The History of English Podcast · Kevin Stroud

Episode 186: A Dutch Treat

·1 hr 26 min·5 clips

Episode 186 of the History of English podcast covers the early 1620s, tracing how Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth and Dutch colonization of Manhattan shaped the English language. Host Kevin Stroud reveals that English survived its earliest American colony partly because two indigenous people — Samoset and Squanto — happened to speak English, with Squanto's extraordinary story (kidnapped twice, enslaved in Spain, escaped, returned fluent in English) becoming the colony's lifeline. The episode also explores the Thirty Years' War as a word-donor to English (maraud, plunder, hurrah, gauntlet), the Dutch origins of the first English newspaper and the word 'current', the first printed English fairy tale (Tom Thumb, 1621), the first recorded spoonerism (1622), and the Dutch proverb 'live and let live' entering English.

As heard by us

Dutch contact, early print, and a long view of how English kept changing.

Episode 186 takes English into North America in the early 1620s, with Plymouth and New Amsterdam as two distinct footholds. It works best when it treats borrowing as a chain you can hear: the Dutch courant, the Italian gazette, and the later English newspaper all belong to the…

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Why you'd press play

Start with Plymouth, then move to New Amsterdam, and watch English pick up a Dutch twist in North America.

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