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From Orange to Hollywood: How Borrowing, Media, and Vikings Shaped Modern English
Episode 81
Published 5 days, 15 hours ago
Description
In this episode we follow the word ‘orange’ from Sanskrit through Arabic to French and into Middle English, uncovering how a silent consonant vanished while the color term emerged. We then examine Hollywood’s role in exporting General American pronunciation worldwide and investigate whether Viking contact accelerated the loss of inflectional endings in Old English. Together these stories illustrate how borrowing, media diffusion, and cultural contact have continuously reshaped English.
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