The origin of the English language.

The subject of English language.

The History of the English Language appeared as a serious science in the 19^th century. Every science has its object, subject and aims.

The objectof The History of the English Language is the English Language itself, its phonetic, grammatical and lexical aspects.

The subjectof The History of the English Language is:

• main changes in the phonetic structure and spelling of the language at different stages of the development of the language;
• the evolution of the grammatical system;
• the growth and development of the vocabulary.

All these changes are considered against the background of the main historical events that took place in the country.

The aimof The History of the English Language is to study the changes mentioned above.

The History of the English Language has been reconstructed on the basis of written records of different periods. The earliest written texts in English are dated in the 7^th century. The earliest records in other Germanic languages go back to the 3^rd or 4^th centuries A.D.

Language is constantly changing, at different speed and at different linguistic levels (phonetics, grammar, lexicon). The linguistic history explains many features of present-day language (see § 3-5, p. 10-12 in “Историяанглийскогоязыка” by Т.А. Расторгуева).

A language can be studied synchronically:

• a certain period in the history of the development of a language is taken (fixed time boundaries) – horizontal study;
• each level of a language is studied (phonetics, grammar, lexicon);
• different functional varieties of a language are studied (different dialects of this period).

or diachronically:

• all periods in the history of the development of a language are taken – vertical study;
• only one level of a language is studied (phonetics or grammar or lexicon);
• only one functional variety of a language is studied (e.g. Standard English).

These two types of studying a language are closely interconnected and create a full picture of the development of a language.

The History of the English Language is interconnected with other linguistic and non-linguistic disciplines:

1. General Linguistics – provides us with general linguistic laws and rules valid for and language.
2. History – historical events that take place in a country influence to a great extent the language of this country.
3. Theoretical Phonetics – provides us with main phonetic notions and helps to explain phonetic phenomena.
4. Theoretical Grammar – provides us with main grammatical notions and helps to explain grammatical phenomena.
5. Lexicology - provides us with main lexicological notions and helps to explain lexical phenomena.
6. Cultural Studies – helps to understand better the connection between the culture and the language of the country and their mutual influence.
7. Literature – gives us examples of the languages of this or that historical period and these works of literature serve as the material for the language research.

 

 

English as a Germanic language. Ain features of Germanic languages in English.

As far as the English Language belongs to the Germanic group of languages, this group makes a part of the History of the English Language and we are going to consider the whole group before starting to speak about English itself.

The first scholars to mention the Germanic tribes in their works were:

1. Pitheas (4^th c. B.C.) – a Greek historian and geographer, the work “An Account of a Sea Voyage to the Baltic Sea”.
2. Julius Caesar (1^st c. B.C.) – a roman Emperor, the work “Commentaries on the Gallic War”.
3. Pliny the Elder (1^st c. A.D.) – a Roman scientist and writer, the work “Natural History” (contained the classification of the Germanic tribes).
4. Tacitus (1^st c. A.D.) – a Roman historian, the work “Life and Customs of the Ancient Germans”.

Proto-Germanic Language

The Proto-Germanic Language (PG) is supposed to have split form the Indo-European Language (IE) some time between 15^th and 10^th c. B.C.The Ancient Germans (the Teutons) moved further north and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Seaand in the region of the Elbe.

The Proto-Germanic Language has never been recorded in written form. In the 19^th c. it was reconstructed by means of comparative linguistics.

With time the dialectal differences among the Germanic tribes grew because of the migration and geographical expansion. The reasons for this migration and expansion were:

• overpopulation in the areas of the original settlement;
• poor agricultural techniques;
• scanty natural resources in the areas of the original settlement;

The earliest migration of the Germanic tribes from the region of the Elbe was to the Scandinavian Peninsula.As a result, 2 branches of the Proto-Germanic Language appeared:

• southern branch (those who remained in the region of the Elbe);
• northern branch (those who moved northwards, to the Scandinavian Peninsula).

Later some of the tribes returned to the mainland and settled east of the other Germanic tribes. As a result, the Proto-Germanic Language split into 3 branches:

• East Germanic Languages(those who returned and settled in the east);
• North Germanic Languages(those who moved northwards, to the Scandinavian Peninsula, and stayed there);
• West Germanic Languages(those who never left the mainland).

