A Hearth Library collection
History of the English Language
How people have written about words, from the first grammars to the first great dictionaries
The people who first asked where words come from, how they change and who decides what they mean, in their own words. A companion to the History of the English Language games on Hearth Games, where the same dictionaries and texts power Word Passport, Then or Now? and Family Reunion.
Games
- Word Passport Put a word's earlier forms in order, oldest first.
- Then or Now? Did the writer mean the word the old way or today's way?
- Family Reunion Sort sixteen words into four families of relatives.
Sources on the way
No sources are translated yet. These are planned, in rough date order.
- 100–121How writing began, and why characters must be explained
Xu Shen, Luoyang, Classical Chinese.
- 1490Eggs or eyren: the trouble with English
William Caxton, Westminster, English.
- 1492Language has always been the companion of empire
Antonio de Nebrija, Salamanca, Spanish.
- 1755Preface to the Dictionary
Samuel Johnson, London, English.
- 1786Sanskrit, Greek and Latin share a parent
William Jones, Calcutta, English.
- 1789An American language
Noah Webster, Boston, English.
- 1818Letters that answer each other
Rasmus Rask, Copenhagen, Danish.
- 1822The shift of the consonants
Jacob Grimm, Göttingen, German.
- 1847A grammar for the Spanish of the Americas
Andrés Bello, Santiago de Chile, Spanish.
- 1861Language grows like a plant
Max Müller, London, English.
- 1867Why languages change
William Dwight Whitney, New York, English.
- 1888The circle of the English language
James A. H. Murray, Oxford, English.
- 1906–1911The Devil's definitions of dictionary, lexicographer and language
Ambrose Bierce, San Francisco, English.
- 1916The sign is arbitrary
Ferdinand de Saussure, Paris, French.
- 1919The American language
H. L. Mencken, New York, English.
- 1921Drift: how a language changes in one direction
Edward Sapir, New York, English.
- 1886Shampoo, bungalow, pyjamas: English words from India
Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, London, English.
- 1828Preface to An American Dictionary
Noah Webster, New Haven, English.