TED-Ed Original lessons feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Educator Claire Bowern and Director Patrick Smith have produced a great little film that explains the origins of English. As they explain, when we talk about ‘English’, we often think of it as a single language. But what do the dialects spoken in dozens of countries around the world have in common with each other, or with the writings of Chaucer? The Origins Of English traces the language from the present day back to its ancient roots, showing how English has evolved through generations of speakers.
Going Further Back
However, illustrator Minna Sundberg went even further back. She has captured in an elegant infographic a linguistic tree which reveals some fascinating links between different tongues, illustrating how most of the different languages we speak today can actually be placed in only a couple of groups by their origin (the illustration has been shared by both Bored Panda and io9).
Using the research data from Ethnologue, Minna has used a tree metaphor to illustrate how all major European, and even plenty of Eastern languages can be grouped into Indo-European and Uralic “families”.
Bigger leaves represent more people using the language as their native tongue
Illustration by Minna Sundberg
A Three-part Split
The European branch splits in three: Slavic, Romance, and Germanic. A rather complicated relationship between the Slavic languages is visible.
Illustration by Minna Sundberg
The Germanic roots of English
Illustration by Minna Sundberg
For anyone wanting to delve deeper into this infographic (or print it out), a high-resolution version of these images is available on Bored Panda.
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I have always been fascinated with the origin or languages. This is an intriguing post.
Thank you, Michelle 🙂
Fascinating Nicholas. As I have found as a child and young teenager, learning another language is a gateway to another’s culture. I have learnt Afrikaans, French and Spanish so that I could live within those particular cultures and it made such a difference. I do enjoy those who can slip between the various branches of this tree with ease.. I find it difficult. English is very hard even for the English.
I do envy those who can monkey their way around the tree (Marina Costa comes to mind). I have a friend who’s fluent in 14 languages. Talk about a gifted girl!
Wow.. 14.. I manage to mangle those I have attempted to learn.. but I am very good at crochet! xx
We all have our strengths. For example, I can eat a whole cake 😀
This was truly fascinating Nicholas. Thank you. 🙂
Yay! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
🙂
Really interesting, Nicholas. Thanks for sharing. 🙂 — Suzanne
Thanks for reading, Suzanne 🙂
Many thanks, Nicholas! I love this stuff.
Thank you, Bill 🙂
Absolutely fascinating and relevant since I work with refugees teaching them English. Many of our learners struggle with different English sounds as they don’t have similar word sounds in their own language. Our Cambodian learners have difficulty sounding out letters such as: f, sh, x, sk, ch, th, s – ends up being something like a tongue twister. Yet our Afghani learners may initially have problems with the sounds but after only a little practice are able to pick up the sounds a lot faster. It really is interesting the way languages have developed, especially English which is an amalgam of so many other languages – a wonderful post Nicholas 🙂
That’s fascinating! Thank you for sharing that, Catherine 🙂
History of English. English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Germanic invaders and settlers from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands, displacing the Celtic languages that previously predominate
That’s the gist of it 🙂
I recall reading once that Turkish and Finnish have many similarities. Language is indeed fascinating, and when I first went to Germany, I was surprised how many words I understood. Then again, the British Royal Family is mostly German, so that’s not really a surprise! 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
It’s true–Turkish and Finnish are related, as I think is mentioned in the original post. Thank you, Pete 🙂
Sorry, missed that bit! 🙂
Very, very misleading tree.
How so?
Don’t know where to start to be honest – so many disputed things. The term European is v misleading. Where would you put Tocharian, say, or far more difficultly, the Anatolian branch with languages such as Luwian? Many people believe that the Italic group and the Celtic group may ultimately have initially split off together…. should I go on?
Please do. Only, on a guest post. I’d be very interested in hosting it, if you’re interested in writing it!