Sandy: Welcome again to our weekly podcast, A Time for Times; and as we were saying at the beginning of our podcast, today we have special topics about life in old Britain. Talking about this stage in England is to talk about a wonderful culture that lived there and changed history and language forever: the Anglo-Saxons. To tell us a little more about this, we have a special guest, Doctor Frank Teller, professor and investigator of Historical and Sociocultural Development of English Language at our university. Doctor Teller, how are you?

Dr. Teller: I’m great, Sandy, thank you for inviting me to your podcast; I wanted to say hello to our listeners and say thank you for attending today’s session.

Sandy: Thank you, Doctor. Well, please let’s start talking about the Anglo-Saxons, professor. Who are the Anglo-Saxons and why are they so important for historians and linguists?

Dr. Teller: Well, Anglo-Saxons are warriors and civilized at the same time, they are a fighting and a hard- working tribe in England around the 5th century. They are very organized people, and their cultural context is changing very fast. We have a warrior nation in one side and Christian missionaries on the other; there is one point in history when these two worlds meet. This contact made a good change in Anglo-Saxon culture, kings and high-society members, in addition to, these missionaries made the first laws in Anglo-Saxon culture, but there is also something very particular in this encounter: the missionaries used Latin in religion, the Angles had their language and Saxons spoke what we know as Old German. What happens here? These three languages make one, an Anglo-Saxon English, or as we know it better: Old English.

Sandy: That’s amazing, professor. So, basically, the English language roots are these three languages?

Dr. Teller: In a very basic way, yes. There’s another turning point in this history, would you like to know it?

Sandy: Of course, Doctor, but let’s make a little pause to give special information by our friend Natalie, we’ll be right back.