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Holm's hypothesis is held by no one but himself, and hasn't even been published yet. Its inclusion here is massive UNDUE weight on a single viewpoint that is not widely held. Kortlandt's paper is a red herring, as Kortlandt (like very many Indo-Europeanists) believes in the Indo-Hittite hypothesis. I didn't mind you removing the info about Indo-Hittite, Rokus01, because it was, as you pointed out, unsourced, but replacing it with the unpublished, untested, and unreviewed "Separation Level Recovery method" is preposterous. — An gr If you've written a quality article... 17:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Try "Alfa Informatica" or "Alpha-Informatica". This is a faculty in at least the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Freiburg. Indeed, the study is not confined to Indo European studies (I found a general description in German: [1]), though the methods are scientific and verifiable. We can have a discussion on this topic if you want, though I figure beforehand that Alfa Informatica don't compare with what I would consider fringe. To me such a denomination has too many connotations with the Velikovsky and Daniker kind, and can not and should not be applied to cutting edge university research.
Concerning your other comment, indeed the Anatolian results are the only clear deviation from sure and confirmed knowledge. However, in Britannica we can read there are THREE opinions on the Anatolian question, not two (the third one holding anatolina to be an even more recent split than Greek or Armenian). It says the Indo-Hittite hypothesis is neither definitely proved nor disproved (22:582). Actually, the encyclopedia makes a case against the hypothesis at page 494 and attibute a split of the same order as Celtic or Italic corresponding to your second view (like the SLRD results).
I will propose another edit. Rokus01 ( talk) 16:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I fully agree with Angr. Holm's hypothesis has no place in the main Indo-European languages article. A clear case of WP:UNDUE recentism if ever there was one. Try to be reasonable. dab (𒁳) 18:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
you obviously do not want to listen. Holm's calculations are intersting and quotable, but their significance is nowhere even near what would warrant their mention in this article. I don't see why I should "turn off my computer" because you obviously have no grasp of the matters you are dabbling in. I have done similar calculations for fun, and they were laughed out of court by one of the authors of LIV. That's what this is: fun with dictionaries. Interesting if you are into these things, but of no consequence whatsoever to the question of Indo-European prehistory: you basically end up recovering the assumptions that went into the writing of the dictionary. The calculation is fair because it generally replicates communis opinio, not the other way round. Even if you decide you want to take this at face value, if you think the outcome for Anatolian or Tocharian has any significance, you clearly have no understanding of the underlying mathematics. dab (𒁳) 09:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I have access to the online Britannica, and there is no article entitled "Indo-Hittite hypothesis". There is a very brief article on "Indo-Hittite languages", restricting itself to the bare definition of the term and saying there is no consensus, without any of the details we attribute to Britannica. [2] It would be useful to cite the lemma in Britannica, and the lemma's authors, not just page numbers. Britannica has a good "Anatolian languages" article, signed by Philo H.J. Houwink ten Cate, H. Craig Melchert and Theo P.J. van den Hout, but I fail to find anything about "very Indo-European agricultural terminology" in Anatolian, as our article references to Britannica. dab (𒁳) 09:59, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Ok, in the online version, the final section is entitled "Relationship with the other subgroups"
The "Historical background of Ancient Anatolia" does mention agricultural terminology, but rather to the opposite effect of what you quote:
Interestingly, the text you quote is dumped verbatim on a giant page here. The bit on "definitely Indo-European word-stems" was apparently edited out. If it's in the 15th edition, we can still refer to it of course, but seeing that the authors "retracted" the claim, it would be worthwhile to cite some actual scholarly literature on this. But this goes too deep for the "Indo-European languages" and should be moved to Anatolian languages. dab (𒁳) 15:41, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
look, the agricultural thing does not support the Indo-Hittite hypothesis either way. The "old" Britannica quote brings it up in the context of the question of Anatolian "invasion" vs. "peaceful migration". This is very very weak in any case and has no place here. If someone has indeed "proffered" this agricultural terminology argument in favour of Indo-Hittite, you will need to state who that was. And you'll need to state it over at Indo-Hittite, not here. It is more than sufficient for the purpose of this article here to quote the Britannica to the effect that there is no consensus either way, and that neither "extreme" take on Indo-Hittite is likely to be correct. dab (𒁳) 18:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Rokus, the statement that the agricultural terminology in Hittite is *not* related to that in other IE languages is hardly equivalent to the statement that the agricultural terminology in Anatolian is "very Indo-European". Can we please have this discussion at Talk:Anatolian languages, and restrict ourselves to merely reporting what the authors are saying without jumping to conclusions? dab (𒁳) 23:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
:In a recent presentation, Charles Burney (2003) discussed how this hypothesis, first proposed in just a sketchy outline by Emil Forrer in 1921 and later expanded by Sturtevant in 1938 (see E. H. Sturtevant 1962, a posthumous publication of Sturtevant’s 1938 lecture on the Indo-Hittite hypothesis at the Linguistic Institute at Ann Arbor, Michigan), was largely dismissed until resurrected in the late 1980s in a number of publications espousing theories of Indo-European origin (most notably Renfrew 1987), and, gaining steady support, became the subject of a colloquium at the University of Richmond, Virginia in March of 2000. Burney states that the unavoidable conclusion of the hypothesis, strongly promoted by Colin Renfrew, is that some speakers of Proto-Indo-European migrated out of Anatolia, where speakers of Proto-Anatolian remained and began to diverge and form the Nesite, Luwian, and Palaic languages. Such a scenario has been reasoned to imply that the earliest Proto-Indo-European nucleus, evolving from Proto-Indo-Hittite, developed in the Konya Plain around 7000 BC.
I'll say again that discussion of the Indo-Hittite question belongs on the Indo-Hittite article. Burney may think it is "unavoidable" that Indo-Hittie implies an Anatolian homeland, but that's nonsense. I'll happily embrace moderate scenarios of IH, but I am very far indeed from concluding the IH homeland (let alone the IE homeland). Say you conclude PIH dates to 6000 BC and "PIE proper" to 4000 BC. It is still anyone's guess whether the Proto-Anatolians moved from the steppe to Anatolia, or whether the pre-PIEans moved from Anatolia to the steppe, and the PIE homeland will still be in the steppe no matter where you put the PIH one. That's really just a big non sequitur that doesn't even belong on this article. dab (𒁳) 12:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
my personal point of view has nothing to do with it. My personal point of view, if you'd like to know, is rather sympathetic towards moderate Indo-Hittite scenarios. There is nothing wrong with the IH hypothesis. It has its own article. All I am doing is preventing you from touting your thinly veiled ideological fringe theories. Really, there is no need to rehash the discussion, I think all has been said. dab (𒁳) 09:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Even though utterly undue to this linguistic article, actually I have something to add to my efforts to stop continuous Kurgan POV pushing and the erroneous representation of the Kurgan theory as "mainstream". In the Oxford Companion to Archeology, Mallory (p.348) names three main homeland hypotheses.
I am very curious in knowing how a good faith editor would be able to interpret one theory (out of three) that happen to enjoy "widespread support" as "mainstream" above another "widely accepted theory". This book is from 1996, and ever since the Kurgan theory has not been further evidenced in any new research I know of and actually there is a tendency among archeologists to move away from this theory towards the broader concept (my observation). This discussion will lead to nowhere and for the sake or OR we can't allow to push views on our own terms, not at any place. Within this context, we'd better adhere to Mallories concept that the homeland issue remains "one of the most contested issues in prehistoric research" and avoid the hairraising use of "mainstream" altogether. Thanks. Rokus01 ( talk) 10:44, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
lol, Mallory is one major Kurgan proponent. He is just being polite. I am happy with mentioning the three approaches you mention as those that enjoy notable support. Just as long as you don't attempt your WP:SYN stunts. The "broad homeland" theory is "widely accepted" because it is all-inclusive. It isn't necessarily in contradiction to the Kurgan one, it's just a more agnostic variant of the general Kurgan scenario. dab (𒁳) 20:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't China be coloured in light green as Portuguese and English are co-official languages in Macau and Hong Kong? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Afigueiro ( talk • contribs) 23:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I would be in favor of creating a new page, Language Families, as suggested in the dispute tag. The current Grouping subheading is not specifically a question of the Indo-European family, but of diachronics/typology more generally. Similar controversies over areal features, for example, exist among scholars specializing in other families (e.g. Austronesian). Cnilep ( talk) 19:29, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Just in case the reader may be confused, the hypothesis of the linking between Indian and European languages is still theoretic so far as I understand, and will always remain so given there are no living speakers of the "proto" languages. If it is not hypothetical, it would be nice to have the section with fully referenced (including citations) proof that the connection indeed exists-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 00:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
The fact that the IE theory can never be proven, is just a fact of life, so try to accept it. proto- anything is in an even shakier theoretical boat. SIL may be good enough for ISO, but it is still not an accredited academic institution. Surely you can find other references from more mainstream linguistic sources?
What I said about proof is that if, IF, the article is not about a theory, than it must have become a proven fact, and therefore deserves a section that details this proof. However, as you acknowledge, no such proof is ever possible. As a reference work, Wikipedia is obligated to say explicitly if something is a proven fact or not, even if the assumptions are made in the more learned circles. Wikipedia is no place for voicing assumptions.
"The chances that modern IE languages haven't actually sprung from common source are as likely as that god created Tower of Babel." - are you saying that the IE languages have not sprung up from a common source? I'd remind you that God did not create the Tower of Babel.
"As far as the 99.99% linguists out there are concerned, Indo-European theory is taken for granted as a priori valid, because claiming otherwise would be insane." - pardon me for insanity, but proto- everything is completely manufactured. The IET is based on several very shaky assumptions that fail the multi-disciplinary tests not available in the 18-19th centuries. However, this has little to do with the article. What people do or don't believe does not influence the fact that as it stands the IE linguistics is a theory based on a number of hypothesis. SIL may base their assumptions of beliefs, but in linguistics one deals with facts and logic.
You realise of course that comparing the common lexis, morphology, etc. is not like observing genome in a lab, right? You do know that sequencing for many biological families has been largely completed, while historical linguistics has barely scratched the surface due to obvious anomalies, and wide-ranging differences of opinion on interpretation of data.
I'll tell you what, I'll come back and add cited authoritative sources that do acknowledge the IE linguistics to be theoretic in nature, and I will outline the hypothesis on which it is based, given no one has done so yet-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 15:17, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Right, though it took a lot of time for arriving at this conclusion. All of this concerns are WP:OR without proper sourcing and nothing more. I regret so much good energy has been spent on this obvious violation of Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, quote:"Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views." Could we please remove this discussion? Rokus01 ( talk) 08:42, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Warnow, using the phylogenetic method, figured out the following tree for Indo-European languages:
Anatolian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
'''*Albanian could have branched off before Italo-Celtic or after Greco-Armenian.
**Germanic left the Satem area before Satemization was complete and moved next to Italo-Celtic.
[1]
I've deleted the above and moved it over here for discussion. The reason I moved it is because this is only one of many proposed trees, as far as I know it doesn't have general acceptance. I think a separate page should be created showing the various proposals. Otherwise, just don't list any. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
207.112.64.80 (
talk)
04:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Neither French nor English are official in Lebanon, contrary to popular opinion. However, English is official in Sudan. Which makes the map look scary actually, man IE is dominating. -- Karkaron ( talk) 08:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
(Moved here from User talk:Angr):
I think the table is there to serve as an illustration of the early stages of IE splitting. It might make more sense to establish sort of a timeline, ie from PIE/IE > protolanguages > old attested > modern. I don't think it's irrelevant, just not complete enough to make sense.
If we put in a link to Old Irish, shouldn't the greek link be to Ancient Greek rather than modern greek? Cheers Akerbeltz ( talk) 15:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok I added some more examples and info and established a rough timeline. Nebulosity, I see you've added Old English but I'm not sure if that's needed - I think one example from each major family is enough to give a general idea of what's going on, so on balance I feel we should rather add a church slavonic or baltic conjugation rather than a second germanic example. Otherwise we may end up with a bias towards germanic or a table as wide as my desk ;) Akerbeltz ( talk) 17:44, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Angr, glad you feel that way about relevance but the "call for citations" you've added is a little ... odd. Everyone can *see* that the PIE verb was synthetic and that the modern languages use largely periphrastic systems. It's like asking for a citation saying that it's usually brighter during the day ;) Same applies to the similarities/differences I would say, wouldn't you agree? I agree with the need for sourcing information, don't get me wrong but not every little statement is sourced, not even on featured articles if the info is totally obvious Akerbeltz ( talk) 09:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Agreed... feel free to change/delete, I gotta rush to a workshop right now! Akerbeltz ( talk) 10:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Different point that aside - any objections to splitting off the PIE bit of the table into a seperate table and adjusting the width so the old forms sit directly above the now? Someone else would have to do that though, I'm no good with the table formatting. Akerbeltz ( talk) 14:35, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
I just added a reference to him as originator of the term "indo-european", adding that the term was popularized by Bopp. Compromiso ( talk) 13:55, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Are you sure Bopp coined the term? I have a recollection that Schlegel and his "successor" Bopp were both caught up in trying to derive European languages from Sanskrit and sort of came up with the comparative linguistics as an unintentional by-product and that it was only after Bopp that the notion of Sanskrit being the ancestor language was abandoned in favour of PIE?
Akerbeltz (
talk)
22:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
there isn't any "controversy in german", just a question of terminological preference. The origin of the term is discussed at length at Indo-European studies. -- dab (𒁳) 16:48, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
this little exchange on thomas young above is illustrative of diametrically opposed approaches to learning and knowledge. User:Angr wrote "Okay; can you add a source for it, though?" while User:Dbachmann reverted and wrote "nonsense". i know which form of exchange i prefer, and i think the wikipedia project continually suffers from the "yes it does - no it doesn´t" paradigm. we need more collaborative and less adversarial work!
unwittingly though, User:Dbachmann is right: i, also unwittingly, was undertaking original research, testing the hypothesis of a "controversy" through a "natural experiment": if a reference to a controversy is suppressed intemperately by an Indogermanist, then there is surely one there!
the controversy is not "nonsense", it has been in the academic establishment (cf. the use of "indoeuropäisch" in GDR academia), but perhaps more significantly on the political and ideological level, and therefore a source for this does not have to be an academic reference, contrary to what User:Dbachmann requires. i can modify the parenthesis to "(see, though, the German discussion page http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Indogermanische_Sprachen)". it´s instructive, and there is no need to try to sweep all this under the carpet. Compromiso ( talk) 09:40, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Compromiso, Wikipedia is the "encyclopedia anyone can edit". Anyone. This means we get a lot of people passing by for a chat, or some idle provocation, or to vent some spleen. If there is anything you want, you are obliged to present a reference. Did you get that, yes? No reference, no discussion. See WP:RS for a description of what kind of references are deemed appropriate. We'll be happy to discuss your references with you. As long as you have none, you can hardly claim anything is being "swept under the carpet". -- dab (𒁳) 11:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
The indo-european constructed language was probably a caveman adoption.No doubt it will be denied as the semites deny their ethiopian Urheimat despite endless genetic and linguistic evidence.Return to your Ket roots - part of the Basque, Sino-Tibetan and Ibero-Caucasian languages all groups share exact ancestral ties with most indigenous europeans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.178.55.79 ( talk) 14:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
What is the guy even talking about? The Indo-European language group originated in Siberia? I always thought it was NE of the Black sea. And the Kat language isn't even I-E. And what's the caveman part about? An insult? For whom? Europeans? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.185.198.244 ( talk) 17:41, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
It is misleading to represent both the Baltic and Slavic by the same colour in the maps showing the distribution of the IE starting at around 100-500 AD. I can buy such a representation for the disputed period 3000-500 BC. However, avoiding discriminating between the Baltic and Slavonic languages in the later pre-historic and historic periods is nothing but a masked POV or even propaganda.
Moreover, the following facts are clearly ignored/overlooked in the article:
1. If the Baltic and Slavic are “genetically” classified as one group, there should be a clear statement, that the Proto-Slavic spin-off from the Proto-Baltic-Slavic stem in the beginning was just a peripheral dialect. See for example Encyclopaedia Britannica.
2. Many scholars agree about the occurrence of Baltic hydronims in a huge territory from Pomerania in the West to Volga River in the East. Namely, BALTIC and not Balto-Slavic. See Gimbutas for example. http://www.vaidilute.com/books/gimbutas/gimbutas-01.html
3. I learned at school that Lithuanian and, in particular, Old Prussian, are the languages, which preserved most of the archaic IE features, these features, in particular, can be found in unusually rich ancient Lithuanian dialects still spoken today (The Slavic are more innovative in this regard aren’t they?). That’s why these “insignificant” languages are studied in many universities across the world. Isn’t this fact worth mentioning? I understand that it might be a bit difficult to accept for the speakers of the “big” languages such as English, Russian or French, but it’s all about facts isn’t it?
4. As a layman I can only state, that the distance between Swedish and English or German is similar to the distance between the two major dialects of Lithuanian: Samogitian and Aukstatian. Not speaking about Latvian and Old Prussian. Thus, once you put together Baltic and Slavic into one group, you shouldn’t create a wrong impression, that the Russian, Latvian, Polish are “all the same”. Because other vice the reader can get a wrong impression that, in fact, the recent history of that part of Europe is nothing wrong, just a natural exchange within “very close dialects of the PIE continuum”. In such a case, we arrive in a situation when some nations are more important than the others ( i.e. some are small, they don’t have enough of Wiki editors, few recent publications in English consider their languages, etc.). 15:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)Gotho-BalticGotho-Baltic 18:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Baltic and Slavic are indeed comparatively remote. As are Ossetian and Marathi, and both are still Indo-Iranian. Your view of Slavic as a "peripheral" spin-off Baltic is Baltocentric. I take it you are a Balt, and you had an Balto-centric education. Which I grant is one point of view, although an ethnocentric one. That Baltic "preserved most of the archaic IE features" is wrong. It did indeed preserve some surprisingly archaic features, but other archaic features are found in other branches. -- dab (𒁳) 20:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Gotho-Baltic ( talk · contribs) is invited to read our current Balto-Slavic article and then offer informed criticism on its talkpage. This talkpage here isn't the proper venue for this discussion. -- dab (𒁳) 10:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
There are Russian-speaking and Tajik-speaking minorities in northeastern and western [Sinkiang?] China, although I don't know what status they might have as relevant to the map shown here. However, Portuguese and English are coöfficial, in the SARs of Macau and Hong Kong, respectively. Tomer talk 20:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
For those who are latin and sanskrit challenged, Americans would comprehend the change to the latter, as it doesn't require much thinking. 146.235.66.52 ( talk) 17:07, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
made a few corrections. i gave the reasons in the history section. i have to say this is quite a good article. it has good detail :) Dicst ( talk) 11:29, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
In the upper right board of the page "indoeuropean languages" is missing the Greek language as a separate family of languages.
