uh, actually ancestral to modern Dutch in.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: That's the
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Dutch. Alright,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: that's interesting. Okay, so, so we're talking about, so the, in the area of France eventually became this Germanic kind of speaking area, but by the, but going back when Caesar was there, it was this like Celtic kind of thing that wasn't Germanic yet. And
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so we
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: I see.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: We have the Celtic layer, then the Latin layer, and then on top of that, the Germanic layer.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Each time, it's never a complete replacement. So when the Romans come in, Latin becomes established, and more and more people speak it eventually, but Alish never dies out during that period.
It's always spoken, especially in the countryside. And then the Franks come in. But the Franks are not, uh, numerous enough to impose their language over everyone
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so they can impose their language in the places that are already mostly Germanic speaking,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the Netherlands as an example, [00:10:00] They can't really impose their language over all France.
And so what happens is you get a shift where they adopt the language of the conquered people.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: it's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: francs come in that gish eventually dies out, and you get more or less an ancestor to French, which is formed in the crucible of, um,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: All these things.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: speaking, GS and Franks trying to understand each other.
And so as
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: it's crazy.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: very different from Latin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, I, I remember going down the rabbit hole of like, what even is French, uh, made of you go like, sure, it's a Latin language, you know, but like I. What, how much of that, and you go into it and you're like, oh my God. So there's all this German in there, there's Celtic in there for sure, like Arabic and there's all these mishmash of things in there that are so different from Italian or something like that.
Um, so that's really cool, this history behind how that happened. And some of it was [00:11:00] war. A lot of it sounds like war, and a lot of it sounds like kind of just regular migration, economic migration too. That's interesting. Um, so did, did, okay. So the Caesar and his army were there for like 20 something years.
Did they bring a substantial amount of any language back or was it just like me, might as well never have been there.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: from
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what, like, did, did that language flow into Rome a little bit or change anything in Latin? A little bit.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, it, it didn't flow so much into the Latin spoken in Rome.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: there is one word that I can think of which is, uh, am, which becomes the word ambassador,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: uh, which I think comes from Gish. Um, but, uh, where it has an influence is more in the spoken Latin of ga.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: okay. That's cool.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the, the Latin as it's spoken and the Latin that you learn in score [00:12:00] two different things,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: just like the English you read in the newspaper, um, and the English that people actually speak. Could be very different from place to place. And so Latin was no different. There was a, a spoken version of Latin, which had all of its slang and all of of its particular ways of expressing things and pronouncing things often affected by the local language that was there before Latin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And that'd be different in different places.
And so there would've been a certain influence of Gish on that Latin as it was spoken in ga.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay. And before we move on from the Franks entirely, um, you called their linguistic legacy like a paradox. What do you mean by that?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Well, it's a paradox in this sense. You would expect that a conquering people would be able to impose its language on the
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: people. But instead, what happened was that, that the conquerors were conquered. Linguistically speaking, and so they end up speaking French. They were, in a way, a victim of their own success because they conquered [00:13:00] huge, vast swaths of territory, but couldn't populate it with frankish speakers and maybe didn't even want to necessarily, uh, so they ended up adopting the language of the people that they were ruling, which was this early form of what we'd later call French.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: That is interesting. That is so fascinating. And then of course the French change English later, so
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: What's,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: it's all these wheels of fortune, you know,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and there are words that go back and forth between them, back and forth between Germanic and romance and Germanic and romance
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: crazy.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: over again. It's, it's quite wild. But what's really interesting about French in particular, when you look at French now, you're actually seeing a language that's more. Latin, like then French would've been in the Middle Ages
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh huh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: during the Renaissance, French underwent a process of sort of deification. So they
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: rid of a lot of the words that they had taken from [00:14:00] Frankish. There are still many, but they got rid of a lot of them and replaced them with words that they reborrowed from Latin.
Because during this entire time, Latin was still a language that was used, uh, like more of a classical style of Latin. of the church. so
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: had this A, this access to Latin. And so you get cases where there are words that are from the sort of spoken slang, everyday street Latin and the fancy book Latin words, coexisting in French
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right, right. And we are gonna talk a little bit about that later. This is a really cool topic. Um, okay, so let's kind of get out of that a little bit and go over to the Vikings in England. Um, everybody knows a little bit about this, but. Uh, I think that a lot of people would be surprised to know that there was such a thing called the Dane Law, which was freaking huge.
