As we all write in English, it’s great to find out more about the language in depth! Welcome to a new mini-series here on HTWB by Senior Transcriber Neil Wright – an avid expert on historical linguistics. This week Neill looks at where Indo-European languages come from. Over to Neil…
‘Indo-European’ languages might not sound similar to you, but linguists have scratched their heads over the apparent similarities of the Indo-European languages for centuries. Today, huge swaths of populations covering most of Europe, Asia Minor, and northern India speak languages that are so similar in construct, they must have had a single progenitor tongue.
Scientists and linguistics are closing in on the true origins of the Indo-European languages. Shown above: the flag representing Indo-European languages. Source: Wikimedia Commons
One of the very first people to draw the dots together was a man named William Jones in 1786. He was serving as a judge in British India at the time. Jones was a well-educated man, and had studied Greek and Latin, as well as English in school. Not long after arriving in India, he began to take an interest in Sanskrit — the language of the ancient religious texts — and wrote the following: [Read more…]
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