Language always changes. The pathway from the first language to all of these variations was based on the fact that language always changes over time.

A. Old English is a foreign tongue to us, as we see in the opening of Beowulf:

Yet there was no time when this language suddenly changed to ours— the process was gradual. This has been happening to all languages around the world since language began.

B. The change from Old English to Modern English—or from the first language to Nama or Jingulu or Greenlandic Eskimo—happened as the result of certain kinds of changes universal in how language changes. We will explore one of these processes, how sounds in a language change over time.