Think Americans butchered English? Think again.

Many “Americanisms” that sound wrong to British ears are actually ghosts of older English.

Forms Shakespeare himself might recognize.

Here’s the story of the English that died in England — but lives on in America 🧵 Take “gotten” — which sounds like an American innovation.

But Shakespeare used it: “Henry the Sixth hath lost / All that which Henry the Fifth had gotten?”

It’s Britain that innovated by simplifying to “got.”

And there are many more examples like this.

Most people know Chaucer as a great poet.

But he didn't just write "The Canterbury Tales" — he helped forge modern English.

Here’s how one medieval poet paved the way for the language you're reading right now... (thread) 🧵 Picture 14th Century England: the English language isn't on top.

French rules the court, Latin the Church.

English is a patchwork of dialects spoken by ordinary people.

Hardly the stuff great literature is made of, at least until one poet arrived...

Ever called a raccoon a “trash panda”?

If so, you’ve used an ancient poetic technique called a “kenning” — the same one that transformed a Viking sword into a “battle serpent.”

This technique reveals something fascinating about how our minds process language... (thread) 🧵 A kenning isn't just a metaphor — it's a compound where one part doesn't directly name what's being described.

When you say “trash panda,” your mind doesn't just substitute “raccoon.”

It processes multiple images: first trash, then pandas, then maps similarities to raccoons…

The sea preserves words that died on land centuries ago.

Words like “lee,” “abaft,” and “starboard” are living fossils of Old English.

They survive in sailors’ speech after disappearing from everyday language.

Here are the 1000-year-old words only sailors know... (thread) 🧵 “Starboard” comes from Old English “steorbord” — literally “steer board.”

Early ships had their steering oar on the right side, so the right side became known as the “steer side.”

This use of “board” to mean “side” is related to the word “border.”

This is just one of many…

The word “she” shouldn't exist.

If English had followed its normal evolutionary path, men AND women would be referred to as “he.”

But they’re not — and this reveals something fascinating about how languages evolve... (thread) 🧵 In Old English (450–1100 AD), “she” was “heo” and “he” was “he.”

As the language evolved, the ‘eo’ sound (pronounced like ‘eyoh’) typically transformed into ‘ee.’

This means both would have sounded identical: “he” for both men and women.

But something else happened instead…

The King James Bible isn't just a religious text.

It's the most influential work in the history of the English language — giving us more phrases than all of Shakespeare put together.

And it contains a hidden linguistic mystery most people never notice... 🧵 The King James Version (KJV) sounds old-fashioned to us with all its “thou,” “thee”, and “begat.”

But its language was already old-fashioned in 1611 when it was published.

The mystery: Why would translators create a “modern” Bible that sounded old to its first readers?

In 793 AD, monks watched in horror as Viking longships emerged from the fog at Lindisfarne.

By sunset, the monastery lay in ruins — but the real conquest was just beginning.

These raiders would transform not just England's fate, but the very words we speak today...🧵 These invaders changed English forever.

Words like “sky, “window,” and “husband” all came from Vikings — even the word “they.”

About 5% of our vocabulary is Norse — but it's an essential 5%

Their impact runs deeper than any other linguistic influence in the history of English.

English spelling is full of silent letters.

Most are there for good reason — they were once pronounced.

But some were added to make English look fancier — and others are actually 100% mistakes.

Here's the strange history of the letters we write but never say... 🧵 The most infamous silent letter mistake is the ‘s’ in “island.”

This word comes from Old English “ieg-land” (meaning “island-land”).

But Renaissance scholars mistakenly thought it came from French “isle.”

So they “corrected” the spelling by adding an ‘s’ that never belonged.

A strange book lies locked in an English cathedral vault.

Inside are 95 riddles — and no answer key.

In these riddles, objects speak: shields tell war stories, and an onion describes itself in the dirtiest terms imaginable.

1000 years later, we still can't solve them all...🧵 This mysterious manuscript is the Exeter Book, created around 970 AD.

For centuries, it sat forgotten in Exeter Cathedral's library.

Then scholars realized what they had — the largest collection of Old English poetry in existence.

Inside were nearly 100 mind-bending riddles.

The boundaries between colours seem natural and obvious.

But 1000 years ago, English colours were totally different.

“White” was anything gleaming, “red” included orange and purple, and “blue” barely existed.

Here's the surprising story of how the colours got their names...🧵 In Old English (~1000 years ago), colours weren't categorized by hue like they are today.

They were categorized by brightness.

Light vs. dark mattered more than red vs. blue.

This system shaped how our ancestors described the world around them in ways we'd find strange today.

The Black Death didn't just kill half of London's population.

It ended up transforming the English language itself.

Rural migrants flooded the half-empty city — and unleashed the most dramatic linguistic revolution in history.

Here's how it unfolded... 🧵 Before 1400, English words sounded completely different from today.