Probably is a mistake that should be corrected.
Also there is a board on the discussion page, that is mentioned in "greaco-armenian family" languages, this is a hypothesis that is supported by only few scientists as far as I know.
Anyway in the board of the page "indoeuropean languages" is not mentioned neether "graeco-armenian" as family. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Konig82 ( talk • contribs) 18:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
the group is in fact known as "Greek" in English. "Hellenic" is a pompous term used for oblique pov-pushing. -- dab (𒁳) 11:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
See http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.archaeology/2006-03/Msg00564.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.219.143 ( talk) 09:59, 13 June 2009 (UTC) See Bernard Sergent, Les Indo-Europeens, Payot, 1995. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.219.143 ( talk) 10:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
The article speaks of the "loss of pre-vocalic *s- in Greek". Actually, the "s" was shifted to "h". Admittedly, this "h" has been dropped in Modern Greek. At the least, the article is misleading on this point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.170.8 ( talk) 10:57, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
In the table about the various modern and ancient equivalents of the verb "to bear", it mentions the French verb {con}férer. I am French-speaking, and "conférer" means to confer, not to bear. CielProfond ( talk) 02:49, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
In the table about the various modern and ancient equivalents of the verb "to bear", it mentions the German verb "gebären". The third person singular is given as "er gebiert". I've never seen a male German give birth to a child :) This most certainly should be "sie gebiert".
THis might indeed be about conjugation, not meaning. Nevertheless, I am confused by you mentioning "to carry" in the beginning sentence of the section, then proceeding to conjugate "gebären", which is something completely different to the best of my knowledge. If a mother carries a baby she does not gibe birth to it (German "sie gebiert"), but moves it from one place to another (German "sie trägt")!? It might be a good idea to explicitly stress that those verb examples have different meanings and to avoid the impression that all those verbs from different languages are synonyms to a specific english verb. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.168.241.41 ( talk) 11:01, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
Indoeuropean language is a theory. No one to date has proved the existance of such a powerful, society. A theory, that has not been proven so far. One would expect that evidence of such a powerful society's existance, (lending its language to significant portion of the world) would have been unearthed by archeologists so far. An inscription, a setting, a pot a drawing. Mothing so far. None. This fact is neglected, why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.207.162.51 ( talk) 13:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
As an Iranian Persian myself, who has studied languages, I can tell you that Dravidian people and Australoid (non Aryan Indians closely related to aboriginals from Australia and Africans) and their language is NOT Indo-European. This section was put in this article using the wiki article on Nostratic languages as a source. I'm sorry, but this is just another example of propaganda. There is no historical evidence for this, and is not accepted in the scholarly community. This is an article on Indo-Europeans, NOT African or Asian languages. Joseph Greenberg's research is highly faulty and full of agenda (not to mention he is highly criticised) I think his information should stay in the Nostratic article on wikipedia and off this page.-- CreativeSoul7981 ( talk) 02:07, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Again, I will reiterate that this information belongs on the Nostratics page and NOT the Indo-European page since the Linguistic community does NOT accept even accept this as a valid theory. Please leave this on the Nostratics page.-- CreativeSoul7981 ( talk) 05:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I will add that this information needs to be agreed upon with valid sources and not theories by one or two people not even recognized by the Lingual Community. Otherwise, it's just propoganda.-- CreativeSoul7981 ( talk) 05:01, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree with CreativeSoul7981. There has been huge INFLUENCE of indo-iranian on the Indian sub-continent to the dravidians, but they are Australoid not Indo-European. Iraj Ali ( talk) 13:27, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
Made minor corrections regarding the period 1500-2000 (covering attempted European colonization of West, Southern and South-East Asia and North Africa; and actual European colonization of Southern Africa, North Asia, and the Americas). Changes included changing the confusing reference to South Arica (as a region associated with IE 'romance languages'; specifically Portuguese, French and Spanish) to Sub-Saharan Africa; the more inclusive and actual area of Africa to which Romance languages where spread through forced European colonization.
The term 'South Africa' is confusing and inaccurate in reference to regions of Africa where Romance IE languages are spoken because South Africa is (currently) a country in Southern Africa where the principal IE languages spoken are Non=Romance, in fact Germanic languages(i.e. English and Afrikaans); Southern Africa includes Mozambique and Angola where portuguese is the main IE language, as well as Zimbabwe, Nambia, Zambia and Botswana where the main non-native IE languages are Germanic (English, German. English and German, respectively). However, 'Romance' IE languages are spoken in many countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (which includes the Southern African region), such as the aforementioned Mozambique and Angola (Portuguese), as well as Ivory Coast (French), Cameroon (French), and many more. Therefore the erroneous term 'South Africa' (which can be confused with the country of South Africa) has been changed to Sub-Saharan Africa.
In addition, the intent of this section is to define areas of the world to which IE languages were recently introduced (i.e. did not exist prior to the period of 1500-2000), therefore the reference to South Asia is too limiting and inappropriate as it gives the misimpression that IE languages spread to only that region of Asia AND as a result of the spread of English, which is clearly absurd as most of the inhabitants of Persia (Persian Iranian Aryan ethnic group and speakers), India/Southern Asia (Indo-Aryan ethnic group and speakers) have been native speakers of Indo-European languages for thousands of years BCE to present. The spread of English, Dutch, Portuguese and Russian to traditionally non IE speaking regions of Asia is more relevant as it pertains to the Geographic spread of IE languages during this period (1500-2000 AD). Hence I have included East and South-East Asia and North Asia (which where previously not covered) as regions where IE languages have been introduced recently (i.e. period of 1500-2000). 70.83.175.116 ( talk) 03:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Can we explain the huge amount of non indo-european words and grammatical features(especially in local-non standard-indoeuropean
dialects)by dene-caucasian,borean and cromagnic substratum of pre neolihicly migrating(proto indoeuropean speaking anatolian
farmers)populations of europe?
Humanbyrace ( talk) 00:55, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Second bullet states:
2000 BC–1500 BC: Catacomb culture north of the black sea. The chariot is invented, leading to the split and rapid spread of Iranian and Indo-Aryan from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex over much of Central Asia, Northern India, Iran and Eastern Anatolia. Proto-Anatolian is split into Hittite and Luwian. The pre-Proto-Celtic Unetice culture has an active metal industry (Nebra skydisk).
Yet Wikipedia's page for the Indo-Aryan Migration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration states:
However, recent extensive studies conducted on genetics and archaeogenetics of the South Asian population have found no proof of large population migrations, since at least 10,000 years, and that Indo-Aryan language speakers have a largely South Asian origin.
and sites three sources to substantiate this claim:
Is the page on Indo-European Languages using now defunct Aryan Invasion Theory? Scholars generally agree now that there was no Invasion via chariots. Specifically I point you to page 239 of Culture Throughout Time 1991 (Stanford University Press). I will come back with more sources to further substantiate this, if need be.
Derived ( talk) 06:47, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
I notice this section is tagged. I just worked on Centum-Satem isogloss, which needed a lot of work. I notice this section contains a lot of issues already addressed and corrected in the other article. The incorrect picture is repeated yet once again (aren't there any others?) Either this write-up could be corrected, which would amount to doing another but shorter article similar to Centum-Satem isogloss or we can just defer to the other article, which contains everything mentioned here and more. I don't like to capture the same ground twice so if no one objects I am just going to remove the contents of this subsection. As far as the jargon is concerned - well, maybe. It is too conversational and it is too opinionated. Dave ( talk) 12:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I removed this image:
I have no criticism of the graphics, which are very fine. Nice work, I hope you get an A. You must know of course that this graphic represents one point of view about the origin of Indo-European; moreover, it is not the mainstream view, which places them between and above the Black and Caspian Seas. But again, there is plenty of room in Wikipedia for minority views; in fact, I think they ought to be encouraged in the people's encyclopedia. No, that is not my beef. Whoever's point of view it is needs to be identified. The author and publisher need to be stated. Who's view do you say this is? Who did the graphic? How do we know you didn't lift it from somewhere? Wikipedia asks that you try to use templates such as cite web, which provide a uniform look and ask for standard information. Now I find that we are all blocked from the site, which is provided by UPenn history department. That brings a further complication. Now, it appears as though you have a personal site at the department, which is generally true of students. That means, this could be your personal until now unpublished creative work, or more likely you did an imitation or rehash from Scientific American (the original publisher of this Russian point of view). So, I hope you will not be too astounded if I ask for references on this, and a location of the private pages of UPENN history department is not that. We have plenty of course blurbs but typically the professor gives his name and takes credit and responsibility and the blurb is already published in one form or another. Reference please. Ciao. Dave ( talk) 02:37, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
the informations about the Aryans are resebled to Iranian which is a bigg mistake, that shouldnt be divided by sub-iranian branches . Afghans(Pashtons) and their language Pashto is not sub-iranian branch of language but its separate a North-Eastern-Aryanian Language of the Indo-European tree. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
84.49.128.102 (
talk)
04:39, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I removed this:
The problem with this one is basically the same. It is stored on Professor Clark Ford's site. Now, nothing on this image or with it identifies it as the work of professor Ford. He could just be keeping it there for personal reference. Moreover, the professor's field is far removed from Indo-European linguistics. I don't think he did this, especially as it turns up at a few other locations of the Internet without his name. You know, just because the Internet makes it possible to invade privacy even more than before does not mean we can use material obtained in this way. We need an author and a publisher here. If the author designated it for public use it does not matter if we view it in the good professor's site, just as he does. If not, it is against the law for the professor to publish it like that and for us to use it like this. Not to mentions the fact that as far as we know now it might be original unpublished creative material. Reference please. Ciao. Dave ( talk) 02:57, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
The file http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg, is not unproblematic either. It erroneously lists Norwegian as a West Scandinavian language. The only extant West Scandinavian languages are Faroese and Icelandic. //roger.duprat.copenhagen —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.138.228.148 ( talk) 07:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
To all of us Internet Indo-Europeanists the sudden pulling of the American Heritage Dictionary from Bartleby.com was a low blow. It is hard to remember what a great asset it was and how lucky we were to have it. Some people like to take candy away from babies. I remember when uemployment was made taxable, which ever after was greatly regretted, but no one seems to have the power to reverse it. Houghton-Mifflin is after all in business to make money, and why should they give us anything for free? I will not even wonder what Calvert Watkins thinks of this move. I remember him as a totally helpful man if you can accept being always wrong and never right. That is how it seems to students anyway. Regardless of why Houghton Mifflin did it and why the people allowed their unemployment to be taxed and what Calvert may think of this unhelpful act, it is done and we have lost a great intellectual asset. Things will never be the same. Oh well, you can buy the paper book; it is less than 100, or used to be - but it isn't the same as the Internet, you know that. But - there is a ray of hope. I do not know how long it will last. Internet Archive has got it. I have changed the link from Bartelby to archived Bartleby. There are a large number of online links to roots in the AHD so there is a tremendous amount of work to do in fixing it. Watkins is on Google also but you never can count on links to their material so we might be better off just referencing the paper books. Dave ( talk) 05:05, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
isbn=90-272-2151-0 (Europe), ISBN 1-55619-505-2 (U.S.) May be invalid - please double check
Is your typing hand broken? Check it yourself. Anyway I invoked "find it in a library" and what do you know, no library has it. There's some for sale second-hand in the usual places. "Find it in a library" also gave the publisher's info. Even though only one edition is listed, there are several ISBN's. This is the case with many books. In cases such as that I never list the ISBN as that is equivalent to plugging one edition, format or seller and not another. We told them enough to locate the book, we are not helping them to buy it or anyone else to sell it. Dave ( talk) 02:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
(Removed sidetrack section. If you guys want to keep it, I won't object.) ( Taivo ( talk) 15:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC))
to be fair, the three main pillars of PIE reconstruction are Vedic Sanskrit, Greek and Anatolian (Hittite), because these three give a "direct" glimpse of the Bronze Age. The point that Sanskrit records do not survive in any material manuscripts dating to the Bronze Age (as Taivo correctly points out) is of limited importance. -- dab (𒁳) 07:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) Vedic is not attested from the Bronze Age and it is only presumed to be based on oral traditions from the Bronze Age. But there's a difference between preserving traditions from the Bronze Age and preserving actual linguistic forms. In that respect, Vedic is rightly valued in I-E studies, but adding it to Bronze Age attestation is a leap of faith. ( Taivo ( talk) 00:21, 8 April 2010 (UTC))
Why exactly is the Persian declension listed under the Armenian column? Is there no modern Armenian descendent of *bʰer- to use, and an empty column would look weird? As it is, it looks like it claims Persian is a contemporary member of Armenian. So shouldn't it be replaced with examples from modern Armenian, or either just left blank? Baranxtu ( talk) 17:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
How can individual languages like "Albanian" have the same status as Language Family's like "Germanic"? The whole list seems utterly anachronistic and arbitrary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.188.85.11 ( talk) 03:31, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
Using methods similar to those of Greenberg, Roman Stopa proved that I.-E. languges are related to the Bushman languages of Southern Africa. See the article in the Polish Wikipedia on Stopa for a reference to his work of 1972. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.132.159.91 ( talk) 16:06, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
There is a redirect from "Indo-Germanic" to "Indo-European". I thought that it was an alternate name, albeit rare. I wouldn't count a mention of that as "vandalism", but I'm not going to do anything without discussion. TomS TDotO ( talk) 09:47, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
I have collected information on this here. Perhaps a short summary wouldn't be superfluous in this article. -- dab (𒁳) 11:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
I apologise for labelling it as "vandalism". The edit was done by an editor who had just changed German to the most spoken Indo-European language, so I just threw it in with that. "Indo-Germanic" is very rarely used in English, though. Hayden120 ( talk) 01:32, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
Isn't the terminology of "Indo-Germanic" a bit outdated? I cannot find a single source earlier than 1915. I'm also gonna guess that this terminology is rooted in 19th century German nationalism. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 05:56, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Wough Marek, you have done nice research work! 1915 was the great war (WW I) and many German notations in the anglo-saxon world were changed to English. Another example: Berlin near Waterloo/Ontario was changed to Kitchener, remembering Lord Kitchener of the Sudan. But one name wasn't changed: Merck (from the NYSE and the Dow) remained Merck, although being a reparation from the German Merck (named after its founder), which still exists today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.133.155.68 ( talk) 07:54, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
The notion ,indo-germanic' was introduced by a Dane, not by a German. It should not be used in an English written text (only in German ones - perhaps also in Danish ones), unless there is a conference, in which the majority of scholars accepts a change. But certainly a historical notion is more appropiate than a geographical one, do not confuse space and time. This applies especially to ,afro-asiatic' instead of ,semitic' . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.100.79.6 ( talk) 13:10, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
I'll bite. Why is "the Iranian plateau and South Asia" preferred to "the Indian Subcontinent and the Iranian plateau"? At least the latter form clearly doesn't include Burma. — Tamfang ( talk) 23:33, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
The word "genetic" is not directly explained, and could be confusing to those who don't know the special linguistic meaning of the word... AnonMoos ( talk) 00:51, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I've modified the two conjugation comparison tables. In the basic sense, I've fixed the styling so that it's easier to read and doesn't have strange/redundant markup (for some reason, every table cell was colspan="4"
); there is now a difference between header cells and regular cells, but I've retained the text centering on all cells.
Back in July, somebody made an edit to show that Persian was not part of the Armenian subgroup—it was a good thought, but it was executed poorly. I've rectified that by creating an "Iranian" column and putting that and "Indo-Aryan" under an "Indo-Iranian" column. I've also properly left a space for modern Armenian examples. In a subsequent edit, I rearranged the columns to match File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg, which is supposedly ordered based on specific evidence; I've excluded dead-end branches for simplicity. I added the "Albanian" branch, as well as a "Baltic" branch under the "Balto-Slavic" header.
Here's what's to be done: I've changed some of the names and expanded some of abbreviations; we can easily haggle over those changes, but they were motivated by the tree diagram and verbosity. What we really need are examples of the languages we are now missing:
So if anyone can dig up some references for those, that'd be great. We may also want to note when the ancient representative did not directly evolve into the modern representative (e.g. Gothic and German). Hope that helps. — Gordon P. Hemsley→ ✉ 09:11, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I looked it up in Fraenkel's Lithuanian Etymology Dictionary here: http://www.indo-european.nl/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=leiden&morpho=0&basename=\data\ie\fraenkel&first=1&text_word=&method_word=substring&text_etym=&method_etym=substring&text_pages=&method_pages=substring&text_any=berti&method_any=substring&sort=word According to this Lithuanian word "berti" (meaning 1. strew; scatter 2. break out ; 3. sow ;. shed tears) is derived from the indo-european * bher- 'bear, give'. My suggestion would be to include lithuanian as an ancient representative so that dual verb forms could also be mentioned as they are still used in dialects (the reference for this can be found here: http://www.lki.lt/LKI_LT/images/Padaliniai/Gramatikos_skyrius/3_skyrius.pdf in page 74). There is no space for dual in the table for the modern representatives. Then Latvian could be the modern representative if there is a word derived from *bher in Latvian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smurkst ( talk • contribs) 12:22, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
The reason I added Lithuanian example for Proto-Indo-European(*bʰer- 'to carry') Comparison of conjugations under the "Ancient Representatives" instead of "Modern Representatives" is because there was no place for dual under "Modern Representatives". The example of how dual is conjugated in Lithuanian dialects can be seen here: http://www.lituanus.org/1969/69_3_02.htm
Singular aš einu 'I go, I am going' tu eini ('thou goest') jis eina 'he goes'
Plural mes einame 'we go' jūs einate 'you go' ie eina 'they go'
Dual mudu (mudvi) einava 'we two ('we two", fern.) go' judu (judvi) einata 'you two ('you two', fern.) go' jiedu (jiedvi) eina 'they two ('they two', fern.) go'19 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smurkst ( talk • contribs) 19:21, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
Where's the criticism for this theory of a language family? 71.212.214.163 ( talk) 07:00, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
http://www.khyber.org/articles/2005/TheGreatAryanMyth.shtml http://archaeology.about.com/od/indusrivercivilizations/a/aryans.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.59.22.166 ( talk • contribs)
the oldest text of the gathas is written in gathic wich is so old that is why linguistics date zoroastrianism to 1800 bc it is older then just 1000 bc way older i dates from 1500-1200 bc actually that is why gathic is incredibly close to vedic sanskrit it can´t be from around 1000 bc the gathas is just way to old it whas written in very old avestan 1500 bc is a good date but atleast 1200 bc that is the minimum —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.160.183.70 ( talk) 14:44, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Can someone with access to the book cited check the recent IP additions here [5] and [6]. I don't have access to the book they cite, and their reasoning in the edit summary has me wondering. I am always a little distrustful of someone inserting something into an already existing sentence, especially with such reasoning. As they have already IP hopped to 3 different addresses, talking with them other than here may be difficult. He iro 04:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
The principle difference between
and the actual extent in 1500 is the push to the North in eastern europe, at this point the Duchy of Moscow hadn't become the Tsardom of Russia and begun its push to the Pacific. So saying the IEs had global extent any time before the 16th century is flat false and the coverage shown in the current map wasn't established until the late 19th with the
Scramble for Africa.
