World Language History Of Language Timeline
In the early iron age alphabetic writing spread across the near east and southern europe with the emergence of the brahmic family of scripts languages of india are attested from after about 300 bc.
World language history of language timeline. I am unlikely to do it justice in this short exposition but it may at least suffice to give an overview of the main developments. A timeline of language. Consequently scholars wishing to study the origins of language must draw inferences from other kinds of evidence such as the fossil record archaeological evidence contemporary language.
This timeline offers a glimpse at some of the key events that helped to shape the english language over the past 1 500 years. To learn more about the ways that english evolved in britain and then spread around the world check out the history of english in 10 minutes an amusing video produced by the open university. He has also written a book on dialects and black english the word on the street.
At that time the inhabitants of britain spoke a celtic language. A natural history of language on how the world s languages arise change and mix. The history of the english language really started with the arrival of three germanic tribes who invaded britain during the 5th century ad.
The timeline dates way back to 2690bc when the ancient egyptian language first emerged. The selection of events is my own and the dates are approximate in some cases but it gives at least some idea of the time scales involved and puts the developments into some sort of perspective. 1500 bc appear to record a northwest semitic language though only one or two words have been deciphered.
A good surviving example of this process is the line in western europe dividing the romance languages those deriving from a roman example from the germanic. Timeline here is a list of important dates in the development of the english language. The specialist travel company have done some digging to create this incredible timeline highlighting when languages around the world first originated.
Over the course of history languages continually infiltrate each other as words are spread by conquest empire trade religion technology or in modern times global entertainment. The origin of language and its evolutionary emergence in the human species have been subjects of speculation for several centuries. The earliest known alphabetic inscriptions at serabit el khadim c.
The topic is difficult to study because of the lack of direct evidence. These tribes the angles the saxons and the jutes crossed the north sea from what today is denmark and northern germany. English is a west germanic language that originated from anglo frisian dialects brought to britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries ad by anglo saxon migrants from what is now northwest germany southern denmark and the netherlands the anglo saxons settled in the british isles from the mid 5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern great britain.