Seriously, go look up a map if you've never heard of it before. This thing is like, I, it looks like it takes up half of England. [00:15:00] Um, so can you tell us what the heck that was, what was going on there? What languages were there
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Okay,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: we're talking about,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: yeah, let's, let's, um. the channel now,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: mm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: we're looking at what's now modern day England. Now, during Roman times, this was also occupied by the Romans, and a very similar situation happened there has happened in Gaul. So there was a Celtic language spoken there, and it had started to become replaced, uh, at least, especially in cities with Latin, but never completely replaced. what happened when the Empire fell, or was the process of it falling? Was that the Romans withdrew from Britain. And they were through their protection as well. And so it's debated exactly, exactly what circumstances were that led to this. But what happened was Germanic peoples also crossed over into what would be later called England.
And these peoples were called, uh, traditionally the angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. But what [00:16:00] the best way to think about them is, uh, a collection of tribes from, um, sort of. Southern Denmark, uh, and into maybe that northwestern part of Germany.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and they crossed over and they essentially established their dominion.
And in their case, the language won out. So the, there was a language shift in this region of Southern Britain, which would be called, which would be called England after them. And the Celtic language, um, went away. Or at least became limited to the far Western fringe, what we call whales and Cornwall today. So these, uh, are the descendants of the speakers of that Celtic language, uh, or at least linguistic descendants of the speakers of that Celtic language that was, uh, in Britain before Latin. And so you have these Germanic speakers and they speak a variety of dialects, but they're more or less mutually comprehensible.
After a little while, they start to, [00:17:00] uh, form a collective identity as what they called English.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the name of one of their tribes, which were the, the s
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and uh, then eventually they come to call themselves in Latin, at least the Anglo-Saxons. Um, they never called themselves that in English
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: But that was this a sort of a, a political identity that was adopted because they were soon joined after a few centuries they were joined by, uh, other Germanic speaking peoples, the Danes.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are Scandinavians, uh, from, from Denmark and uh, and Norway, depending on where you are, uh, in Britain, you know, it's sort of whatever, the closest one. To you, that's who you're gonna get rated by.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, of course.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are the people we know, uh, know as the Vikings, uh, uh, is a word that more or less translates to pirate.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so it's not that all of the people in Scandinavia were Vikings, but if you were in England, the ones you would encounter would be Vikings.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes, yes.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so this [00:18:00] starts to happen in the late eighth century and continues until sort of the mid 11th century. So we're thinking around seven. 90 to, um, 10 66. We'll talk about that year,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: particular in
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Super big ear. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but that's really the last gasp of these, um, Scandinavian incursions into England.
And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: is that they really wipe the floor with the English for a long time, uh, until you get to, uh, uh, the reign of a king named Alfred the Great. And he was a king of one of the kingdoms. So England wasn't unified at this, at this time. He was the king of one of the kingdoms, which is called Wessex.
Um. Wessex means West Saxons. Uh, so he was the king of, of that group. And he essentially, um, brought the Danes to, uh, uh, brought their expansion to a halt and sort of formalized relations with them and said, okay, let's come up with a way. I mean, he fought them quite a bit too,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: in the end, he came up [00:19:00] with a, a treaty, which established Danish Over part of England, a Danish rule,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: this part is called the Dane Law. For that reason. It's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Naturally.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: in which Danish law held sway.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And in fact, the word law itself is a Danish lone word. It's a lone word. Yeah. It means that which is laid down.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Cool. That's so fascinating. So it, it, so, okay, so it was a way to. Put somewhat of a end, final end to all of these like constant, constant, uh, invasions and incursions from the north. Um, and okay, so I am really interested to know how much English was spoken in the Dane law. Was it English with Danish influences or was it Danish with English influences?
