This honestly feels like it's missing a huge chapter. The British Empire & their being arguably the first WORLD power via their navy is something you barely even mentioned tangentially through colonialism.

Completely skipping over how English spread around the world between the 14th century and WW2 is quite a choice.

Another thing to consider is in some former British colonies there are usually multiple native languages with English being the one common language among ethnic groups.

It would've been great if you also touch on the fact that one of the major reasons is colonialism, not just in Singapore.

I think you will find that British colonialism had a lot more to do with the spreading of English than the US signing a couple of treaties. From Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, through Africa, Asia, and the Americas - the English language didn't just suddenly pop up in these places in the 1900's.

The Internet is also a major reason why English is expanding so much at the moment. Around half of all the information on the Internet is in English, if you want a deep dive into almost any subject you will find more information in English than other languages.

I once lived in Russia, teaching English at a university level. I had a lecture series on English Speaking nations. The incredible variety of culture, geography, ethnicities, etc. was amazing! The world is such a cool place. I also tried to make sure the students understood when a usage was generally considered correct/incorrect or whether a difference was because of more specific variances between types of English. For my students this was primarily a dissonance between British English textbooks and American English they heard in pop culture.

For a while people always used to joke about how "we'll all be speaking Chinese soon enough" but the reason Mandarin/Chinese will never eclipse English globally is that, despite all of English's inconsistencies and quirks, the barrier to a "good enough" level of literacy in English is magnitudes lower than Chinese.

Simple, the British conquered a LOT of the world and their language went with them.

I was in Cyprus once, trying to rent a boat. Ahead of me was an Arabic speaking man from Kuait. The owner was a Greek. As soon as they looked at each other they both began in English.

no real mention of colonialism and british empire which is the reason most countries in asia, africa, oceania, americas have English as an official language.

I work in a public library system, and I cannot emphasize how important ESOL classes are for our customers. Arguably one of our most widely used services.

I have travelled a lot and stayed at many hostels. I find it amazing that a group of german, Argentinian, dutch, italian, and japanese will all be having a conversation in english. Its crucial to know English if you want to travel to speak to other people. Even in japan there are english menus and the trains will announce in english.

Internet "English" has become common lately. It is an amalgamation of many versions of English. Platforms and websites have their own separate English also, not just jargon but due to the region specific of speech and language. It is another layer altogether.

3:58 French is still a living language, so it is evolving, regardless of what the Academie Française "wants".

To say that the English nobility spoke French post Norman conquest is a bit of a simplification. The new royals spoke Old Norman French (a distinct dialect from Old French and quite different from modern French). The English upper classes mixed these new words into their existing Saxon language, whilst the lower classes continued using their own language. These differences became part of the modern English language and can still be seen today: beef/cow, pork/pig, mutton/sheep. Even a lot of English swear words are just the old Saxon words, whereas their "polite" versions were absorbed into the language from Old Norman French.

In my personal opinion as a linguist, albeit not one specialized in diachronic linguistics, I expect what matters most for the future of English is the internet. Unless another country supplants the US culturally enough to unseat English as the dominant world language within the next 20-30 years, and as long as the ways we communicate don't fundamentally change from what it is right now, I believe we will see a new form of English develop out of the online discourse, as I believe we will see the contact between many different dialectical forms of English online eventually result in the formation of a new dialect, which I think will likely eventually eclipse GAE as the dominant variant of English and as the dominant world language. I'm not sure if it will decouple enough to become its own language though, and even if it does it's still likely to take much longer than 20-30 years.

I love AAEV in the south one of my coworkers is from SC and to hear her code switch from her Gullah accented English to her “proper” English is amazing to me. Same with Sumncheaux, I almost feel like I’ve lost something along the way, really have a longing for it. My family came from SC both mom and dad’s side. And almost all Black folks came through the port of Charleston, where it is spoken.

I think this series has gotten me to want to become a linguist even more

I've always felt that it's very easy to speak English well enough to be understood, but exceedingly difficult to speak it so you sound like a native. As the saying goes "English is the language that came about from Norman men-at-arms chatting up Saxon barmaids." (New Zealander)

As the veteran director Aparna Sen once said: “English is also an Indian language.”