Lycurgus (
talk)
13:50, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
This map is for 500 AD a very useful one, except for one tiny item: Germanic settlements in Morokko (in the Rif) are not proven, contrary to those around Karthago in todays Tunesia. And in Spain Gothic settlements were around Toledo, at least 80 km south of Toledo, the gothic capital, and perhaps along El Cid's route (and some in Galicia). Undoubtedly everything like that was wiped out with the moslem conquest of the peninsula. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.133.155.68 ( talk) 08:06, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
So are you saying the North African kingdom of the Vandals was a myth, as well as the numerous accounts of its history and war with Byzantium - or that their patently East Germanic language was not Germanic at all? Harsimaja ( talk) 16:24, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
Please Harsimaja, learn English. The preceding remark tells you, that the Vandals are proven around Karthago, that is in today's Tunesia, and not in Morocco, as coloured in this map (and never use the word so, because it needs a logical conclusion). By the way - travelling in the Rif mountains of Morocco, I found only one river name which might be from a Vandal language, which is far too little, to draw any conclusion from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.100.79.6 ( talk) 13:56, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
I have changed a bit the Homer note.
The Iliad of Homer was composed in post-Mycenaean period (IX BC – VIII BC see Homer) due to the presence of modern variants of deities. However, the story took place in the Mycenaean period and it's been passed down orally from that period. The form that we know has been crystallized in writing probably around VIII-VII century BC when borned the modern alphabet derived from Phoenician.
Interesting is the fact of the passage of Bronze Age to Iron Age see Achilles armature made by Hephaestus. Indeed the Dorians used Iron.
-- Andriolo ( talk) 17:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Probably I am not clear. I agree with you about text became written down in VIII-VII century but I think that this sentence confuses the date of composition with the date of writing. “Tradition”, does not mean written but oral. The etymon of “tradition” is corpus consuetudinary (for a folk or group). So Homeric tradition doesn’t date 8th century BC because it is older (probably soon after the Mycenaean period in the Greek dark age). I propose to modify the sentence in “Homer written texts may date 8th century BC.” or “Iliad and Odyssey were probably written in 8th century BC”. -- Andriolo ( talk) 11:51, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
Ok... Ciao -- Andriolo ( talk) 12:05, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
Hi all! Can someone please help? I am not that much familiar with the subject of the article, and going through the article could not find anything relevant to archeology. I mean if there ever was this great civilization of Indoeuropeans surely they must have lived in an area before their migrations.
The article right from the beginning reads as if the indoeuropean family of languages is a certain undisputed fact and not a theory. Is that the case? Thank you!! 23x2 ( talk) 18:09, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
I would like to know what peer-reviewed paper says that is disputed as an Indo-European and Celtic language since John T. Koch first published his thorough attempt at translation and classification in 2008 with increasing confidence now that he has looked at the longest and complete inscription (see peer-reviewed chapters in books "Celtic from the West" and "Tartessian 2". All I have seen is support since from other academics in the Tartessian space (e.g. Guerra and Villar). Please tell me. Jembana ( talk) 04:02, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Well we've been changing this number several times and we need to fix the problem. Ethnologue goes with 2.7 billion http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=family A fellow told me that we don't know how many of them natives, but clearly Ethnologue are counting natives as can be seen in the section "Language size" http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size (English= 328 million). However, if anyone have doubts and wants to add new sources it would be interesting. -- Bentaguayre ( talk) 12:48, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
"Indo-Germanic" and "arian" [sic] are obsolete terms that are only of minor historical relevance, and are thus too trivial for mention in the lede. "Indo-Germanic" is already mentioned in the lede, and "aryan" languages currently refer exclusively to a particular sub-family. Dominus Vobisdu ( talk) 15:46, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
There is no consensus about BSl, see for example International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, William J. Frawley (Editor), Oxford University Press, 2003. The ongoing POW pushing certainly has consequences on misleading millions of readers. This let's-play-science-game went that far that in several other related WP articles the Baltic as a linguistic group “disappeared” at all. This is already about falsification of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.64.252.30 ( talk) 21:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Page 196: "2. Classification. The shared features of Baltic and Slavic have led many scholars to propose an intermediate Balto-Slavic family within IE; however, this view has been disputed by scholars who argue for a separate, if parallel, evolution of Baltic from IE. This issue remains open."
"The vast majority of Indo-Europeanists accept Baltic as a valid single clade within Indo-European (see the various stammbaum offered in all the modern introductory texts on Indo-European--Fortson, Clackson, etc.). The notion that there was no Baltic clade is not supported within the mainstream Indo-European literature. The whole section "Modern interpretation" is not based on modern, accepted Indo-European scholarship, but is a WP:FRINGE position from the 1960s. It is not accepted in the 21st century by the vast majority of Indo-Europeanists. Fortson (2010, Indo-European Language and Culture), Mallory & Adams (2006, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World), Szemerényi (1990, Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics), Beekes (1995, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics), Schmalsteig (1998, "The Baltic Languages," The Indo-European Languages, ed. Ramat & Ramat), Clackson (2007, Indo-European Linguistics), Baldi (1983, An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages), etc. all support Baltic as a clade. This is the mainstream position and the "Baltic is not a clade" is a minority view and to give it an entire section violates WP:UNDUE. --Taivo (talk) 17:38, 1 May 2011 (UTC)" Count du Monét ( talk) 20:46, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Rather than censoring Balto-Slavic out of the article entirely, how about adding a passage to the effect that "since 1989 the validity of a Balto-Slavic group has increasingly been disputed"? — Tamfang ( talk) 21:25, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
What about Sino-Tibetan (Classical Chinese)? But then again, I suppose if we're counting oral literature, Indo-European might count, with things like the Rigveda and Zoroastrian texts. 216.54.22.188 ( talk) 19:36, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Now when I look at this article, somebody has almost deleted it. Can anybody fix it?
Excuse me, can anybody make this article as it is now back to its former glory? Somebody almost deleted it.
Hill Crest's WikiLaser (Boom). (
talk)
01:32, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, reverter. Hill Crest's WikiLaser (Boom). ( talk) 01:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
They speak Danish and English in Greenland, they speak into european languages. Should be on the map. 46.194.202.154 ( talk) 19:29, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Jespersen said that there was considerable opposition to and ill-feeling towards the comparativists from the classicists. This was in the German-speaking area. The classicists objected to the implication that they did not know Latin and Greek, or even German. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alaskan Wanderer ( talk • contribs) 15:51, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
I'm reverting this addition
mainly because it was inserted into the section "History of IE linguistics", where it definitely doesn't fit, and I don't see a better place for it. — Tamfang ( talk) 07:38, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
Kazakhstan's population mainly consists of Kazakh speakers - why is Kazakhstan in dark green? Harsimaja ( talk) 16:18, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
According to the wiki article about Greenland, the use of Danish, while non-official, is still widespread in some sectors, and a significant minority (>10%) speaks Danish only. Hence Greenland should be coloured blue in the map. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.48.132.13 ( talk) 11:15, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Hi,
I see that Greenland and Iceland are not coloured, although the inhabitants of these countries speak an indo-european language (Danish and Icelandic). can someone correct this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gertdk ( talk • contribs) 15:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/full/ncomms2656.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.97.65 ( talk) 22:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Article needs to be bought.
Still here are some parts of the text:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/04/mtdna-haplogroup-h-and-origin-of.html
Here is part of the text:
From around 2800 BC, the LNE Bell Beaker culture emerged from the Iberian Peninsula to form one of the first pan-European archaeological complexes. This cultural phenomenon is recognised by a distinctive package of rich grave goods including the eponymous bell-shaped ceramic beakers. The genetic affinities between Central Europe’s Bell Beakers and present-day Iberian populations (Fig. 2) is striking and throws fresh light on long-disputed archaeological models3. We suggest these data indicate a considerable genetic influx from the West during the LNE. These far-Western genetic affinities of Mittelelbe-Saale’s Bell Beaker folk may also have intriguing linguistic implications, as the archaeologically-identified eastward movement of the Bell Beaker culture has recently been linked to the initial spread of the Celtic language family across Western Europe39. This hypothesis suggests that early members of the Celtic language family (for example, Tartessian)40 initially developed from Indo-European precursors in Iberia and subsequently spread throughout the Atlantic Zone; before a period of rapid mobility, reflected by the Beaker phenomenon, carried Celtic languages across much of Western Europe. This idea not only challenges traditional views of a linguistic spread of Celtic westwards from Central Europe during the Iron Age, but also implies that Indo-European languages arrived in Western Europe substantially earlier, presumably with the arrival of farming from the Near East41.
It seems that genetic evidence supporting the Iberian hypothesis, paired with archaelogy, is ever-growing. A lot has been already published concerning the Iberian-Basque-British Isles connection. Now this seems to continue in other European areas like Germnay.
Pipon — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
98.203.97.65 (
talk)
23:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Turkey, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan should be colored blue as they have significant minorities of IE speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.4.123.133 ( talk) 00:48, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Also, the map makes a distinction between Lurish, "Persico" and Kurdish which should rather be grouped together under Iranian or Indo-Iranian (parallel to Slavic, Germanic, etc.) TomS TDotO ( talk) 18:17, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/243/8/8/linguistic_map_of_europe_by_1blomma-d6k1i1x.png — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.45.223.190 ( talk) 00:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
"The Indo-European languages are a family (or phylum) of several hundred related languages and dialects." Speling12345 ( talk) 2:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I removed the aforementioned languages from the infobox for the following reasons:
1. Philistine is not confirmed to be an Indo-European language. It was merely suggested, by some linguists, that Philistine might have been an Indo-European language but there's nothing that can conclusively prove it was. Adding it to the infobox would be as ridiculous as adding Hunnic to the infobox, since some linguists have also theorized that Hunnic was an Indo-European language.
2. Messapic and Thracian were indeed Indo-European languages, but they were not subfamilies. In fact, there's no consensus on the exact classification of these two languages. The infobox is meant to list the immediate (i.e. first order) subdivisions of the Indo-European family, therefore it was not appropriate to list Messapic and Thracian in the infobox as their precise classifications within the language family have not been widely determined.
--Nadia (Kutsuit) ( talk) 08:50, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
Why is Guyana shown in light green on the map? The national language, Guyanese Creole is an English-based creole, therefore rather manifestly an IE language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.48.18 ( talk) 06:24, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
An editor has been repeatedly trying to insert text in the articles on Indo-European, Balto-Slavic and Baltic. There are, by my count, three other editors who are reverting these changes. I want to add my name to those who find these changes inappropriate, and to note that they should be justified in the talk page somewhere before trying again. I observe that the language of these changes is "chatty", not encyclopedic, and is not supported by appropriate citations. I think that appropriate action is warranted by an administrator if this text continues to appear without discussion. TomS TDotO ( talk) 10:53, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
§ Diversification refers to the work of "Don Ringe and Wendy Tarnow", but in the references and other mentions ( "Ringe-Warnow model of language evolution") the second name is "Tandy [or T.] Warnow", confirmed by a Google search for the phrase. AWB finds the name first appearing here in the edit of 18:48, 30 April 2014, described as "(→Diversification: Copied info from Indo-European migrations, added link)". I'm correcting it in both articles.
To discuss this, please {{Ping}} me. -- Thnidu ( talk) 03:35, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
A move discussion with connection to this article is open at Kurdish languages' talk page. Please read and join if you can help resolve it. Khestwol ( talk) 17:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Both the political and non-political maps of the IE languages should be present in the article. Why remove something that makes the article more informative? 168.187.250.57 ( talk) 10:18, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
The political map is inappropriate for the infobox. This article is about the language family, not politics. Moreover, the non-political map contains information about the branches of the family. Nevertheless, the political map is okay for somewhere in the body of the article. -- JorisvS ( talk) 10:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
We should have some criteria for selecting which languages will serve as examples. I suggest that it is not appropriate just to use the most familiar, or widely spoken languages. I'd rather suggest that the we include languages which show the range of differences. So there should be examples from all of the extant branches of Indo-European, and all of the subbranches of the larger groups. So, I would definitely include a few of the Indic group. In the Romance group, I suggest that we don't have to include all of the well-known languages, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French: rather, I think we could have Sardinian, Romanian and Catalan. In the Germanic group, I would have Yiddish, Icelandic and maybe Gothic. Meanwhile, if we are going to drop a language from the present list, I'd drop one of the Baltic languages or Italian or Portuguese or Spanish or English - yes - after all, all of the readers do not need reminders of the English words! TomS TDotO ( talk) 15:22, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
This is just a suggestion, of course open to discussions, for sixteen languages. No particular order intended.
1. Albanian - a given, the only language in its branch.
2. Armenian - a given, the only language in its branch.
3. Greek - a given, the only language in its branch.
4. Lithuanian - almost a given, no reason to pick Latvian instead.
5. Russian - largest Slavic language, and all Slavic languages are close.
6. English - a given, relevant for readers to understand the words.
7. German - largest Germanic bar English, and conservative.
8. Irish - most conservative Celtic language.
9. Welsh - perhaps. The Goidelic and Brythonic branches are very different.
10. Persian - as the main Iranian language.
11. Hindi - largest Indic language.
12. Italian - most conservative of the major Romance languages.
13. Other romance - An argument could be made for any of them.
14. Swedish - possibly, to a Northern Germanic language.
15. Sanskrit - the oldest preserved IE language.
16. Latin - perhaps, but several other relevant options.
Again, this is just a suggestion, good arguments can be made for several other options.
Jeppiz (
talk)
16:04, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
As for the Romance languages,the best choises are Italian,as it is the most conservative of the major modern Romance languages and Latin .As for the Slavic languages,the best choises are Russian(East Slavic),Polish (West Slavic) and/or Serbo-Croatian(South Slavic).Anyways this is a suggestion. Rolandi+ ( talk) 16:34, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
There are 9 language families. So that is how many languages we need to put in the table, one language per family. Or, we might pick two languages per family, an old language and a modern one. Any extra languages we include should have a linguistic reason for being there. -- Kautilya3 ( talk) 23:14, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
Apart from the discussion about which languages to include, it would seem very relevant to decide which items to use. Currently it's just the numbers 1-10, which seems rather uninteresting. Let's avoid too long tables, but I'd recommend numbers 1-5 and then around ten different items. Jeppiz ( talk) 22:37, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
All of this discussion begs the question: what is the purpose including this table in the article? Before we start deciding on what to put in the table, we should make clear why the table is there. Is it just simply to list 1-10 in random IE languages? Is it to demonstrate the similarity of forms across the constituent language families to confirm the languages are indeed related? Is it to demonstrate outliers, divergent innovations or a variety of forms? etc., etc.? All the talk about what to include seems pointless (and subject to endless future debate and bloat) if we don't first define the purpose of the table's existence.-- William Thweatt Talk Contribs 00:34, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
How do we justify the colouring of Malaysia, when the article Malaysian English does not seem to support any official status? Is there any objective (sourced) criterion by which the role of English in Malaysia is significantly more important than, say, French in Tunisia?-- Lieven Smits ( talk) 15:00, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
The article Languages of South Africa does not suggest a secondary official role for the IE languages English and Afrikaans, so it would seem justified to colour that country dark green. -- Lieven Smits ( talk) 15:14, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
There are two main reasons for listing Indo-European as being "From Europe to India":
-- Taivo ( talk) 21:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
TaivoLinguist,
Kautilya3,
Dr.K. Let's get a few things clear:
With your reasons such as "Western Europe should be mentioned first because it has more primitive language branches blah blah Aryan invasion" sounds immature and it seems like you don't understand the context of these sections in the article or are trying to prove some other hidden point.
Reference no. 9 states that " In Dutch, for instance, the general population uses the term Indo-Germaans." As someone with a Master's Degree in Foreign Languages from a Belgian/Flemish university, I can comfortably say I have never heard that term before, nor in scientific literature, nor in common parlance.
Ithvan ( talk) 09:51, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry but if you are an academic you should be angry at those who indoctrinated you and the universities who lowered their standards to allow you to be so. Arutun ( talk) 15:00, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Is duolingo.com a good reference? There is a limited number of choices available. There are choices of learning English for speakers of several other languages. But there are very few choices for learning non-IE languages. TomS TDotO ( talk) 00:42, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
Basque and Farsi deserve to be included in the family tree. 68.2.235.85 ( talk) 17:03, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Old Prussian either does not have anything to offer in the conjugation chart or it does but nobody entered it in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Myrrhfrankincensegold ( talk • contribs) 03:45, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
In § Grouping, I'm adding a parenthetical note with a link to Genetic (linguistics):
The same page is linked from the word "genetic" in the immediately preceding sentence. While normally we wouldn't have a redundant second link so close to the first one, I feel that it's quite important to make it clear that words like "genetic" and "ancestor" here have nothing whatever to do with human genetics. There are already too many people who think that language and "race" are somehow intrinsically linked.
