I love this podcast. It just hits all the buttons for me. It's well-researched and addresses language, daily life, and national history. The pacing is kind of frustrating in the earlier episodes, but it improves over time. 3 episodes hinting at the region where the original proto-Indo-European-speaking people lived and then all of the movements and migrations glossed over in 15 minutes. I about lost it. Had to listen to the episode that covered the migrations twice because he went so fast after I spent 3 episodes yelling at him to just say they originated in the Caspian steppe. 3 hours tap-dancing around saying that they had horses and so we need to look at what areas had domesticated horses and where were horses domesticated and.... apparently I'm still mad about it.
Anyway, I stuck it out and I'm glad I did. I'm on episode 67 and still loving it. It is so thorough. He's just now getting to middle English in the 67th hour-long episode for reference.
I do wish he knew more about languages besides English, Latin, and Greek. He tries to discuss declension and case and it's hard to do that without some experience with languages that use a lot of different cases. If he had some knowledge of Slavic languages, it would have been much easier for him to demonstrate the utility of that grammar. You can definitely tell that he's explaining something he's unfamiliar with himself. But he's not a linguist by trade or education and he makes that clear early on and I'm damn impressed with how much he knows.
Dang that'sa lot of words for "if you're interested in English language history, listen to this show", so I'll stop here. Seriously it's excellent.
Yes, I should have put more effort into saying how excellent it is. It's a masterful demonstration of how good podcasting can be as a medium for explaining history. I really have only one minor gripe with it: I wish he'd stop saying "cantaberry" when he means Canterbury (but that's only likely to bother Brits).
Anyway, I stuck it out and I'm glad I did. I'm on episode 67 and still loving it. It is so thorough. He's just now getting to middle English in the 67th hour-long episode for reference.
I do wish he knew more about languages besides English, Latin, and Greek. He tries to discuss declension and case and it's hard to do that without some experience with languages that use a lot of different cases. If he had some knowledge of Slavic languages, it would have been much easier for him to demonstrate the utility of that grammar. You can definitely tell that he's explaining something he's unfamiliar with himself. But he's not a linguist by trade or education and he makes that clear early on and I'm damn impressed with how much he knows.
Dang that'sa lot of words for "if you're interested in English language history, listen to this show", so I'll stop here. Seriously it's excellent.