Issue 2: The Indo-European
Language Family
•Branches of Indo-European
–Germanic branch
–Indo-Iranian branch
–Balto-Slavic branch
–Romance branch
•Origin and diffusion of Indo-European
–Kurgan and Anatolian theories
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The indo-European Language Family, Slides of Origin of language
The indo-European Language Family documents include branches of indo european, origin and diffusion of indo european and breifly explain Kurgan and Anatolian Theories.
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2021/2022
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Issue 2 : The Indo-European
Language Family
- Branches of Indo-European
- Germanic branch
- Indo-Iranian branch
- Balto-Slavic branch
- Romance branch
- Origin and diffusion of Indo-European
- Kurgan and Anatolian theories
Indo-European Language Family
Fig. 5 - 5 : The main branches of the Indo-European language family include Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian.
Indo-Iranian Branch of Indo-European
The branch of the
Indo-European
language family with
the most speakers is
Indo-Iranian, more
than 100 individual
languages divided into
an eastern group
(Indic) and a western
group (Iranian).
Indic (Eastern) Group of Indo-Iranian
Language Branch
- The most widely used languages in India, as well as in the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh, belong to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo- European.
- Approximately one-third of Indians, mostly in the north, use an Indic language called Hindi.
- Hindi is spoken many different ways—and therefore could be regarded as a collection of many individual languages but there is only one official way to write the language, using a script called Devanagari.
South Asian Languages and Language
Families
Fig. 5 - 7 : Indo-European is the largest of four main language families in South Asia. The country of India has 18 official languages.
Iranian (Western) Group of Indo-Iranian
Language Branch
- Indo-Iranian languages spoken in Iran and neighboring countries form a separate group from Indic.
- The major Iranian group languages include Persian (sometimes called Farsi) in Iran, Pathan in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and Kurdish, used by the Kurds of western Iran, northern Iraq, and eastern Turkey.
- These languages are written in the Arabic alphabet.
East Slavic and Baltic Groups of Balto-Slavic
Language Branch
- After Russian, Ukrainian and
Belarusian (sometimes
written Byelorussian) are
the two most important
East Slavic languages.
- The desire to use languages
other than Russian was a
major drive in the Soviet
Union breakup a decade
ago.
West and South Slavic Groups of Balto-
Slavic Language Branch
- The most spoken West Slavic language is Polish, followed by Czech and Slovak.
- The latter two are quite similar, and speakers of one can understand the other.
- The two most important South Slavic languages are Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian.
- Although Serbs and Croats speak the same language, they use different alphabets.
- Slovene is the official language of Slovenia, while Macedonian is used in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.
Origin and Diffusion of Romance
Languages
- As the conquering Roman armies occupied the provinces of it’s vast empire, they brought the Latin language with them the languages spoken by the natives of the provinces were either extinguished or suppressed.
- Latin used in each province was based on that spoken by the Roman army at the time of occupation.
- Each province also integrated words spoken in the area.
- The Latin that people in the provinces learned was not the standard literary form but a spoken form, known as Vulgar Latin, from the Latin word referring to “the masses” of the populace.
After the Fall of Rome
- By the eighth century, regions of the former empire had been isolated from each other long enough for distinct languages to evolve.
- Latin persisted in parts of the former empire.
- People in some areas reverted to former languages, while others adopted the languages of conquering groups from the north and east, which spoke Germanic and Slavic.
Romance Language Dialects – Spain
- Spain, like France, contained many dialects during the Middle Ages.
- In the fifteenth century, when the Kingdom of Castile and Leon merged with the Kingdom of Aragón, Castilian became the official language for the entire country.
Spanish and Portuguese
Speaking Countries
- Spanish and Portuguese have achieved worldwide importance because of the colonial activities of their European speakers.
- Approximately 90 percent of the speakers of these two languages live outside Europe.
- Spanish is the official language of 18 Latin American states, while Portuguese is spoken in Brazil.
- The division of Central and South America into Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking regions is the result of a 1493 decision by Pope Alexander VI.
- The Portuguese and Spanish languages spoken in the Western Hemisphere differ somewhat from their European versions.
Origin and Diffusion of Indo-European
- The existence of a single ancestor cannot be proved with certainty, because it would have existed thousands of years before the invention of writing or recorded history.
- The evidence that Proto-Indo- European once existed is “internal.”
- Individual Indo-European languages share common root words for winter and snow but not for ocean.
- Therefore, linguists conclude that original Proto-Indo-European speakers probably lived in a cold climate, or one that had a winter season, but did not come in contact with oceans.
Kurgan Theory of Indo-European Origin
Fig. 5 - 9 : In the Kurgan theory, Proto-Indo-European diffused from the Kurgan hearth north of the Caspian Sea, beginning about 7,000 years ago.