Indo-European Language/Culture

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Languages, like people, can be genetically related, forming families derived from a common source. By comparing languages whose similarities can only be explained by appeal to shared ancestry, it is possible to reconstruct not only their parent language but also aspects of its speakers’ culture and world. In this course, we will examine the grammar and vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the language ancestral to Greek, Latin, and English itself, and go on to survey the chief historical developments of these and other such daughter languages in both linguistic and cultural terms.