Classroomtools.com Warm-up Activity for A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia

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A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia

Warm-up Activity
The Lord's Prayer and the Evolution of English

Take what follows as a suggestion. Feel free to modify it in any way you think appropriate given the group with which you work. When you've finished, go to the main activity.

Without saying anything about it, give each student a written copy of the Old English/Anglo-Saxon version of The Lord's Prayer (available online at http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=913000). Ask them to try to decide in what language the words on the paper they've received are written. After a minute or so, take possibilities and facilitate the development of a consensus answer, but do not tell students if they are correct.
Again without saying anything, give each student a written copy of the complete or partial Middle English version of The Lord's Prayer (available online at http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=The Lord's Prayer: Middle English). Again, have them try to reach a consensus on the language in which it is written.
If your students have not yet discovered it, point out that the first paper contains The Lord's Prayer as it was written in English at about 1000 CE (common era); while the second contains the same prayer as it was written in English at about 1400 CE. You might explain that you are using The Lord's Prayer because it was one of the first things written down in English, and that it was repeatedly written in whatever was then contemporary English right up to the present. Studying its various incarnations therefore gives us a good look at how English has changed over the last thousand years.
As the second version is much closer to modern English, it should be more easily recognizable. Ask students to what they'd attribute the visible changes in this 300-400 year period. Those with any background in European history should recognize that the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066 would be a good first answer. You can explain that victors in war often impose their language on the defeated enemy. In this case, it is evident that English became Frenchified, and to a large extent remains so to this day. However, war is not the only thing that causes languages to evolve. English kept changing. To illustrate, you can show students The Lord's Prayer in Modern English (available online at http://www.global.org/Pub/LordsPrayer.asp), both Early Modern (from the King James Bible) and Late Modern (your choice from the available selections).
With this as a background, you can point out that historians constantly deal with changing language in their efforts to understand the past. The activity they are about to undertake is designed to give them practical experience in this area.

Please note:

Should you want to use oral versions of the Old or Middle English Lord's Prayer, either in place of or as supplements for the written versions above, they are available on the audio recording Documentary History of Broadcasting: 1920-1950: Radio Before Television from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Available on both CD and cassette (catalog #F-9171), this recording is a gem. It excerpts two programs from the Ways of Mankind, a series designed to explain key anthropological concepts to laymen. The shows on this recording deal with language (A Word in Your Ear) and art (I Know What I Like). Track 2 contains the Old and Middle English versions of The Lord's Prayer, as well as other tidbits relevant to this activity. If you want to present an audio recording of the King James version, find Kate Smith's rendition. It is great.

The Lord's Prayer read (and written) in Old English is also available for online listening. To hear the entire prayer, visit http://www.pastperfect.org.uk/sites/yeavering/archive/prayerclip.html.

In April 2001, Benson Bobrick published
Wide As the Waters : The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired
Hardcover - 384 pages (April 2001)
Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0684847477

It is a fascinating tale. Students will find it hard to believe that one was subject to execution for translating the Bible. If you want to listen to an exceptional interview with Bobrick, you can hear Terry Gross discuss the book with him on a Fresh Air program originally broadcast on April 18, 2001. Pay especially close attention to Terry's question at 25 minutes into the interview, and Bobrick's answer. The battle over the Bible is clearly not over, and Terry's question shows why.

On July 25, 2001, Bobrick was interviewed by Ray Suarez on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. You can read a transcript of that interview. You may also watch it in streaming video via a link on the transcript page.

On July 26, 2001, Paul O. Williams wrote a crystal clear overview of Bobrick's book in The Christian Science Monitor.

Bobrick's book is written for adults. If you're looking for a young adult version of part of his story, Scott O'Dell's The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt By Day should fill the bill. It is an action-packed mystery novel built around the life of William Tyndale.

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