Book contents
- The Long Journey of English
- The Long Journey of English
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: A View from the Birthplace
- 1 Where It All Started: The Language Which Became English
- 2 The Journey Begins: The First Movement South
- 3 Interlude: A View from the Celtic Island
- 4 Heading West Again: The North Sea Crossing, 400–600
- 5 Anglo-Saxons and Celts in the British Highlands, 600–800
- 6 And Further West: Across the Irish Sea, 800–1200
- 7 Atlantic Crossing: On to the Americas, 1600–1800
- 8 Onwards to the Pacific Shore
- 9 Across the Equator: Into the Southern Hemisphere, 1800–1900
- 10 Some Turning Back: English in Retreat
- 11 Meanwhile … Britain and the British Isles from 1600
- 12 Transcultural Diffusion: The New Native Englishes
- Epilogue: Sixteen Hundred Years On
- References
- Index
- References
1 - Where It All Started: The Language Which Became English
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 May 2023
Book contents
- The Long Journey of English
- The Long Journey of English
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: A View from the Birthplace
- 1 Where It All Started: The Language Which Became English
- 2 The Journey Begins: The First Movement South
- 3 Interlude: A View from the Celtic Island
- 4 Heading West Again: The North Sea Crossing, 400–600
- 5 Anglo-Saxons and Celts in the British Highlands, 600–800
- 6 And Further West: Across the Irish Sea, 800–1200
- 7 Atlantic Crossing: On to the Americas, 1600–1800
- 8 Onwards to the Pacific Shore
- 9 Across the Equator: Into the Southern Hemisphere, 1800–1900
- 10 Some Turning Back: English in Retreat
- 11 Meanwhile … Britain and the British Isles from 1600
- 12 Transcultural Diffusion: The New Native Englishes
- Epilogue: Sixteen Hundred Years On
- References
- Index
- References
Summary
Where did English originally come from? We can say with some degree of certainty that the ancestor of modern English, Proto-Germanic, was originally a dialect of the Indo-European language which travelled from the borderlands of Asia and Europe to southern Scandinavia. It also seems rather likely that Proto-Germanic was significantly linguistically influenced at some stage by contact with another language or languages. And it is by no means impossible that much or some of that influence was exerted by Finno-Samic.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Long Journey of EnglishA Geographical History of the Language, pp. 2 - 16Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
Further Reading
Anthony, David. 2007. The horse, the wheel, and language: how bronze-age riders from the Eurasian steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bammesberger, Alfred, & Vennemann, Theo (eds.) 2003. Languages in prehistoric Europe. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Fortson, Benjamin. 2010. Indo-European language and culture: an introduction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John. 1990. Germanic languages. In Comrie, B. (ed.) The major languages of Western Europe. London: Routledge, 58–66.Google Scholar
Sanders, Ruth. 2010. German: biography of a language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2020. Millennia of language change: sociolinguistic studies in deep historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar