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From Norman Conquest to Johnson: How Borrowed Words Built Modern English
Episode 19
Published 3 days, 10 hours ago
Description
This episode traces how the 1066 Norman invasion introduced a flood of French vocabulary that reshaped English grammar and spelling; it then explores the Viking legal legacy that left its own mark on words like ‘law’ and ‘jury’; finally it follows early modern lexicographers—from Cawdrey to Bailey—to show how their glossaries paved the way for Samuel Johnson’s monumental dictionary, cementing English as a global lingua franca.
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