The History of English Podcast · Kevin Stroud

Episode 180: English on the Move

·1 hr 14 min·5 clips

Don Quixote gave English "tilting at windmills," "quixotic," and a new model for the modern novel.

1. The History of English Podcast episode 180, "English on the Move," follows English as it spread into North America and Ireland in the first decade of the 1600s. 2. Host Kevin Stroud frames the episode as a language history story and mentions James I, Richard Verstigen, Richard Carew, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, John Smith, and Samuel de Champlain by name. 3. The episode asks how English, Scots, and regional dialects began shaping the language that later traveled into Virginia, Ireland, and other parts of the English-speaking world. 4. James I promoted a sense of "Great Britain" by styling himself as king of England, Scotland, and Wales and by authorizing a coin with a Latin inscription calling him "King of Great Britain." 5. He also approved a new flag that combined St. George's cross and St. Andrew's cross, a design that later became known as the Union Jack. 6. The episode explains that English and Scots shared an Old English root, which made James's Scottish courtiers understandable in London with some effort. 7. Regional differences inside England also mattered, because northern speech and West Country speech differed from London English in pronunciation and vocabulary. 8. Richard Verstigen's 1605 book, A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities Concerning the Most Noble and Renowned English Nation, is presented as a history of English that defended Germanic roots and criticized French and Latin borrowings. 9. Verstigen's example sentence about "I would eat more cheese if I had it" becomes three dialect versions, including a northern form and a western form with ch-like pronunciations. 10. Verstigen also tells a story about a northern official who could not understand a London courtier's instruction to "equip his horses," showing how loanwords could travel unevenly. 11. Richard Carew answers Verstigen with The Excellency of the English Tongue and praises the "copiousness" of English dialects and the language's ability to use proverbs and metaphors. 12. Carew's view reflects a broader shift from John Skelton's 1504 dismissal of English as "rude and rustic" to a newer confidence in English literary power. 13. The episode dates the first recorded use of "fit as a fiddle" to Englishman for My Money, and it places "fiddlesticks" in Thomas Nash's Summer's Last Will and Testament. 14. It also identifies 1605 as the first recorded appearance of "honesty is the best policy" in Sir Edwin Sandys's Relation of State of Religion. 15. Cervantes's Don Quixote, published in Spanish in 1605, is treated as a turning point because it parodied chivalric romance and helped define the modern novel. 16. The book is linked to English phrases such as "tilting at windmills," "quixotic," and later proverb debates including "the pot calling the kettle black" and "a man is known by the company he keeps." 17. Ben Jonson's Eastward Ho mocked bought knighthoods and anti-Scottish feeling, and the authorities arrested the playwrights after the play ran into trouble. 18. Macbeth and King Lear are described as moving Shakespeare toward British subjects, with King Lear producing lines such as "the wheel has come full circle" and Macbeth contributing phrases like "double-double toil and trouble" and "what's done is done." 19. The episode will appeal to listeners who like language history, Shakespeare, and early colonial English. 20. Listeners focused on later periods of English literature or colonial politics may find it less useful.

As heard by us

A clear, measured look at how migration and local dialects carried English into new forms.

Episode 180 tracks English as it moves beyond England in the first decade of the 1600s, following speakers who made permanent homes elsewhere and brought their local dialects with them.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play when you want a measured walk through English as it starts moving farther from home in the early 1600s.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The History of English Podcast