Welcome to The Dead Language Society!
Every word of the English language is a historical document, if you know what to look for.
The Black Death permanently reshaped your vowels. Vikings are the reason we say eggs, they, and husband instead of eyren, hie, and wer. Even the most ordinary, everyday words — dog, she, boy — hide the deepest mysteries.
I’m Colin Gorrie. I write about the deep history of the English language: what we know, what we only think we know, and what stubbornly remains a mystery.
Every week, I dig into questions like:
Why is English spelling such a disaster?
How did Viking settlers reshape the grammar of the English language?
What did English actually sound like a thousand years ago? Where can we still hear echoes of those sounds today?
Join 34,000+ readers exploring where English came from, and how it got so weird. Ranked in Substack’s Top 30 History publications.
Why subscribe?
Free subscribers get:
Every other Wednesday, a new investigation into where language and history collide: stories like how the Black Death permanently changed English pronunciation, the paradoxical reason English doesn’t use accents like é or ü, and why the most everyday words have the most mysterious origins.
Paid subscribers ($95/year) get all that, plus:
Deep dives — Twice-monthly deep dives like “How iambic pentameter really works” and “Why English spelling will never make sense.”
Full archive access — 40+ exclusive posts going back to April 2025.
Reading lists — A guide through the maze of academic sources, highlighting where to start your own exploration.
Community — Join friends in our book club, where we read and discuss great books from the history of the English language together, most recently Beowulf.
What readers say
I learn so much from your posts.
— Anne Wendel
What a delightful Substack that engagingly combines a deep understanding of linguistics with modern cultural references in a way that is easily grasped by the lay reader.
— Miriam Kerzner
Your writing opened up a whole new place for my mind.
— Sandra Green
About me
I’m Colin, a PhD linguist and ancient language teacher, whose work has been featured on NPR. My specialties are Old English, historical linguistics, and helping people fall in love with languages they thought were inaccessible.
My mission is simple: to bring linguistics out of the ivory tower.
I am the author of Ōsweald Bera, an Old English textbook that teaches the language through story. I believe the best way to learn a dead language is through living stories. The same principle drives everything I write here.
Although I teach the history of the English language for a living, there’s never enough time in a class to tell all the fascinating stories that hide just below the surface even in the everyday words we use. I started the Dead Language Society because I wanted to share these stories with the world. I hope you’ll join us!
