An chic account of ways one historic language went international

Proto
Laura Spinney (HarperCollins (UK) Bloomsbury Publishing (US, 13 May))

A brand new ebook through Laura Spinney is quite tantalisingly known as Proto, begging the query: proto-what? Prototype, the earliest model of a era? Protoplasm, the stuff of our cells? Or even protoplanet, a small hunk of area rock with a large long run forward?

The resolution, actually, sits above and throughout the ones phrases: Proto-Indo-European. This is the nice unique language from which English, amongst many different tongues, each alive and useless, derives. As Spinney places it: “Almost each and every 2nd individual on…