Summary

Comparative historical linguistics is an approach comprising a set of methods that historians who have training in linguistics employ to reconstruct histories for periods of history for which written documentation is absent or scant. It is suggested that the use of comparative historical linguistics helped to push against the notion that people living in oral societies had to be deemed prehistorical, a category popularized in the 19th century, because it is premised that the rich history of the words comprising their languages hold troves of knowledge that historians can access and use to write narratives. Core steps of comparative historical linguistics are explained so that readers understand how researchers use modern-day spoken languages to work backward in time to reconstruct the histories of words that comprise the material items, ideas, and concepts that mattered to speakers of languages prior to the 21st century. The methods’ benefits are discussed, and their limitations highlighted.