| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (50 min. 50 sec.) ; 306951214 bytes |
| Summary |
This eight-part series traces the journey of the English language, telling the incredible story of how English survived against all the odds. This episode begins In the Augustan Age - the first half of the 18th century - where admiration for Latin literary models was at its height in England. Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, led a movement to fix and regulate the language on the model of Latin. Samuel Johnson produced the first great English dictionary, Robert Lowth and other grammarians imposed new rules on the language and actor Thomas Sheridan took it upon himself to teach the whole country to speak properly. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth and Jane Austen all contributed to the story of the language. The new inventions and social upheaval of the Industrial Revolution introduced a whole new vocabulary and reinforced the link between class and the way people spoke. (From the UK, in English) (Part 6) |
| Event |
Broadcast 2007-11-02 at 19:30:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: PG |
| Subject |
English language -- Etymology.
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English language -- Grammar.
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English language -- Grammar, Comparative.
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English language -- Phraseology.
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English language -- Old English.
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United Kingdom.
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| Form |
Streaming video
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| Author |
Wattis, Nigel, director
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Bragg, Melvyn, host
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