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Indo-European Languages
Countries with a majority of speakers of one or more Indo-European languages
Countries with one or more Indo-European minority languages with official status
The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on the striking
similarities between three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin, Greek,
Sanskrit, to which he tentatively added Gothic, Celtic, Persian
Thomas Young in 1813 first used the term Indo-European, which became the standard
scientific term; Most European languages and others (in India, parts of the Middle East,
and Asia) are cognates (are related, as a family, by common origins)
Franz Bopp: systematic comparison of these and other old languages supported the
theory.
o "Indo-European" =Indo-Germanic = defines the family by indicating its
southeastern most and northwestern most branches. In most languages this term is
dated or less common, whereas in German it is still the standard scientific term
o Comparative Grammar, 1833 and 1852, is the beginning of Indo-European studies as
an academic discipline.
o The classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics
August Schleicher: 1861 Compendium and
Karl Brugmann: Grundriss (1880)
Ferdinand de Saussure: laryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of
"modern" Indo-European
Rasmus Rask (1818) and Jacob Grimm (1822), notice of systematic phonological
changes
A. Schleicher, reconstruction of pre-historic Indo-European forms,
Stammbaumtheorie (tree stem theory)
It's speculated that the so called Kurgan were the original Indo-European people; lived northwest of the Caucasus, north of the
Caspian Sea, as early as the fifth millennium B.C.
Their language is known by scholars as Common Indo-European or Proto-Indo-European.
(Reference: Maria GIMBUTAS, "The Beginning of the Bronze Age in Europe and the Indo-Europeans" 1973)
Descendants of words for trees (ash, apple, oak, linden, aspen, pine), animals (bear, wolf), and other (honey,
snow, cold, winter, father, mother) allow for hypotheses regarding their original homeland and culture.
Beginning around 3000 BC the Indo-European people abandoned their homeland and migrated in a variety
of directions (found in Greece by 2000 BC, in northern India by 1500 BC)
Sources of Knowledge
Foreign sources
In the 1st century BCE, Strabo: relationship between the various Iranian peoples and their language which seem to
speak quite the same language
Lexicon
Words derived from the Common Indo-European language are preserved in a large number of languages:
numerals from one to ten;
the word meaning the sum of ten tens (Latin "centum," Avestan "satem," English "hundred");
words for certain natural phenomena (air, night, star, snow, sun, moon, mind);
vowels: [a],
, [i],
, [u],
Morphology
The Common Indo-European language was inflected. It used suffixes and internal (root) vowel changes
(ablaut system) to indicate grammatical information like
case,
number,
tense,
person,
mood, etc.
Nouns
Indo-European nouns were inflected for eight cases:
Example:
Hypothetical declension of Indo-European word EKWOS ("horse") (ancestor of Modern English, "horse,"
Latin: "equus," and Old English, "eoh")
Nominative: ekwos
Accusative: ekwom
Genitive: ekwosyo
Dative: ekwoy
Verbs
Indo-European verbs had six "aspects" (we would call them "tenses"):
INDO-EUROPEAN Language to GERMANIC (around 3000 BC) to Common Germanic (CGmc) (around 100 BC)
One of the oldest records of a Germanic language is a runic inscription identifying the workman who made a horn about A.D. 400.
Transliterated it reads as follows:
ek hlewagastir holtijar horna tawido
Translated, it roughly means:
I, Hlewagastir Holtson, [this] horn made
Prosody:
Indo-European free, pitch accent became strong stress on the initial syllable in Germanic
Phonology
loss of Indo-European laryngeal consonants, articulation shifting higher up in the vocal tract
Indo-European voiceless stops (p, t, k) became Germanic voiceless fricatives (f, th, h):
Indo-European pter, Germanic (English) father (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin
pater)
Indo-European treyes, Germanic (English) three (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin tres)
Indo-European kerd, Germanic (English) heart, (compare with non-Germanic: Latin cord)
Indo-European voiced stops (b, d, g) became Germanic voiceless stops (p, t, k):
Indo-European abel, Germanic (English) apple (contrast with non-Germanic: Russian
jabloko)
Indo-European dent, Germanic (English) tooth (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin dentis)
Indo-European grno, Germanic (English) corn (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin
granum)
voiced aspirated stops(bh, dh, gh) to voiced stops (b, d, g):
Indo-European bhrater, Germanic (English) brother (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin
frater)
2.
Morphology
Relative preservation of Indo-European ablaut system (also known as apophony or vowel gradation):
changes in root vowels indicated tense, number, part of speech (English sing, sang, sung is a survival of
this system). The stability of this system was however undermined because the position of the IndoEuropean accent was a conditioning factor for the vowel changes and the accent/stress became fixed in
the Germanic languages.
Syntax
Germanic retained a relatively free word order, but made greater use of prepositions to compensate
for the loss of inflections
Lexicon
Germanic inheritance of many basic words of the Indo-European vocabulary (e.g. cold, winter, honey,
wolf, snow, beech, pine, father, mother, sun, tree, long, red, foot, head, and verbs such as be, eat, lie) and
forms for grammatical concepts (negation, interrogation)
borrowings from Italic, Celtic and Balto-Slavic languages
large common and unique vocabulary of the Germanic languages (not present in other Indo-European
languages and perhaps borrowed from non-Indo-European languages) (e.g. back, blood, body, bone,
bride, child, gate, ground, oar, rat, sea, soul)
extensive use derivative affixes and compounding to create new words
OLD ENGLISH
Old English was spoken in western Britain and southern Scotland until approximately the end of the 11th
century, when it began to evolve into Middle English. At about the same time the Scots language began to
diverge from Old English and eventually became established as a separate language.