Old Germanic Languages:

1. East Germanic Languages

The East Germanic tribes were known as the Goths. They were one of the most numerous and powerful Germanic tribes who returned form Scandinavia around 200 A.D. and settled in the east of Europe. The Goths were subdivided into two major branches:

• Visigotæ(lived on the territory of present-day France) – linguistically were absorbed by the Romanised Celts and spoke their Celtic Dialects;
• Ostrogotæ(lived on the territory of present-day northern Italy) – they spoke the Gothic Language (now dead).

Other East Germanic tribes (Burgundians, Vandals, Langobards) also had their respective languages.

The Gothic Language was THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE OLD GERMANIC LANGUAGES because:

1. It had the oldest written records – 4^th – 6^th c. A.D.(compare, Old English – 7^th c., Old High Germanic – 8^th c.).
2. The Goths were the first Germans to become Christians. In the 4^th c. A.D Ulfilas, a Gothic bishop, translated the Bible from Greek into Gothic using a modified form of the Greek Alphabet. “Ulfilas’ Gospels”is a work of 200 pages copied in the 5^th – 6^th c. Now this copy is kept in Uppsala (Sweden) and is known as “The Silver Codex” because it is written an red background with silver and golden letters.
3. The Gothic, having the earliest written records among the Germanic Languages, is considered to be very close to the Proto-Germanic Language and thus throws some light on the history of this common Proto-Germanic Language.

2. North Germanic Languages

The North Germanic tribes settled on the southern coast of Scandinavia and in Northern Denmark (since the 4^th c. A.D.). They lived relatively isolated and showed little dialectal variation at that time.

There existed one common language – Old Norse/Old Scandinavian. It had the following characteristics:

• It used the original Germanic Alphabet called the Runes/the Runic Alphabet. It appeared in the 3^rd – 4^th c. A.D. It has come down to us in runic inscriptions– separate words written/carved on objects made of wood, stone, metal (more about it in Lecture 7).
• It was spoken by all North Germanic tribes.

In the 9^th – 10^th c. A.D.the Scandinavians started their voyages to America and islands in the Atlantic Ocean (Leif Ericson, a Scandinavia raider, was the first to land on the American Continent). In addition to this overpopulation in the fjord areas caused the migration of the people to inner Scandinavia. This provoked the beginning of the linguistic differentiation. In Scandinavia the linguistic division corresponded to the political division: there were 3 kingdoms (Sweden, Denmark and Norway) that were constantly fighting for dominance and they had 3 respective languages (earliest records in these languages date back to the 13^th c.):

• Old Danish –later it developed into Danish (now the national language of Denmark);
• Old Swedish - later it developed into Swedish (now the national language of Sweden and a part of Finland);
• Old Norwegian – was the last to develop, later transformed into Norwegian (now the national language of Norway).

In the 8^th c. A.D.sea-rovers and merchants founded numerous colonies on the islands in the North Sea and in the Atlantic Ocean (the Shetland Islands, the Orkneys, the Faroe Islands) and reached even Iceland and Greenland. Thus two more North Germanic languages appeared:

• Faroese(In the Faroe Islands the writing was done in Danish for centuries. The first written records in Faroeseappeared only in the 18^th c.);
• Icelandic (9th c. A.D.)

The Icelandic Language was THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL NORTH GERMANIC LANGUAGES because:

1. The isolation of Iceland caused the preservation of archaic vocabulary and grammatical system.
2. The preservation of archaic vocabulary and grammatical system makes this language very close to Old Norse and helps to reconstruct this ancient common Germanic language.
3. Icelandic has the largest body of written texts (12^th – 13^th c.), e.g.:

– “The Elder Edda” (12^th c.) – a collection of heroic songs;

• “The Younger Edda” (13^th c.) – a text-book forpoets;
• Old Icelandic Sagas.

3. West Germanic Languages

The West Germanic tribes lived between the Oder and the Elbe and they never left the mainland. They were:

• the Franconians(Low, Middle and High Franconians) – settled the lower basin of the Rhine and with time began to speak the language of the Romanised Celts, apart from Low Franconians who spoke Old Low Franconianthat later developed into à Dutch;
• the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes and the Frisians– settled the coastal territories of the Netherlands, Germany, the south of Denmark and the British Isles. The languages they spoke were:

• Old English– later developed into à English (national language – 16^th c.; first written records – 7^th c.);

– Old Saxon – later developed into a territorial dialect in Germany;

• Old Frisian– later developed into à Frisian

• High Germans – settled the southern mountainous areas of Germany and spoke Old High Germanthat later developed into two distinctive languages:

à German:

• is known for great dialectal diversity;
• first written records – 8^th – 9^th c.;
• 12^th c. – literary form of the language appears.

