The Mother Tongue
Presented by Robert MacNeil Written by ROBERT MCCRUM Two thousand years ago people from Denmark and Germany brought the English language - as obscure then as present day Icelandic - to the British Isles.
This dramatic episode in The Story of English describes how the language came to these shores and how, against overwhelming odds, it survived first the Danish, and then the Norman invasion.
The Mother Tongue explains that Old English is not as remote as most people imagine, and shows how much everyday speech is a direct throwback to Anglo-Saxon times.
Finally, after three centuries of Norman rule, English emerges as the language of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Caxton , the near-ancestor of the English used today. Directors
VIVIAN DUCAT. HOWARD REID Producer WILLIAM CRAN
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