To discuss this, please {{Ping}} me. -- Thnidu ( talk) 03:03, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
I have reverted [7] the ip for following reasons:
I think the intro gives redundant emphasis on which non-IE languages spoken in Europe, which is out of scope. I think it can be reworded, considering Wikipedia:out of scope and Wikipedia:Lead or such information can be given as 'footnote', if you think it is necessary. 91.235.143.218 ( talk) 10:20, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
1. The Great Vowel Shift should probably be included in this article(even though it predominantly applies to English).
2. We might want to touch on why Latin didn't some of these Indo-European languages(i.e. English) as much as it did others(i.e. French/Italian)
3. It could be worthwhile for us to better explain the difference between a "branch" and a "family"
Esotericbubbba ( talk) 00:00, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Someone tried to re-interpret the concept "genetic" by a sense expressing the concept "genealogical". Choosing the correct term solves the unnecessary "explanation". Done. HJJHolm ( talk) 13:07, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
-- Reciprocist ( talk) 21:29, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
"There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue", what about the extinct Indo-European languages, how many there were ? Is there any suggestion or potential amount ? Leo Freeman ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:39, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Sionkimzion ( talk) 08:26, 10 February 2018 (UTC)The article mentions that Sanksrit and a few other languages are the "most important". I couldn't find the evidence for those languages' being "most important" I think the sentence needs a correction.
I find it strange that an article on the most widely spoken language family that's well-recognized (I'm still holding out for Nostratic, woot woot!) includes no section on typical features of its languages. I'm sure there are a few that have been written about and that we could include, like fused person-number/gender/case (for nouns) and person-number/gender/tense (for verbs) suffixes, generally SOV word order, sex-based gender systems (usually male/female/neuter), and T/V second-person pronoun distinction. Tezero ( talk) 22:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Most of the language can be categorised as feudal languages. A few like English can be defined as planar languages.
This is an information many language 'scientists' do not want to take up for study. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:204:D38C:B31C:257A:C7FA:AE5D:AC4 ( talk) 09:11, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
This in Sardinian may be the word for hit, from ferio, not fero. Two unlike roots. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ferio#Latin Yoandri Dominguez Garcia 16:05, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
There is a serious need to correct all Wikipeida articles which reference or define "Indo-Aryan" languages as being specifically languages of the Indian Subcontinent.
Indo-Aryan is simply a synonym for Indo-European. All standard University level Linguistics and History faculties agree that Indo-Aryan is indeed just a Synonym for Indo-European - Again it is Encyclopedia Britannica's ONLINE VERSION that has propagated this error into Wikipedia as well as to some online dictionaries.
The phrase Indo-Aryan properly referes to "one of the early Indo-European invaders of southern Asia" which includes both the Iranian and Indian branches of this "invasion southward.
The confusion this has created is vast and the correction I am proposing encompasses many Wikipeida articles on this topic, but nevertheless it should be undertaken ASAP. Some feedback would be appreciated regarding this proposal. Xoltron ( talk) 22:06, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
The key to the map in the "info box" is missing a colour. Large parts of Asia are coloured in a pale green that is not explained. 86.191.146.73 ( talk) 23:14, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
Definitely, Israel should be painted blue because they have English as a state language (along Hebrew and Arabic).-- Reciprocist ( talk) 05:39, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Why does this article list Romanian and Moldovan as if they were two separate languages? We don't do that with Catalan/Valencian, a pretty much parallel case: we just say "Catalan" which is the main term used internationally, as is "Romanian". (For the record, I'd have no problem with "Romanian/Moldovan" or for that matter with "Catalan/Valencian", but I think the separate listing of "Romanian" and "Moldovan" is misleading.) - Jmabel | Talk 19:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
So I've been discussing with @ 89.210.251.100 about whether Greek is an Indo-European language, but we couldn't really agree on what to do. So could we have a Request for comment? Thanks! Nigos ( t@lk • Contribs) 05:44, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Hello, I am the anonymous user who discussed with " Nigos". There is an article, which, for some reason, I cannot find on the Internet and is contained in a book about the history of the Greek language, talking about toponymic findings that there were Neolithic civilizations in Greece, the Sesklo and the Dimini after the first one, in a period among 7.150 and 5.000 B.C.E (3.200 B.C.E if the Cycladic civilization is added before the arrival of the primarily known Hellenic tribes at 3.000 B.C.E) whose people spoke languages closely related to Proto-Greek and really divergent from the Proto-Indo-European language of the Yamna culture on the Crimean coast. Now, about Babiniotis• in his book "A brief history of the Greek language", he classifies Greek as Indo-European. This book was written in 1998. Around 1 year after its release, he was interviewed by George Papadakis in his breakfast show on television and was asked what changes he would make to the book, which I also cannot find online it was shown on television during some flashbacks of his show last year. Babiniotis responded saying that he reclassifies Greek as an isolate (the sole survivor of the Hellenic language family) due to a significant number of words whose origin is not Indo-Europoean. Furthermore, he stated that Greece played an important role in the evolution of many languages, especially Latin, because of the ancient Greek colonialistic policy and the the conquests of Alexander the Great, and that any Greek word looking like any other word of a foreign language is due to borrowing or language contact.
Demoule, Jean-Paul; Perlès, Catherine (1993). "The Greek Neolithic: A New Review". Journal of World Prehistory. Here is a journal article about the existence of the Sesklon culture at 7.150 B.C.E although it does not refer to any language. Just to clarify, most Greek linguists classify Greek as an isolate (the sole survivor of the, divergent from Indo-European, Hellenic languages).
I guess you are not Greek like me and you do not know well. Prodicus, an ancient Greek linguist, who was mentioned by Plato in his writing "Protagoras", staits that a lot of words that do not look like Indo-European are not loanwords, because, as mentioned above, there were two Neolithic cultures (created by Hellenic tribes) living in Greece at 7.000 B.C.E while the primarily known theory says that Greeks came in Greece at 3.000 B.C.E. Also, there was another tribe, the Paenonian which dwelled the northern parts of Macedonia at around 3.500 B.C.E and, according to the related primarily known theory, they were of Greek derivation. What do you have to say about it? I think your sources are fringe. Plus, there is no actual evidence showing the Indo-European ancestry of Greek. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.210.251.100 ( talk) 14:44, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Every unreliable source tries to "prove" the Indo-European ancestry of Greek. History itself proves otherwise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.210.251.100 ( talk) 18:33, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
They are, because, as I told you, history proves otherwise. If you look somewhere above, you will find a source from me about archaeology talking about some pre-Indo-European cultures in Greece- the source does not include any language, since you like so much to work with sources. As I re-mentioned above, there was another article from a book talking about the history of the Greek language, which I cannot find online to use as a source, and classifies Greek as the sole survivor of the Hellenic language family and a language isolate, because its genetic relatives are dead- just like the Ket language. The true relatives of Greek were the Sesklo and the Dimini languages (Seslo and Dimini cultures, 7.000-4.500 B.C.E), the Cucladic (Cycladic civilisation, 3.200-1.600 B.C.E) and, perhaps Paeonian and ancient Macedonian (the last two may be Illyrian languages with heavy Hellenic influence). Since I am Greek, I assure you that during Junior High School we were being taught history with parts of that book, which, I repeat, I cannot find online, and that book was ginving, plus everything I mentioned about Greeks relatives, Babiniotis' reconstruction of Proto-Greek and a hypothetical reconstruction of Proto-Hellenic. The Seslo and Dimini languages left substrates to the other languages later spoken in Greece (Minoan, Eteocretan, Lemnian and Anatolian) and this is why you think that Greek has such a large number number of "loanwords". These are not loanwords but pure Hellenic words that worked as a substrate to the non-Greek languages of the area. Greek can be easily defined as a pre-Indo-European language. It was just too hard for the other languages of the area to affect Greek, because it had genetic relatives way before those non-Indo-European peoples settled Greece. Only Turkish managed to lend a significant number of words in Greek but that happened way after that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.72.187 ( talk) 07:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~prehistory/aegean/?page_id=424 about the existence of the Sesklo and Dimini cultures. https://books.google.gr/books?id=kSkjAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=Language+of+Sesklo+culture&source=bl&ots=Z76kOi5Om5&sig=ACfU3U3pBy6KKddRTS3He9GRwBjejhAheQ&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwig2teC24HjAhVmz6YKHbE7BV8Q6AEwD3oECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Language%20of%20Sesklo%20culture&f=false talks about the Dimini peoples originating from Hungary where the Greeks lived before the hypothesized Dorian invasion. There is this article I was talking about above, which I caanot find online, and talks about Cycladic being Hellenic and Greek a language isolate. https://alphaomegatranslations.com/foreign-language/three-ways-greek-has-influenced-other-languages/ about foreigh words of Greek origin. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/greeks-really-do-have-near-mythical-origins-ancient-dna-reveals about Greek D.N.A not being Indo-European but similar to other Pre-Indo-European peoples of the area (meaning the Sesklo and Dimini cultures). https://www.pronews.gr/epistimes/452149_terastia-ereyna-8-panepistimion-katharo-dna-ton-ellinon-kai-idio-me-ton-arhaion talking about Greek D.N.A being a proof of a non-Indo-European tribe living in Greece until today, since, as the source clarifies, Greek D.N.A has not changed over the course of time and it is not simliar with other European or Indian peoples but with some Paleo-Europeans such as Minoan. This article is in Greek.
Here is my source. George Babiniotis in his book "A brief history of the Greek language" notes differences between Greek and Indo-European languages which, according to him easily distinguishes Greek from the family (not the classification within the family but a language isolate outside of it).
(page 57) Final consonats: In Indo-European, opposing to Greek, every consonant just like every vowel can be used at the end of a word.
For example: *genesom (*γενέσων> γενών, that is an Indo-European word borrowed from Hellenic γίγνομαι which means "I become")
Accentuation: In Greek the thesis of the tone, if it is distinguished from other Indo-European languages like Sanskrit, was not free. In Greek the tone cannot go any farther than the third from the end of the word syllable. Furthermore, Babiniotis staits that Lation borrowed its heavy tonal thesis from Aeolic Greek.
(page 61) Verbs: The passive and the neutral verb moods are creations of the Proto-Greeks. Furthermore, the Indo-European disambiguation between Past simple and continuous was borrowed from Greek. In Indo-European there were no Present Perfect Simple, Passive Future or Passive Past as opposed to Greek. Just like names,Indo-European verbs are categorized "stemmed" and stem-less (Feature borrowed fron Greek). In Greek, the "stemmed" verbs are split in baritone and conjugated according to the thesis of the tone.
(page 62) Syntax: Greek has created and lented to Indo-European various significant syntax while two features of it, the genitive and accusative absolutes, are not met in any other language.
(page 70) Vocabulary: There are words classified as pure Hellenic whichare shown in no other language
For example: "Δάφνη" (Sesklo and Dimini: "Dafmea", meaning "laurel"), "Αθήνα" [<"αθρέω" (="think"), the word means "Athens"), "Θάλαττα"(<"άλς" meaning "sea" while the Indo-European root is "mori", for example "Sub-marine". Greek also uses the words "πέλαγος" and "πόντος" for sea). About the pre-Greek substrate, the associated Kretschmer theory staits that there were Pre-Greek substrata deriving from Middle East due to toponymic evidence. But this theory has been largely discredited by most linguists. So, every different word is not due to a substrate but pure word roots from Proto-Greek. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.72.187 ( talk) 11:35, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia then does not provide valuable sources. And no, you are mistaken. I use logical arguments and everyone responds "We need more sources, those ones are not valid". Do not just work with sources, just try to criticize sometimes what you read. Just like you know about your language better than me, I know mine, Greek, better. And what I wrote about Babiniotis was a citation just not written as a Wikipedia reference, if you notice, I have written the pages of the book.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKQ52103mMc. This video talks about the non-Indo-European ancestry of ancient Greeks using ancient writings as sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.42.254 ( talk) 16:22, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I can accept the inclusion of this proposal just as a minority point of view with all the sources and explanations I gave. There is no pre-Greek substrate, becaus I referred to a source with an e-book talking about the Hellenic (Sesklo and Dimini) substrate given to the pre-Greek languages (second from the beginning source I referred to above). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.42.254 ( talk) 17:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
The associated Kretchmer theory about the Pre-Greek substrate, according to Babiniotis, has been largely discredited by linguists. Also, I have been trying to justify my sayings with logical arguments and you all just do not take it for granted, every source positive about the inclusion of Greek into Indo-European is unreliable. As a native speaker, I know better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.42.254 ( talk) 19:42, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I know that the world is wrong, thank you for reminding you and me that. And Wikipedia then is just a place for naive people like you, because it provides any kind of "sources". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.42.254 ( talk) 10:30, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I have found and written many reliable sources about the being discussed issue. When one user staited that I have only written about archaeology and D.N.A he should check them out, becauseone of them was talking about languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.55.244.162 ( talk) 10:48, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I have said that Babiniotis classifies Greek as a language isolate. I just cannot write the source as a Wikipedia citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.55.244.162 ( talk) 15:10, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
http://languagehat.com/the-perception-of-indo-european-in-greece/. This article talks about the perception of Indo-European in Greece.
https://www.quora.com/If-only-30-of-the-ancient-Greek-vocabulary-is-Indo-European-then-where-does-all-the-rest-come-from. And this one contains a case of unproven Indo-European descent. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
5.55.244.162 (
talk)
15:27, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Babiniotis in his book "A brief history of the Greek language", page 13 staits• "Greek is the oldest living language of the world so its oldest and newest forms can be defined throughout a large period of time. Greek, like Basque, is a Paleo-European language, because its relatives lived in Greece even before the advent of the so-called Pre-Greeks. The Pre-Greek substrate is actually not words of other non-Indo-European languages but words borrowed from other Hellenic languages, especially Cycladic which lived among other unrelated languages, such as Pelasgian, Minoan, etc. So Greek is not an Indo-European language but a Hellenic, while the fact that it is the sole survivor of the family makes it a language isolate and the similarities between the two language families is due to borrowings. Furthermore, Kretschmer notes that a lot of ancient Greek words were not met in any other language, such as a lot of toponyms, gods' names and some verbs, such as φθίνω which means to end. This verb and its etymology are also mentioned at Charalampos Symeonidis' ancient Greek dictionary, page 293." — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
89.210.252.4 (
talk)
12:59, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Symeonidis also mentions in his dictionary, page 6 "This dictionary has been written with the help of George Babiniotis' book about the history of the Greek language and it also contains verbs of the Sesklo and Dimini languages while the fact that there are a lot of unrelated words with other languages makes the language unique. Let us not forget to mention that the language isolate theory has also been accepted by George Xenis, Asimakis Fliatouras and George Triantafyllidis. It was also known from ancient times that Greek is a language isolate, because Plato, in his writing Protagoras, notifies Prodicus as the first big father of linguistics who proposed this theory." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.210.252.4 ( talk) 13:16, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
PS: For all the WP editors who handled this discussion with great civility and patience, here is an interesting piece of reading that critically deals with the "breeding ground" for the school of thought that we have been exposed to: K. Sampanis & E. Karantzola (2018). "The perception of historical and Indo-European linguistics in the instruction of Greek" (PDF). Studies in Greek Linguistics. 38. – Austronesier ( talk) 14:29, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Morphology 1. The sentence "The Greek root ‘morph’ means shape or form; thus morphology is interested in how words form." should have a comma after thus 2. Should be another parentheses after Fortson 3. After the third sentence under the bolded "Morphology", I would just say the examples w/o the repetition of the word similar/similarity and go into more depth on what you mean 4. "In terms of affixes, all Indo-European languages mark their nouns and verbs with various affixes to indicate a wide range of information such as number and case." -- put a comma before such
Ablaut 1. Change the wording of the second sentence -- you say "in English the verb infinitive sing", but that should be worded differently and should be to sing AND you should split up the sentence because it is too wordy and confusing 2. "Linguists do not yet completely agree whether or not ablaut is a phonetic or morphological process" -- incorrect grammatically so I would put the yet' with a comma in the beginning of the sentence
Word Structure 1. put a comma after optionally (1st sentence of this section) 2. Comma before such as in the second sentence 3. In this sentence, "In terms of placement, affixes can be divided into prefix, suffix, and infix", I would say affixes can be divided into subcategories: prefix, suffix, infix. 4. No comma after derivational affixes 5. Omit are those that serve to 6. no need for also in English
Root Structure 1. "Examples of each variation is shown in the following table" -- changes to are shows
Verb Structure 1. combine the first two sentences 2. say what PIE is or use the actual word
Syntax 1. Put a comma after grammar in the second sentence 2. would say that are underlying forms of a sentence's structure instead of unifying structures that underlie a sentence’s surface form 3. change the third sentence because it is confusing -- make sure to not keep repeating the word rare 4. No need for careful, persistent, and ingenious in the last sentence -- make it concise
Word Order 1. Refrain from saying IE languages or say beforehand what it is 2. Hittite came out of nowhere so sort of confusing -- maybe explain what it is 3. would not say school of thought because it is not supposed to be oppnionated
Clause Structure 1. put a comma before the moreover in the last sentence
Esotericbubbba
Reanna.shah ( talk) 23:33, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
I would like to start a conversation about whether is it certain or not that there existed a Proto-Indo-European language. Some languages are quite difficult to be placed as "ancestors" of that "proto-language", because of a lot of divergent forms in them and significant and continuous language contact with other, possibly, unrelated languages. Give me your opinion upon this. 46.177.242.232 ( talk) 14:19, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a forum, the talk page is only meant for discussing the article.-- Megaman en m ( talk) 17:51, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
No, I just want everyone to provide some sources to make sure that this "family" does exist. And Wikipedia is a forum and a social networking site, where everyone discusses in talk pages about the inclusion and exclusion of sources from articles. I can provide sources which exclude Greek, Armenian, Illyrian, Albanian, Daco-Thracian, Phrygian, Paeonian, Elymian, Siani, Sicilian and some Romance languages. Indo-Iranian, Tocharian and Anatolian from Indo-European. 5.54.182.77 ( talk) 12:33, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
There is no serious linguist that denies the existence of an Indo-European language family. 8.36.251.209 ( talk) 03:28, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
The subsection Important languages for reconstruction is critically undersourced. It was inserted in May 2013 by User:Benwing without citing any sources. In September 2016, User:Taron Saharyan added {{cn}}-tags. User:ReconditeRodent eventually added two valuable refs in December 2018. In these references, Beekes (2011) is correctly cited as a source for the state of attestation and the degree of conservativity for seven of the languages mentioned in this subsection. Beekes also gives on p.30 a short list of sixteen branches of IE "in the order of their importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European". Apart from this, all other detailled statement in the subsection are totally unsourced, e.g. stuff like: "Early poetry is of special significance because of the rigid poetic meter normally employed, which makes it possible to reconstruct a number of features (e.g. vowel length) that were either unwritten or corrupted in the process of transmission down to the earliest extant written manuscripts."
