"To be or not to be" *Is you or is you ain't*

1600: Thou art thy reason 2000: you are the reason 2050: you is the because

fun fact: one of the oldest words that still remain around today since ancient English is the word "town"

It’s crazy how English went from sounding completely german to how it is today! It’s so mind blowing to hear old english!

*Standard English in the future:* _"She sittin' right there under dat Dank ass table lookin' like a queen all hot and white like, finna go ask her out"_ Our language is going to sound Shakespearean to them

Middle english be like: In the mid of the table, börkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörkbörk

British Latin sounds like a mix of Spanish and Portuguese spoke by a drunk person, Speaking native portuguese and basic spanish I can understand it quite well

For those who want to listen in reverse: 10:30 Modern English 9:17 Early Modern English 7:55 Late Middle English 6:38 Middle English 6:00 Outside Influence: Old Norman 4:38 Old English 3:58 Outside Influence: British Latin 3:20 Outside Influence: British Celtic 1:50 Anglo-Frisian 0:16 Proto-Germanic --> West Germanic

"Yong she was and yet nat so" Roasted...

Old english be like: æ

Future English be like: Center 'f th' table, 'genst th' wovn cloths on th' wall, there wuz a cher unde' a canpi, and fine-lookn grl sat there, lookin damn strait like a truewoman, that king Edmund thot that sh' wuz one 'f hiz close reltivs. Sh' wuz yung but nah. Th' braids 'f her dark haer wazn't tuchd by frost, her white arms and cleer face wuz flawls and smooth, and th' starlight wuz in her brite eyez, as the cloudls nite; but she lookn like a queen, she lookn like she knows lots 'f thingz thru th' years she's livd. Top her brow her head wuz covrd with a cap of silvr, lace nettd with lil gems, glitt'ring white; but her soft grey robe was not boujee but haz a silvr leaves on 'er belt. He neva seen nor thot of such lovli-lookn being; he was shook and feeln shy that he wuz sitt'n on th' king's table with a fine-az grl.

I'm a native Spanish speaker and when I heard the British Latin I got amazed because I was able to understand almost everything.

"And" will never change. Glory to the "And"!!!

It's interesting how the word "and" has never changed.

0:20 Proto Germanic 1:50 Anglo Frisian 3:17 Outside influence British Celtic 3:58 Outside influence British Latin 4:36 Old English 5:58 Old Norman 6:40 Middle English 7:55 Late Middle English 9:18 Early Modern English 10:29 Modern English

I feel like this video, great though it is, has neglected the transition from old to middle English. It jumps from c.10th century English to c. late 14th century, and the two forms are dramatically different. So… I decided to bridge the gap! Here are two intermediate stages of the language, which can be described as Transition English (or Semi-Saxon) and Early Middle English, respectively. c.1150: In þe bordes middle, wiþ wefen riften uppon þe walle, wæs an setl under selde, and þǽr sat an lafediȝ faȝer tó beséon, and alse wæs sce in maȝdenhád swá þe kynge þæt Edmund wénde þe sce wæs of his néhste kynne. Ȝung sce wæs ac ne swilc. Þá iwunden lokkes hire dunne hǽres nǽren irínen bí nán froste, hire hwíte armes and briht nebb wemmlǽse wǽren and sméþe, and steorrelém wæs in hire lihte égen, al swá græȝ swá wolkenlǽs nihte. Ac cuénlic me þuhte sce, and iþoht wæs in hire isihþ and andȝet, al swilc als án þe cnéow maniȝ þing þá þá ȝǽr bringen. Bufen hire brúwe wráh án cappe hire hǽfed of seolfren ibroȝden seoleke mid smale ȝimmen on nette isett, hwíte glysniende; þǽh hire softe græȝ kyrtel næfde ná maþem búten ánne gyrdel of seolfrene lǽfes iwroht. Swilc winsumnesse in cuike wihte næfde Edmund nǽfre ǽr ne isegen nowþer næfde hé swá ifúnden on his móde; and him wæs eȝþer ȝe wundor ȝe scame þá fúnde hé þe hé hæfde setl æt þe kynges borde onmáng al þis folke swá héh and faȝer. c.1250: I þe bordes middle, aȝenes weven riftes upon þe walle, was a setel under a selde, and þer sat a levdí fair tó besén, and swo ilíche was sche in wimmanlíhede tó þe king þat Edmund wénde þat sche was of his néxstfolde. Ȝung sche was and ȝét nouȝt swo. Þe iwunden lockes of hire dunne here neren irínen bí no frost, hire whíte armes and briȝt semblant wemlese weren and sméþe, and sterrelém was in hire liȝte éȝen, al se grai swo skiles niȝt. Ak quénlí me þuȝte sche, and iþouȝt was in hir isiȝþ and andȝet, al swich as on þe havþ iknowen maní þing þat þe ȝeres bringen. Buve hire brú a cappe wroȝ hire heved of selvere ibroiden selek mid smale ȝimmes a nette iset, whíte glisnende; þouȝ hire soft grai kirtel nadde no ornement búte onne girdel of selvrene leves iwrouȝt. Swich lufsumlék i quike wiȝte nadde Edmund nevere er isén nowþer nadde hé swo ifúnden a his móde; and him was eiþer ȝe wnder ȝe angoise þanne fúnde hé þat hé hadde setel at þe kinges borde among al þis folke swo héȝ and fair. I’d like to emphasise I still really enjoyed the video - this is a fascinating demonstration of how English has evolved, and the pronunciation is, for the most part, very good. Also, great choice of sample text!

