ElektroTal (talinthas) wrote in linguaphiles,
2012-12-30 13:06:00

good books on the history of non-english languages in english?

Hiya folks,
I have amassed quite a collection of great books tracing the history of english from PIE to modern day, and have always wondered if there are books about other languages that similarly trace the history and evolution of modern languages, including stuff like pronounciation changes and spelling reform and the like.
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  • 5 comments

sollersuk

December 30 2012, 21:13:47 UTC 4 months ago

For a starting point, there's "The Romance Languages", Martin Harris ahnd Nigel Vincent ISBN 0-7099-37717

muckefuck

December 30 2012, 22:09:29 UTC 4 months ago Edited:  December 30 2012, 22:09:50 UTC

Off the top of my head:

The history of Basque by R.L. Trask (who was a recognised authority both on the Basque language and on historical linguistics generally).
A history of the Spanish language and Variation and change in Spanish, both by Ralph Penny.
Language and History in early Britain: a chronological survey of the Brittonic languages, 1st to 12th C. A. D. by Kenneth Jackson.
Common and comparative Slavic by Townsend and Janda.

There's a lot of writing available on this subject. It would help if you could narrow down the scope somewhat.

talinthas

December 31 2012, 01:33:00 UTC 4 months ago

I'm mainly looking for indo-european languages, and specifically indic ones, but those aren't really around.

muckefuck

December 31 2012, 04:36:46 UTC 4 months ago

Actually, The Indo-Aryan languages from Routledge fits the bill pretty nicely. $76 from Amazon, but a good academic library will have it or be able to obtain it for its users through interlibrary loan.

hobbitblue

December 31 2012, 00:50:35 UTC 4 months ago

Henriette Walter French Inside Out: the worldwide development of the French language in the past, the present and the future is a good starting point for French, the author has a whole catalogue of books on the development of French though many don't seem to have been translated into English as yet (L'Aventure des mots français venus d'ailleurs was excellent, following the impact of loan words on the language)