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Western Languages: Ad 100-1500
Short, punchy, and highly illustrated, this brilliant historical survey of the development of language in the West is a classic reference. When did Europeans stop speaking Latin? How did the actions of society or religion influence vocabulary? What affect did the conquest of the Anglo-Saxon countries by William the Conquerer and his French-speaking knights have on language? Surveying the linguistic scene from Cicero to Gutenberg, this landmark study illuminates not only language, but the entire development of the West.
256 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 5, 2007
WESTERN LANGUAGES: AD 100-1500 is an English translation by Frances Partridge of Philippe Wolff's original book published in French in 1971. Wolff, a professor of medieval history at the University of Toulouse, believed that understanding language change amongst the societies of Western Europe is a crucial part of understanding the history of the region. Wolff felt that historians would be scared away by the considerable theoretical apparatus of other introductions to historical linguistics, and wrote this book as a more gentle presentation of the field. Wolff's attention is on the Romance and Germanic languages, with occasional reference to Slavic and Greek, though in practice Germanic gets much less attention.
The introduction discusses the basics of linguistics, namely grammar and sounds, and how languages change over name. Here Wolff quotes often from Ferdinand De Saussure, whom one might fairly call the founder of modern linguistics. I was unhappy with one part, when Wolff claims that the assignment of gender to non-animate nouns (rivers, the Earth, etc.) was based on animism. In the earliest stages of European languages it seems that what eventually became the "feminine" gender was only a collective suffix that had nothing to do with sex. Nonetheless, considering that the book first appeared in the early 1970s, Wolff might not have had access to what was then a fairly recent discovery.
The following chapter, entitled "Remote Origins", starts at the very beginning with Latin on the one hand and the earliest Germanic dialects on the other. Wolff makes it clear that the Latin of classical literature was an artificial standard quite different from how the masses really spoke, and consequently not the true ancestor of later languages like French and Italian. Wolff makes some pronouncements on Latin pronunciations that are actually matters of debate, and the reason with some Latin experience already may want to supplement Wolff's coverage with W. Sidney Allen's Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin.
The remainder of the book is much more specific. Wolff charts the fragmentation of Latin into myriad small dialects, and then the gradual "crystallization" of these dialects into standard national languages. Here he lays out the sound changes and differences in word endings that distinguish modern French, Italian, Spanish etc. for their Vulgar Latin ancestor. The figures behind the development of standard languages, like Dante in Italy and Caxton in England, are sketched.
It is a pity that Wolff's book is so old, though this printing is recent, for recent research and the debunking of various myths could have been taken into account. The writing style and translation are adequate, though often quite clunky ("How can retrospective diachrony reconstitute these developments?"), and I find it vaguely objectionable that Wolff wrote much of the book as blockquotes from other authors instead of his own personal wording on the subject. Nonetheless, if you are a historian wanting to know more about language change and the rise of the modern European languages without getting a heady introduction for future linguists, this is a decent book.
The introduction discusses the basics of linguistics, namely grammar and sounds, and how languages change over name. Here Wolff quotes often from Ferdinand De Saussure, whom one might fairly call the founder of modern linguistics. I was unhappy with one part, when Wolff claims that the assignment of gender to non-animate nouns (rivers, the Earth, etc.) was based on animism. In the earliest stages of European languages it seems that what eventually became the "feminine" gender was only a collective suffix that had nothing to do with sex. Nonetheless, considering that the book first appeared in the early 1970s, Wolff might not have had access to what was then a fairly recent discovery.
The following chapter, entitled "Remote Origins", starts at the very beginning with Latin on the one hand and the earliest Germanic dialects on the other. Wolff makes it clear that the Latin of classical literature was an artificial standard quite different from how the masses really spoke, and consequently not the true ancestor of later languages like French and Italian. Wolff makes some pronouncements on Latin pronunciations that are actually matters of debate, and the reason with some Latin experience already may want to supplement Wolff's coverage with W. Sidney Allen's Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin.
The remainder of the book is much more specific. Wolff charts the fragmentation of Latin into myriad small dialects, and then the gradual "crystallization" of these dialects into standard national languages. Here he lays out the sound changes and differences in word endings that distinguish modern French, Italian, Spanish etc. for their Vulgar Latin ancestor. The figures behind the development of standard languages, like Dante in Italy and Caxton in England, are sketched.
It is a pity that Wolff's book is so old, though this printing is recent, for recent research and the debunking of various myths could have been taken into account. The writing style and translation are adequate, though often quite clunky ("How can retrospective diachrony reconstitute these developments?"), and I find it vaguely objectionable that Wolff wrote much of the book as blockquotes from other authors instead of his own personal wording on the subject. Nonetheless, if you are a historian wanting to know more about language change and the rise of the modern European languages without getting a heady introduction for future linguists, this is a decent book.
March 16, 2019
A francophone-centric and classic albeit rather dated history of Western European languages. It is a work of synthesis, indeed peppered with long quotes from other secondary sources. Although it has a rather curious quality of taking Christian accounts of language quite seriously as proto-scientific, its basic story is solid: the universalizing of Latin, the resistance of Germanic dialects to Latin’s linguistic imperialism, the fragmentation of the lingua Franca, and the consolidation of modern standardized languages. Rather less attention is paid to the political contexts and applications of language definition, which a contemporary reader might consider the main event.
March 11, 2020
Interesting, but dry in places. Presupposes a knowledge of Romance languages and Latin and frequently throws in foreign words with no translation.
Notable quotes:
The Germanic sheep alive and well in the field, became French (mutton) on a dish.
However, the language of daily conversation was diverging from ancient Latin, though the Italians were slow to realise that fact. One might say that there had been a long period of unconscious bilingualism [...] Written Italian made a somewhat stealthy entrance onto the scene.
Notable quotes:
The Germanic sheep alive and well in the field, became French (mutton) on a dish.
However, the language of daily conversation was diverging from ancient Latin, though the Italians were slow to realise that fact. One might say that there had been a long period of unconscious bilingualism [...] Written Italian made a somewhat stealthy entrance onto the scene.
October 24, 2019
Short and essential, with no too much bibliography and what is there is a bit old; however, I am partial to language books and European languages in particular, so I liked it: it was a fast and nice way to revisit the evolution of both Romance and Germanic languages from the Roman Empire to the Renaissance.
January 23, 2018
A nice discussion of the changes in, causes of, and interactions between Latin and Germanic languages that I could for the most part follow.
June 3, 2013
As an armchair historian with a deep, deep jones for Late Antiquity and the transition from the classical world to the medieval world, this survey for the non-linguist of the development of Late Vulgar Latin dialects into the Romance languages and the crystallization of the Germanic dialects was a real pleasure.
Writing in a lively and accesible style (which no doubt means it is filled with the sorts of generalizations and fudges which set actual specialists' teeth on edge, Mr. Wolff explicates the textual and linguistic evidence that traces the evolution of Western Europe's languages, not only via vocabulary development through borrowings and shifts in pronunciation, but also through changes in grammatical structure and usage characteristic to the different language groups.
If that sounds fascinating rather than stultifying to you, and you're not already a linguist, I heartily recommend this volume.
Writing in a lively and accesible style (which no doubt means it is filled with the sorts of generalizations and fudges which set actual specialists' teeth on edge, Mr. Wolff explicates the textual and linguistic evidence that traces the evolution of Western Europe's languages, not only via vocabulary development through borrowings and shifts in pronunciation, but also through changes in grammatical structure and usage characteristic to the different language groups.
If that sounds fascinating rather than stultifying to you, and you're not already a linguist, I heartily recommend this volume.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews