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

This is episode 157, Highlands, Lowlands, and Netherlands.

In this episode, we're going to continue our look at developments that shaped the English

language in the mid-1500s, but we're going to shift our focus briefly to events that

were taking place outside of England.

Specifically, we're going to examine some important developments in the North in Scotland,

and also across the English Channel in the Netherlands.

Developments in those regions had major consequences for England going forward, and also had linguistic

consequences throughout the region.

Among the mid-1500s, both Scotland and the Netherlands rebelled against Catholic authorities,

and against the continental powers that effectively controlled those regions.

By embracing Protestantism, those regions were brought closer to England.

In Scotland, that meant the decline of Scots as a distinct national language, and in the

Netherlands, it meant that Dutch words continued to pass into English, maintaining a pattern

that stretched back to the middle ages.

So this time, we'll look at those developments.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes at patreon.com slash history

of English.

Now this time, I want to look at the first decade or so of the reign of Queen Elizabeth

I.

In the last episode, we saw that she became Queen late in the year 1558, and very early

...