Latin

The chapter begins with a discussion of some of the characteristic features of Latin, such as its case system and ablative absolute construction, with examples taken largely from Latin phrases (like vice versa) that have passed directly into English. Three case studies follow: the first looks at the word-play in Lucretius’ De rerum natura made possible through linguistic features particular to Latin, the second at the difficulties involved in translating Horace’s Odes 4.7 through a comparison of the Latin with A. E. Housman’s translation, noting especially the interlaced word order of the original poem, the third at the extreme compression of Latin seen in Tacitus’ Annals.

Epilogue and further reading

The epilogue recaps the discussion of the preceding chapters, reflecting on the languages highlighted in each, their distinctive personalities, and their relations to each other and their modern successors. It also offers suggestions for further reading and resources to enable interested readers to deepen their explorations into these and other ancient and medieval languages.

Old Irish and the Celtic languages

Old Irish is a notoriously difficult language, and the chapter begins with an account of why this is so, exploring the features such as consonant mutations, palatalization, the absolute and conjunct inflections of verbs, conjugated prepositions, verb-initial sentences, and infixed pronouns that make it so distinct from the other languages considered so far. But even so, it is still of Indo-European stock, and a couple of selections from the Táin Bó Cuailnge reveal some of this shared ancestry. The chapter also offers an extended comparison with Welsh, another important member of the Celtic branch, highlighting, with an excerpt from the Mabinogion, the Celtic features common to it and Irish, as well as the points of difference between the two.

Greek

To lay the foundations for the linguistic discussion found in the remainder of the book, this chapter begins with a systematic introduction to some of the main features of Ancient Greek, explaining the necessary technical terms along the way. First comes a discussion of the sounds of Greek, focusing on those that are particularly characteristic of Greek, as well as the development of Greek from the Proto-Indo-European parent language. The chapter then introduces some of the ways Greek words, especially nouns and verbs, change their forms to suit the grammatical context, since such morphological richness will come up repeatedly in the book. Excerpts from three texts are then discussed: first, the Iliad, to show how formulaic language marks its origins as an oral composition; second, Thucydides, to highlight the abstract language that characterizes his history; third, the New Testament, to show how much translators sometimes need to rearrange the structure of a sentence in order for the syntax to make sense in English.

Sanskrit

The chapter begins with a discussion of Sanskrit’s place in the Indo-European family tree, showing how both the roots of individual words and the patterns seen in grammatical endings have close correspondences to Greek, Latin, and English. It also considers some of the features that are especially characteristic of Sanskrit, such as the voiced aspirate stops (seen in words like dharma) and the complex workings of sandhi, whereby the ends of Sanskrit words change their shape to match the sounds that occur at the beginning of the following word. In the second half, it turns to several short excerpts from the Rig Veda, demonstrating not only how its language has more connections to English than one might think at first but also how it draws on some of the same poetic diction found in other Indo-European traditions.

Introduction

All languages can, in a general sense, express the same ideas. But different languages have their own characteristic features that give them each their own particular personality, in part because of cultural and historical circumstances, in part because of the structural peculiarities of the language in question. This introductory chapter sets the stage for what follows by discussing the extent to which languages are marked by such differences, in connection with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (the idea that the language one speaks shapes how one views the world), which continues to loom large in popular writing on linguistics. It then provides a brief synopsis of the chapters that follow, noting some of the major points that will be made on the basis of the six main languages considered in the book.

Hebrew

The final chapter of the book turns to Biblical Hebrew so that the portrayal of a language from a different family can, through this very contrast, set off better what is Indo-European about the other languages considered so far. Not only are the sounds themselves different (the Semitic languages have many more fricatives and sounds produced in the throat than the older Indo-European languages did) but the way they’re arranged into words is also distinctive, with the triconsonantal root structure a notable hallmark of the Semitic family. Then, the chapter focuses on a couple of syntactic patterns that are especially characteristic of Biblical Hebrew, the waw-conversive and construct chains, showing how these features even make their way into the English translations of the Bible, such as the King James Version, in such phrases as “and it came to pass” and “Holy of Holies”.

Old English and the Germanic languages

First, an account of two main features that set all the Germanic languages off against the rest of the Indo-European family (Grimm’s Law, and the creation of a system of strong and weak verbs) gives readers a chance to see how linguists group languages together on the basis of shared innovations. The chapter then turns to Old English in particular, discussing first how Old English, with its greater number of grammatical endings, is still a bit more like its sister languages Greek and Latin than is its modern descendant, before considering the individual words of a verse of the Old English Bible to see in detail what causes it to look so different to the contemporary anglophone. Finally, it works through six lines of Beowulf, not only as a continued illustration of what makes Old English different but also to show how it exploits features like compound nouns and alliterative verse for poetic effect.