Dear Member

Tim Jackson Lecture

From the First Sound Shift to South Dublin DORT-Speak: How languages change at 11.00am on March 12th 2025 in the Long Room Hub TCD

Linguists assume that far back in linguistic prehistory there was a language to which the name “Indo-European” has been given. From it the development of a number of language groups can be traced: the Germanic group of languages (English, German, Afrikaans, Icelandic, etc), the Celtic languages, the Slavonic languages, among others. In the course of history each language in each group has diverged from the others in different ways. This can involve changes of sound (English “pound” vs German “pfund”), of grammar (in French and in German adjectives still have different endings according to grammatical gender – in English they no longer do), and of vocabulary (the meanings of words change – eg: gay; languages borrow words from other languages – eg: rucksack). The talk will look more closely at such developments.