Talk:Indo-European languages

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Indo-European languages was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: June 15, 2006
Nuvola actions help green.svg This is a controversial topic that may be under dispute. Please discuss substantial changes here before making them, making sure to supply full citations when adding information, and consider tagging or removing uncited/unciteable information.

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  5. February to July 2008

Contents

[edit] Indo-European tree

Warnow, using the phylogenetic method, figured out the following tree for Indo-European languages:

Anatolian



Tocharian


Italo-Celtic

Italic


Celtic




Albanian*


Greco-Armenian

Greek


Armenian


Satem Core
Indo-Iranian

Indic


Iranian




Germanic**

Balto-Slavic

Baltic


Slavic








'''*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)

I agree. Including this tree was putting UNDUE weight on one person's analysis and includes several intermediate "nodes" that do not enjoy wide acceptance, such as Italo-Celtic, Greco-Armenian, and "Germano-Balto-Slavic". —Angr 04:24, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, the German/Balt/Slav "branch" goes all the way back to Schleicher; Italo-Celtic has been questioned, in part because the prime exhibit for the grouping (the r-forms of middle and passive verbs) turn out to be conservative features, not innovations, but in fact there are some other, less dramatic, shared innovations, if not terribly important ones. The real problem is much more serious than such quibbles. It's been 150 years since anyone thought that languages branch off of one another this way. Baltic and Slavic are unquestionably satem languages, Germanic unquestionably isn't, but both share a unique detail of developing high vowels before syllabic resonants, and Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic have adjectives marked for definiteness (albeit with a different marker). Indeed, whole "branches" can be iffy: so-called West Germanic looks like a collection of innovations that spread over existing linguistic terrain (e.g. *ð > *d) rather than shared innovations of a branch (High German's anaphoric pronouns agree with Gothic, an East Germanic language, against the system in English and Old Saxon). North Germanic is a compact branch, but shares the change of *z to *r with West Germanic, and Old English shows many traits like certain kinds of vowel breaking that align with North Germanic, as does the much greater sensitivity of Old English to i-umlaut than is to be seen in High German. The trouble with trying to connect clean breaks to innovations is that different innovations require different breaks. In any case the matter has been very extensively discussed for a long time, and the clear consensus is that a branching structure, all by itself, is incapable of mapping important diachronic relationships. Alsihler (talk) 00:57, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Mistakes in the map: Lebanon and Sudan

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)

[edit] Conjugation comparison

(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)

Without any text explaining its significance, it's just a random table that's not doing anything. Does the article even discuss the similarity of verb conjugations among the oldest languages? —Angr 16:26, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't personally have the data to do that but establishing a timeline would be a good idea. As to the above point, the table is clearly relevant, although maybe you feel it isn't explained well enough, but my point is that it's counter-productive to just delete something without at least discussing first whether it can be improved or not, if it's deemed to be irrelevant by concensus then remove it, don't just delete right off the bat, that doesn't benefit any article. (84.13.253.245 (talk) 17:05, 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)

Good point. I've removed the Old English table. I agree we should add one example from the slavic and baltic families, and also indo-iranian to cover the major IE branches. (Nebulousity (talk) 19:40, 31 August 2008 (UTC))
Btw, now that the section has been expanded a bit, Angr do you still have any objection to the relevance tag being removed? (78.150.131.147 (talk) 21:48, 1 September 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)

I'm not asking for sources showing that the older languages were synthetic and the younger languages are periphrastic. I'm asking for sources showing that "the differences [between the Indo-European languages] have increased significantly over time". The chart of the ancient IE languages shows that there were already tremendous differences between them, and I'm not seeing an increase in differentiation between the ancient languages and the modern ones. —Angr 09:07, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Ah I see what you mean. I guess I was just wearing my linguist goggles when I wrote that. I'm quite happy to scrap that statement and simply say that the differences have increased over time. How's that? Akerbeltz (talk) 10:39, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't think removing the word "significantly" is much of an improvement. The average person is going to see a chart showing several very different-looking ancient languages and then a chart showing several equally different-looking modern languages, and then wonder why we think the differences have increased. And why do we even have to say so? Isn't it fairly unremarkable that as related languages evolve, they diverge from each other more and more? And why should anyone care that they do? It seems to me that section is making a point that is both obvious and uninteresting, and then doesn't even succeed in using evidence to establish that obvious, uninteresting point. —Angr 10:46, 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)

