What happens when languages collide? In this Substack Live, I sat down with fellow linguist Daniel W. Hieber, Ph.D. to talk about language contact: how languages change when they meet.
We covered:
The spectrum of contact, from isolated loanwords all the way to pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages.
Whether the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings could understand each other, and what the place names of the Danelaw tell us about how they did it.
Why European languages are weird from a global perspective, and how the fall of Rome created a continent-wide linguistic area.
Why languages spoken by small communities might differ from widely spoken lingua francas.
Danny also posted this conversation on Linguistic Discovery. Go over and subscribe if you’re not already following his work!
Articles we discuss:
