ENG 342 History of the English Language
A linguistic and cultural survey of the development of the English language from its Indo-European origins to the 21st century, exploring the language (and reconstructed pronunciation) of the Anglo-Saxons, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and discussing, among others, the origin and development of different writing systems, the reasons for the discrepancy of spelling and pronunciation in Modern English, differences between British and American English, and the historical origin of American dialects.