Unless someone can bring up good sources for all these details specifically in the context "importance for reconstruction", I'd recommend to trim down the text to the content supported by Beekes (2011). – Austronesier ( talk) 10:53, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
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Holm's hypothesis is held by no one but himself, and hasn't even been published yet. Its inclusion here is massive UNDUE weight on a single viewpoint that is not widely held. Kortlandt's paper is a red herring, as Kortlandt (like very many Indo-Europeanists) believes in the Indo-Hittite hypothesis. I didn't mind you removing the info about Indo-Hittite, Rokus01, because it was, as you pointed out, unsourced, but replacing it with the unpublished, untested, and unreviewed "Separation Level Recovery method" is preposterous. — An gr If you've written a quality article... 17:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Try "Alfa Informatica" or "Alpha-Informatica". This is a faculty in at least the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Freiburg. Indeed, the study is not confined to Indo European studies (I found a general description in German: [1]), though the methods are scientific and verifiable. We can have a discussion on this topic if you want, though I figure beforehand that Alfa Informatica don't compare with what I would consider fringe. To me such a denomination has too many connotations with the Velikovsky and Daniker kind, and can not and should not be applied to cutting edge university research.
Concerning your other comment, indeed the Anatolian results are the only clear deviation from sure and confirmed knowledge. However, in Britannica we can read there are THREE opinions on the Anatolian question, not two (the third one holding anatolina to be an even more recent split than Greek or Armenian). It says the Indo-Hittite hypothesis is neither definitely proved nor disproved (22:582). Actually, the encyclopedia makes a case against the hypothesis at page 494 and attibute a split of the same order as Celtic or Italic corresponding to your second view (like the SLRD results).
I will propose another edit. Rokus01 ( talk) 16:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I fully agree with Angr. Holm's hypothesis has no place in the main Indo-European languages article. A clear case of WP:UNDUE recentism if ever there was one. Try to be reasonable. dab (𒁳) 18:01, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
you obviously do not want to listen. Holm's calculations are intersting and quotable, but their significance is nowhere even near what would warrant their mention in this article. I don't see why I should "turn off my computer" because you obviously have no grasp of the matters you are dabbling in. I have done similar calculations for fun, and they were laughed out of court by one of the authors of LIV. That's what this is: fun with dictionaries. Interesting if you are into these things, but of no consequence whatsoever to the question of Indo-European prehistory: you basically end up recovering the assumptions that went into the writing of the dictionary. The calculation is fair because it generally replicates communis opinio, not the other way round. Even if you decide you want to take this at face value, if you think the outcome for Anatolian or Tocharian has any significance, you clearly have no understanding of the underlying mathematics. dab (𒁳) 09:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I have access to the online Britannica, and there is no article entitled "Indo-Hittite hypothesis". There is a very brief article on "Indo-Hittite languages", restricting itself to the bare definition of the term and saying there is no consensus, without any of the details we attribute to Britannica. [2] It would be useful to cite the lemma in Britannica, and the lemma's authors, not just page numbers. Britannica has a good "Anatolian languages" article, signed by Philo H.J. Houwink ten Cate, H. Craig Melchert and Theo P.J. van den Hout, but I fail to find anything about "very Indo-European agricultural terminology" in Anatolian, as our article references to Britannica. dab (𒁳) 09:59, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Ok, in the online version, the final section is entitled "Relationship with the other subgroups"
The "Historical background of Ancient Anatolia" does mention agricultural terminology, but rather to the opposite effect of what you quote:
Interestingly, the text you quote is dumped verbatim on a giant page here. The bit on "definitely Indo-European word-stems" was apparently edited out. If it's in the 15th edition, we can still refer to it of course, but seeing that the authors "retracted" the claim, it would be worthwhile to cite some actual scholarly literature on this. But this goes too deep for the "Indo-European languages" and should be moved to Anatolian languages. dab (𒁳) 15:41, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
look, the agricultural thing does not support the Indo-Hittite hypothesis either way. The "old" Britannica quote brings it up in the context of the question of Anatolian "invasion" vs. "peaceful migration". This is very very weak in any case and has no place here. If someone has indeed "proffered" this agricultural terminology argument in favour of Indo-Hittite, you will need to state who that was. And you'll need to state it over at Indo-Hittite, not here. It is more than sufficient for the purpose of this article here to quote the Britannica to the effect that there is no consensus either way, and that neither "extreme" take on Indo-Hittite is likely to be correct. dab (𒁳) 18:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Rokus, the statement that the agricultural terminology in Hittite is *not* related to that in other IE languages is hardly equivalent to the statement that the agricultural terminology in Anatolian is "very Indo-European". Can we please have this discussion at Talk:Anatolian languages, and restrict ourselves to merely reporting what the authors are saying without jumping to conclusions? dab (𒁳) 23:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
:In a recent presentation, Charles Burney (2003) discussed how this hypothesis, first proposed in just a sketchy outline by Emil Forrer in 1921 and later expanded by Sturtevant in 1938 (see E. H. Sturtevant 1962, a posthumous publication of Sturtevant’s 1938 lecture on the Indo-Hittite hypothesis at the Linguistic Institute at Ann Arbor, Michigan), was largely dismissed until resurrected in the late 1980s in a number of publications espousing theories of Indo-European origin (most notably Renfrew 1987), and, gaining steady support, became the subject of a colloquium at the University of Richmond, Virginia in March of 2000. Burney states that the unavoidable conclusion of the hypothesis, strongly promoted by Colin Renfrew, is that some speakers of Proto-Indo-European migrated out of Anatolia, where speakers of Proto-Anatolian remained and began to diverge and form the Nesite, Luwian, and Palaic languages. Such a scenario has been reasoned to imply that the earliest Proto-Indo-European nucleus, evolving from Proto-Indo-Hittite, developed in the Konya Plain around 7000 BC.
I'll say again that discussion of the Indo-Hittite question belongs on the Indo-Hittite article. Burney may think it is "unavoidable" that Indo-Hittie implies an Anatolian homeland, but that's nonsense. I'll happily embrace moderate scenarios of IH, but I am very far indeed from concluding the IH homeland (let alone the IE homeland). Say you conclude PIH dates to 6000 BC and "PIE proper" to 4000 BC. It is still anyone's guess whether the Proto-Anatolians moved from the steppe to Anatolia, or whether the pre-PIEans moved from Anatolia to the steppe, and the PIE homeland will still be in the steppe no matter where you put the PIH one. That's really just a big non sequitur that doesn't even belong on this article. dab (𒁳) 12:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
my personal point of view has nothing to do with it. My personal point of view, if you'd like to know, is rather sympathetic towards moderate Indo-Hittite scenarios. There is nothing wrong with the IH hypothesis. It has its own article. All I am doing is preventing you from touting your thinly veiled ideological fringe theories. Really, there is no need to rehash the discussion, I think all has been said. dab (𒁳) 09:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Even though utterly undue to this linguistic article, actually I have something to add to my efforts to stop continuous Kurgan POV pushing and the erroneous representation of the Kurgan theory as "mainstream". In the Oxford Companion to Archeology, Mallory (p.348) names three main homeland hypotheses.
I am very curious in knowing how a good faith editor would be able to interpret one theory (out of three) that happen to enjoy "widespread support" as "mainstream" above another "widely accepted theory". This book is from 1996, and ever since the Kurgan theory has not been further evidenced in any new research I know of and actually there is a tendency among archeologists to move away from this theory towards the broader concept (my observation). This discussion will lead to nowhere and for the sake or OR we can't allow to push views on our own terms, not at any place. Within this context, we'd better adhere to Mallories concept that the homeland issue remains "one of the most contested issues in prehistoric research" and avoid the hairraising use of "mainstream" altogether. Thanks. Rokus01 ( talk) 10:44, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
lol, Mallory is one major Kurgan proponent. He is just being polite. I am happy with mentioning the three approaches you mention as those that enjoy notable support. Just as long as you don't attempt your WP:SYN stunts. The "broad homeland" theory is "widely accepted" because it is all-inclusive. It isn't necessarily in contradiction to the Kurgan one, it's just a more agnostic variant of the general Kurgan scenario. dab (𒁳) 20:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't China be coloured in light green as Portuguese and English are co-official languages in Macau and Hong Kong? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Afigueiro ( talk • contribs) 23:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I would be in favor of creating a new page, Language Families, as suggested in the dispute tag. The current Grouping subheading is not specifically a question of the Indo-European family, but of diachronics/typology more generally. Similar controversies over areal features, for example, exist among scholars specializing in other families (e.g. Austronesian). Cnilep ( talk) 19:29, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Just in case the reader may be confused, the hypothesis of the linking between Indian and European languages is still theoretic so far as I understand, and will always remain so given there are no living speakers of the "proto" languages. If it is not hypothetical, it would be nice to have the section with fully referenced (including citations) proof that the connection indeed exists-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 00:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
The fact that the IE theory can never be proven, is just a fact of life, so try to accept it. proto- anything is in an even shakier theoretical boat. SIL may be good enough for ISO, but it is still not an accredited academic institution. Surely you can find other references from more mainstream linguistic sources?
What I said about proof is that if, IF, the article is not about a theory, than it must have become a proven fact, and therefore deserves a section that details this proof. However, as you acknowledge, no such proof is ever possible. As a reference work, Wikipedia is obligated to say explicitly if something is a proven fact or not, even if the assumptions are made in the more learned circles. Wikipedia is no place for voicing assumptions.
"The chances that modern IE languages haven't actually sprung from common source are as likely as that god created Tower of Babel." - are you saying that the IE languages have not sprung up from a common source? I'd remind you that God did not create the Tower of Babel.
"As far as the 99.99% linguists out there are concerned, Indo-European theory is taken for granted as a priori valid, because claiming otherwise would be insane." - pardon me for insanity, but proto- everything is completely manufactured. The IET is based on several very shaky assumptions that fail the multi-disciplinary tests not available in the 18-19th centuries. However, this has little to do with the article. What people do or don't believe does not influence the fact that as it stands the IE linguistics is a theory based on a number of hypothesis. SIL may base their assumptions of beliefs, but in linguistics one deals with facts and logic.
You realise of course that comparing the common lexis, morphology, etc. is not like observing genome in a lab, right? You do know that sequencing for many biological families has been largely completed, while historical linguistics has barely scratched the surface due to obvious anomalies, and wide-ranging differences of opinion on interpretation of data.
I'll tell you what, I'll come back and add cited authoritative sources that do acknowledge the IE linguistics to be theoretic in nature, and I will outline the hypothesis on which it is based, given no one has done so yet-- mrg3105 ( comms) ♠♥♦♣ 15:17, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Right, though it took a lot of time for arriving at this conclusion. All of this concerns are WP:OR without proper sourcing and nothing more. I regret so much good energy has been spent on this obvious violation of Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, quote:"Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views." Could we please remove this discussion? Rokus01 ( talk) 08:42, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Warnow, using the phylogenetic method, figured out the following tree for Indo-European languages:
Anatolian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
'''*Albanian could have branched off before Italo-Celtic or after Greco-Armenian.
**Germanic left the Satem area before Satemization was complete and moved next to Italo-Celtic.
[1]
I've deleted the above and moved it over here for discussion. The reason I moved it is because this is only one of many proposed trees, as far as I know it doesn't have general acceptance. I think a separate page should be created showing the various proposals. Otherwise, just don't list any. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
207.112.64.80 (
talk)
04:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Neither French nor English are official in Lebanon, contrary to popular opinion. However, English is official in Sudan. Which makes the map look scary actually, man IE is dominating. -- Karkaron ( talk) 08:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
(Moved here from User talk:Angr):
I think the table is there to serve as an illustration of the early stages of IE splitting. It might make more sense to establish sort of a timeline, ie from PIE/IE > protolanguages > old attested > modern. I don't think it's irrelevant, just not complete enough to make sense.
If we put in a link to Old Irish, shouldn't the greek link be to Ancient Greek rather than modern greek? Cheers Akerbeltz ( talk) 15:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok I added some more examples and info and established a rough timeline. Nebulosity, I see you've added Old English but I'm not sure if that's needed - I think one example from each major family is enough to give a general idea of what's going on, so on balance I feel we should rather add a church slavonic or baltic conjugation rather than a second germanic example. Otherwise we may end up with a bias towards germanic or a table as wide as my desk ;) Akerbeltz ( talk) 17:44, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Angr, glad you feel that way about relevance but the "call for citations" you've added is a little ... odd. Everyone can *see* that the PIE verb was synthetic and that the modern languages use largely periphrastic systems. It's like asking for a citation saying that it's usually brighter during the day ;) Same applies to the similarities/differences I would say, wouldn't you agree? I agree with the need for sourcing information, don't get me wrong but not every little statement is sourced, not even on featured articles if the info is totally obvious Akerbeltz ( talk) 09:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Agreed... feel free to change/delete, I gotta rush to a workshop right now! Akerbeltz ( talk) 10:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Different point that aside - any objections to splitting off the PIE bit of the table into a seperate table and adjusting the width so the old forms sit directly above the now? Someone else would have to do that though, I'm no good with the table formatting. Akerbeltz ( talk) 14:35, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
I just added a reference to him as originator of the term "indo-european", adding that the term was popularized by Bopp. Compromiso ( talk) 13:55, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Are you sure Bopp coined the term? I have a recollection that Schlegel and his "successor" Bopp were both caught up in trying to derive European languages from Sanskrit and sort of came up with the comparative linguistics as an unintentional by-product and that it was only after Bopp that the notion of Sanskrit being the ancestor language was abandoned in favour of PIE?
Akerbeltz (
talk)
22:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
there isn't any "controversy in german", just a question of terminological preference. The origin of the term is discussed at length at Indo-European studies. -- dab (𒁳) 16:48, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
this little exchange on thomas young above is illustrative of diametrically opposed approaches to learning and knowledge. User:Angr wrote "Okay; can you add a source for it, though?" while User:Dbachmann reverted and wrote "nonsense". i know which form of exchange i prefer, and i think the wikipedia project continually suffers from the "yes it does - no it doesn´t" paradigm. we need more collaborative and less adversarial work!
unwittingly though, User:Dbachmann is right: i, also unwittingly, was undertaking original research, testing the hypothesis of a "controversy" through a "natural experiment": if a reference to a controversy is suppressed intemperately by an Indogermanist, then there is surely one there!
the controversy is not "nonsense", it has been in the academic establishment (cf. the use of "indoeuropäisch" in GDR academia), but perhaps more significantly on the political and ideological level, and therefore a source for this does not have to be an academic reference, contrary to what User:Dbachmann requires. i can modify the parenthesis to "(see, though, the German discussion page http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Indogermanische_Sprachen)". it´s instructive, and there is no need to try to sweep all this under the carpet. Compromiso ( talk) 09:40, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Compromiso, Wikipedia is the "encyclopedia anyone can edit". Anyone. This means we get a lot of people passing by for a chat, or some idle provocation, or to vent some spleen. If there is anything you want, you are obliged to present a reference. Did you get that, yes? No reference, no discussion. See WP:RS for a description of what kind of references are deemed appropriate. We'll be happy to discuss your references with you. As long as you have none, you can hardly claim anything is being "swept under the carpet". -- dab (𒁳) 11:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
The indo-european constructed language was probably a caveman adoption.No doubt it will be denied as the semites deny their ethiopian Urheimat despite endless genetic and linguistic evidence.Return to your Ket roots - part of the Basque, Sino-Tibetan and Ibero-Caucasian languages all groups share exact ancestral ties with most indigenous europeans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.178.55.79 ( talk) 14:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
What is the guy even talking about? The Indo-European language group originated in Siberia? I always thought it was NE of the Black sea. And the Kat language isn't even I-E. And what's the caveman part about? An insult? For whom? Europeans? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.185.198.244 ( talk) 17:41, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
It is misleading to represent both the Baltic and Slavic by the same colour in the maps showing the distribution of the IE starting at around 100-500 AD. I can buy such a representation for the disputed period 3000-500 BC. However, avoiding discriminating between the Baltic and Slavonic languages in the later pre-historic and historic periods is nothing but a masked POV or even propaganda.
Moreover, the following facts are clearly ignored/overlooked in the article:
1. If the Baltic and Slavic are “genetically” classified as one group, there should be a clear statement, that the Proto-Slavic spin-off from the Proto-Baltic-Slavic stem in the beginning was just a peripheral dialect. See for example Encyclopaedia Britannica.
2. Many scholars agree about the occurrence of Baltic hydronims in a huge territory from Pomerania in the West to Volga River in the East. Namely, BALTIC and not Balto-Slavic. See Gimbutas for example. http://www.vaidilute.com/books/gimbutas/gimbutas-01.html
3. I learned at school that Lithuanian and, in particular, Old Prussian, are the languages, which preserved most of the archaic IE features, these features, in particular, can be found in unusually rich ancient Lithuanian dialects still spoken today (The Slavic are more innovative in this regard aren’t they?). That’s why these “insignificant” languages are studied in many universities across the world. Isn’t this fact worth mentioning? I understand that it might be a bit difficult to accept for the speakers of the “big” languages such as English, Russian or French, but it’s all about facts isn’t it?
4. As a layman I can only state, that the distance between Swedish and English or German is similar to the distance between the two major dialects of Lithuanian: Samogitian and Aukstatian. Not speaking about Latvian and Old Prussian. Thus, once you put together Baltic and Slavic into one group, you shouldn’t create a wrong impression, that the Russian, Latvian, Polish are “all the same”. Because other vice the reader can get a wrong impression that, in fact, the recent history of that part of Europe is nothing wrong, just a natural exchange within “very close dialects of the PIE continuum”. In such a case, we arrive in a situation when some nations are more important than the others ( i.e. some are small, they don’t have enough of Wiki editors, few recent publications in English consider their languages, etc.). 15:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)Gotho-BalticGotho-Baltic 18:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Baltic and Slavic are indeed comparatively remote. As are Ossetian and Marathi, and both are still Indo-Iranian. Your view of Slavic as a "peripheral" spin-off Baltic is Baltocentric. I take it you are a Balt, and you had an Balto-centric education. Which I grant is one point of view, although an ethnocentric one. That Baltic "preserved most of the archaic IE features" is wrong. It did indeed preserve some surprisingly archaic features, but other archaic features are found in other branches. -- dab (𒁳) 20:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Gotho-Baltic ( talk · contribs) is invited to read our current Balto-Slavic article and then offer informed criticism on its talkpage. This talkpage here isn't the proper venue for this discussion. -- dab (𒁳) 10:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
There are Russian-speaking and Tajik-speaking minorities in northeastern and western [Sinkiang?] China, although I don't know what status they might have as relevant to the map shown here. However, Portuguese and English are coöfficial, in the SARs of Macau and Hong Kong, respectively. Tomer talk 20:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
For those who are latin and sanskrit challenged, Americans would comprehend the change to the latter, as it doesn't require much thinking. 146.235.66.52 ( talk) 17:07, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
made a few corrections. i gave the reasons in the history section. i have to say this is quite a good article. it has good detail :) Dicst ( talk) 11:29, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
In the upper right board of the page "indoeuropean languages" is missing the Greek language as a separate family of languages.
