Preface
Introduction: What this book covers
Chapter One: Germanic Beginnings: Early Ancestors in Denmark
Timeline : From the earliest settlements in northern Europe to the
beginning of the Christian era
Sidebars:
1. Indo-European: Protolanguage and culture
2. The First Sound Shift
3. Language contact and language change: The case of Finland
Chapter Two: The Germanic Languages Survive the Romans: The Battle
of Kalkriese
Timeline: From the beginning of the Christian era to the end of the
Western Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages
Sidebars:
1. The Germanic tribes
2. The Goths and the Gothic language
3. The Celts
Chapter Three: A Fork in the Road: Germanic languages separate into
Low and High
Timeline: From the beginning of the Middle Ages to the Protestant
Reformation
Sidebars:
1. The Second Sound Shift
2. The Vikings: Raiders, traders, and neighbors
3. The Germanen go to England: The Anglo-Saxons and the English
language
4. Yiddish: The creation of a new Germanic language
Chapter Four: A perfect storm, and the birth of Standard German
Timeline: From the beginning of the Reformation to the beginning of
the First Industrial Revolution
Sidebars:
1. The Thirty Years' War
2. The Reformation
3. The history of European printing
Chapter Five: The German language gets a state
Timeline: From the Unification of Germany to the beginning of World
War I
Sidebars:
1. The revolution of 1848
Chapter Six: Postwar Comeback Times Two: German Begins to Recover
after a Fall from grace
Timeline: From the end of World War I to the present
Sidebars:
1. Spelling Reforms
2. Early Germanic language in a deep freeze: The case of
Icelandic
Bibliography
Ruth H. Sanders is Professor of German at Miami University of Ohio.
"An approachable overview of the evolution of the German language
and a history of its speakers."-eLanguage
"Ruth Sanders has written a biography of the German language and
its speakers for the generalist and the specialist. She punctuates
the broad sweep of historical recollections with vivid vignettes of
daily life, and she supplements insights culled from traditional
linguistic and historical research with the latest findings of
genetic and archaeological studies. Ancient cultures come
tantalizingly close in this engaging narrative."--Katherine R.
Goodman, Brown
University
"An ingenious telling of just how German emerged from the
primordial Germanic soup, and how many other ways it could have
been."--The Economist
"For any scholar of linguistics, this book offers rich
material."--Organiser, New Delhi
"Specialists and the intellectually curious will find here a wealth
of information; the book has a very widespread appeal...An
excellent bibliography and plentiful unobtrusive footnotes
make this a fine reference work. This is an exhilarating and
enlightening read." --Catholic Library World
"This is a book remarkable in numerous respects...Will strongly
appeal to a great variety of readers because of the demonstrated
value of its content and the expert as well as pleasing way the
array of data is presented. Part of the reason for this is that the
author superbly succeeds throughout in what she herself has stated
as her objective: to present a "narrative." She does indeed
"narrate," while less initiative writers might just have presented
another
set of casual academic lectures." --German Politics and Society
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