🚀 go-pugleaf

In-Reply-To: <gus.teschke-050193133237@no-name-medadmin.med.umich.edu> gus.teschke@med.umich.edu (Gus Teschke)

The short answer to your question is: Modern English comes from Old
English (5th - 11th Century AD) which comes from Germanic (spoken in
Northern Germany/Southern Denmark from perhaps 1000 BC? onwards),
which comes from Indo-European (perhaps 3000 BC).

That much is agreed by everyone - well, perhaps not the dates.

Quite a lot of people argue for an intermediate sub-grouping of
Germanic called North-Sea Germanic (basically the language of the
Angles, Saxons, Jutes & Frisians in modern Friesland). Where the speakers of
Indo-Europeans lived is a long-standing matter of dispute, but
probably not west of the Black Sea. And what came before
Indo-European is a matter for idle speculation and/or ferocious
argument according to taste.

Of course particular *bits* of English come from elsewhere as a
result of contacts with Vikings, Normans, Christianity etc. But an
enormous amount of the basic vocabulary can be traced back at least as
far as Germanic, the same for the basic grammar.

Peter


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Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
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