Welcome to Episode 2 of the History of English Podcast.

In this episode, we're going to look at the oldest known ancestor of English, the ancient

language known as Indo-European, or technically speaking the proto-Indo-European language.

This is the story of the discovery of that language, and the man who has credited for

that discovery, Sir William Jones.

In presenting a history of English, I believe that it's important to begin at this point.

Many histories of English begin with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain in the 5th century.

But modern English is a combination and blend of several languages, Anglo-Saxon English,

Norman French, Latin, Greek, Old Norse languages of Scandinavia, and even some Celtic

influences.

But all of those languages have at least one thing in common.

They all evolved from the same ancient source, the language of the so-called Indo-Europeans,

which was spoken several thousand years ago.

This is very significant in modern English.

For example, in English, unlike many other languages, we have multiple words for almost

everything.

Take the word Father.

We can use the word Father and we can make a lot of other words with it, like Fatherland,

Father-in-Law, Stepfather, Fatherhood, Founding Father, and so on.

We can even make it into a verb as in he-fathered three children.

The word Father is a Germanic Anglo-Saxon word, which comes to us from the Old English word

Fatter.

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