Episode 25: What was language learning like 400 years ago?

10/05/2021 47 min Episodio 25
Episode 25: What was language learning like 400 years ago?

Listen "Episode 25: What was language learning like 400 years ago?"

Episode Synopsis

What would language learning YouTube have been like in 1580? Was Queen Elizabeth I really a polyglot? Who was teaching and learning languages in 1600s London? Early Modern historian John Gallagher and Cate talk about what it was like learning languages in England at a time when English was a marginal language that was not very useful past Dover. Have English tourists always been terrible at learning languages or is that a more recent stereotype? Did young men learn how to order 'two beers' before their Grand Tour?