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

This is episode 181, heaven and earth.

This time, as we continue the chronological story of English, we're going to look at two

important historical events which shaped the world and the English language in the early

1600s.

The first is the completion of the King James Version of the Bible, also known as the Authorized

Version.

We'll look at how that important work was composed and how it influenced the development of English.

The other major development was the invention of the telescope and the realization that the view of the universe that had been generally accepted for nearly 2,000 years was wrong.

This event marked the beginning of, or at least laid the

foundation for the scientific revolution. Though these two developments were sometimes in conflict

with each other, they occurred simultaneously, and this time we'll see how they shaped the language

we speak today.

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 at patreon.com

slash history of English.

Now, last time, we looked at the first permanent English settlement in North America

and the early British settlement in Northern Ireland. As we saw, the English language was on

the move in the early 1600s as English speakers started to migrate to new areas. Well, this time,

I want to pick up where we left off in that episode

and conclude our look at the first decade of the 1600s.

Now, modern historians tend to classify the early 1600s as the early modern era,

...