Probably is a mistake that should be corrected.
Also there is a board on the discussion page, that is mentioned in "greaco-armenian family" languages, this is a hypothesis that is supported by only few scientists as far as I know.
Anyway in the board of the page "indoeuropean languages" is not mentioned neether "graeco-armenian" as family. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Konig82 ( talk • contribs) 18:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
the group is in fact known as "Greek" in English. "Hellenic" is a pompous term used for oblique pov-pushing. -- dab (𒁳) 11:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
See http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.archaeology/2006-03/Msg00564.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.219.143 ( talk) 09:59, 13 June 2009 (UTC) See Bernard Sergent, Les Indo-Europeens, Payot, 1995. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.219.143 ( talk) 10:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
The article speaks of the "loss of pre-vocalic *s- in Greek". Actually, the "s" was shifted to "h". Admittedly, this "h" has been dropped in Modern Greek. At the least, the article is misleading on this point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.170.8 ( talk) 10:57, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
In the table about the various modern and ancient equivalents of the verb "to bear", it mentions the French verb {con}férer. I am French-speaking, and "conférer" means to confer, not to bear. CielProfond ( talk) 02:49, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
In the table about the various modern and ancient equivalents of the verb "to bear", it mentions the German verb "gebären". The third person singular is given as "er gebiert". I've never seen a male German give birth to a child :) This most certainly should be "sie gebiert".
THis might indeed be about conjugation, not meaning. Nevertheless, I am confused by you mentioning "to carry" in the beginning sentence of the section, then proceeding to conjugate "gebären", which is something completely different to the best of my knowledge. If a mother carries a baby she does not gibe birth to it (German "sie gebiert"), but moves it from one place to another (German "sie trägt")!? It might be a good idea to explicitly stress that those verb examples have different meanings and to avoid the impression that all those verbs from different languages are synonyms to a specific english verb. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.168.241.41 ( talk) 11:01, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
Indoeuropean language is a theory. No one to date has proved the existance of such a powerful, society. A theory, that has not been proven so far. One would expect that evidence of such a powerful society's existance, (lending its language to significant portion of the world) would have been unearthed by archeologists so far. An inscription, a setting, a pot a drawing. Mothing so far. None. This fact is neglected, why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.207.162.51 ( talk) 13:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
As an Iranian Persian myself, who has studied languages, I can tell you that Dravidian people and Australoid (non Aryan Indians closely related to aboriginals from Australia and Africans) and their language is NOT Indo-European. This section was put in this article using the wiki article on Nostratic languages as a source. I'm sorry, but this is just another example of propaganda. There is no historical evidence for this, and is not accepted in the scholarly community. This is an article on Indo-Europeans, NOT African or Asian languages. Joseph Greenberg's research is highly faulty and full of agenda (not to mention he is highly criticised) I think his information should stay in the Nostratic article on wikipedia and off this page.-- CreativeSoul7981 ( talk) 02:07, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Again, I will reiterate that this information belongs on the Nostratics page and NOT the Indo-European page since the Linguistic community does NOT accept even accept this as a valid theory. Please leave this on the Nostratics page.-- CreativeSoul7981 ( talk) 05:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I will add that this information needs to be agreed upon with valid sources and not theories by one or two people not even recognized by the Lingual Community. Otherwise, it's just propoganda.-- CreativeSoul7981 ( talk) 05:01, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree with CreativeSoul7981. There has been huge INFLUENCE of indo-iranian on the Indian sub-continent to the dravidians, but they are Australoid not Indo-European. Iraj Ali ( talk) 13:27, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
Made minor corrections regarding the period 1500-2000 (covering attempted European colonization of West, Southern and South-East Asia and North Africa; and actual European colonization of Southern Africa, North Asia, and the Americas). Changes included changing the confusing reference to South Arica (as a region associated with IE 'romance languages'; specifically Portuguese, French and Spanish) to Sub-Saharan Africa; the more inclusive and actual area of Africa to which Romance languages where spread through forced European colonization.
The term 'South Africa' is confusing and inaccurate in reference to regions of Africa where Romance IE languages are spoken because South Africa is (currently) a country in Southern Africa where the principal IE languages spoken are Non=Romance, in fact Germanic languages(i.e. English and Afrikaans); Southern Africa includes Mozambique and Angola where portuguese is the main IE language, as well as Zimbabwe, Nambia, Zambia and Botswana where the main non-native IE languages are Germanic (English, German. English and German, respectively). However, 'Romance' IE languages are spoken in many countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (which includes the Southern African region), such as the aforementioned Mozambique and Angola (Portuguese), as well as Ivory Coast (French), Cameroon (French), and many more. Therefore the erroneous term 'South Africa' (which can be confused with the country of South Africa) has been changed to Sub-Saharan Africa.
In addition, the intent of this section is to define areas of the world to which IE languages were recently introduced (i.e. did not exist prior to the period of 1500-2000), therefore the reference to South Asia is too limiting and inappropriate as it gives the misimpression that IE languages spread to only that region of Asia AND as a result of the spread of English, which is clearly absurd as most of the inhabitants of Persia (Persian Iranian Aryan ethnic group and speakers), India/Southern Asia (Indo-Aryan ethnic group and speakers) have been native speakers of Indo-European languages for thousands of years BCE to present. The spread of English, Dutch, Portuguese and Russian to traditionally non IE speaking regions of Asia is more relevant as it pertains to the Geographic spread of IE languages during this period (1500-2000 AD). Hence I have included East and South-East Asia and North Asia (which where previously not covered) as regions where IE languages have been introduced recently (i.e. period of 1500-2000). 70.83.175.116 ( talk) 03:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Can we explain the huge amount of non indo-european words and grammatical features(especially in local-non standard-indoeuropean
dialects)by dene-caucasian,borean and cromagnic substratum of pre neolihicly migrating(proto indoeuropean speaking anatolian
farmers)populations of europe?
Humanbyrace ( talk) 00:55, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Second bullet states:
2000 BC–1500 BC: Catacomb culture north of the black sea. The chariot is invented, leading to the split and rapid spread of Iranian and Indo-Aryan from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex over much of Central Asia, Northern India, Iran and Eastern Anatolia. Proto-Anatolian is split into Hittite and Luwian. The pre-Proto-Celtic Unetice culture has an active metal industry (Nebra skydisk).
Yet Wikipedia's page for the Indo-Aryan Migration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration states:
However, recent extensive studies conducted on genetics and archaeogenetics of the South Asian population have found no proof of large population migrations, since at least 10,000 years, and that Indo-Aryan language speakers have a largely South Asian origin.
and sites three sources to substantiate this claim:
Is the page on Indo-European Languages using now defunct Aryan Invasion Theory? Scholars generally agree now that there was no Invasion via chariots. Specifically I point you to page 239 of Culture Throughout Time 1991 (Stanford University Press). I will come back with more sources to further substantiate this, if need be.
Derived ( talk) 06:47, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
I notice this section is tagged. I just worked on Centum-Satem isogloss, which needed a lot of work. I notice this section contains a lot of issues already addressed and corrected in the other article. The incorrect picture is repeated yet once again (aren't there any others?) Either this write-up could be corrected, which would amount to doing another but shorter article similar to Centum-Satem isogloss or we can just defer to the other article, which contains everything mentioned here and more. I don't like to capture the same ground twice so if no one objects I am just going to remove the contents of this subsection. As far as the jargon is concerned - well, maybe. It is too conversational and it is too opinionated. Dave ( talk) 12:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I removed this image:
I have no criticism of the graphics, which are very fine. Nice work, I hope you get an A. You must know of course that this graphic represents one point of view about the origin of Indo-European; moreover, it is not the mainstream view, which places them between and above the Black and Caspian Seas. But again, there is plenty of room in Wikipedia for minority views; in fact, I think they ought to be encouraged in the people's encyclopedia. No, that is not my beef. Whoever's point of view it is needs to be identified. The author and publisher need to be stated. Who's view do you say this is? Who did the graphic? How do we know you didn't lift it from somewhere? Wikipedia asks that you try to use templates such as cite web, which provide a uniform look and ask for standard information. Now I find that we are all blocked from the site, which is provided by UPenn history department. That brings a further complication. Now, it appears as though you have a personal site at the department, which is generally true of students. That means, this could be your personal until now unpublished creative work, or more likely you did an imitation or rehash from Scientific American (the original publisher of this Russian point of view). So, I hope you will not be too astounded if I ask for references on this, and a location of the private pages of UPENN history department is not that. We have plenty of course blurbs but typically the professor gives his name and takes credit and responsibility and the blurb is already published in one form or another. Reference please. Ciao. Dave ( talk) 02:37, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
the informations about the Aryans are resebled to Iranian which is a bigg mistake, that shouldnt be divided by sub-iranian branches . Afghans(Pashtons) and their language Pashto is not sub-iranian branch of language but its separate a North-Eastern-Aryanian Language of the Indo-European tree. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
84.49.128.102 (
talk)
04:39, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I removed this:
The problem with this one is basically the same. It is stored on Professor Clark Ford's site. Now, nothing on this image or with it identifies it as the work of professor Ford. He could just be keeping it there for personal reference. Moreover, the professor's field is far removed from Indo-European linguistics. I don't think he did this, especially as it turns up at a few other locations of the Internet without his name. You know, just because the Internet makes it possible to invade privacy even more than before does not mean we can use material obtained in this way. We need an author and a publisher here. If the author designated it for public use it does not matter if we view it in the good professor's site, just as he does. If not, it is against the law for the professor to publish it like that and for us to use it like this. Not to mentions the fact that as far as we know now it might be original unpublished creative material. Reference please. Ciao. Dave ( talk) 02:57, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
The file http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg, is not unproblematic either. It erroneously lists Norwegian as a West Scandinavian language. The only extant West Scandinavian languages are Faroese and Icelandic. //roger.duprat.copenhagen —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.138.228.148 ( talk) 07:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
To all of us Internet Indo-Europeanists the sudden pulling of the American Heritage Dictionary from Bartleby.com was a low blow. It is hard to remember what a great asset it was and how lucky we were to have it. Some people like to take candy away from babies. I remember when uemployment was made taxable, which ever after was greatly regretted, but no one seems to have the power to reverse it. Houghton-Mifflin is after all in business to make money, and why should they give us anything for free? I will not even wonder what Calvert Watkins thinks of this move. I remember him as a totally helpful man if you can accept being always wrong and never right. That is how it seems to students anyway. Regardless of why Houghton Mifflin did it and why the people allowed their unemployment to be taxed and what Calvert may think of this unhelpful act, it is done and we have lost a great intellectual asset. Things will never be the same. Oh well, you can buy the paper book; it is less than 100, or used to be - but it isn't the same as the Internet, you know that. But - there is a ray of hope. I do not know how long it will last. Internet Archive has got it. I have changed the link from Bartelby to archived Bartleby. There are a large number of online links to roots in the AHD so there is a tremendous amount of work to do in fixing it. Watkins is on Google also but you never can count on links to their material so we might be better off just referencing the paper books. Dave ( talk) 05:05, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
isbn=90-272-2151-0 (Europe), ISBN 1-55619-505-2 (U.S.) May be invalid - please double check
Is your typing hand broken? Check it yourself. Anyway I invoked "find it in a library" and what do you know, no library has it. There's some for sale second-hand in the usual places. "Find it in a library" also gave the publisher's info. Even though only one edition is listed, there are several ISBN's. This is the case with many books. In cases such as that I never list the ISBN as that is equivalent to plugging one edition, format or seller and not another. We told them enough to locate the book, we are not helping them to buy it or anyone else to sell it. Dave ( talk) 02:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
(Removed sidetrack section. If you guys want to keep it, I won't object.) ( Taivo ( talk) 15:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC))
to be fair, the three main pillars of PIE reconstruction are Vedic Sanskrit, Greek and Anatolian (Hittite), because these three give a "direct" glimpse of the Bronze Age. The point that Sanskrit records do not survive in any material manuscripts dating to the Bronze Age (as Taivo correctly points out) is of limited importance. -- dab (𒁳) 07:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) Vedic is not attested from the Bronze Age and it is only presumed to be based on oral traditions from the Bronze Age. But there's a difference between preserving traditions from the Bronze Age and preserving actual linguistic forms. In that respect, Vedic is rightly valued in I-E studies, but adding it to Bronze Age attestation is a leap of faith. ( Taivo ( talk) 00:21, 8 April 2010 (UTC))
Why exactly is the Persian declension listed under the Armenian column? Is there no modern Armenian descendent of *bʰer- to use, and an empty column would look weird? As it is, it looks like it claims Persian is a contemporary member of Armenian. So shouldn't it be replaced with examples from modern Armenian, or either just left blank? Baranxtu ( talk) 17:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
How can individual languages like "Albanian" have the same status as Language Family's like "Germanic"? The whole list seems utterly anachronistic and arbitrary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.188.85.11 ( talk) 03:31, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
Using methods similar to those of Greenberg, Roman Stopa proved that I.-E. languges are related to the Bushman languages of Southern Africa. See the article in the Polish Wikipedia on Stopa for a reference to his work of 1972. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.132.159.91 ( talk) 16:06, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
There is a redirect from "Indo-Germanic" to "Indo-European". I thought that it was an alternate name, albeit rare. I wouldn't count a mention of that as "vandalism", but I'm not going to do anything without discussion. TomS TDotO ( talk) 09:47, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
I have collected information on this here. Perhaps a short summary wouldn't be superfluous in this article. -- dab (𒁳) 11:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
I apologise for labelling it as "vandalism". The edit was done by an editor who had just changed German to the most spoken Indo-European language, so I just threw it in with that. "Indo-Germanic" is very rarely used in English, though. Hayden120 ( talk) 01:32, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
Isn't the terminology of "Indo-Germanic" a bit outdated? I cannot find a single source earlier than 1915. I'm also gonna guess that this terminology is rooted in 19th century German nationalism. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 05:56, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Wough Marek, you have done nice research work! 1915 was the great war (WW I) and many German notations in the anglo-saxon world were changed to English. Another example: Berlin near Waterloo/Ontario was changed to Kitchener, remembering Lord Kitchener of the Sudan. But one name wasn't changed: Merck (from the NYSE and the Dow) remained Merck, although being a reparation from the German Merck (named after its founder), which still exists today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.133.155.68 ( talk) 07:54, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
The notion ,indo-germanic' was introduced by a Dane, not by a German. It should not be used in an English written text (only in German ones - perhaps also in Danish ones), unless there is a conference, in which the majority of scholars accepts a change. But certainly a historical notion is more appropiate than a geographical one, do not confuse space and time. This applies especially to ,afro-asiatic' instead of ,semitic' . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.100.79.6 ( talk) 13:10, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
I'll bite. Why is "the Iranian plateau and South Asia" preferred to "the Indian Subcontinent and the Iranian plateau"? At least the latter form clearly doesn't include Burma. — Tamfang ( talk) 23:33, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
The word "genetic" is not directly explained, and could be confusing to those who don't know the special linguistic meaning of the word... AnonMoos ( talk) 00:51, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I've modified the two conjugation comparison tables. In the basic sense, I've fixed the styling so that it's easier to read and doesn't have strange/redundant markup (for some reason, every table cell was colspan="4"
); there is now a difference between header cells and regular cells, but I've retained the text centering on all cells.
Back in July, somebody made an edit to show that Persian was not part of the Armenian subgroup—it was a good thought, but it was executed poorly. I've rectified that by creating an "Iranian" column and putting that and "Indo-Aryan" under an "Indo-Iranian" column. I've also properly left a space for modern Armenian examples. In a subsequent edit, I rearranged the columns to match File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg, which is supposedly ordered based on specific evidence; I've excluded dead-end branches for simplicity. I added the "Albanian" branch, as well as a "Baltic" branch under the "Balto-Slavic" header.
Here's what's to be done: I've changed some of the names and expanded some of abbreviations; we can easily haggle over those changes, but they were motivated by the tree diagram and verbosity. What we really need are examples of the languages we are now missing:
So if anyone can dig up some references for those, that'd be great. We may also want to note when the ancient representative did not directly evolve into the modern representative (e.g. Gothic and German). Hope that helps. — Gordon P. Hemsley→ ✉ 09:11, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I looked it up in Fraenkel's Lithuanian Etymology Dictionary here: http://www.indo-european.nl/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=leiden&morpho=0&basename=\data\ie\fraenkel&first=1&text_word=&method_word=substring&text_etym=&method_etym=substring&text_pages=&method_pages=substring&text_any=berti&method_any=substring&sort=word According to this Lithuanian word "berti" (meaning 1. strew; scatter 2. break out ; 3. sow ;. shed tears) is derived from the indo-european * bher- 'bear, give'. My suggestion would be to include lithuanian as an ancient representative so that dual verb forms could also be mentioned as they are still used in dialects (the reference for this can be found here: http://www.lki.lt/LKI_LT/images/Padaliniai/Gramatikos_skyrius/3_skyrius.pdf in page 74). There is no space for dual in the table for the modern representatives. Then Latvian could be the modern representative if there is a word derived from *bher in Latvian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smurkst ( talk • contribs) 12:22, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
The reason I added Lithuanian example for Proto-Indo-European(*bʰer- 'to carry') Comparison of conjugations under the "Ancient Representatives" instead of "Modern Representatives" is because there was no place for dual under "Modern Representatives". The example of how dual is conjugated in Lithuanian dialects can be seen here: http://www.lituanus.org/1969/69_3_02.htm
Singular aš einu 'I go, I am going' tu eini ('thou goest') jis eina 'he goes'
Plural mes einame 'we go' jūs einate 'you go' ie eina 'they go'
Dual mudu (mudvi) einava 'we two ('we two", fern.) go' judu (judvi) einata 'you two ('you two', fern.) go' jiedu (jiedvi) eina 'they two ('they two', fern.) go'19 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smurkst ( talk • contribs) 19:21, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
Where's the criticism for this theory of a language family? 71.212.214.163 ( talk) 07:00, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
http://www.khyber.org/articles/2005/TheGreatAryanMyth.shtml http://archaeology.about.com/od/indusrivercivilizations/a/aryans.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.59.22.166 ( talk • contribs)
the oldest text of the gathas is written in gathic wich is so old that is why linguistics date zoroastrianism to 1800 bc it is older then just 1000 bc way older i dates from 1500-1200 bc actually that is why gathic is incredibly close to vedic sanskrit it can´t be from around 1000 bc the gathas is just way to old it whas written in very old avestan 1500 bc is a good date but atleast 1200 bc that is the minimum —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.160.183.70 ( talk) 14:44, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Can someone with access to the book cited check the recent IP additions here [5] and [6]. I don't have access to the book they cite, and their reasoning in the edit summary has me wondering. I am always a little distrustful of someone inserting something into an already existing sentence, especially with such reasoning. As they have already IP hopped to 3 different addresses, talking with them other than here may be difficult. He iro 04:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
The principle difference between
and the actual extent in 1500 is the push to the North in eastern europe, at this point the Duchy of Moscow hadn't become the Tsardom of Russia and begun its push to the Pacific. So saying the IEs had global extent any time before the 16th century is flat false and the coverage shown in the current map wasn't established until the late 19th with the
Scramble for Africa.
