William Jones was born in London; his father William Jones (1675–1749) was a mathematician from Anglesey in Wales, noted for introducing the use of the symbol π. The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, who in addition to his native languages English and Welsh,[3] learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age.[4] By the end of his life, he knew eight languages with critical thoroughness.[5]

Pi(e) day pi(e) facts:

The guy introduced the Greek letter for pi was the father of the guy who discovered proto-Indo-European (PIE)

If you don't subscribe to The History of English podcast you should right that wrong.

It's brilliant.

historyofenglishpodcast.com

@englishhistpod.bsky.social

Interesting. I suspect there is a connection to the 'do' as 'otherwise' phenomenon I described in the episode. Glad you enjoyed the episode!

All is right with the world again. 😊

Glad you enjoyed the episode. I was fascinated to learn about the 'hillbilly' features in the old New England accent - at least the 'country Jonathan' version of it.

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it. If you're starting at the beginning, you've got a long way to go.😀

Confession: I don’t know what songs in English are about maybe 75% of the time.

What New York Looked Like in 1660 | AI Reconstruction of New Amsterdam (Documentary) YouTube video by Restored Timeline

Interesting AI reconstruction of New Amsterdam in the 1600s. youtu.be/tfGZEzoU_WY?...

An interesting discussion on English time-words in the 1600s that I don’t remember being covered in @englishhistpod.bsky.social

Thanks! Very interesting.

If the podcast is a hobby and not a job, it should never feel like a chore. Good luck and enjoy your podcast retirement!

Thanks! Same to you. The next episode should be ready in a week or so - sometimes around Christmas.

Look for the next episode on Thursday or Friday. Hope to record it tomorrow.

I get a lot of those as well. Most have little or nothing to do with the podcast.

Thanks! I'm glad you're up-to-date, but that means you'll have to wait for each new episode. Hopefully, it will continue to be worth the wait. And keep sharing those juicy tidbits.😀

How to Speak Middle English | Featuring Kevin Stroud YouTube video by LetThemTalkTV

I recently spoke with Gideon Ben-Ami about Middle English on his LetThemTalkTV YouTube channel. It was a lot of fun! Check out the video: youtu.be/_1hahaLQ_DY?...

Well, I knew YOU listened to every episode. I was talking about everyone else.😉 Seriously, thanks for listening. I hope you and Mark are doing well.

Does anyone else find it crazy that you can walk into a bookshop and be charged £9.99 for a paperback novel that took the author a year to complete, but £17.99 for a completely blank notebook?

Glad the wait was worth it. 😄

I'm not familiar with that. It could be a holdover, but it might be an independent development. I'm going to discuss the development of modern Scottish dialects in an upcoming episode, so I'll look for that.

Thanks for the interest! The next episode is on track for next week.

#booksky

3 languages under a trenchcoat pretending to be 1.

I learned (learning) Spanish as a second language and I am so glad I didn't have to learn English this way.

If you are interested in *why* English is the disaster that it is, @englishhistpod.bsky.social

Thanks for the plug. Glad you're enjoying it!

Glad you enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun to put together.

Opossums and the fate of Sir Henry Hudson..?

It’s all here in The History of English podcast

❤️

Thanks for the support!

Thanks for wonderful comments! I'm glad you enjoy the podcast almost every night. A lot of listeners tell me that it helps them to fall asleep at night. It took a while to get used to that 'complement' though. 😉

The episodes are always topical. 😉

Thanks. That wasn't planned when I started the episode. It just sort of came out I was writing that segment and I decided to leave it in.