Lecture 3 Linguistic Features of the Germanic Languages Phonetic Features

All the Germanic Languages of the past and present have common linguistic features that are not shared by other groups of languages in the Indo-European family (Slavonic group, Romance group, etc.). These features are characteristic of the Germanic group only. They appeared during the period of the Proto-Germanic Language, before it split into a certain number of the Germanic languages. First of all we are going to discuss the common Germanic phonetic features.

Word Stress/Accent

Indo-European (Non-Germanic)	Proto-Germanic
1. free stress (movable, i.e. can appear in any part of a word (root, prefix, suffix));	1. fixed stress (can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix);
2. pitch stress (musical)	2. dynamic stress (force, breath stress)
E.g.: русский	E.g.: German	English
б`елый	`Liebe	`white
белизн`а	`lieben	`whiteness
белов`атый	`lieberhaft	`whitish
бел`ить	ge`liebt	`whitewash

The Proto-Germanic type of stress led to the formation of the following peculiarities of the Germanic languages as compared to non-Germanic Indo-European languages:

• phonetic– as a result of the fixed position of the stress the unstressed syllables were becoming weaker and weaker, they got less distinct and neutral sounds (such as “schwa”) appeared;
• morphological – as a result of the fact that the stress was fixed on the root and the syllables following the root were always unstressed and weak, many Germanic languages began to lose suffixes and grammatical endings and became ANALYTICAL LANGUAGES.

E.g.: Old English (OE) [`sunu]

Middle English (ME) [`sunə]

New English (NE) [`sun]

Modern English (ModE) [`sΛn] (the word “son”)

Vowels

Vowels undergo different types of changes:

1. Qualitative change – affects the quality of a sound (e.g. [o àΛ]).
2. Quantitative change – affects the length of a sound (e.g. [i ài:]).
3. Dependent/positional change– a change that occurs in certain position or in certain phonetic conditions (e.g. bit_ – bite [bit à bait]).
4. Independent/spontaneous change – affects a certain sound in all positions irrespective of phonetic conditions and serves to distinguish a grammatical phenomenon (ablaut) (more about it in Lecture 4).

Main tendencies in Vowel Changes in the Germanic Languages:

1. Short vowels à become neutralized.
2. Long vowels à become short and more open.

àbecome diphthongized and more closed.

Proto-Germanic Vowel System:

Short Vowels	i	e	a	o	u
Long Vowels	i:	e:	a:	o:	u:

Some vowel correspondences between Germanic and on-Germanic Languages:

Sound Correspondence	Non-Germanic		Germanic
	Latin	Русский	English	German	Swedish
[a: à o:]	mater	мать	mother	-	moder
[o à a]	nox	ночь	-	Nacht	natt
[e à i]	ventus	ветер	wind	Wind	vind
[u à o]	sunus	сын	son	Sohn	son

Consonants

The comparison of the Germanic and non-Germanic languages within the Indo-European family reveals regular correspondences between German and non-German consonants.

First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law) –in the 19^th Jacob Grimm, a German scholar, discovered the existence of regular correspondence between Indo-European (IE) and German consonants and subdivided them into 3 groups:

№	Consonant Correspondences		Examples
			Old		Modern
	IE	PG	Non-German (Latin)	German (OE)	Non-German (Italian,рус.)	German (English, German)
1	[bh,dh,gh] à aspirated voiced stops	[b, d, g] non-aspirated voiced stops	bhrāta (Hind)	brōþor	брат	brother, Bruder
			rudhira(Hind)	rēad	-	red
			hostis	giest	гость	guest, Gast
2	[b, d, g] à voiced stops	[p, t, k] voiceless stops/plosives	labare	pōl	болото	pool, Pfuhl
			decem	tīen	dieci,десять	ten
			genu	cnēo	ginocchio	knee, Knie
3	[p, t, k] à voiceless stops/plosives	[f, q, h] voiceless fricatives	pedis	fōt	piedi	foot, Fuß
			tres	þrēo	tre, три	three
			cordis	heort	cuore	heart, Herz

