HSS 258 Story of Language: Empires, Languages, & Global English

The Story of Language offers an alternative view of the world history from the perspective of languages, living and dying, dominant and powerless, major and minor. English as the current global language represents its focal point. English documents a tantalizing and unpredictable journey of speakers converging onto particular centers of political and economic power that use English as their defining marker and affluence. As today's global language, English has surpassed all its precedents in terms of speaker numbers and geographical expanse. It keeps changing and splitting up as it spreads geographically and socially. The course dwells also in the history of global languages such as Latin, Greek, Egyptian, Sanskrit and others that once dominated particular geo-political regions.