What are we talking about?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So the rating that happened at gave way to [00:20:00] settlement. So the first Danes that came were just interested in stealing things and burning things and you know, that sort of the pillaging. Uh, lifestyle,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Classic.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but bef, but before too long, they began to settle as well. so the din law had a mixture of speakers of English, old English, uh, so a very early form of English, one that we're not able to comprehend when we hear it or read it today.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, no.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and old Norse, which is the language that the Dane spoke. And so these were spoken side by side, uh, side by side with each other, and they were. it's debated whether the two would've been able to understand each other easily, but with some effort they would've been able to understand each other.
Because these languages are both Germanic languages. They're not so distant from one another.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: endings. Um, but most of the words are recognizable. And so if you're living with neighbors who speak this language, you could probably work out a way of communicating and
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: your son might marry one of their daughters and [00:21:00] you know.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the communities start to blend together and words start to pass back and forth. in the end, the English language ran out because the Dane law came to an end and.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: rule was established over that, uh, territory once again, but there was a lot of Danish influence that remains in the English has spoken in those regions.
And place names are a really big, um, a really big, uh, tell for where the Dayin law was actually. You can make a, a map and you look for certain place name elements, like place names that end in BBY.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: this comes from an old norward meaning settlement.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ooh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you see that BY,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the din law.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh wow, that's really cool. Interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Grimsby, the,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of the grim one,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: oh my God, that is so cool. Wow. Okay. And so, and so in the areas where the Dane Law was, can you today see a [00:22:00] difference in maybe the dialect spoken in that part of England where it's like, that sounds a little bit influenced by the North.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you can, so the problem is we're in this. Age of mass communication now.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: a lot of these traditional dialects have unfortunately receded or died out.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: look back at old recordings or speak to old people who are, you know, maybe old rural people who haven't traveled a lot, you might hear some of these things.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, there are some words that, uh, that have stuck around, especially in places like Yorkshire that would be a part of the Dane
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Do you have any examples?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, I'm wondering if, there's one caveat, which is that. The dialect that of English that was spoken there
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: actually quite similar to old nor so it's sometimes hard to, uh, to
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: But, um, but I can give you tons of examples of words that came into modern English,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: we speak that are [00:23:00] of old nor origin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: love to hear it.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: so one example is, um, uh, basically any word that has a, uh, an sk at the start. So Sky. As an example, uh, sky skirt, um, skull, these sk words did not exist in old English, by and large, but they did in old nor.
So all of these, all these skull words come from from old Norse, whereas that end in g are very frequently from old Norse like egg.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Yeah, the word egg is an old nors form in, um, in old English, if we had, uh, maintained the old English version, we'd call them ease. Have
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: my God. That's so, that's not as good as egg?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: it's not as good as egg, although it had a
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: No.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: plural form.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: um, this is something that, uh, the, the first printer in England, William Caxton, tells an anecdote about he's, he's worried about, you know, standardizing what form of the language he's gonna print.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: he tells an anecdote about [00:24:00] talking, uh, someone who's ordering eggs at an inn or something, and he says, uh, ais, ais,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: I.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: do you mean. You know, I, sorry, I don't speak French is essentially what they say 'cause they don't know what he's saying. because for them the word for egg is aen. Uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: What?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: yeah, which would've become that e form that I was mentioning before. So it may have been e in the singular and ein in the plural, which might redeem the word a little bit for
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh, little bit, but still not as good.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh, I see. Yeah. Oh, that's so weird. Um, I mean, it makes sense, but like I'm glad that egg won out 'cause Yeah. Um. Okay, so we're, are we talk, so God, I, I remember reading about how. There's this interesting layer of different words for kind of the same concept, and you could see some of it being Danish and [00:25:00] some of it being English, kind of like, um, sick and Ill, or I, God, I'm, I'm drawing to blank on like other stuff right now.
But is that, is that normal or is that just like a weird thing that happened with English and nor, or is that kind of just something you see everywhere? I.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Everywhere where you see this, um, contact.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: um, you also see this contact in, in places like. know, east Asia, for instance, uh, Japan had contact with Chinese, which was a prestigious language for them, is the language of, of high culture for a long time. And so Japanese has taken a lot of words from Chinese, but at the same time, they've also retained Japanese words.