Lycurgus (
talk)
13:50, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
This map is for 500 AD a very useful one, except for one tiny item: Germanic settlements in Morokko (in the Rif) are not proven, contrary to those around Karthago in todays Tunesia. And in Spain Gothic settlements were around Toledo, at least 80 km south of Toledo, the gothic capital, and perhaps along El Cid's route (and some in Galicia). Undoubtedly everything like that was wiped out with the moslem conquest of the peninsula. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.133.155.68 ( talk) 08:06, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
So are you saying the North African kingdom of the Vandals was a myth, as well as the numerous accounts of its history and war with Byzantium - or that their patently East Germanic language was not Germanic at all? Harsimaja ( talk) 16:24, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
Please Harsimaja, learn English. The preceding remark tells you, that the Vandals are proven around Karthago, that is in today's Tunesia, and not in Morocco, as coloured in this map (and never use the word so, because it needs a logical conclusion). By the way - travelling in the Rif mountains of Morocco, I found only one river name which might be from a Vandal language, which is far too little, to draw any conclusion from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.100.79.6 ( talk) 13:56, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
I have changed a bit the Homer note.
The Iliad of Homer was composed in post-Mycenaean period (IX BC – VIII BC see Homer) due to the presence of modern variants of deities. However, the story took place in the Mycenaean period and it's been passed down orally from that period. The form that we know has been crystallized in writing probably around VIII-VII century BC when borned the modern alphabet derived from Phoenician.
Interesting is the fact of the passage of Bronze Age to Iron Age see Achilles armature made by Hephaestus. Indeed the Dorians used Iron.
-- Andriolo ( talk) 17:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Probably I am not clear. I agree with you about text became written down in VIII-VII century but I think that this sentence confuses the date of composition with the date of writing. “Tradition”, does not mean written but oral. The etymon of “tradition” is corpus consuetudinary (for a folk or group). So Homeric tradition doesn’t date 8th century BC because it is older (probably soon after the Mycenaean period in the Greek dark age). I propose to modify the sentence in “Homer written texts may date 8th century BC.” or “Iliad and Odyssey were probably written in 8th century BC”. -- Andriolo ( talk) 11:51, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
Ok... Ciao -- Andriolo ( talk) 12:05, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
Hi all! Can someone please help? I am not that much familiar with the subject of the article, and going through the article could not find anything relevant to archeology. I mean if there ever was this great civilization of Indoeuropeans surely they must have lived in an area before their migrations.
The article right from the beginning reads as if the indoeuropean family of languages is a certain undisputed fact and not a theory. Is that the case? Thank you!! 23x2 ( talk) 18:09, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
I would like to know what peer-reviewed paper says that is disputed as an Indo-European and Celtic language since John T. Koch first published his thorough attempt at translation and classification in 2008 with increasing confidence now that he has looked at the longest and complete inscription (see peer-reviewed chapters in books "Celtic from the West" and "Tartessian 2". All I have seen is support since from other academics in the Tartessian space (e.g. Guerra and Villar). Please tell me. Jembana ( talk) 04:02, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Well we've been changing this number several times and we need to fix the problem. Ethnologue goes with 2.7 billion http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=family A fellow told me that we don't know how many of them natives, but clearly Ethnologue are counting natives as can be seen in the section "Language size" http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size (English= 328 million). However, if anyone have doubts and wants to add new sources it would be interesting. -- Bentaguayre ( talk) 12:48, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
"Indo-Germanic" and "arian" [sic] are obsolete terms that are only of minor historical relevance, and are thus too trivial for mention in the lede. "Indo-Germanic" is already mentioned in the lede, and "aryan" languages currently refer exclusively to a particular sub-family. Dominus Vobisdu ( talk) 15:46, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
There is no consensus about BSl, see for example International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, William J. Frawley (Editor), Oxford University Press, 2003. The ongoing POW pushing certainly has consequences on misleading millions of readers. This let's-play-science-game went that far that in several other related WP articles the Baltic as a linguistic group “disappeared” at all. This is already about falsification of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.64.252.30 ( talk) 21:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Page 196: "2. Classification. The shared features of Baltic and Slavic have led many scholars to propose an intermediate Balto-Slavic family within IE; however, this view has been disputed by scholars who argue for a separate, if parallel, evolution of Baltic from IE. This issue remains open."
"The vast majority of Indo-Europeanists accept Baltic as a valid single clade within Indo-European (see the various stammbaum offered in all the modern introductory texts on Indo-European--Fortson, Clackson, etc.). The notion that there was no Baltic clade is not supported within the mainstream Indo-European literature. The whole section "Modern interpretation" is not based on modern, accepted Indo-European scholarship, but is a WP:FRINGE position from the 1960s. It is not accepted in the 21st century by the vast majority of Indo-Europeanists. Fortson (2010, Indo-European Language and Culture), Mallory & Adams (2006, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World), Szemerényi (1990, Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics), Beekes (1995, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics), Schmalsteig (1998, "The Baltic Languages," The Indo-European Languages, ed. Ramat & Ramat), Clackson (2007, Indo-European Linguistics), Baldi (1983, An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages), etc. all support Baltic as a clade. This is the mainstream position and the "Baltic is not a clade" is a minority view and to give it an entire section violates WP:UNDUE. --Taivo (talk) 17:38, 1 May 2011 (UTC)" Count du Monét ( talk) 20:46, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Rather than censoring Balto-Slavic out of the article entirely, how about adding a passage to the effect that "since 1989 the validity of a Balto-Slavic group has increasingly been disputed"? — Tamfang ( talk) 21:25, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
What about Sino-Tibetan (Classical Chinese)? But then again, I suppose if we're counting oral literature, Indo-European might count, with things like the Rigveda and Zoroastrian texts. 216.54.22.188 ( talk) 19:36, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Now when I look at this article, somebody has almost deleted it. Can anybody fix it?
Excuse me, can anybody make this article as it is now back to its former glory? Somebody almost deleted it.
Hill Crest's WikiLaser (Boom). (
talk)
01:32, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, reverter. Hill Crest's WikiLaser (Boom). ( talk) 01:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
They speak Danish and English in Greenland, they speak into european languages. Should be on the map. 46.194.202.154 ( talk) 19:29, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Jespersen said that there was considerable opposition to and ill-feeling towards the comparativists from the classicists. This was in the German-speaking area. The classicists objected to the implication that they did not know Latin and Greek, or even German. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alaskan Wanderer ( talk • contribs) 15:51, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
I'm reverting this addition
mainly because it was inserted into the section "History of IE linguistics", where it definitely doesn't fit, and I don't see a better place for it. — Tamfang ( talk) 07:38, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
Kazakhstan's population mainly consists of Kazakh speakers - why is Kazakhstan in dark green? Harsimaja ( talk) 16:18, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
According to the wiki article about Greenland, the use of Danish, while non-official, is still widespread in some sectors, and a significant minority (>10%) speaks Danish only. Hence Greenland should be coloured blue in the map. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.48.132.13 ( talk) 11:15, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Hi,
I see that Greenland and Iceland are not coloured, although the inhabitants of these countries speak an indo-european language (Danish and Icelandic). can someone correct this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gertdk ( talk • contribs) 15:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/full/ncomms2656.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.97.65 ( talk) 22:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Article needs to be bought.
Still here are some parts of the text:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/04/mtdna-haplogroup-h-and-origin-of.html
Here is part of the text:
From around 2800 BC, the LNE Bell Beaker culture emerged from the Iberian Peninsula to form one of the first pan-European archaeological complexes. This cultural phenomenon is recognised by a distinctive package of rich grave goods including the eponymous bell-shaped ceramic beakers. The genetic affinities between Central Europe’s Bell Beakers and present-day Iberian populations (Fig. 2) is striking and throws fresh light on long-disputed archaeological models3. We suggest these data indicate a considerable genetic influx from the West during the LNE. These far-Western genetic affinities of Mittelelbe-Saale’s Bell Beaker folk may also have intriguing linguistic implications, as the archaeologically-identified eastward movement of the Bell Beaker culture has recently been linked to the initial spread of the Celtic language family across Western Europe39. This hypothesis suggests that early members of the Celtic language family (for example, Tartessian)40 initially developed from Indo-European precursors in Iberia and subsequently spread throughout the Atlantic Zone; before a period of rapid mobility, reflected by the Beaker phenomenon, carried Celtic languages across much of Western Europe. This idea not only challenges traditional views of a linguistic spread of Celtic westwards from Central Europe during the Iron Age, but also implies that Indo-European languages arrived in Western Europe substantially earlier, presumably with the arrival of farming from the Near East41.
It seems that genetic evidence supporting the Iberian hypothesis, paired with archaelogy, is ever-growing. A lot has been already published concerning the Iberian-Basque-British Isles connection. Now this seems to continue in other European areas like Germnay.
Pipon — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
98.203.97.65 (
talk)
23:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Turkey, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan should be colored blue as they have significant minorities of IE speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.4.123.133 ( talk) 00:48, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Also, the map makes a distinction between Lurish, "Persico" and Kurdish which should rather be grouped together under Iranian or Indo-Iranian (parallel to Slavic, Germanic, etc.) TomS TDotO ( talk) 18:17, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/243/8/8/linguistic_map_of_europe_by_1blomma-d6k1i1x.png — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.45.223.190 ( talk) 00:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
"The Indo-European languages are a family (or phylum) of several hundred related languages and dialects." Speling12345 ( talk) 2:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I removed the aforementioned languages from the infobox for the following reasons:
1. Philistine is not confirmed to be an Indo-European language. It was merely suggested, by some linguists, that Philistine might have been an Indo-European language but there's nothing that can conclusively prove it was. Adding it to the infobox would be as ridiculous as adding Hunnic to the infobox, since some linguists have also theorized that Hunnic was an Indo-European language.
2. Messapic and Thracian were indeed Indo-European languages, but they were not subfamilies. In fact, there's no consensus on the exact classification of these two languages. The infobox is meant to list the immediate (i.e. first order) subdivisions of the Indo-European family, therefore it was not appropriate to list Messapic and Thracian in the infobox as their precise classifications within the language family have not been widely determined.
--Nadia (Kutsuit) ( talk) 08:50, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
Why is Guyana shown in light green on the map? The national language, Guyanese Creole is an English-based creole, therefore rather manifestly an IE language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.48.18 ( talk) 06:24, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
An editor has been repeatedly trying to insert text in the articles on Indo-European, Balto-Slavic and Baltic. There are, by my count, three other editors who are reverting these changes. I want to add my name to those who find these changes inappropriate, and to note that they should be justified in the talk page somewhere before trying again. I observe that the language of these changes is "chatty", not encyclopedic, and is not supported by appropriate citations. I think that appropriate action is warranted by an administrator if this text continues to appear without discussion. TomS TDotO ( talk) 10:53, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
§ Diversification refers to the work of "Don Ringe and Wendy Tarnow", but in the references and other mentions ( "Ringe-Warnow model of language evolution") the second name is "Tandy [or T.] Warnow", confirmed by a Google search for the phrase. AWB finds the name first appearing here in the edit of 18:48, 30 April 2014, described as "(→Diversification: Copied info from Indo-European migrations, added link)". I'm correcting it in both articles.
To discuss this, please {{Ping}} me. -- Thnidu ( talk) 03:35, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
A move discussion with connection to this article is open at Kurdish languages' talk page. Please read and join if you can help resolve it. Khestwol ( talk) 17:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Both the political and non-political maps of the IE languages should be present in the article. Why remove something that makes the article more informative? 168.187.250.57 ( talk) 10:18, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
The political map is inappropriate for the infobox. This article is about the language family, not politics. Moreover, the non-political map contains information about the branches of the family. Nevertheless, the political map is okay for somewhere in the body of the article. -- JorisvS ( talk) 10:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
We should have some criteria for selecting which languages will serve as examples. I suggest that it is not appropriate just to use the most familiar, or widely spoken languages. I'd rather suggest that the we include languages which show the range of differences. So there should be examples from all of the extant branches of Indo-European, and all of the subbranches of the larger groups. So, I would definitely include a few of the Indic group. In the Romance group, I suggest that we don't have to include all of the well-known languages, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French: rather, I think we could have Sardinian, Romanian and Catalan. In the Germanic group, I would have Yiddish, Icelandic and maybe Gothic. Meanwhile, if we are going to drop a language from the present list, I'd drop one of the Baltic languages or Italian or Portuguese or Spanish or English - yes - after all, all of the readers do not need reminders of the English words! TomS TDotO ( talk) 15:22, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
This is just a suggestion, of course open to discussions, for sixteen languages. No particular order intended.
1. Albanian - a given, the only language in its branch.
2. Armenian - a given, the only language in its branch.
3. Greek - a given, the only language in its branch.
4. Lithuanian - almost a given, no reason to pick Latvian instead.
5. Russian - largest Slavic language, and all Slavic languages are close.
6. English - a given, relevant for readers to understand the words.
7. German - largest Germanic bar English, and conservative.
8. Irish - most conservative Celtic language.
9. Welsh - perhaps. The Goidelic and Brythonic branches are very different.
10. Persian - as the main Iranian language.
11. Hindi - largest Indic language.
12. Italian - most conservative of the major Romance languages.
13. Other romance - An argument could be made for any of them.
14. Swedish - possibly, to a Northern Germanic language.
15. Sanskrit - the oldest preserved IE language.
16. Latin - perhaps, but several other relevant options.
Again, this is just a suggestion, good arguments can be made for several other options.
Jeppiz (
talk)
16:04, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
As for the Romance languages,the best choises are Italian,as it is the most conservative of the major modern Romance languages and Latin .As for the Slavic languages,the best choises are Russian(East Slavic),Polish (West Slavic) and/or Serbo-Croatian(South Slavic).Anyways this is a suggestion. Rolandi+ ( talk) 16:34, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
There are 9 language families. So that is how many languages we need to put in the table, one language per family. Or, we might pick two languages per family, an old language and a modern one. Any extra languages we include should have a linguistic reason for being there. -- Kautilya3 ( talk) 23:14, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
Apart from the discussion about which languages to include, it would seem very relevant to decide which items to use. Currently it's just the numbers 1-10, which seems rather uninteresting. Let's avoid too long tables, but I'd recommend numbers 1-5 and then around ten different items. Jeppiz ( talk) 22:37, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
All of this discussion begs the question: what is the purpose including this table in the article? Before we start deciding on what to put in the table, we should make clear why the table is there. Is it just simply to list 1-10 in random IE languages? Is it to demonstrate the similarity of forms across the constituent language families to confirm the languages are indeed related? Is it to demonstrate outliers, divergent innovations or a variety of forms? etc., etc.? All the talk about what to include seems pointless (and subject to endless future debate and bloat) if we don't first define the purpose of the table's existence.-- William Thweatt Talk Contribs 00:34, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
How do we justify the colouring of Malaysia, when the article Malaysian English does not seem to support any official status? Is there any objective (sourced) criterion by which the role of English in Malaysia is significantly more important than, say, French in Tunisia?-- Lieven Smits ( talk) 15:00, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
The article Languages of South Africa does not suggest a secondary official role for the IE languages English and Afrikaans, so it would seem justified to colour that country dark green. -- Lieven Smits ( talk) 15:14, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
There are two main reasons for listing Indo-European as being "From Europe to India":
-- Taivo ( talk) 21:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
TaivoLinguist,
Kautilya3,
Dr.K. Let's get a few things clear:
With your reasons such as "Western Europe should be mentioned first because it has more primitive language branches blah blah Aryan invasion" sounds immature and it seems like you don't understand the context of these sections in the article or are trying to prove some other hidden point.
Reference no. 9 states that " In Dutch, for instance, the general population uses the term Indo-Germaans." As someone with a Master's Degree in Foreign Languages from a Belgian/Flemish university, I can comfortably say I have never heard that term before, nor in scientific literature, nor in common parlance.
Ithvan ( talk) 09:51, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry but if you are an academic you should be angry at those who indoctrinated you and the universities who lowered their standards to allow you to be so. Arutun ( talk) 15:00, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Is duolingo.com a good reference? There is a limited number of choices available. There are choices of learning English for speakers of several other languages. But there are very few choices for learning non-IE languages. TomS TDotO ( talk) 00:42, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
Basque and Farsi deserve to be included in the family tree. 68.2.235.85 ( talk) 17:03, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Old Prussian either does not have anything to offer in the conjugation chart or it does but nobody entered it in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Myrrhfrankincensegold ( talk • contribs) 03:45, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
In § Grouping, I'm adding a parenthetical note with a link to Genetic (linguistics):
The same page is linked from the word "genetic" in the immediately preceding sentence. While normally we wouldn't have a redundant second link so close to the first one, I feel that it's quite important to make it clear that words like "genetic" and "ancestor" here have nothing whatever to do with human genetics. There are already too many people who think that language and "race" are somehow intrinsically linked.
