‘THE STORY OF ENGLISH’ : MacNEIL’S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE LANGUAGE

“The Story of English,” the new nine-part public television series about the history and spread of the language, has reached this country in large part due to one of its many immigrants, Robert MacNeil.

The Canadian-born MacNeil, best known to public television viewers as co-anchor of “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour,” formed the alliance between the British Broadcasting Corp. and MacNeil-Lehrer Productions (a company owned by MacNeil and his longtime partner Jim Lehrer) that made the $3-million production possible.

And, despite a dizzying schedule preparing for the nightly “NewsHour,” he co-authored, co-produced and hosted the series. He also contributed sections on Canadian English and on the language of U.S. Presidents to a Viking companion book to the series.

“The language has been a close personal interest of mine since the time in high school when I discovered Shakespeare was not a drudge and something I was being forced to learn but something that really turned me on,” MacNeil said in an interview as he explained his substantial commitment to the project.

MacNeil estimated that in the last two years he has devoted four months, “time off from the ‘NewsHour’ and vacation time,” to the series.

“Growing up in Canada,” he continued, “I was surrounded by different accents, and then traveling and becoming a writer in Britain and in the U.S. only added to my fascination with the delectable differences in the language. I started to develop a taste, and an amusement, as a collector of English.”

MacNeil said he first learned of the proposal for a series on the language three years ago when he was asked to read a treatment for the series written by an old friend, Robert McCrum, an editor at the English publishing firm of Faber and Faber. “Immediately, I thought it was a good idea, and I couldn’t imagine why it hadn’t been done before,” he recalled.

“But many people said, ‘This is not a TV series,’ ” he added, acknowledging “the challenge” of using a visual medium to tell a story about words. It was MacNeil-Lehrer Productions that found the additional funding (from General Foods and the Mellon Foundation) necessary to complete the nine-part series.

“We tried to tackle the problem by looking at language as a living thing that people deal with in their everyday lives,” MacNeil said. He cited a section from the second segment in the series, in which a story sounds and is told differently from the point of view of an Anglo Saxon deer hunter and one living today.

“There are incredible riches to be found in the story of English,” the usually mild-mannered MacNeil said enthusiastically. “Not only can we learn something new, we can get reacquainted with a language that we all can share. The promise is of both a heightened consciousness and increased joy.”

“The Story of English” is airing Sundays at 10 p.m. on Channel 28, and Mondays at 10 p.m. on Channels 50, 15 and 24.