You guys don't know how good this timing is. I have a presentation in a month in English class and it's about the evolution of English. I will 100% use this video in the presentation, of course with crediting ABAlphaBeta for all his help! *WE DID IT BOIS! I finally did my English presentation about the history of the English language, I got an A!*

Id like to hear them argue about coconuts.

I learned that basically If I time travelled, I would be killed for not understanding a thing before 13-14th century 🤦🏻‍♀️

1900: "They incorrectly believe that this is an atypical state of affairs." 1975: "People don’t think it be like it is, but it do."

Me: hey what's the wi-fi password Friend: oh it's on the back of the router Back of the router: 0:17

Basically if you travel back in time beyond the 15th century, you will be utterly lost

4:00 I speak Portuguese and I managed to understand literally everything that is written there, this is amazing, I speak british latin and didn't know

It's crazy how much english has changed throughout the centuries. And it's also amazing how it was developing into such a beautiful language. Man, how I love this language.

As someone who speaks English and Spanish, it was fascinating to see few similarities I recognized in the evolution of the language.

English now:oi you got a license for that?

English basically came from Anglo Saxon, west germanic language. However with the French or Norman influence, the language really shifted substantially that no one can really understand medieval English

Wtf, as a french native speaker I can understand literally everything of the Old Norman version

My italian classmates: "English is the hardest language to learn" Old english: am i a joke to you?

We all agree that English is the most messed up language of Europe, neither German nor Italian (among others) suffered so many changes as English.

It was amazing, especially the voice-over. Can't believe You have a grip on all these modifications of the language! Thank You, it's informative and helpful. I'm grateful You mentioned outside influences.

one of the most amazing videos I've ever ever ever seen. As someone who's always been interested in linguistics but never pursued. This is as mystifying as it is revealing. Thank you

British Latin sounds like Spanish with a pinch of Brythonic influence.

4:03 Wtf I'm a Spanish speaker and I can literally understand A LOT of things there, I think almost the whole text lmao, it's so similar to Latin.

Someone said in English "German is a stupid language, no one should ever speak it"... The language they're speaking is originated from German....Such a brave thing to say!

As a welsh speaker, I recognised many words and phrases in the British Celtic part. It’s incredible that the language has evolved, keeping many words!

900: yöu ær þe ræsóm 1300: yœ ár þá ræsôn 1600: thou art the rèason 2000: you are the reason 2500: yolo tho raspo 3500: yoyo lolo popo 10000: märįø kårt

it’s cool how you can hear the german sounds slowly disappear as time went on, especially after it “combined” with norman

This video was nothing but, music to my ears! The accents, and the pronunciations, were truly spot on.

I’m watching this with no headphones, my mom probably thinks I listen to a satanist prayer

0:18 Germanic 1:52 Anglo-Frisian 3:20 British Celtic (Outside influence) 3:58 British Latin (Outside influence) 4:38 Old English 6:00 Old Norman (Outside influence) 6:42 Middle English 7:56 Late Middle English 9:20 Early Modern English 10:30 Modern English *Late Modern English (2000 CE - today)* Mid-table against the woven cloths on the wall, there was a chair under canopy where a fair lady sat who was so like in womanhood to the king that Edmund guessed she was a close relative of his. She was young yet wasn't, her dark braids were untouched by frost, her pale arms and face were smooth and flawless, the starlight in her eyes was gray like a clear night and she looked queenly with consideration in her glance like she had some knowledge gained over the years. Her head above brow was covered with a silver lace cap netted with small white gems but her soft gray robe had nothing on it except for a silver-wrought leaf-girdle. He never saw or imagined such loveliness in a living thing before and was surprised and abashed to learn he had a seat at the king's table with all such high fair folk.

