The History of English podcast
A remarkably detailed and informative podcast that transformed my teaching of etymology.
This amazing podcast isn’t aimed at literacy teachers, but I’ve learned loads of information that has been useful to my teaching. Kevin Stroud presents an incredibly detailed history of the English language, told in chronological order. It describes the influences of Greek, Latin, Germanic, Norse, French and other languages on the words we use and their spelling.
If you want to feel like an expert on English etymology, listen to this! It’ll take you a while – Kevin has been podcasting since 2012 and he’s still only just into the 1600s (as of summer 2025) – but it’s well worth it. The podcast covers a lot of history alongside the etymology – it’s really a story of how historical events have impacted the English language. So, if you have an interest in history, that’s an added bonus!
Transcripts are available on the website, which is fantastic if you have a vague memory that Kevin mentioned such-and-such word on the podcast, but you can’t remember which episode!
Recommended episodes:
I found many episodes of this podcast fascinating and couldn’t recommend them all, so I’ve picked out those which are particularly useful for explaining spellings.
Episodes 87 to 89: The First Spelling Reformers, The Long and Short of It, ‘I Before E’ and All That
These episodes describe spelling changes as Old English changed into Middle English, when the Norman scribes who arrived after the invasion had to deal what they considered to be peculiar Old English letters. For example, what happened to the Anglo-Saxon letters ‘wynn’ ‘thorn’ and ‘eth’? Why did French scribes introduce ‘v’ and ‘z’? And why was doubling of letters introduced?
Episodes 140 to 143 on The Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift can explain a lot about English spelling, and it’s rare to come across such a detailed but clear explanation.
Episode 140 is a kind of prequel, making sure you’re familiar with how vowel sounds are articulated, and what is meant by ‘high’, ‘low’, ‘front’ and ‘back’ vowels. Then the following three episodes take you through the ‘chain shift’ that affected nearly all the vowels in turn.
Even if you don’t remember all the details, these episodes convey the massive changes in pronunciation that occurred between about 1400 and 1700. Rather than viewing vowel spellings as annoyingly random, you’ll see the insights they reveal about a word’s history.
Episode 153: Zombie Letters
This episode explores letters that have ‘come back from the dead’. In the 1500s, spelling was less fixed and many of those who were literate could read and write Latin and Greek, so there was a tendency to try to reflect a word’s origin in its spelling. So, Kevin discusses lots of examples such as the <b> in debt, the <u> in language and <h> in rhyme.
Interestingly, there are some cases where a ‘silent’ letter was added, but nowadays we actually pronounce it – so adventure would have been “aventure”, but a silent <d> was added to the spelling to reflect the original Latin prefix ad-, and over time we came to pronounce the <d>.
Episodes 184 and 185: Spelling Says a Lot (Parts 1 and 2)
These episodes focus specifically on spelling, taking you through the history of each letter of the alphabet. It pulls together a lot of what has been covered in previous episodes, so it would act as a good overview for a beginner.
The material in this episode overlaps to some extent with The History of the Alphabet, an audiobook by Kevin Stroud that is available to Patreon backers of the podcast.