A 1500-year journey through the layers of language — Germanic, Norse, French, Latin, and half the world besides — that settled one on top of another until they formed the tongue that 1.5 billion people speak today.
Dig downward
How to read this map
No language replaces the one before it. It gets added on top.
Every invasion, conquest, or trade exchange left behind a layer of vocabulary that never fully disappeared. This is a cross-section of those five layers, in the order they were laid down.
Anglo-SaxonNorseNormanClassicalGlobal
Tool
Dig up a word
Pick an everyday English word and find out which layer it's buried in.
Haz clic en un nodo para ver los detalles
DS
In summary
The English you speak today isn't one language. It's at least five, stacked one on top of another.