And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: situation where you get two words that roughly refer to the same context. Uh, same concept rather, but you use them in different context because one has a more sort of. lofty feel to it
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: feel to it. Uh, an example, uh, for English would [00:26:00] be, would be this kingly regal distinction
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: brotherly, fraternal. These words mean the same thing technically, but you would use them in very different contexts. And this is
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: that comes with this, uh, language contact situation. Uh, where you have, you have options, you can sort of dial up or down the formality depending on. Which one of those words you use?
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right. Or like, uh, sisterhood versus sorority or something like that. Like that is interesting. Um, well, I guess, so that brings me to the Norman Conquest. Um, so we're jumping forward in time a little bit. The year 10 66. Big year for England. Tell us a little bit about what was going on with, uh, the language, at least with that.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So. to 10 66, the political power in England, outside of the Dane Law for the period when it existed, uh, [00:27:00] was held by, uh, kingdoms and rulers who spoke early forms of English. So, uh, a form that we call Old English. And, uh, for literature fans, this is the language that Beowulf has written in, uh, a very great poem, uh, and a lot of fun. They spoke a, you know, a little less, um, of a poetic form perhaps, but they, they spoke old English.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: after 10 66, the rulers of England come to be speakers of a form of French called Norman French, is an interesting story. The Normans themselves are a group of people who spoke French, but they are the 10 descendants of Vikings as well.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right. The Northman Norman Liz. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Exactly. And so
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: did was more or less the same as what Alfred did in England,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: them an area where they could rule. And the deal was you stopped raid us, sit down, rule there, that's your land, and protect us from your friends back [00:28:00] home.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: it worked out in that case. And, uh, to some dynastic, um. Astic entanglements. The Normans, uh, specifically William of Normandy, has a claim to the English throne.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And when, uh, when the King of England, Edward the Confessor dies, uh, without an heir, then there's a scramble. And, uh, a local, uh, family of potentates in England claim the throne. The A Dain claims the throne and William of Normandy claims the throne.
And so there's a lot of fighting and in the end, the one who wins out is William Normandy, AKA William the Conqueror. Because yeah, he conquered
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of Hastings in 10 66. Uh, and when he takes over, he brings in all his buddies from Normandy who speak a form, an early form of French called Norman French. they take over and they. [00:29:00] Remake the government in, uh, the language of French. so all of the scribes that were trained under the old, uh, the old regime, uh, they get replaced by French scribes. Uh, the people who are in charge of everything get replaced, be replaced by French speakers. And as a result, English kind of goes underground a
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: time because. is not an age of mass literacy, not an age where writing is particularly cheap to do and producing books. So as a result, we don't have a lot of English texts from this period when the French are on top of the heap.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: that's a bummer.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: It's a bummer. We have a few and we can sort of guess what's going on, but it's not until, um, a few hundred years later, uh, in, uh, roughly the 14 hundreds where we start to get this real resurgence of English literature and people like Chaucer, and the Canterbury Tales and
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: a book that some people may have heard of. Um, but during that period when the French, uh, [00:30:00] are in charge, changes too. just a little bit harder to see. so English starts to take on a lot of the aspects of French, a lot of vocabulary from French. And, uh, it also, it's no longer standard language, there's no one there keeping it the way it was.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: I see. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: when it was, uh, when the, uh, English speakers were ruling and they were producing their laws in English and things like that. They had an incentive to sort of write in a particular way, and there was a standard and not a standard in the sense that we have today where, you know, there's mass education and people are taught to spell and, and speak in a
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but there was. A greater deal of uniformity in the, in the writing. And so if you were from a different part of the country, you would be trained to write in one dialect, the West Saxon dialect because of Alfred,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And that goes away when French becomes used. So the French is all [00:31:00] very nice and standard, but the English is wild.
