A Chat With Seth Lerer

Today, we have as our guest Seth Lerer, a professor at Stanford University and the author of "Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language". He is joining us from California.

Anu Garg
The topic of today's chat is The Journey of the English Language.

Tom Doyle - DC
I very much enjoyed your Teaching Company lectures. Could you clarify something that you mentioned in them? You cited the Cornish accent that became “pirate talk” (due to the movie portrayal of Long John Silver) as an example of a form of English that had not completed the Great Vowel Shift. Some folks (without much authority) challenge this online -- have you or others written anything more detailed on this that I could point them to? And do you have anything further to say about it here?

Seth Lerer
Tom: not Cornish, but East Anglia, late 17th century English.

Jim Bisso - Sonoma
What do you think has been the biggest change in the English language in the last 100 years?