Verner’s Law –Carl Verner, a Danish scholar (19^th c.), explained the consonant correspondences as a gradual historical process (a change takes place in the course of time):

Consonant Correspondences			Latin	OE	ModE
1. [p, t, k] à voiceless stops/plosives	[f, q, h] à voiceless fricatives	[v, ð/d, g] voiced fricatives	septem	seofen	seven
			pater	fæđer	father
			socrus	swaiho(Gothic)	Schwager(Germ)
2. Rhotacism			ausis(Lithuanian)	Auso (Gothic)	ear, Ohr (Germ)
[s] à	[z] à	[r]

P.S.: these processes usually happened on condition that the consonants were situated between vowels and if preceded by an unstressed vowel.

Modern Examples: seethe – sodden, death – dead, was – were.

Second Consonant Shift –happened in the 9^th c. in Old High German and today we can observe it comparing English and German:

Consonant Correspondences		English	German
1. [t] à à	[ts]	two	zwei
	[s]	water	Wasser
2. [q] à	[d]	three	drei
3. [d] à	[t]	daughter	Tochter
4. [k] à	[h]	make	machen

 

Lecture 4 Linguistic Features of the Germanic Languages Grammatical Features

The Proto-Germanic and the Old Germanic Languages were SYNTHETIC, i.e. the relationships between the parts of the sentience were shown by the forms of the words rather than by their position in the sentence or by auxiliary words.

The grammatical forms of the words were built by means of:

1. Suppletion(inherited from Indo-European) – the usage of 2 or more different roots as forms of one and the same word:

Part of Speech	Indo-European Non-Germanic Languages		Germanic Languages
	Italian	русский	English	German
Personal Pronouns	io, mio, mi/me	я, меня, мне	I, my, mine, me	ich, mich, mir
Adjectives	buono, migliore, ottimo	хороший, лучше, лучший	good, better, best	gut, besser, bester
Some Verbs	essere, sono, e`, ero, saro`, etc.	есть, был, будет	be, is, are, am, was, were	sein, bin, ist, sind, war, gewesen, etc.

1. Inflections(inherited from Indo-European) – though in the Germanic languages inflections were simpler and shorter than in other Indo-European languages.

Let’s take the system of declensionsas an example.In PG it was well-developed but in the Old Germanic languages, due to the stress that was fixed on the root and the weakening of the end of a word as a result, the declensions started to disappear. While the nouns and adjectives still preserved stem-suffixes, they had declensions but once the stem suffixes started to weaken and disappear, the declensions were lost as well and the endings were simplified and got fewer:

Word Structure
PG	mak-oj-an	root + stem-suffix(word-deriv.)	+ gram. ending(form-marker)
Old Germanic Languages	mac-ian	stem(root melted with stem-suffix)	+ gram. ending

1. Sound Interchange –the usage of interchange of vowels and consonants for the purpose of word- and form-building (e.g.: English: bear – birth, build – built, tooth – teeth; German: gebären – Geburt)

Ablaut/Vowel Gradation – an independent vowel interchange, unconnected with any phonetic conditions (phonetic environment/surrounding) used to differentiate between grammatical forms of one and the same word. The Germanic ablaut was consistently used in building the principle forms of strong verbs.

Jacob Grimm has subdivided all the verbs into two groups according to the way they build their principle forms:

		Strong Verbs (irregular)	Weak Verbs (regular)
		called so because they have preserved the richness of forms since the time of Proto-Germanic	called so because they have lost their old Proto-Germanic forms and acquired new ones
form-building		vowel interchange + gram. ending	suffix –d/t (a Germanic invention!!!)
E.g.	OE	reisan – rais – risum – risans	macian – macode - macod
			cepan – cepte - cept
	ModE	rise – rose - risen	make – made – made
			keep – kept – kept

 

 

 

Grimm’s Law.

Grimm’s law, description of the regular correspondences in Indo-European languages formulated by Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Grammatik (1819–37; “Germanic Grammar”); it pointed out prominent correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages of Europe and western Asia. The law was a systematic and coherent formulation, well supported by examples, of patterns recognized as early as 1814 by the Danish philologist Rasmus Kristian Rask. It is important for historical linguistics because it clearly demonstrates the principle that sound change is a regular phenomenon and not a random process affecting only some words, as had been thought previously.

