Here For The History - English Language: Why do we speak like that?

Download 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

Published on Thursday, 25th June 2026.

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