Algeo's Origins and Development of the English Language - Reflection - Part One

Even though Algeo's textbook has not yet delved into the depths of the history of English itself yet, it has perused upon the topic of the history of language as a whole. It is very interesting to me that the beginning of language has remained an enigma. Language is the shining beacon that makes humans human, and the fact that no one knows where that defining characteristic emerged from makes language in itself all the more interesting to study. I feel that the origin of language as a whole would be a very interesting topic to study, even if we may never know the exact place that language came from.

Written language, which is almost as important as spoken language, has only been around for several thousand years. I cannot imagine a time before writing, as writing makes documenting history and reading thoughts directly taken from someone else's mind much easier than passing on traditions orally. I wonder where exactly early humans got the idea that certain scrawls on pieces of stone or wood stood for different letters that make up words, or even entire words. The first writings must have been an extremely innovative invention for its time.

I also discovered this simplistic chart of the West Germanic branch of language on Wikipedia recently. It ignores some of the more obscure names, but the fact that so many languages are related is remarkable.

Anyway, there is so much more information on history of languages entirely that I almost forgot I'm supposed to be looking for English history. There is just so much more content to be explored than I ever imagined. Next time, I will be documenting research on the next section of Algeo's text.