- “Mouse” was pronounced like “moose”
- “Time” like “team”
- “House” like “hoose”

This shift was so dramatic it marks the boundary between medieval and modern English.

But what caused this massive change?

Hidden in English place names is a secret code of invasion and conquest.

Vikings, Romans, Saxons, and Normans all stamped their languages onto the landscape.

Here's how to decode any English place name — and instantly know who conquered that spot 1,000+ years ago... 🧵 The Romans arrived first in 43 AD, building forts across England.

Their word “castra” (military camp) evolved into place names ending in:

“-chester” (Manchester, Winchester)
“-cester” (Leicester, Gloucester)
“-caster” (Lancaster, Doncaster)

But these are just the first layer..

From Mother Goose to Shakespeare's sonnets, most iconic English poetry rhymes.

But English poetry once followed a totally different rule: the BEGINNING of words had to match.

This technique was the backbone of English literature — and it still influences you today... 🧵 From 650–1100 AD, Anglo-Saxon poets created verses where words began with the same sound.

A modern example comes from Auden's “Age of Anxiety”:

“Deep in my dark. the dream shines” — here the repeating ‘d’ sound glues the line together.

This is called “alliterative verse”...

Canadians do NOT say “aboot.”

The unique Canadian pronunciation of “about” is something even stranger — a linguistic fossil from the 1600s that got frozen in time.

Here's the remarkable story of how a 400-year-old speech pattern survived in Canada... 🧵🇨🇦 So how DO Canadians actually pronounce “about”?

Most English speakers say “about” with the ‘ou’ like in “loud.”

But many Canadians say it higher in the mouth — a sound midway between the ‘ou’ in “loud” and the ‘oo’ in “boot.”

It’s not “aboot” — that's a crude exaggeration...

Why do dragons guard gold?

It's not random — it's an ancient economic metaphor.

In warrior societies, wealth needed to flow freely — binding kings to warriors.

Dragons are a symbol of the system breaking down.

Here is the hidden symbolism of the dragon's hoard... 🧵 In the poem Beowulf, a thief steals ONE cup from a dragon's massive hoard.

The dragon's response? It burns whole villages to the ground.

This extreme reaction reveals something crucial about dragons.

They weren't just monsters — they represented the breakdown of a way of life.

550 years ago, English got hit by a linguistic disaster.

The printing press arrived and “froze” English spelling…

And then everyone started speaking totally differently.

Here’s how one sound change ruined English spelling — and why we’re still suffering the consequences 🧵 Before 1400, English words sounded completely different from today.

- “Mouse” was pronounced like “moose”
- “Time” like “team”
- “House” like “hoose”
- “Bite” like “beet”

But the next generations would put these words through a massive transformation.

English once had a complex grammar system like Latin.

Words had charts full of endings to learn.

But then it all disappeared — the only remnant is words like “he/him” and “she/her.”

Here's the fascinating story of how English lost this ancient system — and what replaced it. 🧵 1,000 years ago, English grammar worked completely differently.

Words changed their form depending on what job they did in a sentence.

Words like “he,” “him,” and “his” are the last survivors of this ancient system.

Here’s how it worked…

The meanings of words aren't as stable as people think.

- “deer” once meant any animal
- “nice” used to mean foolish
- “girl” originally meant a child of either sex

Many English words have a secret history of abandoned meanings — and some are truly bizarre...🧵 Linguists call this phenomenon “semantic change” — when words shift meanings over centuries of use.

These transformations can seem completely random.

Words might narrow their scope, or expand it — improve in tone, or degrade.

And old meanings vanish as new ones take hold...

Medieval monsters weren't random nightmares.

The had a family tree — according to Beowulf, every dark creature traced back to one cursed ancestor:

The world's first murderer, cursed for all eternity.

Here's the story of the family that kept medieval people awake at night... 🧵 For the audience of Beowulf, monsters weren't just unexplained terrors.

They all come from Cain — the first son of Adam and Eve, who killed his brother Abel.

This wasn't just any murder.

It was the first act of human violence — and it birthed something terrible.

Beowulf was the greatest warrior in Germanic legend.

He ripped monsters apart with his bare hands.

But when he was young, his own people thought he was worthless.

This bizarre detail reveals a hidden pattern of storytelling — one that connects myths through the centuries... 🧵 The detail comes out of nowhere near the end of Beowulf:

As a young man, the hero famous for his feats of strength was seen as “worthless.”

But it actually fits an ancient pattern of the hero’s unpromising youth — found from King Arthur to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer…

“Dog,” “pig,” “frog,” and “hog” share a strange secret.

These everyday words all appeared in English around 1000 years ago.

But to this day, no one knows for sure where they came from.

This is the puzzling story of the most mysterious words in the English language... 🧵 Before these words emerged, English had names for these animals.

People wrote “hound” instead of “dog” and “swine” instead of “pig.”

The older words also appear in related languages — German has “Hund” and “Schwein.”

But the new words are unique to English...