What once was an island dialect of Proto-Germanic spoken by some obscure tribe has evolved into a complex and sophisticated language, influenced by many others, now spoken all over the world and the INTERNET by millions of people, and many more as a lingua franca.

Absolutely lovely video to listen to. Love your narration, pronunciation and just the sound of your voice in general. Wish you would have narrated a little contextual understanding or set-up before each section. As in explaining what changes were taking place with each evolution or iteration of the language. All in all it was a fantastic video. I enjoyed hearing the melodic quality of the older versions and that of your voice as well. Now all we need to do is get you, Simon Whistler, of the "Today I Found Out" Channel, Simon Roper, or Leornand Eald Englisc, together in 1 spot to do a collab!! Some of these other channels talk about the differences but none of them do a thorough enough job (all in one sitting) for me to make heads or tails of what they are describing. Not a slight towards any of them. In fact I LOVE each and every one of their channels. It's just that I wish they would provide viewers with more spoken demonstrations all at once.

Accurate and excellent choice of music! Especially David Russell at the end!

Its crazy how much English has changed over time, I wonder how English will sound like in the future. 👀👽

I coulda sworn he said "hinga dinga durgen"

This past year I studied History of English and again I have to say you nailed the main sound changes! Particularly want to applaud your pronunciation of the early development of diphthongs in Early Modern English

Ta sae muckle fur posting, ah loue thae leid evolution videos! 🙏🏾

0:18: English Traditional 10:32: English Simplified

I feel that I would learn more if the order was reversed

1:38 This word, "kuningas" is still a modern Finnish word meaning "king" It was loaned from Proto-Germanic and has stayed the same

As a passionate about History, i find this video is very learningly. It is interesting to read, listen to the origins of English. It's kinda poetic to hear the very ancient English. I was smiling at the Old Norman part. I'm belgian ( i speak french ) haha. btw, sorry for my english, haha. Thanks to sharing us this great one.

700BCE-200BCE: 0:18 200BCE-200CE: 1:52 400-600: 3:22 200-700: 3:59 400-1170: 4:38 800-1400: 6:01 1115-1540: 6:43 1430-1540: 7:57 1470-1650: 9:21 1800-Today: 10:32

As someone who speaks both Swedish and English and studied Latin for 5 years, this is trippy af

How did you ever put this video together? Cause this is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating videos on KZfaq...

My god, I can’t even begin to put into words just how fascinating all of this is! ☺️

They used to roll their R's

Me: mom can I have English ? Mom: no there's English at home English at home :

Love this. One suggestion, somehow reference the current period in the image you’re showing. I’m doing other stuff while watching this and it’s hard to remember where we are.

Very interesting and worthwhile video.

I'm sure this took a lot of research and practice time to say it so smoothly! Thank you for your efforts!!

English in the future will be acronyms and emojis.

I like how it seems that the speech pattern and inflection has remained, while the actual sounds and words have changed.

I love this video it really taught me a lot. I'm learning German and my brother is learning French so I see and hear a lot of resemblances Btw how did you learn all these variations of English?

The most anticipated video of the millennium is finally here!

Why British latin seems like Spanish?😂

I absolutely love the text in Middle and Early Modern English. Bloody lovely they are.

Audamundō, âdǎmundū, Edmondo, Ēadmund, Edmund, Edmunde, Edmunde, Edmund and Edmund: *who is this Llawffalch character*

9:27 sounds like a drunk elderly northern irish person speaking

For those saying the Old English segment is hard to see as anything like today’s English, bear in mind that the way the words are written is different, and that large portions of the words in the passage still exist, albeit evolved. For the last sentence, for instance, I had comparatively little trouble understanding (5:25): ...tō findan thæt he hæfde setl at the cyninges meteborde amang allum þissum folcum swā hēaum and fægrum. ...to find that he had settle (“seat”) at the king’s meet board (“table”) among all these folk so high and fair. Even for much of the first sentence of that paragraph, it was not especially hard to see what was being said, especially since modern English still has many of the same words (5:25): Onbufan hiere brūwe hiere hēafod... wæs wiþ cæppan of silfrene... Modern English: Above her brow her head...was with cap of silver... With a little digging and with some sharpened ears, it’s not so hard to see the resemblance. The grammar is definitely more complex, but even if you look at Shakespeare’s works, it’s not so hard to see how English’s grammar didn’t just change like that overnight.

