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Spoken in:	originally England; spread to the rest of the British Isles and to the former colonies of the United Kingdom; now a world language also spoken as a first language in the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and as a first or subsequent language in many other countries, including India and Singapore.
Speakers::	at least 500,000,000 speakers as a first or subsequent language; over 330,000,000 native speakers; many millions more have some knowledge.
Language Family::	Germanic	West Germanic	English

English [ɪŋglɪʃ]

Spoken: originally in England; spread to the rest of the British Isles and to the former colonies of the United Kingdom; now a world language also spoken as a first language in the USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and as a first or subsequent language in many other countries, including India and Singapore.

Speakers: at least 500,000,000 speakers as a first or subsequent language; over 330,000,000 native speakers; many millions more have some knowledge.

Language Family: Indo-European

Germanic

West Germanic

English

Script: Written in the Roman alphabet.

Wikipedia English box:

English [ɪŋglɪʃ]
Spoken in	Originally in England; spread to the rest of the British Isles and to the former colonies of the United Kingdom; now a world language spoken as a first language in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and as a first or subsequent language in many other countries, including India and Singapore.
Total speakers	At least 500,000,000 speakers as a first or subsequent language; over 330,000,000 native speakers; many millions more have some knowledge.
Language family	Indo-European  Germanic   West Germanic    English
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Indo-European (449)

   Germanic  (53)

       West  (41)

       English (3)

           English  [eng] (United Kingdom)

           Scots  [sco] (United Kingdom)

           Yinglish  [yib] (USA)

English
Spoken in	Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Liberia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States and many other countries (see article for full list)
Total speakers	First language: 380 million Second language: 600 million Learners: Over 1 billion
Language family	Germanic   West Germanic    Anglo-Frisian     Anglic
Language codes
ISO 639-1	en
ISO 639-2	eng
ISO 639-3	eng
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change. It has several main concerns, such as:

• to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
• to describe the linguistic history of speech communities
• to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (see comparative linguistics)
• to develop general theories about how and why language changes
• to explain how language variation results in language change.

Modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th century and grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents, which goes back to antiquity.

At first historical linguistics was comparative linguistics and mainly concerned with establishing language families and the reconstruction of prehistoric languages, using the comparative method and internal reconstruction. The focus was mainly on the well-known Indo-European languages, many of which had long written histories, though other language groupings, such as Finno-Ugric and Semitic (see Uralic and Afroasiatic) were also recognized and studied in those early years. But since then, significant comparative linguistic work has been done on numerous other language families of the world. Comparative linguistics is now, however, only a part of a more broadly conceived discipline of historical linguistics. For the Indo-European languages comparative study is now a highly specialised field and most research is being carried out on the subsequent development of these languages, particularly the development of the modern standard varieties.

Initially, all modern linguistics was historical in orientation - even the study of modern dialects involved looking at their origins. But Saussure drew a distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics, which is fundamental to the present day organization of the discipline. Primacy is accorded to synchronic linguistics, and diachronic linguistics is defined as the study of successive synchronic stages. Saussure's clear demarcation, however, is now seen to be idealised. In practice, a purely synchronic linguistics is not possible for any period before the invention of the gramophone: written records always lag behind speech in reflecting linguistic developments, and in any case are difficult to date accurately before the development of the modern title page. Also, the work of sociolinguists on linguistic variation has shown synchronic states are not uniform: the speech habits of older and younger speakers differ in ways which point to language change. Synchronic variation is linguistic change in progress.

The biological origin of language is in principle part of the remit of historical linguistics, but most linguistics regard it as too remote to be reliably established by the comparative method, given the remoteness from historical records. Other techniques, such as mass lexical comparison, are regarded by some as means of overcoming the limitations of the comparative method, but most linguists regard them as unreliable.

The findings of historical linguistics are often used as a basis for hypotheses about the groupings and movements of peoples, particularly in the prehistoric period. However, it is now recognized that relating language to ethnic identity is problematic, as is relating language history to archaeological or genetic evidence.

See also

• Comparative linguistics
• Comparative method
• Glottochronology
• Indo-European studies
• Language change
• Language families
• Paleolinguistics
• Proto-language

Bibliography

• August Schleicher: Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. (Kurzer Abriss der indogermanischen Ursprache, des Altindischen, Altiranischen, Altgriechischen, Altitalischen, Altkeltischen, Altslawischen, Litauischen und Altdeutschen.) (2 vols.) Weimar, H. Boehlau (1861/62); reprinted by Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, ISBN 3-8102-1071-4
• Karl Brugmann, Berthold Delbrück, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1886-1916).
• Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 1977) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
• Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph (Eds), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Blackwell, 2004) ISBN 1-4051-2747-3
• Roger Lass, Historical linguistics and language change. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-45924-9
• Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Holt, 1962) ISBN 0-03-011430-6
• April McMahon, Understanding Language Change (Cambridge University Press, 1994) ISBN 0-521-44665-1
• James, Milroy, Linguistic Variation and Change (Blackwell, 1992) ISBN 0-631-14367-X
• M.L. Samuels, Linguistic Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 1972) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
• R.L. Trask,(ed.)Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001) ISBN 1-57958-218-4