It, you know, every dialect is different. It changes relatively rapidly. And so when it reemerges, uh. To be called middle English now as opposed to old English. It's very different from old English
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: A lot of the endings have been lost and a lot of new French words have come in. And as a result, you can really quite easily read, um, middle English,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: That's the Shakespeare, the Shakespearean, that's the middle English kind of that you're talking about.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: a little bit later. Uh,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: is early modern English,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay. Okay. Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: an event that happens, um, roughly the. Uh, it's roughly the start of printing that
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah. Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: matches it off. That's the historical event that you can point to, um, in the late, uh, late 15th century. Uh, but also there's a big linguistic change, which is called the great vowel shift that sets these
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: yeah, these, these two apart.
So basically the great vowel shift is, um, the [00:32:00] vowels of middle English made sense. And I, so when we look at, um. So you speak some other languages,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: some other European languages.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you know how when you're learning other languages and you have to learn that the vowel that we spell A and we say A
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: not
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: could that, why does that ah, sound a in English?
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of the great vowel shift where all of the pronunciations of, uh, a particular set of vowels radically changed. And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: spelling unfortunately was standardized before that happened. So it's a bit of a, you know, bad luck on our part, but, um,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but that's what we use to, uh, mark the difference between middle and modern English.
And so Shakespeare's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: other side of that
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: on the other side. Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: uh, so his stuff is even more comprehensible to us. But, uh, if you read Chaucer, say the Canterbury Tales, it's a lot more, uh, easy to understand than if you hear it. If you hear it, it's like, well, what's going on here? [00:33:00] All those vowels have changed
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but if you read it, okay.
I recognize these words, a lot of the same words that we use now, and the grammar is very similar,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Things like, uh, if I remember remembering my lessons from that where things like wife used to be, we, and, um, I, again drawing a blank on, are there other examples of like this battle shift that you can give us?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So, um, a good example would be, name would've been. Nam or nama?
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay. That makes sense.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: wife would've been, we house would've been s
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: yeah.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: there are, there are a few other, so those, but those are the ones that are the most striking.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: So reading it, you're like, I get what this is all about. And hearing it, you're like, what are you saying to me right now? Interesting. Um, and so, okay, so the norming conquest 10 66, over time, we're talking like, um, I. All of the laws had to be written in French [00:34:00] and all of the, anytime you went to court or did anything officially, it was French.
And that was like all the nobility, the English nobility kind of got kicked out of their positions and replaced by Frenchmen. And every, the lofty higher upper class all spoke French. Um, so, okay, so English is a dramatic language because of the rules about how. It goes together how to use words and because of its origins.
But what do you think about the estimates that English words themselves are like 30 something percent French, 30 something percent Latin, which means the majority of our words are Latin based. Is that accurate?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Yeah, that's, uh, well, the, the precise numbers, you could probably debate endlessly,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: but basically, yes, that's correct.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, but the, the devil's in the details because it depends on how you count words. So if you
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: up a dictionary of English,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you just count words and find their [00:35:00] origins, then you will see, uh, statistics like that. However, if you go through the words that people actually speak by frequency.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: It is a very different picture
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: almost all of the most common words core Germanic words.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: interesting. Okay, so, okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: eat, you know, all core Germanic, if
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: something like, um, government priorities, advance education, those are all going to be either French or Latin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: See the lofty words? Yeah, that is very interesting. And that, okay, so then that brings us to the idea of vulgar, which is such an interesting concept. Um, I'd love to ask you about that a little bit, where you have like. You're studying the etymology of a word, the the origin of where words come from, and you're like, this is vulgar Latin, vulgar English.