Old English is where I was able to make way more guesses that were correct when hearing a more familiar language later. It was still practically unintelligible to me. But my guesses were improved greatly here

*Modern english:* _You look beautiful to me._ *Postmodern english:* _Yeah, you got that yummy-yum_ _That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy_

It hit me hard when he said "weetah leetah blinkans" at 1:16 😔😔😔

Hmm, it seemed like British Latin and Old Norman were more easily recognizable than Old English (I have studied Latin and Spanish before, maybe that helped?)

A question for native english speakers: When you start to understand or how was for you each stage?

I remember looking at excerpts similar to this one when I did my BA in Applied linguistics. Fun...good olde daiyees!!

This is why I love the TV show Vikings, although inaccurate with a lot of the history, it is accurate with the languages. You’ll see English characters speaking in old English when talking to a non English speaking Norsemen.

Honestly the old English sounds more interesting than the modern English..

As a French native speaker, I find the Old Norman language more intelligible than the Old, or even the Late Old French in your video about the evolution of the French language. It would be great to have the translation of the same texts in all the languages. Great job though.

It really is quite intriguing to hear this old English. It makes me wonder how long we have come and how the language evolved over time. What will it sound like in future years to come?

Can you make the evolution of portuguese? I'm fluent, but I can't understand the medieval songs without subtitles.

6:02 That’s 100% french “au milieu de la table” (in the middle of the table)

Thank you! This appears to have taken much work!

There’s a book series I’ve read (Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind) that takes place thousands of years after present day and throughout the course of the books English evolves into a universal language called Stark. I thought that was interesting.

7:13 and they said "thingies" isn't a word

a long time ago: to be or not to be Now: *Don't you know how to flush a toilet after you've had a shet?*

So crazy to slowly understand it more and more

Are you an A.I.? Lol That was incredible. It sound so authentic as if you've lived in those times. Bravo!

That moment you realize it was the same text being quoted

Some english speaker 300 years from now: "Me wisht thats we stile spoken like modarn anglish. Sooch a pretty sund, it had."

0:25 "Anda" Me a Malaysian: *_Y O U ?_*

This is frightfully good!

4:00 Translation to Spanish: En el medio de la mesa (tabla) contra los trapos bien cosidos arriba del muro, había una silla debajo del pabellón, y sentaron una dama que se veía rica, y se veía que estaba en sus buenos días hacia el rey Edmundo que adivinó que era un relativo cercano. Ella era joven, pero no tanto. Los rizos de su cabello negro no fueron tocados ni por la helada, sus brazos blancos y cara bonita eran indescriptibles, y suaves, y las estrellas estaban en el reflejo de sus ojos, así como el reflejo de una noche abierta.

2000: "Not really!" 2014- : "YEET!"

I'm curious about what text you used for British Latin, since there are no records of it. It sounds really cool!

Is nobody talking about how soothing this is. I could fall asleep to this!

my english teacher: explain the literary significance of this sentence the sentence: 0:18

Odd to see the word "kuningas" spoken in proto/west Germanic. Modern Finnish still has the word "kuningas" in common use and it means "king"

As an admirer of languages, I observe the small changes and adaptations people apply when they speaking english coloquially. People make "mistakes" when speaking, sometimes not even mistakes, but speak their manner on purpose, to ease the process. Then somehow it spreads throughout society and, in due time, that little change becomes part of the language. For example, if I would try to predict future English, the language would probably put in scarcity the verb "to be", for we see many people today say "you is my friend", reducing the number of conjugations of that verb to 1; or even more profoundly, sometimes you hear "you my friend", probably due to a strongly contracted pronunciation of the verb "are", after "you", unnoticeable to the listener. That´s a cool thing to see, cause as linguists know, languages tend to simplify theirselves through time, and that´s exactly what´s happening. Talking about simplification, we can´t forget about the great number of words with unpronounced letters in them. "Though", may become "tho", or even "do" (if we consider that the fricative sound in english is losing popularity), "tough" into "tuff" (why not? everyone native english speaker can read that naturally and notice the pronunciation is the same). So, for an example, my prediction is English will be like this (in more or less 100 years)[only removing the unnecessary letters]: "As an admira of languages, I observ da smal changes and adaptations peepo apli wen dey speekn english coloquialy. Peepo mayk "mistayks" wen speekn, sumtims not evn mistayks, but speek deir maner on purpus, to eez da proces".

It was like I uncovered more of the story each time a new version of English was read.