What Casual English Speech Was Like in 1586

Simon Roper, a polyglot who enjoys exploring the history of the English language, read the text from the 1586 book “Familiar Dialogues” by Jacques Bellot, a French immigrant to England who sought to make phrasebooks for other immigrants. Roper examined the structure of each casual phrase and how it relates to modern lexicon.

I explore a 1586 work by Jacques Bellot, and what it can tell us about ‘street English’ in the early modern period.