Understanding Etymologies Across Languages

What is certain among linguists is that modern languages all have a common root, the materials from which the words in each language are derived. The sounds mentioned above were, at one point, codified as words in a language, understood and accepted by a large portion of a culture.
These words eventually made their way into other languages due to many different factors. English, for example, was not always English. Some of the vocabulary of the language comes from Latin and Greek, and languages spoken throughout Europe have words that were borrowed or modified to create what is now known as English.
Over the course of many centuries, the original “English” people, the Celtics, were conquered by other tribes from Europe. The Celts were pushed to what is now Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and the Germanic tribes (such as the Angles, from which the word “England” is derived), began disseminating their languages throughout the country. Many of the words that the Celts had used for centuries were changed by the new languages that began to become common throughout England, although some of the Celtic words remained. The resulting language was known as Old English, and it had more in common with German than today’s English does.

Blog Archive