Honestly, I think the factor that English is far more forgiving than other languages is greatly overlooked. Unlike Mandarin or Cantonese, it is not a tonal language which trip up most non-speakers of those language dialects up because most global languages aren't tonal to begin with. So, you don't need to learn an entirely new skill to speak English. In English there is more often than not more than one way to say something. For example, "The cat is here," and "Here is the cat." Means the same thing. Heck, toss in, "Here be the cat," and "The cat be here," onto the pile. It's all the same thing. You can play around in English in all sorts of ways and still be understood. It's also adaptable. It's a very mutt language. Toss in some words in any language and it still works. It never strives to be "pure." As a freely spoken language, it's an extremely user friendly language.

4:00 the Académie Française only rules the language on official documents and administrations, most French people don't care, or even despise the Académie. Just listen to conferences, read articles or tweets (more informal and spontaneous) by French people: they use tons of English loanwords and do a lot of mistakes.

Another aspect may add to our popularity: everyone hears a little bit of themselves in it, for we've made common words out of most of the world's languages & openly seek more. Or, famously & less favorably quipped: English doesn't just borrow from other languages, it hunts strangers down and mugs them in dark alleys!

Yeah, good video! As someone who has a lot of international friends, it’s super cool to have connected primarily in English, but since i have picked up some more languages, we have a mutual language exchange. It’s so much fun and it’s even gotten to a point where i meet this Swiss dude who speaks French, Japanese, German, and primary Italian and English and i speak Russian, Spanish, and English and a bit of Portuguese and Sign and we can have a multilingual conversation so when the video mentioned about a Pidgin, it reminded me of this.

Would be nice to hear about how English borrows from other languages and the origins of english

Dr. B is leagues ahead of the game that one could say she is playing the sequel!

When I was in China I spoke with a local linguist who believed (possibly rightly) that China would eclipse the West economically- not just overtake, but drown - but that English would continue to dominate because its just easier for most people to learn than Putonghua/ Chinese (specifically) and other tonal languages (in general), to say nothing of the difficulty of written Chinese.

Always excited for new episodes!

FYI, Yorkshire and Lancashire are literally next to each other. There is no 2 and a half hour distance.

Love these shows, studied anthropology and it like mini lectures ☮️

singapore english and singlish are 2 different things (for ppl who want to know more) also, something interesting when linguists talk about "english" is whether you're a believer in "world englishes" or "global englishes" (the girlies are fighting) just like generative vs universal grammar

Love this one, great job! I totally didn't expect to see Cajun as a dialect! It makes me regret more that I didn't learn the actual French dialect different from Canadian and France French:(

As a native English and Hindi speaker who can also speak Spanish, I feel amazing knowing I can speak to the majority of the world.

Thank you for highlighting Guyanese English. I feel represented. As a doctor I've found that it is not possible to use the hospital translator phone services for Guyanese English or its sibling, Jamaican patois and as a result many patients are not as well understood as they could be, which impacts care.

Why do Americans give distances in time? “Even though the two counties [in Great Britain] are only 2 1/2 hrs apart.” A German asked me this and I couldn’t give him a good answer.

Nice outtake. Would be fun to see this video switching between US, UK, and Aussie dialects. Or Southern slang.

English is even spoken in other galaxies. It really is the universal language.

As others stated, I don't think one can just ignore British influence through empire but also manufactured goods and therefore technology in givin English momentum to become the global language it currently is. Another aspect I missed was how English has a relatively simple grammar (anyone who had to conjugate verbs in a romance language or master the case system of East European languages will know what I'm talking about).

There's the old saw about how someone cold make reading the dictionary sound interesting. That's the way I feel about Dr. B. Every episode is such a treat. Wonderfully clear explanations. I'm not, and never will be, a language nerd. I am a fan of this channel, mainly because of Dr. B.

As a native speaker, who is learning all the languages in her ethnic makeup. It's time for a shake up. Learning Zulu and German have taught me so much about efficiency and innovative ways to speak. I'm worried that English will achieve a full Babel and become the only. Or we get a Firefly and it's a smashcut of English and one other.

I love this show, my first video I watched here was the R vowel video. Erica's the best pick for a host in my opinion btw.

I love the fact that we’ll get a video on pidgins and creoles.

I love this show!

Love love this education ngl 😊💛🙏🏾

excellent as always. ❤

Thank you for learning the language of our ancestors, everyone else.

3:45 I grew up with American and British English based on Pop Culture. It was almost like an exercise in Play-Acting that’s amusing.

