Families of Languages
Indo-European
Languages
All living
languages evolve over time, adding & losing vocabulary, morphological
behavior, and syntactic structures, and changing in the ways they are
pronounced by their speakers. Even without knowing how or why these
evolutionary mechanisms operate, one can still get a feel for their effects;
for example, they account for the differences between American and British
English, and for the fact that neither Americans nor Brits can understand
Beowulf at all without first being taught how to read the Old English language
in which it was composed. Even the writings of Shakespeare -- much more recent
than Beowulf -- can be difficult for modern English speakers to interpret. The
field of study that concerns itself with language evolution is called
historical linguistics.
A large number of
related languages form what is called the Indo-European macro family. These
languages all evolved from a common ancestral tongue called Proto-Indo-European
(PIE), spoken ca. 6,000 years ago by a people living (by
"traditional" hypothesis) somewhere in the general vicinity of the
Pontic Steppe north of the Black Sea and east to the Caspian -- an area that,
perhaps not accidentally, seems to coincide with the land of the ancient
Scythians, from the Ukraine across far southwestern Russia to western
Kazakhstan. (N.B. Many claims on this page are debated, in their details, but
on the whole, they seem best to fit the evidence and are accepted by most
scholars; herein, we shall not bother to acknowledge the myriad debates but
instead present a broad-brush picture for a general audience.)
Proto-Indo-European
speakers grew in number and influence -- they are credited with the
domestication of horses and the invention of the chariot, among many other
innovations -- and spread east & west, north & south. But before the
invention of any writing system known to its speakers, PIE had died out: as
Indo-Europeans expanded from the ancestral homeland and brought forth new
generations, PIE evolved, first into disparate dialects, and then into mutually
incomprehensible daughter languages. Ten "proto-language" families
are identified today: using what historical linguists call the comparative
method, their probable forms (and that of Proto-Indo-European itself) can be
reconstructed based on similarities and differences among descendants that were
attested in inscriptions and literary & religious texts. (Such written
records began to appear about a thousand years after PIE was last spoken.) For
a sketch of the evolution of PIE into its major proto-languages, see Evolution
of IE Families.
The Indo-European proto-languages
themselves evolved, each giving rise to its own family of languages. Each
family is identified with the proto-language from which it sprung; these
families are conventionally listed in order, roughly from west to east with
respect to the homelands their speakers came to occupy. The ten families,
linked to modern maps of their homeland areas (which open in a separate
window), are:
Celtic, with
languages spoken in the British Isles, in Spain, and across southern Europe to
central Turkey;
Germanic, with
languages spoken in England and throughout Scandinavia & central Europe to
Crimea;
Italic, with
languages spoken in Italy and, later, throughout the Roman Empire including
modern-day Portugal, Spain, France, and Romania;
Balto-Slavic, with
Baltic languages spoken in Latvia & Lithuania, and Slavic throughout
eastern Europe plus Belarus & the Ukraine & Russia;
Balkan
(exceptional, as discussed below), with languages spoken mostly in the Balkans
and far western Turkey;
Hellenic, spoken
in Greece and the Aegean Islands and, later, in other areas conquered by
Alexander (but mostly around the Mediterranean);
Anatolian, with
languages spoken in Anatolia, a.k.a. Asia Minor, i.e. modern Turkey;
Armenian, spoken
in Armenia and nearby areas including eastern Turkey;
Indo-Iranian, with
languages spoken from India through Pakistan and Afghanistan to Iran and
Kurdish areas of Iraq and Turkey;
Tocharian, spoken
in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang, in far western China.
Each table that
follows presents a highly schematic sketch of the evolutionary paths leading
from the family ancestor to later, attested languages -- up to the present
time, in the case of families that did not entirely die out. (Anatolian and
Tocharian are the only known families that are now extinct.) By highly
schematic we mean, for example, that dates are very approximate: we adopt, for
sheer presentation convenience, quite arbitrary ranges of 500 or 1000 years
that have little to do with accurate dates even when these might be known,
which is seldom. What is important is that the general picture is instructive;
for details the reader is referred to the vast literature of historical
linguistics, now well over 200 years in the making and brimming with
hypotheses, supporting arguments, and disagreements major & minor.
In the tables that
follow, columns show 500/1000-year ranges, reading left to right; successive
rows display groupings of sub-families (in bold face), languages within them
(italicized if dead), and, reading left to right, not just a chronological but
an evolutionary sequence (except for the Balkan languages). After each family
section heading, important points related to the table that follows are briefly
surveyed; for the reader's convenience, most geographic names are in modern
English. Note: even where surviving languages in a family may number in the
hundreds, and may be spoken by over a billion people (as in the case of the
Indo-Iranian family), only a very few languages are selected for illustration
here. For every family except Balkan, there are one or more languages for which
online texts & lessons are or will be available in our Early Indo-European
Online (EIEOL) series; links are provided from those languages to their series
introductions.