Grimm described two consonant shifts involving essentially nine consonants. One shift (probably a few centuries before the Christian era) affected the Indo-European consonants and is evident in English, Dutch, other Low German languages, and Old Norse. The other shift (about the 6th century AD) was less radical in scope and affected the Germanic consonants, resulting in the consonant system evident in Old High German and its descendants, Middle High German and Modern High German (standard German). According to the law, the ancient unvoiced p, t, k became the English unvoiced f, th, h and the Old High German f, d, h, producing such correlations as that between the initial consonants of Greek pod-, English fod, and Old High German fuo. The law further stated that the ancient voiced b, d, g became the English unvoiced p, t, k and the Old High German spirant stops f, ts, kh; hence, the correlation between Latin duo, English “two,” and modern German zwei(pronounced “tsvai”). Also, the originally voiced bh, dh, gh became the English voiced b, d, g and the Old High German p, t, k; compare Sanskrit bhárati, English “bear,” and the Upper German dialects of Old High German ki-peran (later standard German ge-bären). The Old High German examples show the second shift in addition to the first, which is seen in English.

 

4. Verner`s Law

Verner’s law, linguistic explanation of the apparent exceptions to Grimm’s law (q.v.), which first demonstrated the significant role that accent (stress) played in linguistic change in the Germanic languages. It provided further evidence for the important claim of 19th-century linguists that phonetic laws have no exceptions and proved to be a decisive influence in establishing the direction taken by the Neogrammarian (q.v.) school of historical linguistics. This law, one of the greatest discoveries in historical linguistics, was first presented in an article, “Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung” (“An Exception to the First Sound Shift”), in the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung in 1876, by the Danish linguist Karl Verner.

Grimm’s law stated that the Indo-European p, t, and k sounds changed into f, th or d, and h in the Germanic languages. Verner noticed that Grimm’s law was valid whenever the accent fell on the root syllable of the Sanskrit cognate, but, when the accent fell on another syllable, the Germanic equivalents became b, d, and g. This was also the case with s and r. Technically, this rule states that in the Germanic branch of Indo-European, all non-initial voiceless fricatives (spirants) became voiced between voiced sounds if they followed an unaccented syllable in Indo-European or Sanskrit. For example, Sanskrit bhrātar, with the accent on the root syllable, corresponds to Gothic brōþar, but Sanskrit pitā, accented on the final syllable, corresponds to Gothic fadar.

 

The origin of the English language.

The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps too neatly, divided into three periods usually called Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and Modern English. The earliest period begins with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A.D., though no records of their language survive from before the seventh century, and it continues until the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a substantial impact on the lexicon, and the well-developed inflectional system that typifies the grammar of Old English had begun to break down.

Some of the words in the original have survived in altered form, including axode (asked), hu (how), rihtlice (rightly), engla (angels), habbað (have), swilcum (such), heofonum (heaven), and beon (be). Others, however, have vanished from our lexicon, mostly without a trace, including several that were quite common words in Old English: eft "again," ðeode "people, nation," cwæð "said, spoke," gehatene"called, named," wlite "appearance, beauty," and geferan "companions." Recognition of some words is naturally hindered by the presence of two special characters, þ, called "thorn," and ð, called "edh," which served in Old English to represent the sounds now spelled with th.

Other points worth noting include the fact that the pronoun system did not yet, in the late tenth century, include the third person plural forms beginning with th-: hi appears where we would use they. Several aspects of word order will also strike the reader as oddly unlike ours. Subject and verb are inverted after an adverb—þa cwæð he "Then said he"—a phenomenon not unknown in Modern English but now restricted to a few adverbs such as never and requiring the presence of an auxiliary verb like do or have. In subordinate clauses the main verb must be last, and so an object or a preposition may precede it in a way no longer natural: þe hi of comon "which they from came," for ðan ðe hi engla wlite habbað "because they angels' beauty have."

