Did you know that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are named after Anglo-Saxon Gods? Or that the words beef, pork and mutton came from the French people?

I definitely didn't know that Shakespeare contributed as many as 2000 words and phrases to the English language, including regular-English words like eyeball, alligator, bedroom, puking and anchovy. And of course, big words like dauntless, besmirch, lackluster, obsequiously and many more. He also gave us phrases like, 'as dead as a doornail', 'come what may', 'I've not slept a wink', 'a fool's paradise' etc. But the reason I didn't know all these fun facts about the English language was because I had not seen these hilariously informative videos by The Open University.



They have squeezed in 1600 years of linguistic history into 10 minutes and explained it in series of 10 videos of 1 min each. So have a look at these fun videos that will take you through a fun journey of how the English that we speak today evolved over so many years.
































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