Lots of them have been written though sometimes in rather stiff, academic language. A swinging, delightful (but still philologically accurate) version was done back in 2007. Its author Seth Lerer, a professor of English at Stanford, was an equally swinging and delightful guest. Here is our rather richly illustrated conversation about the Latin, Anglo-Saxon, German and French origins of the language which has now become the most widely used in all the modern world. Listen carefully and you can hear the host’s audacious attempt to recite the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.