As an Italian, there is also the fact that English is just easy as a language (for better or for worse), at least when compared to other languages we have here. When you mentioned the influence of pop culture I also want to add how much the internet and its americanization also influenced the spread of English in a faster and easier way for foreigners.

I know the time limit and whatever but like you really glossed over the violence that occurred in forcing English to be dominant like native boarding schools and other similar examples.

love the piano music in this

I am from Australia, and dialectical variations can be recognised between the States, therein. That is to say, the people of Perth Western Australia, speak differently from those living in Sydney, New South Wales.

Great thing about being able to speak English, I can watch a whole lot more KZfaq videos and movies and series, as well as read a whole more books, and work with more people across the world. 😊

I would love to see an episode about the current state of Esperanto

The most telling fact is that; No "guardians" of English words or construction exists. That means any other language can eat English and conversely English can eat any other. And the alphabet is nicely complex without being over-the-top complex.

I'd still like to know how many languages Dr. Brozovsky speaks. Obviously English... and what else? Taiwanese? French? Spanish? Vielleicht sogar Deutsch? :)

I always found regional dialect so interesting, I took that NYT accent quiz and said I'm likely from Southern California, but I'm born and raised in the Midwest, My only hypothesis is that coming from an immigrant household my early english was heard through TV

So, if you speak English and Mandarin you can speak with something like 30% of the world population. That's awesome. I can speak Spanish and English (mostly), so that's not that bad either.

Enjoy your presentations. 😊

Thank you❤. We would appreciate this more if it were accompanied by references.

I used to do Judo where the lessons were in Japanese. you got hip to the lingo or you developed a relationship with the matt. We had one guy who was from brazil. he spoke Portuguese, broken english and dojo japanese. I would speak english, french and dojo Japanese. between them we could get on quite well mixing all the languages freely in out conversations within the same sentence. I like to htink this is how traders got on in places like the middle east in the middle ages or indian traders in north americas in the 18th century

Several years ago I watched a "Bollywood" movie (from India) on TV in its native language with subtitles. But as I listened, it was fairly often that an English word would pop out of their speech! There's also the animated TV series from France, _MIraculous Ladybug,_ where the lead character is referred to, in the FRENCH dub, as "Ladybug", rather than the French "coccinelle". In the French dub of one episode, they're speaking French until someone yells out the English "Stop!" to get someone to do that. And dubs in various languages will have someone shout, "wow!" Also, the series theme song has been translated into many languages; the South Korean version rolls along in their language, but contains the English count, "one, two, three", as well as the phrase "just call my name". Episode dubs are made, as I said, in various languages: a French dub, of course; plus _two_ Spanish dubs, one for Spain, one for Latin America; two Portuguese dubs, one for Portugal, one for Brazil; but just one English dub for the world, in "American English". I would guess they feel that speakers of other English dialects are already so accustomed to hearing American dubs that they don't really need their own; it's utterly matter-of-fact to them.

English speaking pop culture was also spread by being at the forefront of technology. Records and radio used English content to grow their businesses. The combined might of RCA, Colombia , Motorola ,the Beatles , the Stones and countless others helped push English further around the world . Then television followed quickly in their footsteps

English truly started to spread after the Seven Years War ( French and Indian War) where France lost all their holdings in North America and India and then after the defeat of the Napoleonic wars and to the Royal Navy it really took off then. Also Henry V made English the official language of law and commerce in England after 300 years of French dominated the land after the Norman Conquest in 1066

I think it would be good to also examine how English language hegemony kills other languages and how that narrows our collective human understanding

How can you make such a video about English and mention colonialism just couple of times off handedly. Major reason india, Pakistan, many African nations speak English is because of colonialism. Ofcourse as you said, the reasons of power, money, jobs keeps the English train moving, but it started because of colonialism. USA was a Colony of British too. Just feels like the video didn't do enough to fully capture the message

Someone made a comment about how this video wasn't about the spread of various languages including English, which obviously was colonialism, it was more about why English became the de facto language of choice for business, etc instead of another language that may have been present. Given that, it does make sense that colonialism was barely mentioned, but the video should have explicitly stated that from the outset, and maybe even put it in the title, or description.

Years ago I attempted English conversation teaching in Japan. The problem at the time is that it was only for English enthusiasts who didn’t tend to work in roles where they had a chance to apply it. Then they’d go on holidays to places like Hawaii and Guam where they’d be spoken to in Japanese anyway. I don’t get it.

