Instituto de Estudios Superiores Belén

PROFESORADO EN INGLÉS
Historia de la Lengua Inglesa

THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY LANGUAGE

THE P RE-HISTORY OF ENGLISH

WELCOME
Hello, my dear students and welcome to a new week in the History of the English
Language.

We are almost at the edge of starting to learn the long and rich history of the English
language itself. Nevertheless, in the same way as for the history of the English civilization we
recognized the existence and development of early groups of people, linguists also do the
same regarding the history of each language. Nevertheless, trying to explore and learn the
distant pre-history of a language is a dauting task and, for a long time, the history of the
language seemed to have been lost, until several developments in the 18th and 19th centuries
allowed scholars to reconstruct it.

SIR WILLIAM JONES

William Jones was born in London in 1746, though he died in Calcutta in 1794. At a
young age he was able to learn Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and even some
Chinese (he was a real polyglot!). He was educated at Oxford University where he graduated
as an M.A. in 1773. After studying law, in 1783 he was appointed as a judge in the court of
Fort William in Calcutta. Then, in 1784, he founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta and he
continued improving and expanding his knowledge of Oriental languages, including Sanskrit.

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 Instituto de Estudios Superiores Belén
PROFESORADO EN INGLÉS
Historia de la Lengua Inglesa

ABOUT SANSKRIT
Sanskrit was the ancient language of India, but it was still used in law at the time Sir
William Jones was there, so this situation enabled him to learn more and more about it. At the
moment it was believed that, as Sanskrit had many resemblances with European languages,
then Latin, Greek and others came from it.

However, Jones started to think that they all (i.e., Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and such
European languages) came from another “common source” which had perhaps existed
earlier and eventually disappeared. Thus, Jones’ proposal inspired other scholars and they
attempted to deduce the “family” for each language and the form of their common ancestor.

LANGUAGE FAMILIES
As investigations and theories evolved, linguists were able to start speaking about
families of language, that is to say, a group of languages which share a common source (or
language ancestor). Then, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin are part of the Indo-European family
language, and their common ancestor is called the Proto-Indo-European language. The
following picture shows the reconstruction of this language family:

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 Instituto de Estudios Superiores Belén
PROFESORADO EN INGLÉS
Historia de la Lengua Inglesa

This Indo-European is just one of the many families around the world. There also
exists, for instance, the Sino-Tibetan one which includes both the Chinese and the Tibeto-
Burman languages. In terms of numbers of speakers, they constitute the world’s second
largest language family (being the first the Indo-European), and this family includes more
than 300 languages and major dialects. Nevertheless, there are many more languages which
have no clear ties, and they remain isolated still today, waiting for their family to appear.

In the following webpage you will find a set of maps illustrating the current geographical
distribution of all the major families around the world:

https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?194907-What-is-a-language-family-you-belong-to

ACTIVITY 1
READ THE FIRST PART OF THE PDF FILE: “LH 2–1 DOSSIER” AND FIND OUT THE SUGGESTIONS
ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE

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 Instituto de Estudios Superiores Belén
PROFESORADO EN INGLÉS
Historia de la Lengua Inglesa

ACTIVITY 2
CONTINUE READING THE FIRST PART OF THE PDF FILE: “LH 2–1 DOSSIER” AND MATCH THE
LINGUISTS WITH THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS
Linguist Contribution
worked out some of the relationships
Franz Bopp between languages showing how they were
related.
recognized that there were regular sound
Rasmus Rask
shifts between languages.

deduced that there were regular rules of

Jakob Grimm and his brother
sound change.

described a historical sound change in the

Karl Verner
Proto-Germanic language.

ACTIVITY 3
READ THE SECTION “THE INDO-EUROPEAN” AND ANSWER:
1- Which words were not present in the original Indo-European language? Which were
present?
2- Where and when did they live?
3- What improvements did they make?
4- What was their social organization like?
5- What happened after 2500 BC?

SOURCE
➢ WILLIAM JONES. (n.d.). Retrieved May 19, 2021, from
https://www.kent.ac.uk/ewto/projects/anthology/william-jones.html
➢ Egerod, Søren Christian. "Sino-Tibetan languages". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Nov. 2018,
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sino-Tibetan-languages Accessed 19 May 2021.
➢ Wikipedia contributors. (2021, May 12). Language family. In Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:03, May 19, 2021,
from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Language_family&oldid=1022743363

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE

➢ Acosta, Dante (2021). LH 2 - 1 The Indo-European Family Language. Material de
Cátedra “Historia de la Lengua Inglesa” – Profesorado en Inglés (IES Belén)

Esta obra está bajo una licencia Creative Commons

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