This essay was first published at the Scandinavian blog Snaphanen, but since some of my readers may not have seen it I republish it here. It was inspired by the book Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, by James Clackson. The discovery of the Indo-European language family was made by Sir
William Jones, a gifted British
classical scholar who had mastered French and Italian and some Hebrew and
Arabic at an early age. He is said to have known thirteen languages well, and
twenty-eight...