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Only tangentially related, but I've been auditing "The History of English Podcast"[0] and if this sort of thing interests you, you'll probably like that too. [

Only tangentially related, but I've been auditing "The History of English Podcast"[0] and if this sort of thing interests you, you'll probably like that too. [0] https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/episodes/ https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/episodes/

mjhay 2y ago
I highly recommend that podcast as well. The average native English speaker doesn't know much about it.
sevensor 2y ago
Fabulous podcast. Fascinating how we can use pronunciation shifts to date the arrival of a word into English, and how some words have entered the language multiple times by different routes. Also, I learned that there really was a castle in a swamp, in Wessex, to which King Alfred retreated during a particularly heavy Viking invasion.
empath75 2y ago
This is going to sound like damning with faint praise, but it's not meant that way -- this is absolutely my favorite thing to listen to while trying to fall asleep. His voice is quite soothing, and it's interesting enough to constantly hold your attention, while not being _so_ interesting that it keeps you awake, and while it's loosely organized chronologically on an episode-by-episode basis, within each episode it's sort of arranged thematically, so you can dip in and out of consciousness and not be confused as to what he's talking about, and you can pick it up the next night at some random spot and not really feel like you missed much. It also has long stretches where he's just sort of listing off words and etymologies, which are the kinds of trivial facts I love, but I think my brain also takes as a signal to turn off.
- devilbunny 2y ago
  I used to listen to the podcast when it was still young. His original goal was to do it in maybe 100 episodes or so. After he started making money from Patreon, it slowed to a crawl in terms of progressing through the history of the language. Eventually, I gave up. I’m not one of his backers, so he doesn’t owe me anything, but I would have preferred it if he did something more like Dan Carlin (there are plenty of quibbles about his historiography, but you have to admit he’s very good at storytelling), doing deep dives on various subjects instead of beating Middle and early Modern English to death. Yes, they were very important times in the language, where the mostly-comprehensible Middle English turned into the entirely-comprehensible (if you have footnotes for words whose meaning has changed and cultural references that no longer apply) early Modern English, but the language hasn’t been static since 1500.
  - empath75 2y ago
    I think he's just being comprehensive.
ycombinete 2y ago
What do you mean by auditing?
- sandworm101 2y ago
  To audit a course, say at university, means to attend and perhaps do assignments but not pay fees nor receive credit for a course. It is often observed as someone "sitting in" on lectures without writing the final exam. Another usage is for supervising professors who attend a lecture to "audit" it in the sense that an IRS auditor would audit a tax return. They are examining the junior professor's performance or adherence to guidelines.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    But it remains an open question under either definition, since this podcast series isn’t a college course. And, for all we know, the original poster is not a professor…
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nobody9999 2y ago
  >What do you mean by auditing? Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12608-when-i-use-a-word-humpty-dumpty-said-in-rather https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12608-when-i-use-a-word-hum... “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.” ― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
  - BoiledCabbage 2y ago
    What a horrible response
    - nobody9999 2y ago

mjhay 2y ago

I highly recommend that podcast as well. The average native English speaker doesn't know much about it.

sevensor 2y ago

Fabulous podcast. Fascinating how we can use pronunciation shifts to date the arrival of a word into English, and how some words have entered the language multiple times by different routes. Also, I learned that there really was a castle in a swamp, in Wessex, to which King Alfred retreated during a particularly heavy Viking invasion.

empath75 2y ago

This is going to sound like damning with faint praise, but it's not meant that way -- this is absolutely my favorite thing to listen to while trying to fall asleep. His voice is quite soothing, and it's interesting enough to constantly hold your attention, while not being _so_ interesting that it keeps you awake, and while it's loosely organized chronologically on an episode-by-episode basis, within each episode it's sort of arranged thematically, so you can dip in and out of consciousness and not be confused as to what he's talking about, and you can pick it up the next night at some random spot and not really feel like you missed much. It also has long stretches where he's just sort of listing off words and etymologies, which are the kinds of trivial facts I love, but I think my brain also takes as a signal to turn off.

devilbunny 2y ago
I used to listen to the podcast when it was still young. His original goal was to do it in maybe 100 episodes or so. After he started making money from Patreon, it slowed to a crawl in terms of progressing through the history of the language. Eventually, I gave up. I’m not one of his backers, so he doesn’t owe me anything, but I would have preferred it if he did something more like Dan Carlin (there are plenty of quibbles about his historiography, but you have to admit he’s very good at storytelling), doing deep dives on various subjects instead of beating Middle and early Modern English to death. Yes, they were very important times in the language, where the mostly-comprehensible Middle English turned into the entirely-comprehensible (if you have footnotes for words whose meaning has changed and cultural references that no longer apply) early Modern English, but the language hasn’t been static since 1500.
- empath75 2y ago
  I think he's just being comprehensive.

ycombinete 2y ago

What do you mean by auditing?

sandworm101 2y ago
To audit a course, say at university, means to attend and perhaps do assignments but not pay fees nor receive credit for a course. It is often observed as someone "sitting in" on lectures without writing the final exam. Another usage is for supervising professors who attend a lecture to "audit" it in the sense that an IRS auditor would audit a tax return. They are examining the junior professor's performance or adherence to guidelines.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  But it remains an open question under either definition, since this podcast series isn’t a college course. And, for all we know, the original poster is not a professor…
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nobody9999 2y ago
>What do you mean by auditing? Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12608-when-i-use-a-word-humpty-dumpty-said-in-rather https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12608-when-i-use-a-word-hum... “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.” ― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
- BoiledCabbage 2y ago
  What a horrible response
  - nobody9999 2y ago