Tell us about that. What, what are we looking at here?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So vulgar Latin is one [00:36:00] of these, uh, it's a very useful term, but it sometimes gets you in trouble with people because they, they, they don't like it. I'll, I'll outline what it means first, and then I'll outline why people don't, some people don't like it as so vulgar Latin refers to the spoken Latin. So in Latin just means sort of the rabble, the
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: people. Uh, so vulgar means popular common every day. Um, and so it's a, it's a way to distinguish the kind of Latin that gave rise to the romance languages versus the kind of Latin you study in Latin class,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: and Cicero. Uh, and there are some pretty substantial differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and uh, and just sort of sentence construction. between these two, but you can consider it like very similar to how you, how different English is if you take an exact literal, uh, record of what someone says versus if someone sits down and makes a formal, wants to write a [00:37:00] formal academic article.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: gonna be very different. The pronunciation will be different, more casual in speech. Um, there'll be different words used. There will be different, you know, a lot less complexity of grammar, from the point of view of, you know, how many clauses are you stacking next to each other to make this
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: in speech. People tend to say, and then, and then, and then, and then.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: great. Right?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: than notwithstanding the, in as much as we, you know, these
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: very written constructions that you see, so that Latin was similar. Um, and the spoken version is what people refer to as vulgar Latin. The reason some people don't like that phrase is it gives the impression that the, the aristocrats were speaking
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the finest Latin, which is probably not the case. They were
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: shelf Latin.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, so they, they may have had their different, you know. Different diction, but it's not that they didn't have any of these features of spoken Latin. So
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: sometimes say, oh, don't use the word vulgar Latin, but it's very [00:38:00] clear what it means. So I still use it.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh, okay, because it, you're right, it does give across that thing of a class divide where you're like, oh, the people are on the street speaking this version, and then up in the. Mansion or whatever, they're speaking enough. But that wasn't really the case, is what you're saying. Like that's not what vulgar is.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: It's in
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the even aristocrats were speaking had features in their speech that we associate with vulgar Latin.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah, ah, okay. And do you see this across other non-Latin languages? Like there's a formal way of speaking or writing Welsh as opposed to just on the street like it's. Is that universal?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, it's universal. Wherever there's a kind of, um, literary culture.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm. Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, so what happens with literary cultures is people really fixate on the usage of a particular author. In a particular time.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: [00:39:00] so you see this, uh, I'll, I'll use just to take an example from the other side of the world, use China as an example. So China had a form of, uh, the language which is called classical Chinese. And it is based on the language as it was written at a particular time in ancient China around the time of Confucius. And in fact, Confucius's works are some of the ones that people look to. And imitate to create this written standard of the language that continues over the centuries. But at that time, it's probably not something that anyone speaks. It's a written form only, and then their speech is more vulgar. Chinese, or,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: vernacular Chinese. And then, but because it's not written, we don't know a lot about it.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Until the very, very modern period when people say, what, why are we doing this?
Why do we have this completely different way of writing from speaking? And so then
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: start to, uh, then they start to write more like they speak.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: [00:40:00] Interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: movement happens. So you see this in, um, you see this in China, you see this in in Europe with the, um, the rise of the vernaculars. So Dante being one of the first to saying, Hey, is actually this language that we speak that's not Latin is worth writing in. And we can
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, that's very interesting. And okay, so before we close off anything, I do wanna talk a little bit about just war in general, where there is. You see language shifts from war and conquering and all these are huge events, um, but you also see language shifts from intermarriage and trade and things. Would you say that one trade versus war one is more influential in language shifts than the other?
They kind of no way to know.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Well, it, it depends on what happens with the war. So if a war is fought then you get a status quo, no territory [00:41:00] changes hands, you may get some particular words come in from that war, but it's not likely to a huge change.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, however, if you get conquest
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: great.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of war, you start to see, I mean, we saw this example talking about the francs. With the, um, with the Normans. Now, in both of those cases, their language didn't end up winning out, but it had an effect on the other language.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the case of the, uh, the English, the birth of the English language, uh, the Celtic languages ended up losing out in favor of what would become old English. So it
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: either way, but there's, uh, often a, an effect
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of the language that didn't sort of make it. And, and the reason for that is because there's a hierarchy of the two languages. There's one that's sort of got the power and one that doesn't. But
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: is, you know, even the rich people who have the power need someone to take care of their kid. And maybe that person is a native speaker of the language that's not so prestigious, and that's
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: [00:42:00] Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: kid learns all sorts of words from their nanny, and then that kid grows up and thinks, well, there's nothing wrong with those words. And
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: along to their kids. And so this can happen as well. Or you might get situations where one group, uh, a member of the conquering people, um, marry or maybe not marry, but um, end up having children in some way. Not always, uh, in a positive way necessarily, but, uh, with, um, members of the Concord people. Uh, and this is something that people talk about, uh, perhaps happening in the distant prehistory of Europe a lot. And as a result, you know, there are concessions made. There are, um, there are accommodations. One person tries to speak the other person's language and maybe does it imperfectly, and then passes that imperfect understanding of the language onto their children, and things change that way.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: are many different opportunities for language to change through conquest. Not all lovely to think about, but [00:43:00] they, you know, they happen.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Trade on the other hand, is not as hierarchical. It results in situations which are not as hierarchical.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, now there are certainly often a hierarchy, but what you get with trade is often the emergence of, um, pigeon languages. And a pigeon language is a language that's sort of, you know, I don't speak your language. You don't speak my language. one of us is in charge here. I can't make you speak my
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Okay.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: me speak yours. What we wanna do is trade. And so we'll make do, I'll learn a few of yours. You learn a few of mine, and we'll make, we'll have a very kind of make
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Fascinating.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: we can get along with to trade. Then what happens is, uh, often you will get children who grow up hearing that and they flesh it out into a, what's called a Creole language.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, and so. Then you can get things that are kind of, uh, like more full fledged languages, so to speak. [00:44:00] I, I, I should hesitate to, I hesitate to say full fledged languages because you know who's to say.
