---
title: Historical Linguistics
description: This discipline investigates language change over time, focusing on phonetic, grammatical, and semantic shifts. Learners will understand the mechanisms of language evolution, how to reconstruct ancestral languages, and the principles of language contact.
category: social-sciences
subcategory: linguistics
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/historical-linguistics
---

# Historical Linguistics

This discipline investigates language change over time, focusing on phonetic, grammatical, and semantic shifts. Learners will understand the mechanisms of language evolution, how to reconstruct ancestral languages, and the principles of language contact.

## Available Resources

3 Books • 4 Websites

## Websites

### 1. Wiktionary

A collaborative multilingual dictionary whose entries carry etymologies, cognate sets and reconstructed Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic roots, letting you trace a modern word back through sound changes and compare its descendants across related languages.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://en.wiktionary.org/

**Tags:** etymology, reconstruction, proto-indo-european, dictionary, reference

### 2. ethnologue.com

Ethnologue is a comprehensive, searchable database of the world’s living languages, featuring detailed language profiles, language-family classifications, speaker numbers, endangerment status, dialect information, and maps of geographic distribution.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://ethnologue.com

**Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, anthropology

### 3. etymonline.com

Online Etymology Dictionary is a comprehensive, searchable resource that traces the origins and historical development of English words, detailing word roots across languages (Old English, Latin, Greek, etc.) with concise etymologies.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://etymonline.com

**Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

### 4. glottolog.org

Glottolog is a comprehensive, language-centered catalog of the world’s languages and dialects with unique Glottocodes and a historical–comparative classification. It provides extensive bibliographic references and links to descriptive sources (grammars, dictionaries, wordlists) for each language.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://glottolog.org

**Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

## Podcasts

### 1. The History of English

**Author:** Kevin Stroud

A chronological history of the English language examined through the lens of historical events that shaped the development and spread of the language from the Eurasian steppe to the entire world.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en-US | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://historyofenglishpodcast.com

**Tags:** english-language, etymology, language-history, indo-european, old-english

## Books

### 1. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

**Author:** David W. Anthony

An archaeologist's case for locating the Proto-Indo-European homeland on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, combining linguistic reconstruction with excavation evidence on horse domestication and wheeled vehicles to explain how the language family spread across Eurasia.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/069114818X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

### 2. Language Change

**Author:** Joan Bybee

A textbook treating language change as the cumulative result of ordinary usage, working through sound change, analogy, grammaticalization and semantic shift so you can explain why particular changes recur across unrelated languages.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/110765582X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

### 3. Family

Family - A book resource

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/8497897749?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

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