Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 146, a brand new world.

In this episode, we're going to continue our look at the European discovery of the Americas

in the late 1400s.

Well, look at what happened when Columbus reached the shores of several tropical islands

way out in the Atlantic.

Those islands were the islands of the Caribbean, and a few years later he returned to explore

the mainland of South and Central America.

Now, you may be familiar with parts of this story, but the part that often gets left out

is what happened when the European explorers encountered the natives of the region and

tried to communicate with them.

Obviously, they each spoke very different languages.

As the explorers encountered the new culture and all of the things associated with that

culture, they started to pick up new words from the native people, and some of those words

eventually made their way into English.

So as we look at these events in the late 1400s, we'll focus on the linguistic consequences

and we'll see how those developments impacted the English language.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is History of

EnglishPodcast.com, and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes and transcripts

at patreon.com slash history of English.

Also since we're going to be looking at the voyages of Columbus, I should make a quick

note about the sources that exist for most of this information.

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