But, um, uh, but this can happen and this happens often through trade.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: That is so, so are there any like widely used pigeon languages around that just kind of took root?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Mm-hmm. Yeah. There
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: I.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: um. One of them? Uh, no, and I'd have to, I'd have to ponder my, uh, my geography, but I'll give you some names. Um, talk pieing, uh, is a widely spoken pigeon language. Um, it means talk pigeon,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh my God.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: is thought to come from the word business. So talk business.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Oh my God. That's really interesting.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: that is, that is spoken today, uh, I think fairly widely, but for the life of me, I can never remember where.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Uh, yeah. And for, for our listeners out there, we're not talking pigeon, the bird. It's like P-I-D-G-E-N or something like that. Pigeon is that? Am I. So, um, no, not the, not spelled like the word and we're not talking [00:45:00] about the word. That's a different thing. Um, so that's interesting. It definitely sounds like, uh, conquest and war has somewhat of an impact, but it's, it's sta it feels like languages evolve more lastingly through necessity or just.
Person to person interactions of trade or just marriage or whatever relationships that is interesting and um,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: even French, stop being spoken in England.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: ah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And war actually had a part to play in that
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: the English were, well, they lost Normandy eventually,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: um, under the reign of King John.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, for which reason he's not very popular among others. Uh, but uh, then the English fought the French game in the a hundred years war, and as a
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: they started to up with their own sort of separate identity and this aristocracy that had been speaking French, they speak, they're also speaking English for a long time
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm-hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: And hey, aren't we all English? Right? We're [00:46:00] speaking French. So then you start to get this, uh, resurgence of English identity that leads into this, the English Renaissance and the era of Shakespeare and all
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: of thing. And the really, uh, eff fluorescence of English literature once again.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: And wasn't that, uh, Edward ii that was like, Hey, I'm gonna actually give speeches in English and I'm gonna make English the official language. And it was kind of controversial, but kind of popular, but kind of controversial at a time to make English, the official language of England. Uh, something like that.
I remember.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: I, I'm not, I don't remember the dates on that, but, uh, there was one point when, uh, parliament started to accept speeches in English, and
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Hmm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: sort of watershed moment. I.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Interesting. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: a, a, a language of power once again,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Like you say, like you.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: given it up.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah, you, you, you take it as a given now, oh, English is spoken in England, but it wasn't always that way and it wasn't so clear cut and very interesting. Um, okay, so before we close off here again, my, my, [00:47:00] I'd like to talk about huge debates on whatever topic my guest has an expertise in.
So the big general debate in linguistics is. What are your thoughts on the prescriptive versus descriptive language debate? Is language laid out and kind of changes over time? That's how we should do it, or does it just go however we say it should go and that's how we make it.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Okay, so this is an interesting, interesting debate and I don't know if I, uh, have the same opinion as, as most linguists. So I'll lay it out and I'll see if what people think so as. I think we have to distinguish between two approaches to language, linguists, study language, more or less in a scientific fashion as a sort of objective study that they're not, they don't have opinions about, they're not trying to control, it's not engineering,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Mm.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: science.
