English Language: Why Do We Speak Like That?

Why do our spellings not match our pronunciations? Why are so many words just really weird?
Alice Loxton and Ben Henderson take us on a whistle stop tour of some of the key moments that forged the English Language as we know it today.
We’ll be looking at Germanic and French invasions, the impact of a period of history called the Great Vowel Shift and Caxton’s first printing press, our ever-increasing vocabulary and, of course, the dictionaries that go with it.
Subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds and on Here For The History’s YouTube channel.
Key Sources:
The English Language: A Historical Introduction - Professor Joan Beal and Dr Philip Shaw
The Adventure of the English - Melvynn Bragg