CELTIC
Proto-Celtic
speakers moved generally west from the PIE homeland, probably alongside groups
from the Italic branch, spreading across southern Europe into central Turkey,
northern Italy, France, Spain, and eventually the British Isles. As centuries
passed, their language evolved into one group of languages labelled Continental
(spoken by "Gauls" across southern Europe and mentioned by Julius
Caesar among others), and another labelled Insular (spoken in the British
Isles). Continental Celts later adopted Latin, or Greek in the case of those in
Turkey, and the Continental Celtic languages, attested from the 6th century
B.C., were lost. Insular Celtic split into a Goidelic subgroup that developed
in Ireland, and a Brythonic subgroup that developed in England & Wales.
Later in history, Goidelic Celts migrated to Scotland; also later in history,
Brythonic Celts under pressure from the Anglo-Saxons returned to the Continent
and settled in Brittany, on the western point of France.
GERMANIC
The Germanic
tribes generally followed behind the Celts, but moved somewhat further north.
Their language developed into three groups of tongues labelled East, North, and
West for their geographic distribution, with Runic now being considered the
likely ancestor of the latter two. Gothic is the only attested language from
the east, with a 4th century translation of the Bible, although Vandalic is
known to have been spoken by Vandals who migrated across the fading Roman
Empire through Spain to north Africa (see also map of the Germanic Kingdoms in
526). Most of the Goths blended into the Empire and their language was replaced
by local Latin dialects, but some migrated east into Crimea, where their
language survived to the 16th century.
Limited amounts of
"Northwest Germanic" text survive from the 1st/2nd centuries A.D.,
carved in Runic script; later, the North Germanic languages developed in far
north Europe (primarily the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and
their islands). Old Norse was the language of the Vikings, who settled Iceland
as well as Scandinavia.
West Germanic
languages developed in two main groups, one ("High German") at higher
elevations, in southern Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and the other
("Low German") further north and along the coast, including the
Netherlands and Belgium. Modern German evolved from the former; modern English,
via Old English a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon (see the map of Angles & Saxons about
600 A.D.), from the latter. (The term "Pennsylvania Dutch" is a
modern misnomer: the original speakers came from central & southern
Germany, even Switzerland -- not from the Netherlands.)
ITALIC
The Italic peoples
began their descent into the Italian peninsula around the 2nd millenium B.C.
Two subgroups developed from Proto-Italic -- Sabellic and Latino-Faliscan, both
attested by 7th century B.C. inscriptions (the former in Umbrian, the latter in
Faliscan). But the growing strength of the Latin speakers, culminating in the
Roman Empire, resulted in most competing tongues in Italy (and many elsewhere,
for example Continental Celtic) being extinguished. With the collapse of the
Empire, the provincial Vulgar Latin dialects rather than Classical Latin
survived, and in time developed into the Romance languages (see map of the
European Provinces of Rome).
BALTO-SLAVIC
While the
Balto-Slavic (and especially the Baltic) languages of eastern Europe are attested
only late, even by Indo-European standards, there are characteristics that
strongly suggest they are highly conservative (most especially Baltic) and
retain features akin to Proto-Indo-European. No Slavic language is attested
until the mid-9th century A.D. (Old Church Slavonic), and no Baltic language
until the 14th century (some Old Prussian words & phrases). Old Church
Slavonic and Old Prussian became extinct, but Slavic and Baltic sibling
languages survived.
BALKAN
The
"family" of Balkan languages (see also the old map of Macedonia,
Thrace, Illyria, Moesia and Dacia) is exceptional in that there are far too few
early texts to support strong hypotheses about genetic relationships among the
erstwhile members. This doesn't mean there are no hypotheses -- they are, in
fact, numerous! -- but it does mean that no firm conclusions can be drawn
because evidence is paltry or absent. As one example, the
"traditional" hypothesis is that Illyrian is the ancestor of
Albanian; but as there are no native texts in Illyrian, it is difficult to say
much of anything certain about it. It seems nevertheless that these two differ
in a fundamental manner that, in Indo-European linguistics, has always marked a
crucial distinction (denoted by the terms "centum" vs.
"satem"). The languages in the table below are grouped into a
"family" for reasons as much geographic as linguistic, and the
chronological sequence of languages, left to right, cannot be taken to suggest
their evolutionary sequence.
HELLENIC
For all practical
purposes, the Hellenic family is represented by a single language spoken in
Greece and the Aegean Islands: Greek, which is attested in a number of dialects
spanning more than three millenia. The oldest, Mycenaean Greek texts pre-date
the 14th century B.C. (see map of Mycenaean Greece), and were written in the
script known as Linear B. But an invasion of (illiterate?) Dorian tribes ca.
1100 B.C. was followed by the collapse of Mycenaean civilization and the loss
of the art of Greek writing. A few hundred years later the Greeks adapted a
Phoenician script -- adding, for the first time, letters representing vowels.
