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

This last batch of information was a few chapters into the book, as the previous chapters described only how language is formed, and how the body produces words and sounds. None of that interests me, so I skipped ahead a little bit to get into the meat of the book -- how exactly English developed and it's origins.

It's quite fascinating that very early England did not have the language of it's namesake since it's very beginning. The fact that it is actually an immigrant language that took over explains a lot about how many cognates and similarities it shares with other languages. Also, the prehistoric language of Indo-European comes up a lot. I wonder how exactly the language sounded, or if it was actually a language at all. In fact, some sources argue that the Indo-European language is simply a theory. But I believe that it was actually a real language, since many other languages that sound similar but are changed by tradition and location are part of the same family. To me, this point of evidence seems to prove that Indo-European was, in fact, a language, and all other languages in the Indo-European family are simply Indo-European with many modifications from thousands of years of passing down mispronunciations that eventually stuck. Perhaps, other languages not related to Indo-European also influenced languages by sharing words with them that eventually became part of their vocabulary. It's fascinating to analyze how languages may have come about, and the fact that we may never actually know where exactly our languages come from.

Also, it is quite interesting that some languages have no words for certain objects. For example, inland countries with deciduous forests didn't have words for palm trees or other tropical plants until they were shared with them. Also, tropical countries or civilizations probably didn't have words for oak and cedar trees. Being able to find where a language originated by what words are native and which are not is absolutely fascinating. Most people, myself included, take for granted that all languages have words for everything because our society has explored the entire world. Imagine, in the past, that people may have come into contact with absolutely unknown objects or animals, and have no idea how to explain what they are.

I have also found this map of Indo-European language influence on our world. Dark green represents a country with a majority of Indo-European language speakers, light green with a minority of language speakers, and blue with no Indo-European language at all. It's is extremely fascinating that Indo-European languages are some of the most popular in the world, covering most inhabited land on Earth, save for very north Africa, Greenland, and southeastern Asia.