Perhaps the most distinctive difference between Old and Modern English reflected in Aelfric's sentences is the elaborate system of inflections, of which we now have only remnants. Nouns, adjectives, and even the definite article are inflected for gender, case, and number: ðære ðeode "(of) the people" is feminine, genitive, and singular, Angle "Angles" is masculine, accusative, and plural, and swilcum "such" is masculine, dative, and plural. The system of inflections for verbs was also more elaborate than ours: for example, habbað "have" ends with the -að suffix characteristic of plural present indicative verbs. In addition, there were two imperative forms, four subjunctive forms (two for the present tense and two for the preterit, or past, tense), and several others which we no longer have. Even where Modern English retains a particular category of inflection, the form has often changed. Old English present participles ended in -ende not -ing,and past participles bore a prefix ge- (as geandwyrd "answered" above).

The period of Middle English extends roughly from the twelfth century through the fifteenth. The influence of French (and Latin, often by way of French) upon the lexicon continued throughout this period, the loss of some inflections and the reduction of others (often to a final unstressed vowel spelled -e) accelerated, and many changes took place within the phonological and grammatical systems of the language. A typical prose passage, especially one from the later part of the period, will not have such a foreign look to us as Aelfric's prose has; but it will not be mistaken for contemporary writing either. The following brief passage is drawn from a work of the late fourteenth century called Mandeville's Travels. It is fiction in the guise of travel literature, and, though it purports to be from the pen of an English knight, it was originally written in French and later translated into Latin and English. In this extract Mandeville describes the land of Bactria, apparently not an altogether inviting place, as it is inhabited by "full yuele [evil] folk and full cruell."

The spelling is often peculiar by modern standards and even inconsistent within these few sentences (contré and contree, o [griffoun] and a [gret hors], þanne and þan, for example). Moreover, in the original text, there is in addition to thorn another old character 3, called "yogh," to make difficulty. It can represent several sounds but here may be thought of as equivalent to y. Even the older spellings (including those where u stands for v or vice versa) are recognizable, however, and there are only a few words like ipotaynes "hippopotamuses" and sithes "times" that have dropped out of the language altogether.

We may notice a few words and phrases that have meanings no longer common such as byttere "salty," o this half "on this side of the world," and at the poynt "to hand," and the effect of the centuries-long dominance of French on the vocabulary is evident in many familiar words which could not have occurred in Aelfric's writing even if his subject had allowed them, words like contree, ryueres, plentee, egle, and lyoun.

In general word order is now very close to that of our time, though we notice constructions like hath the body more gret and three sithes more þan is the water of the see. We also notice that present tense verbs still receive a plural inflection as in beren, dwellen, han, and ben and that while nominative þei has replaced Aelfric's hi in the third person plural, the form for objects is still hem.

All the same, the number of inflections for nouns, adjectives, and verbs has been greatly reduced, and in most respects Mandeville is closer to Modern than to Old English.

The period of Modern English extends from the sixteenth century to our own day. The early part of this period saw the completion of a revolution in the phonology of English that had begun in late Middle English and that effectively redistributed the occurrence of the vowel phonemes to something approximating their present pattern. (Mandeville's English would have sounded even less familiar to us than it looks.)

Other important early developments include the stabilizing effect on spelling of the printing press and the beginning of the direct influence of Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek on the lexicon. Later, as English came into contact with other cultures around the world and distinctive dialects of English developed in the many areas which Britain had colonized, numerous other languages made small but interesting contributions to our word-stock.

The historical aspect of English really encompasses more than the three stages of development just under consideration. English has what might be called a prehistory as well. As we have seen, our language did not simply spring into existence; it was brought from the Continent by Germanic tribes who had no form of writing and hence left no records. Philologists know that they must have spoken a dialect of a language that can be called West Germanic and that other dialects of this unknown language must have included the ancestors of such languages as German, Dutch, Low German, and Frisian. They know this because of certain systematic similarities which these languages share with each other but do not share with, say, Danish. However, they have had somehow to reconstruct what that language was like in its lexicon, phonology, grammar, and semantics as best they can through sophisticated techniques of comparison developed chiefly during the last century.

Similarly, because ancient and modern languages like Old Norse and Gothic or Icelandic and Norwegian have points in common with Old English and Old High German or Dutch and English that they do not share with French or Russian, it is clear that there was an earlier unrecorded language that can be called simply Germanic and that must be reconstructed in the same way. Still earlier, Germanic was just a dialect (the ancestors of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were three other such dialects) of a language conventionally designated Indo-European, and thus English is just one relatively young member of an ancient family of languages whose descendants cover a fair portion of the globe.

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