To discuss this, please {{Ping}} me. -- Thnidu ( talk) 03:03, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
I have reverted [7] the ip for following reasons:
I think the intro gives redundant emphasis on which non-IE languages spoken in Europe, which is out of scope. I think it can be reworded, considering Wikipedia:out of scope and Wikipedia:Lead or such information can be given as 'footnote', if you think it is necessary. 91.235.143.218 ( talk) 10:20, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
1. The Great Vowel Shift should probably be included in this article(even though it predominantly applies to English).
2. We might want to touch on why Latin didn't some of these Indo-European languages(i.e. English) as much as it did others(i.e. French/Italian)
3. It could be worthwhile for us to better explain the difference between a "branch" and a "family"
Esotericbubbba ( talk) 00:00, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Someone tried to re-interpret the concept "genetic" by a sense expressing the concept "genealogical". Choosing the correct term solves the unnecessary "explanation". Done. HJJHolm ( talk) 13:07, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
-- Reciprocist ( talk) 21:29, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
"There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue", what about the extinct Indo-European languages, how many there were ? Is there any suggestion or potential amount ? Leo Freeman ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:39, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Sionkimzion ( talk) 08:26, 10 February 2018 (UTC)The article mentions that Sanksrit and a few other languages are the "most important". I couldn't find the evidence for those languages' being "most important" I think the sentence needs a correction.
I find it strange that an article on the most widely spoken language family that's well-recognized (I'm still holding out for Nostratic, woot woot!) includes no section on typical features of its languages. I'm sure there are a few that have been written about and that we could include, like fused person-number/gender/case (for nouns) and person-number/gender/tense (for verbs) suffixes, generally SOV word order, sex-based gender systems (usually male/female/neuter), and T/V second-person pronoun distinction. Tezero ( talk) 22:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Most of the language can be categorised as feudal languages. A few like English can be defined as planar languages.
This is an information many language 'scientists' do not want to take up for study. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:204:D38C:B31C:257A:C7FA:AE5D:AC4 ( talk) 09:11, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
This in Sardinian may be the word for hit, from ferio, not fero. Two unlike roots. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ferio#Latin Yoandri Dominguez Garcia 16:05, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
There is a serious need to correct all Wikipeida articles which reference or define "Indo-Aryan" languages as being specifically languages of the Indian Subcontinent.
Indo-Aryan is simply a synonym for Indo-European. All standard University level Linguistics and History faculties agree that Indo-Aryan is indeed just a Synonym for Indo-European - Again it is Encyclopedia Britannica's ONLINE VERSION that has propagated this error into Wikipedia as well as to some online dictionaries.
The phrase Indo-Aryan properly referes to "one of the early Indo-European invaders of southern Asia" which includes both the Iranian and Indian branches of this "invasion southward.
The confusion this has created is vast and the correction I am proposing encompasses many Wikipeida articles on this topic, but nevertheless it should be undertaken ASAP. Some feedback would be appreciated regarding this proposal. Xoltron ( talk) 22:06, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
The key to the map in the "info box" is missing a colour. Large parts of Asia are coloured in a pale green that is not explained. 86.191.146.73 ( talk) 23:14, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
Definitely, Israel should be painted blue because they have English as a state language (along Hebrew and Arabic).-- Reciprocist ( talk) 05:39, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Why does this article list Romanian and Moldovan as if they were two separate languages? We don't do that with Catalan/Valencian, a pretty much parallel case: we just say "Catalan" which is the main term used internationally, as is "Romanian". (For the record, I'd have no problem with "Romanian/Moldovan" or for that matter with "Catalan/Valencian", but I think the separate listing of "Romanian" and "Moldovan" is misleading.) - Jmabel | Talk 19:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
So I've been discussing with @ 89.210.251.100 about whether Greek is an Indo-European language, but we couldn't really agree on what to do. So could we have a Request for comment? Thanks! Nigos ( t@lk • Contribs) 05:44, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Hello, I am the anonymous user who discussed with " Nigos". There is an article, which, for some reason, I cannot find on the Internet and is contained in a book about the history of the Greek language, talking about toponymic findings that there were Neolithic civilizations in Greece, the Sesklo and the Dimini after the first one, in a period among 7.150 and 5.000 B.C.E (3.200 B.C.E if the Cycladic civilization is added before the arrival of the primarily known Hellenic tribes at 3.000 B.C.E) whose people spoke languages closely related to Proto-Greek and really divergent from the Proto-Indo-European language of the Yamna culture on the Crimean coast. Now, about Babiniotis• in his book "A brief history of the Greek language", he classifies Greek as Indo-European. This book was written in 1998. Around 1 year after its release, he was interviewed by George Papadakis in his breakfast show on television and was asked what changes he would make to the book, which I also cannot find online it was shown on television during some flashbacks of his show last year. Babiniotis responded saying that he reclassifies Greek as an isolate (the sole survivor of the Hellenic language family) due to a significant number of words whose origin is not Indo-Europoean. Furthermore, he stated that Greece played an important role in the evolution of many languages, especially Latin, because of the ancient Greek colonialistic policy and the the conquests of Alexander the Great, and that any Greek word looking like any other word of a foreign language is due to borrowing or language contact.
Demoule, Jean-Paul; Perlès, Catherine (1993). "The Greek Neolithic: A New Review". Journal of World Prehistory. Here is a journal article about the existence of the Sesklon culture at 7.150 B.C.E although it does not refer to any language. Just to clarify, most Greek linguists classify Greek as an isolate (the sole survivor of the, divergent from Indo-European, Hellenic languages).
I guess you are not Greek like me and you do not know well. Prodicus, an ancient Greek linguist, who was mentioned by Plato in his writing "Protagoras", staits that a lot of words that do not look like Indo-European are not loanwords, because, as mentioned above, there were two Neolithic cultures (created by Hellenic tribes) living in Greece at 7.000 B.C.E while the primarily known theory says that Greeks came in Greece at 3.000 B.C.E. Also, there was another tribe, the Paenonian which dwelled the northern parts of Macedonia at around 3.500 B.C.E and, according to the related primarily known theory, they were of Greek derivation. What do you have to say about it? I think your sources are fringe. Plus, there is no actual evidence showing the Indo-European ancestry of Greek. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.210.251.100 ( talk) 14:44, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Every unreliable source tries to "prove" the Indo-European ancestry of Greek. History itself proves otherwise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.210.251.100 ( talk) 18:33, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
They are, because, as I told you, history proves otherwise. If you look somewhere above, you will find a source from me about archaeology talking about some pre-Indo-European cultures in Greece- the source does not include any language, since you like so much to work with sources. As I re-mentioned above, there was another article from a book talking about the history of the Greek language, which I cannot find online to use as a source, and classifies Greek as the sole survivor of the Hellenic language family and a language isolate, because its genetic relatives are dead- just like the Ket language. The true relatives of Greek were the Sesklo and the Dimini languages (Seslo and Dimini cultures, 7.000-4.500 B.C.E), the Cucladic (Cycladic civilisation, 3.200-1.600 B.C.E) and, perhaps Paeonian and ancient Macedonian (the last two may be Illyrian languages with heavy Hellenic influence). Since I am Greek, I assure you that during Junior High School we were being taught history with parts of that book, which, I repeat, I cannot find online, and that book was ginving, plus everything I mentioned about Greeks relatives, Babiniotis' reconstruction of Proto-Greek and a hypothetical reconstruction of Proto-Hellenic. The Seslo and Dimini languages left substrates to the other languages later spoken in Greece (Minoan, Eteocretan, Lemnian and Anatolian) and this is why you think that Greek has such a large number number of "loanwords". These are not loanwords but pure Hellenic words that worked as a substrate to the non-Greek languages of the area. Greek can be easily defined as a pre-Indo-European language. It was just too hard for the other languages of the area to affect Greek, because it had genetic relatives way before those non-Indo-European peoples settled Greece. Only Turkish managed to lend a significant number of words in Greek but that happened way after that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.72.187 ( talk) 07:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~prehistory/aegean/?page_id=424 about the existence of the Sesklo and Dimini cultures. https://books.google.gr/books?id=kSkjAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=Language+of+Sesklo+culture&source=bl&ots=Z76kOi5Om5&sig=ACfU3U3pBy6KKddRTS3He9GRwBjejhAheQ&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwig2teC24HjAhVmz6YKHbE7BV8Q6AEwD3oECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Language%20of%20Sesklo%20culture&f=false talks about the Dimini peoples originating from Hungary where the Greeks lived before the hypothesized Dorian invasion. There is this article I was talking about above, which I caanot find online, and talks about Cycladic being Hellenic and Greek a language isolate. https://alphaomegatranslations.com/foreign-language/three-ways-greek-has-influenced-other-languages/ about foreigh words of Greek origin. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/greeks-really-do-have-near-mythical-origins-ancient-dna-reveals about Greek D.N.A not being Indo-European but similar to other Pre-Indo-European peoples of the area (meaning the Sesklo and Dimini cultures). https://www.pronews.gr/epistimes/452149_terastia-ereyna-8-panepistimion-katharo-dna-ton-ellinon-kai-idio-me-ton-arhaion talking about Greek D.N.A being a proof of a non-Indo-European tribe living in Greece until today, since, as the source clarifies, Greek D.N.A has not changed over the course of time and it is not simliar with other European or Indian peoples but with some Paleo-Europeans such as Minoan. This article is in Greek.
Here is my source. George Babiniotis in his book "A brief history of the Greek language" notes differences between Greek and Indo-European languages which, according to him easily distinguishes Greek from the family (not the classification within the family but a language isolate outside of it).
(page 57) Final consonats: In Indo-European, opposing to Greek, every consonant just like every vowel can be used at the end of a word.
For example: *genesom (*γενέσων> γενών, that is an Indo-European word borrowed from Hellenic γίγνομαι which means "I become")
Accentuation: In Greek the thesis of the tone, if it is distinguished from other Indo-European languages like Sanskrit, was not free. In Greek the tone cannot go any farther than the third from the end of the word syllable. Furthermore, Babiniotis staits that Lation borrowed its heavy tonal thesis from Aeolic Greek.
(page 61) Verbs: The passive and the neutral verb moods are creations of the Proto-Greeks. Furthermore, the Indo-European disambiguation between Past simple and continuous was borrowed from Greek. In Indo-European there were no Present Perfect Simple, Passive Future or Passive Past as opposed to Greek. Just like names,Indo-European verbs are categorized "stemmed" and stem-less (Feature borrowed fron Greek). In Greek, the "stemmed" verbs are split in baritone and conjugated according to the thesis of the tone.
(page 62) Syntax: Greek has created and lented to Indo-European various significant syntax while two features of it, the genitive and accusative absolutes, are not met in any other language.
(page 70) Vocabulary: There are words classified as pure Hellenic whichare shown in no other language
For example: "Δάφνη" (Sesklo and Dimini: "Dafmea", meaning "laurel"), "Αθήνα" [<"αθρέω" (="think"), the word means "Athens"), "Θάλαττα"(<"άλς" meaning "sea" while the Indo-European root is "mori", for example "Sub-marine". Greek also uses the words "πέλαγος" and "πόντος" for sea). About the pre-Greek substrate, the associated Kretschmer theory staits that there were Pre-Greek substrata deriving from Middle East due to toponymic evidence. But this theory has been largely discredited by most linguists. So, every different word is not due to a substrate but pure word roots from Proto-Greek. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.72.187 ( talk) 11:35, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia then does not provide valuable sources. And no, you are mistaken. I use logical arguments and everyone responds "We need more sources, those ones are not valid". Do not just work with sources, just try to criticize sometimes what you read. Just like you know about your language better than me, I know mine, Greek, better. And what I wrote about Babiniotis was a citation just not written as a Wikipedia reference, if you notice, I have written the pages of the book.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKQ52103mMc. This video talks about the non-Indo-European ancestry of ancient Greeks using ancient writings as sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.42.254 ( talk) 16:22, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I can accept the inclusion of this proposal just as a minority point of view with all the sources and explanations I gave. There is no pre-Greek substrate, becaus I referred to a source with an e-book talking about the Hellenic (Sesklo and Dimini) substrate given to the pre-Greek languages (second from the beginning source I referred to above). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.42.254 ( talk) 17:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
The associated Kretchmer theory about the Pre-Greek substrate, according to Babiniotis, has been largely discredited by linguists. Also, I have been trying to justify my sayings with logical arguments and you all just do not take it for granted, every source positive about the inclusion of Greek into Indo-European is unreliable. As a native speaker, I know better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.42.254 ( talk) 19:42, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I know that the world is wrong, thank you for reminding you and me that. And Wikipedia then is just a place for naive people like you, because it provides any kind of "sources". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.42.254 ( talk) 10:30, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I have found and written many reliable sources about the being discussed issue. When one user staited that I have only written about archaeology and D.N.A he should check them out, becauseone of them was talking about languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.55.244.162 ( talk) 10:48, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I have said that Babiniotis classifies Greek as a language isolate. I just cannot write the source as a Wikipedia citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.55.244.162 ( talk) 15:10, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
http://languagehat.com/the-perception-of-indo-european-in-greece/. This article talks about the perception of Indo-European in Greece.
https://www.quora.com/If-only-30-of-the-ancient-Greek-vocabulary-is-Indo-European-then-where-does-all-the-rest-come-from. And this one contains a case of unproven Indo-European descent. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
5.55.244.162 (
talk)
15:27, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Babiniotis in his book "A brief history of the Greek language", page 13 staits• "Greek is the oldest living language of the world so its oldest and newest forms can be defined throughout a large period of time. Greek, like Basque, is a Paleo-European language, because its relatives lived in Greece even before the advent of the so-called Pre-Greeks. The Pre-Greek substrate is actually not words of other non-Indo-European languages but words borrowed from other Hellenic languages, especially Cycladic which lived among other unrelated languages, such as Pelasgian, Minoan, etc. So Greek is not an Indo-European language but a Hellenic, while the fact that it is the sole survivor of the family makes it a language isolate and the similarities between the two language families is due to borrowings. Furthermore, Kretschmer notes that a lot of ancient Greek words were not met in any other language, such as a lot of toponyms, gods' names and some verbs, such as φθίνω which means to end. This verb and its etymology are also mentioned at Charalampos Symeonidis' ancient Greek dictionary, page 293." — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
89.210.252.4 (
talk)
12:59, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Symeonidis also mentions in his dictionary, page 6 "This dictionary has been written with the help of George Babiniotis' book about the history of the Greek language and it also contains verbs of the Sesklo and Dimini languages while the fact that there are a lot of unrelated words with other languages makes the language unique. Let us not forget to mention that the language isolate theory has also been accepted by George Xenis, Asimakis Fliatouras and George Triantafyllidis. It was also known from ancient times that Greek is a language isolate, because Plato, in his writing Protagoras, notifies Prodicus as the first big father of linguistics who proposed this theory." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.210.252.4 ( talk) 13:16, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
PS: For all the WP editors who handled this discussion with great civility and patience, here is an interesting piece of reading that critically deals with the "breeding ground" for the school of thought that we have been exposed to: K. Sampanis & E. Karantzola (2018). "The perception of historical and Indo-European linguistics in the instruction of Greek" (PDF). Studies in Greek Linguistics. 38. – Austronesier ( talk) 14:29, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Morphology 1. The sentence "The Greek root ‘morph’ means shape or form; thus morphology is interested in how words form." should have a comma after thus 2. Should be another parentheses after Fortson 3. After the third sentence under the bolded "Morphology", I would just say the examples w/o the repetition of the word similar/similarity and go into more depth on what you mean 4. "In terms of affixes, all Indo-European languages mark their nouns and verbs with various affixes to indicate a wide range of information such as number and case." -- put a comma before such
Ablaut 1. Change the wording of the second sentence -- you say "in English the verb infinitive sing", but that should be worded differently and should be to sing AND you should split up the sentence because it is too wordy and confusing 2. "Linguists do not yet completely agree whether or not ablaut is a phonetic or morphological process" -- incorrect grammatically so I would put the yet' with a comma in the beginning of the sentence
Word Structure 1. put a comma after optionally (1st sentence of this section) 2. Comma before such as in the second sentence 3. In this sentence, "In terms of placement, affixes can be divided into prefix, suffix, and infix", I would say affixes can be divided into subcategories: prefix, suffix, infix. 4. No comma after derivational affixes 5. Omit are those that serve to 6. no need for also in English
Root Structure 1. "Examples of each variation is shown in the following table" -- changes to are shows
Verb Structure 1. combine the first two sentences 2. say what PIE is or use the actual word
Syntax 1. Put a comma after grammar in the second sentence 2. would say that are underlying forms of a sentence's structure instead of unifying structures that underlie a sentence’s surface form 3. change the third sentence because it is confusing -- make sure to not keep repeating the word rare 4. No need for careful, persistent, and ingenious in the last sentence -- make it concise
Word Order 1. Refrain from saying IE languages or say beforehand what it is 2. Hittite came out of nowhere so sort of confusing -- maybe explain what it is 3. would not say school of thought because it is not supposed to be oppnionated
Clause Structure 1. put a comma before the moreover in the last sentence
Esotericbubbba
Reanna.shah ( talk) 23:33, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
I would like to start a conversation about whether is it certain or not that there existed a Proto-Indo-European language. Some languages are quite difficult to be placed as "ancestors" of that "proto-language", because of a lot of divergent forms in them and significant and continuous language contact with other, possibly, unrelated languages. Give me your opinion upon this. 46.177.242.232 ( talk) 14:19, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a forum, the talk page is only meant for discussing the article.-- Megaman en m ( talk) 17:51, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
No, I just want everyone to provide some sources to make sure that this "family" does exist. And Wikipedia is a forum and a social networking site, where everyone discusses in talk pages about the inclusion and exclusion of sources from articles. I can provide sources which exclude Greek, Armenian, Illyrian, Albanian, Daco-Thracian, Phrygian, Paeonian, Elymian, Siani, Sicilian and some Romance languages. Indo-Iranian, Tocharian and Anatolian from Indo-European. 5.54.182.77 ( talk) 12:33, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
There is no serious linguist that denies the existence of an Indo-European language family. 8.36.251.209 ( talk) 03:28, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
The subsection Important languages for reconstruction is critically undersourced. It was inserted in May 2013 by User:Benwing without citing any sources. In September 2016, User:Taron Saharyan added {{cn}}-tags. User:ReconditeRodent eventually added two valuable refs in December 2018. In these references, Beekes (2011) is correctly cited as a source for the state of attestation and the degree of conservativity for seven of the languages mentioned in this subsection. Beekes also gives on p.30 a short list of sixteen branches of IE "in the order of their importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European". Apart from this, all other detailled statement in the subsection are totally unsourced, e.g. stuff like: "Early poetry is of special significance because of the rigid poetic meter normally employed, which makes it possible to reconstruct a number of features (e.g. vowel length) that were either unwritten or corrupted in the process of transmission down to the earliest extant written manuscripts."
Unless someone can bring up good sources for all these details specifically in the context "importance for reconstruction", I'd recommend to trim down the text to the content supported by Beekes (2011). – Austronesier ( talk) 10:53, 30 October 2019 (UTC)