I thought this video was going to be just a black screen with the words "Imperial War and Soft Power"

Tenuous English included, speakers must surely now tick passed a few billion on an upward trend.

Not only. WW2 also caused English to be the language of Science. Before, most of the Science (especially Physics) was in German. But After the WW2 scientists were less favourable to use it, and USA managed to make English the Science language

basically english is everywhere Because of War & Money

Another big factor is compatibility between English and technology. It may be just as easy to hand write Mandarin, but English lends itself better to printing presses and keyboards.

Love this series....... and Erica is outrageously cute.

I am not a native English speaker, but I prefer speaking English more than my native language, because of its simplicity

I absolutely LOVE this series!!! Please never stop making these videos. Etymology is so damn interesting.

You remind me of a senior in my uni

Yea this video glosses over numerous factors that lead to the rise of English, like British Colonialism and of course the US War for Independence that solidified English as the language of the west. The British Industrial Revolution and its global spread essentially sealed the deal, English was well on its way to becoming the dominant international language. Personally I think the future will be a battle between Mandarin and English, its a cliche at this point in scifi to be sure but I think it hits on a very real east vs west divide.

Great video! Although I'm fairly certain that Quebec only adheres to the linguistic standards set by the OLFQ, and not L'Académie Française

This one made me think of two things... First being, that you could answer both questions with a single word: Colonialism. But, less depressing and much sillier - There was a movie (in the late 80s I think? Maybe early 90s) called Freejack, kind of a time travel story, and one of the big "shocking predictions about the Near Future!" had to do with every single corporate employee being required to learn Japanese, because supposedly Japan had taken over the world via electronics companies. Fascinating to think on that and how believable it seemed to teenage me. And what it reveals about the script writers of that decade... One last observation: English is a ridiculously adaptable language in some ways, borrowing freely from everybody else and blending wildly different languages with complete abandon. Add in the prevalence of "internet English" and we get REALLY FUN stuff like "if brains gonna brain" and other constructions that at first glance might seem like complete gibberish - but they actually work, and work WELL, in conversational context. Which makes me wanna tip my hat to every person learning English as a second or third language, because y'all are really taking on a challenge. I'm a native English speaker and this stuff can drive me bonkers, for other folks I can't even imagine how much more confusing English can be!

This is really cool

Speaking of Singlish, please do an episode on code switching

I think the British Empire had a big impact on the spread of English.

1:00 In an English-speaking culture, we are offered other languages to learn in school, usually Spanish, French, and German, with none as the "obvious choice" to take up first. But in other-language cultures, I should imagine that the overwhelming choice of "what other language should I learn?" is ENGLISH!

You overlooked a driving force in adoption of English - technology, like software and the internet. Unlike cultural content like movies and music, technology impacts significantly ones ability to function in an increasingly technological world, and their access to information in an increasingly self-taught world.

Was French also a global lingua franca, or just in Europe? I'm surprised that the widespread nature of English wasn't connected to the British Empire (where the sun never set because it colonised areas all around the world).

4:00 Office Québécois de la Langue Française est entré dans le clavardage

Spanish English learning French and German

Kinda convinient how you glossed over 400 years of colonialism. I highly recommend reading 'Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism' by SJ Greenblatt. Greenblatt tells us how English was the primary "export" of colonialism. And this is the reason why English is spoken in countries all over the world (like mine).

1:50 At first glance, I thought the white would be a close up of north america 😂 Crazy to see what colours can do! I'm good at geography btw.

As a Russian who speaks English, I appreciate that I can communicate with ESL people as well.

0:47 Russia: *_Nyet!_*

I am glad i speak very good English. Long live USA and UK

I know "Englishes" is correct, but it really grates on my ears

There is one case I know of where the type of English is important and stressed- air traffic control. Considering how many lives depend on precise communication in that circumstance, having a standard form is more important there

The intro tune reminds me so much of NightVale 😊

I wish this video had gotten more into the colonization of other countries as a reason so many nations speak it. England, the US, and Canada conquered a hundred nations over the past two hundred years, of course that’s going to lead to a larger spread of their languages

I love English and its benefits, but still feel melancholy about slowly forgetting my native tongue...

English will be king forever

as some one who speaks Slovenian, Croatian, Italian, and a bit of German and Spanish. English is like the easiest language ever, and everyone should learn it as their first language.