#206 - The Discovery of Indo-European Languages - 1876

An episode from 11/17/25: Tonight, I read a section from David Anthony’s book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. It is a wonderfully written account of the archeological and linguistic attempts to discover the origins of the Indo-European language families. The part I read from retells the famous story of Sir William Jones, the Welsh linguist and lawyer stationed in British India in the late eighteenth century, and the eureka moment he had upon realizing that Sanskrit, Latin, Greek (and so many other languages) are related. Anthony also sums up the political, nationalist (and, eventually, simply racist) uses to which this discovery was put.I open the episode with some small remarks on Johann Sebastian Bach, and an anecdote found in Christoph Wolff’s Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.