Welcome to HEL

Histories of language are stories of origins (i.e. mythology) as much as they are factual data. Where do such histories begin, where are their chapter divisions, and is the story still being written, or told? HEL encompasses linguistics, the history of the discipline of “English,” lexicography, and language classification as an adjunct of nationalism and Orientalism. We will learn about the Old, the Middle, the Early Modern and Present Day varieties of the tongue, a bit of phonology, and we will discuss what is at stake in debates over language change in the past and today.