This script developed into what we know as the Greek alphabet, which formed the
early basis of the Etruscan & Roman alphabets among others (a more modern
example being Cyrillic).
ANATOLIAN
The Anatolian
family includes the oldest attested Indo-European languages: some Hittite
documents are dated as early as the 18th century B.C. It is thought to have
been the first branch of Indo-European to separate from PIE, and it was also
the first branch [known to us] to become extinct, being replaced by Greek ca.
2nd/1st century B.C. Buried and lost until modern times, Hittite cuneiform
tablets were first unearthed in the early 20th century in north-central Turkey,
and helped revolutionize Indo-European linguistics. A sister language, Luwian,
was probably spoken in Homer's Troy, located southwest of the Dardanelles.
ARMENIAN
The earliest
documentary evidence re: the Armenians is a 6th century B.C. inscription at Behistun
by the Persian king Darius I. Herodotus, writing a century later, stated that
the Armenians had lived in Thrace and moved into Phrygia, from which they
crossed into the [later] territory of Armenia. But though Armenians are known
to history as a people, their language was first attested by a translation of
the Bible a full thousand years later, following the invention by Mesrop, a
Christian monk, of a suitable alphabet; by that time, Classical Armenian
evidenced strong influence by Iranian tongues, especially Parthian. Other loan
words from Anatolian languages attest to early Armenian presence in western and
central Turkey. Due to manifold linguistic influences, evidenced for example by
many isoglosses with Greek, it is difficult to support arguments for a close
connection with any other Indo-European language family in particular.
INDO-IRANIAN
Proto-Indo-Iranian
speakers moved east & south from the PIE ancestral homeland. Then, still in
prehistoric times, the Indo-Iranian family split into Indic and Iranian
branches, labelled for their early literary centers (roughly speaking) in India
and Iran.
Although written
Indic documents do not exist of an age comparable to that of Hittite, the
language of the Rigveda is thought to be well-preserved from a form dating to
perhaps the early 2nd millennium B.C. When the grammar for Sanskrit was being
composed by Panini ca. 400 B.C., Rigvedic was already archaic and, in many
respects, no longer understood -- a situation analogous to modern English
speakers' problems understanding the language of Beowulf. Even some of the
poetic structures of the Rigveda were no longer recognized -- again, a
situation analogous to our modern ignorance of Old English poetic structures.
Nevertheless, oral transmission of liturgy and poetry can be, and for the
Rigveda is believed to have been, amazingly accurate. Accordingly, early Indic
compositions can be studied with almost as much confidence as is invested in
later, written texts in Pali, Prakrit, etc.
Somewhat like
Rigvedic (a close descendant of Proto-Indic), Avestan (a descendant of
Proto-Iranian) was represented by memorized religious compositions for
centuries before they were written down. The Avestan language itself, then, is
of unknown but great age. Although it is still important in Zoroastrian
liturgy, it does not have living descendants. Two languages closely related to
it, Bactrian and Old Persian, have many modern descendants including Pashto and
Farsi.
TOCHARIAN
Like the Anatolian
language family, the Tocharian family is extinct; also like Anatolian,
Tocharian texts were deciphered in the early 20th century and their study has
suggested major changes to theories about early Indo-European (IE) languages.
Prominent among these is the fact that Tocharian exhibits some fundamental
affinities to the more western language families, such as Celtic, Italic,
Hellenic and especially Germanic, that distinguish it from the geographically
much closer eastern language families, such as Indo-Iranian or even
Balto-Slavic. This does not mean that Tocharian is particularly close to any
western European language family, though many individual parallels have been
drawn, but only that it seems closer to them as a group than to the eastern IE
languages. How western European (?) Tocharian speakers came to live in the
Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, China, is a mystery yet unresolved. However, it is
noteworthy that the Silk Road was established through that area around the same
time Tocharian speakers seem to have arrived: the appearance of a highly mobile
European people at the inception of a major Eurasian trade link might not be a
coincidence.
It is by no means
certain that western European affinities demonstrate a prior western European
presence: sometimes similarities exist by chance; but if chance is ruled out,
there may have been sufficient linguistic contact between Proto-Tocharian
speakers and others destined to live in western Europe, before the IE break-up.
It seems rather likely that Tocharian peoples migrated directly east from the
PIE homeland and discovered exotic trade goods awaiting further exploitation.
Tocharian, unattested, later evolved into two separate languages,
conventionally denoted as Tocharian A (eastern, a.k.a. Turfanian) and Tocharian
B (western, a.k.a. Kuchean), both located along the north rim of the Tarim
Basin; in the 6th-8th century A.D. texts so far discovered, A seems to have
been in liturgical use only, while B was yet a living vernacular. Evidence for
yet a third offshoot, Tocharian C, somewhat older than the other two, has been
unearthed along the southern rim of the Tarim Basin.
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