Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 149 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all ready for some English practice, and this episode in particular is going to be about English itself.
In today's episode, I want to talk about how English has changed over the centuries.
And I had this idea and I thought it would be really cool to look at some different verses from the King James Bible, which is from 1611.
So over 400 years ago.
And I thought it would be cool to show you how the language has changed a little bit since then.
It hasn't changed that much.
It's still completely understandable if you read the King James Bible nowadays and you're a native English speaker.
However, there are some interesting changes that we can see, and I'm a language nerd.
I like languages and I like learning about languages, so this type of topic is really interesting for me, and I know that not all of you are language nerds like me, but I'm sure that you'll still find this episode interesting and you'll like it learning a little bit about some of the different ways that English has changed over the years.
And I want to read another review that I received on Apple Podcasts, because I did that a couple episodes ago.
And I want to do that from time to time just to thank my listeners who are also leaving reviews for me.
This one is from Darwish B And this person says Your episode helps me a lot to gain more vocabulary and ideas.
Nice words, slow speech.
Anyone can understand.
Many thanks.
Darwish.
Thank you for listening and for writing a review.
I really appreciate that and if any of you listeners leave me a review on any of the podcast apps, then I might read it here in an episode.
And, of course, remember that if you want my advanced podcast episodes, you can sign up to become a listening time family member, and The link is in the description below this episode.
And you also have the link down there to sign up for my US Conversations podcast, in which I talk to different English teachers from around the country about many things.
It's a lot of fun and great practice for your listening.
So both of those links are down below.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about some of the ways that English has changed over the years.
But first, before we talk about modern English, I want to mention Old English and Middle English.
Most of you probably aren't too familiar with the different types of English that have been spoken throughout the centuries.
So Old English is the earliest form of English.
It was the earliest form of English. and it was spoken between the 5th and 11th centuries, okay?
So, a long time ago.
And what's really interesting about Old English is that native English speakers nowadays can't understand it unless they have studied it before.
So, before recording this episode, I read an excerpt.
An excerpt is a short part of a book or an article.
I read a short excerpt from Beowulf.
This is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, works of Old English, and from this excerpt I understood maybe 5 of the words.
So that shows you how different Old English was from Modern English.
So it's almost completely incomprehensible meaning.
It's not understandable at all, even to native English speakers nowadays.
So Old English was a different language really, and many people make the mistake using the term Old English to refer to older modern English, like English from the 1600s or the 1700s, for example.
That's not Old English, that's still Modern English, it's just older than today's English.
But the term Old English actually refers to an older language that doesn't really resemble today's English.
So just be careful with that phrase old English, because many people use it incorrectly.
And then after Old English there was Middle English from the 12th to the 15th century.
And maybe the most famous or one of the most famous works of literature from this period was the Canterbury Tales.
And before recording this episode, I also tried to read an excerpt from this work, and I understood much more of it than Beowulf.
So Middle English is a lot closer to Modern English than Old English is.
So Middle English has a lot of words that we can still understand nowadays in Modern English.
However, there are a lot of words that we don't understand.
So it's still a different language, kind of.
It's not a different language in the sense that it's Spanish, right?
It's still English, but it can still be very hard to understand for a native English speaker nowadays.
So that was Middle English.
And then after that, is when modern English was established, let's say.
And so, from that point until now, people have spoken modern English.
However, maybe today, the English that we speak in 2024, this might be considered contemporary English.
It's not a different language.
It's still modern English.
But if we want to differentiate between the English spoken today and the English spoken in the 1600s, for example, maybe we can use the term contemporary English for today's version of the language.
So that was a little bit of the history of English.
So now I want to talk about a few different changes that English has undergone in the past 400 years or so.
By the way, the past participle undergone, this comes from undergo, This means that you go through some process.
So in this case, English underwent changes.
It went through this process of changing.
There are many examples that I could point out.
The phrasal verb point out means that you highlight something, you draw people's attention to that thing.
So I could point out a lot of examples But I chose just a few because my time is limited.
So maybe the first thing that people will notice if they read something from the 1600s or a little earlier, maybe they'll notice some different pronouns being used, pronouns like thou thee thy thine, these pronouns that start with th, and then also the pronoun ye, y-e.
So let me read you a verse from the King James Bible.
This is Romans 10, 9, chapter 10, verse Verse nine.
And this has three of these different pronouns in this verse.
So listen while I read it.
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
So you'll notice that we have some interesting pronouns there.
We have thou, that if thou shalt confess.
We have thy, thy mouth.
And we also have thine, thine heart.
You might be wondering, What those mean?
Well, in the past, English distinguished between the second person singular and the second person plural.
What does that mean?
Well, if you're talking to one person, you're talking in the second person singular.
But if you're talking to more than one person, you're talking to the second person plural.
So in the second person singular in the past, in English, people would use these TH pronouns.
Instead of saying you, They would say thou, if they are using you as a subject.
And if they wanted to use it as an object, instead of saying to you, they would say to thee and then the possessive pronouns instead of saying you're.
If it's just one person, People would say thy or thine, depending on the word after it.
If the word after this pronoun was a word starting with a vowel or an H many times, like in this verse, thine heart, then people would say thine.
But if it was any other word with a consonant other than H, then it would be thy thy mouth, like it says in this verse.
