History of the English Language (and further adventures in the CLI)

Language and history geeks, I want to tell you about a wonderful podcast called History of English. Unfortunately for us FOSS types, it is only available via iTunes (according to the podcast. However, the website gives an RSS feed url). But the author, lawyer Kevin Stroud, allows download of the episodes. In order to listen to them in Amarok, rather than relying on flash on the website, I used wget on all of the episodes to present.

* Fortunately, I waited a day to publish this! I've always used Amarok to fetch and store my podcasts automatically, as well as to play them. I wanted to try out the gPodder service as well, which is needlessly complicated on the website. Fortunately, I decided to just add it via Amarok, and the plugin works flawlessly. So all the wgetting is only necessary if you want to fetch and listen to the episodes outside of Amarok, etc. RSS feed url: http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/feed/podcast/ *

Please visit the podcast website for maps and to leave comments, even if you download: http://historyofenglishpodcast.com

If you want to copy all the episides, first create a directory (put it in your ~/Music directory if you want it in your Music collection): mkdir HistoryofEnglishPodcast && cd HistoryofEnglishPodcast, then do the wgetting from that dir.

Since all the eps are individually named, I copied my commands from the terminal by giving the command history and copying them! Thanks to http://tech.karbassi.com/2007/01/14/view-and-change-bash-history/ for that useful command.

wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep01-Introduction.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep02-Indo-European-Discovery.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep03-TheIndo-EuropeanFamilyTree.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep04-Grimm-Brother-Resurrects-the-Dead.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep05-Centum-Satem-and-Letter-C.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep06Indo-European-Words.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep07-More-Indo-European-Words.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Bonus-Episode-1.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep08-Indo-European-Grammar.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep09Who-Were-The-Indo-Europeans.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep10Early-Indo-European-Migrations.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep11Germanic-Ancestors.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep12Early-Greek-Hittite-and-Trojan-War.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep13Greece-Phoenicia-and-the-Alphabet.mp3
 2009  wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep14Greek-Word-Horde.mp3
 2010  wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep15Etruscans-Romans-and-Modified-Alphabet.mp3
 2011  wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep16Rise-of-Rome-and-Latin.mp3
 2012  wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep17Ancient-Celts-and-Latin-Invasion-Gaul.mp3
 2013  wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep18Keeping-Time-With-Romans.mp3
 2014  wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep19-Romanization-of-Britain.mp3
 2015  wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep20-Early-Germanic-Tribes.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Bonus-Episode-2-History-of-Alphabet2.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep21-Early-Germanic-Words.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep22-Early-Germanic-Grammar.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep23-Tacitus-and-Germanic-Society.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep24-Germanic-Mythology.mp3
 wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep25-Germanic-Markings-and-Runes.mp3
 wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep26-Imperial-Crisis-and-Goths.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep27-Broken-Empire.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep28-Angles-Saxons.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep29-Anglo-Saxon-Invasion.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Bonus-Episode-3.mp3
wget http://media.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/p/content.blubrry.com/historyofenglish/Ep30-Celtic-Legacy.mp3

Enjoy!

The wonderful book The Decipherment of Linear B is also a great look at language and history, which I recently wrote about.