Proto How One Ancient Language Went Global

Laura Spinney, Emma Spurgin-Hussey

eAudio - 2025

Bloomsbury presents Proto by Laura Spinney, read by Emma Spurgin-HusseyThe enthralling story of how today's largest language family, spoken by nearly half the world's population, descended from one ancient dialect.Daughter. Duhitár-. Dustr. Dukte. Listen to these English, Sanskrit, Armenian and Lithuanian words, all meaning the same thing, and you hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely journeys. All four languages—along with hundreds of others, from French and Gaelic, to Persian and Polish—trace their origins to an ancient tongue spoken as the last ice age receded. This language, which we call Proto-Indo-European, was born between Europe and Asia and exploded out of its cradle, fragmenting as it spread east and we...st. Its last speaker died thousands of years ago, yet Proto-Indo-European lives on in its myriad linguistic offspring and in some of our best loved works of literature, including Dante's Inferno and the Rig... more