And then I'll read one other verse that has the word thee in it.
So in John 33 it says Jesus answered and said unto him Verily verily, I say unto thee except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
So here, Jesus is addressing one person.
He's talking to one person here.
So he uses the instead of you.
And then what about if someone was talking to multiple people?
Well, instead of using these th pronouns, they would use the Y pronouns, right?
Ye, you, etc.
So, for example, in John 832, Jesus says and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
So you see there that he uses ye as the subject, and then he uses you as an object later on.
So in that case, he's speaking to more than one person.
So you might wonder, why were there different pronouns?
What was the purpose of differentiating like that?
Well, in many other languages probably most other languages there is a difference when you address one person and when you address more than one person.
If you speak Spanish, or if you speak French or many other languages.
You know what I'm talking about.
You use a different pronoun and probably a different verb conjugation if you're talking to one person or more than one person.
And this is actually a very helpful thing, because it allows your audience to know if you're talking to just one person or if you're talking to all of them, because nowadays we don't know that.
We only say you whether or not we're addressing a single person or multiple people.
So for example, if I call you and you're with a friend And I say, what are you doing?
And you say, I'm at John's house.
If I say you should come over to my house, you don't know if I'm only referring to you or if I'm referring to you and John.
I could be saying either thing, right?
You should come over. that could be used for one person or multiple people.
So I actually think that the way that people used to speak in the past was more helpful, because it eliminated this mystery.
It made it clearer who you were speaking to.
So that's a big change that we can see.
Obviously, we still understand when we read this in the Bible or in other texts.
However, it is a notable difference.
And another notable change is is with th endings.
So nowadays, when we talk in the third person singular, the verb usually ends with an s.
Like he walks, i walk, he walks right.
However, in the past, this third person singular verb ending had a th instead of an s.
So, for example, we can see this in the most famous verse of the bible, john 3 16, which says for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
So you see that instead of saying believes, it says believeth right that t-h represented the third person singular in the past.
So, walketh instead of walks.
Pretty interesting, huh?
I actually really like how that sounds.
I like that extra syllable, that if at the end of verbs.
I think it sounds really cool, but maybe that's just because...
Older styles tend to sound interesting and cool to modern ears like mine.
Maybe that's why, but I really like the way that sounds.
He doeth instead of he does.
To me, that sounds pretty cool.
You might not agree, but I actually really like that.
But I doubt that we'll ever go back to speaking like that again.
And then one other kind of category of changes I wanted to highlight is just certain words that had different forms in the past, that are kind of archaic now but we can still understand them.
So, for example, the past tense of the word speak is spoke, right?
However, in the past, people would say spake.
So, for example, in John 8.30, it says, as he spake... these words, many believed on him.
So really it's saying when Jesus spoke these words, that's how we would say it in modern terms.
However, at that time it was spake as he spake these words, many believed on him.
So that's one example.
Another word I can think of is art, for example.
Instead of saying are like you are in the past, they might have said thou art.
Right.
So, for example, in John 669, it says and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the son of the living God.
He doesn't say you are.
He says thou art Christ.
I also really like that form.
I like that art instead of R, But again, that might just be me thinking that the archaic version sounds cool.
And then another one that you'll notice if you read the King James Bible or some other text that is from that time.
You'll hear the word shout, which is like shall, which nowadays in the us we don't even really use this word anymore, so that's already kind of old sounding to us.
And then shout with a t on the end is even older.
So thou shalt not kill, for example.
You might remember that from the Ten Commandments, right.
So that's another one that you'll see that we don't use nowadays.
So there are a lot of other examples that I could have pointed out, but I just wanted to highlight a few.
And you might ask, can native speakers read English like this and understand it easily?
I would say yes, we just have to get used to it.
The first time you encounter these words, you might be a little bit confused if you've never heard this used before.
However, once you realize what that word means, then it's pretty obvious after that.
So you just have to get used to it, but it's very understandable.
And, for example, in high school in the US, Many of us had to read Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare and his style of English was very similar to the style that we saw today.
And we read that in high school.
We were teenagers when we read that.
So it's definitely understandable, but you just have to get used to it.
Get used to those different words, the different pronouns, the word endings, things like that.
But it's understandable and it's not a problem to read these things.
And how much will English change in the future?
400 years from now, will English be really different?
I don't know, to be honest.
I'm sure the slang will be very different.
Idioms and expressions will probably be pretty different.
The grammar will probably be slightly different because we can see grammar changes that happen over the years slowly but surely.
So I'm sure the grammar might be a little different.
So, I don't know.
Hypothetically, if 300 years, 400 years from now, people are speaking English, it will probably be similar to today's English, but with some pretty noticeable differences, like what we just saw.
But I would guess that it would still resemble the English that I'm speaking now.
So I don't know, but that's what I would guess.
All right.
I hope that you found this episode interesting.
I know this one was a little bit different, but I really wanted to talk about this in an episode.
And if you feel ready to practice with my advanced episodes, make sure to become a Listening Time family member.
The link is in the episode description down below.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And if you want my other podcast in which I talk to different English teachers about different topics, you can go down and click on that link.
It's also down below.
That's patreon.com slash US conversations.
Remember to give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review and I might read it in the future.
All right, thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
