The Briefest History of the English Language
Paul Jones

The oldest known sentence in the English language reads, “gægogæ mægæ medu.”

In fact, it’s perhaps more accurate to say that the oldest known sentence comprises those three words, only written in the ancient runic letters long ago used to write the languages of northern Europe. Suffice to say, there are few people alive today who would be able to read it (and fewer still who could understand it).

That sentence was found inscribed on a fifth-century medallion that was unearthed entirely by chance in a field in rural England in 1981. Clearly, our language has changed somewhat in the millennium-and-a-half or so since that medallion was minted. Empires, invasions, conquests, migrations, kings and queens, new inventions and technologies, religion, exploration, colonization, social change, literature, pop culture, the internet, and even you reading this sentence right now have all played a part in shaping and reshaping our language in that time, transforming it from that arcane string of runes into the familiar words and ABCs we use today. The story of how all of that played out, ultimately, is the story of the English language itself.

The Briefest History of the English Language charts that story from the very beginning, explaining in simple yet endlessly fascinating terms how all of Europe’s languages first emerged in early Bronze Age, how English in turn emerged from the patchwork of dialects that Bronze Age language left behind, and how it then went on to become the most widely spoken language on the planet.

Along the way, we encounter a string of extraordinary characters whose groundbreaking work have made our language—and our understanding of our language—what it is today. The scholar who escaped being mistaken for a spy to unpick how the language of England could be related to the language of Nepal. The printer who was so incensed by the ramshackle state of medieval English that he resolved singlehandedly to force it into some kind of sensible shape. And let’s not forget the lexicographer who remortgaged his home to fund production of the biggest dictionary in history (and who thought the word daughter should have a W in it).

Told with depth and detail yet accessible to all, The Briefest History of the English Language tells the story of something now so widely used, and so globally familiar, that it’s perhaps easy to forget the remarkable tale it has to tell.