So you know, you, you don't. Really involve yourself in trying to make it go one way or another. You're just interested in what's going on, as a result, you end up taking a descriptive [00:48:00] approach as you would for anything else,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Sure.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: scientifically. Um, and as a result, uh, linguists have become, associated with this descriptive approach to language, and it's something that we often teach in introductory linguistics classes because most people come into. A linguistics class, say if they encounter for the first time in university, uh, basically not knowing what it means to study language scientifically. And so they might think, oh, this is about, you know, they're just gonna try and correct me for putting prepositions at the end of the word.
No, that's not really what we're doing. We're interested in what goes on so that we can understand more deeply what goes on in the human mind or, or in society or in history. We wanna understand these things and so as a result, you don't interfere with the experiment, uh, however. The prescriptive approach to language is something that I think everyone has. We all have opinions about language, so prescriptive saying language should be this way or
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: way. Uh, and this could even be a, a small matter of [00:49:00] taste. You know, I don't like the way that this sounds, I'd prefer it to be like this.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Ah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Um, and all linguists do this. All linguists have this. This is the sort of the citizen. Uh, approach to language
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: scientist.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: you, you're a citizen of the, the, the Republic of English, you know, as an English speaker. and so you have opinions about how it should go and you have opinions about what you like about what's going on now and what you don't like, and everyone has those opinions, including linguists.
But they try and think ideally set 'em aside when they're doing their scientific work.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Right. So interesting
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: and.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: about constructivism. You might say, I just think it exists and we have to accept it, but we have to be mindful of when we're using it and whether it's appropriate to do so.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yes. And one of the more, one of the more, um, recent examples of this kind of like blur over what even is, language is the word literally, [00:50:00] which I. Has for a very long time. So it, the definition was always like word for word, you know, like no other interpretation or exaggeration or whatever it's word for word.
But for a very long time we're just kind of, oh, literally the biggest pizza I've ever seen. Or you know, like we just use it in a non-literary way, and now it means. Not literally just, and so it's like that kind of thing of like, should we describe how it happened or should we just say, no, don't do this.
And it's an interesting debate, you know?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Uh, there's also an element of futility in a lot of these
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Like by the time that people get upset about them, they're almost like a, a fe complete.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: do? It's already happened, so you can, you know, write a letter to the editor or something. But other than that,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah,
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: not likely to be with you.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: yeah, yeah. The dictionary is like, we're just telling you what somebody might mean, not, not telling you what you have to think of it. We're just like giving you, you know, something to understand. [00:51:00] That's interesting. Okay, so what can people, what kind of eras or what kind of things can people learn about in your newsletter, the Dead Language Society and your workshops too?
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: So what, um, what I cover with the Dead Language Society is the entire sweep of the history of English. Uh, from the present day, going all the way back into prehistoric times, uh, all the way back to, um. This hypothetical ancestor language, uh, proto Indo-European. So it's a big 6,000 year sweep of history. A lot of interesting stuff happens, and, and I, I give myself a little wiggle, ru I say a guided tour through the history of the English language and its relatives.
So I've got lots, uh, I've got
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: So
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: My, my
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: asterisk. Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: I can still talk about things like French, 'cause uh, I enjoy doing that as well. Um, but just due to the, um, due to my own, uh, particular interests, I focus a lot on. The old English period, which is, uh, I think a, a period that needs to be better understood by modern English speakers because it's there where we [00:52:00] see a lot of the roots of our language.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Yeah.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: that pre 10, 66 period where you get the literature like Beowulf and uh, um, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A lot of amazing poetry. Uh, it's a, it's a beautiful period, uh, that I think, uh, it, it does take a little bit of training to learn to read it, but,
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: It is diff it's hard. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Um, okay. Well, uh, thank you so much again for Colin Gory. Thank you so much again for coming on the show and answering all these language questions. Um, yeah. Thank you.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Oh, thank you very much, Emily. It's been a pleasure.
emily-ross_1_06-11-2025_130457: Alright, bye.
colin-gorrie_1_06-11-2025_150457: Bye.