I disagree, to a linguist the point might well seem obvious, and uninteresting, but to a linguistic layman (like me) the table presents an excellent visual indicator of how closely related the languages were at one time. For example Haitian Creole originates from contact with French, but the language has fundamental differences due it's substratal influences, and who knows some or all of the IE languages may have initially started out as a creole, by contact with PIE speakers, borrowing PIE vocabulary, but not necessarily grammatical structure. This table does show that that wasn't the case. (78.150.131.147 (talk) 12:26, 2 September 2008 (UTC))
But it doesn't. A linguistic layman looking at the tables is only going to see a few tiny similarities (Latin and Greek both end in -ō in the 1st person singular; the 1st person plurals all have an "m" in them somewhere) and otherwise wonder what on earth the table is trying to show. It certainly doesn't succeed in showing laymen any great similarities between the languages; you have to know some things about historical linguistics (like the fact that Greek -ousi is a phonologically regular outcome of -onti) to see through the surface forms and find the similarities. —Angr 12:45, 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)

  • Pardon my innocent remark, but in what languages, other than partially Hindi and Faroese, does this comparison table prove the "shift from synthetic to periphrastic systems" ? Also, the dual forms are missing, and this root also had athematic reduplicative present retained in Sanskrit, and there are more than a few notable Indo-Europeanists (Beekes, Watkins, Kortlandt, Jasanoff..) that would object to 2nd and 3rd-person present singular endings to be equal to athematic endings (i.e. *bʰere(h₁)y, *bʰere), which would render most apparent "similarities" parallel innovations (which casual reader cannot possibly know). I'm also pretty sure that most people don't know that e.g. -tъ in OCS beretъ is not of PIE *-ti, but in fact agglutinated demonstrative pronoun.. Highly confusing for a casual reader. If IP wants to prove otherwise well-known typological universal, he should not do it at the expanse of article's general appearance! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:42, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thomas Young

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)

Okay; can you add a source for it, though? —Angr 14:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
the source is the thomas young page, which i linked to. isn´t that ok? Compromiso (talk) 18:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Well not really, because that article doesn't cite its sources for the claim either, unless the footnote sourcing the previous sentence applies to the sentence making this claim too. —Angr 18:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
yes, you are right. the french wikipedia entry on indo-european languages writes: "En 1813, Thomas Young invente le terme de "langues indo-européennes" pour regrouper ces langues", but does not give a source either. my source was: Historia Universal Vol.1 Los orígenes, Barcelona: Salvat Editores, 2004, p.409, which is not helpful in the english wikipedia. maybe you have an english source?Compromiso (talk) 21:20, 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)

don´t understand, Akerbeltz, bopp didn´t coin the term. and i think the the proto- question is not relevant to the terminology.
thanks to contributor Ivan Štambuk for the reference for thomas young. i made a correction of the german term in the footnote (indogermanisch, not indogermanische, which is an inflection), and made a comment on the controversy in german. © (talk) 15:43, 26 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)

ah, the acrimonious controversy which i referred to is reaching the english-language page too! User Dbachmann has written "(nonsense, a wikipedia talkpage isn't a quotable source.)" and deleted the addition i had made:
"In German it's indogermanisch 'Indo-Germanic' (though the term is controversial, see the acrimonious German discussion page http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Indogermanische_Sprachen)"
his intervention rather proves my point, thank you for your imprudent and acrimonious (you write "nonsense"), Dbachmann. there _is_ an acrimonious controversy on the german discussion page which i linked to, even if you would prefer that there was not, and no amount of undebated reverting will alter that fact. Compromiso (talk) 17:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
no it doesn't. See WP:RS, WP:SELF. If you want to claim there is a "controversy" in article namespace, you will have to provide academic references stating there is one. --dab (𒁳) 18:21, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
I added a brief - and I believe harmless - explanation of the term "Indo-Germanic/indogermanisch" to the foot-note, a term which before WW II was in use not just in Germany:e.g. Columbia Encyclopedia 1942 edition, © 1935, 1938, 1940, 1942 , p. 881: "Indo-European or Indo-Germanic languages..." Marschner (talk) 09:56, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Collaborative and adversarial paradigms in the wikipedia project

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)

What I said "Okay; can you add a source for it, though?" about is the claim that Thomas Young was the one who coined the term "Indo-European". What Dbachmann said "nonsense" about is the claim that there is an ongoing controversy in the German-speaking world about the terms indogermanisch and indoeuropäisch, and in particular about using a talk page from German Wikipedia as a source for that claim. The fact that there's a controversy on a Wikipedia talk page does not mean there's actually a controversy in the real world. —Angr 09:57, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
thank you, you are quite right, and i did not want to put it otherwise. i also appreciate the problem of the legitimacy of wikipedia as a source - in fact i myself never cite it as authoritative. there are two points: the veracity of the description "controversy" and its documentation. as i said, i´m quite happy to withdraw both "controversy" and "acrimonious", but would encourage that the link to the german talkpage be reinstated in the way i deswcribe above. i don´t want to start having footnotes to footnotes, so i won´t start compiling references documenting the controversy. Compromiso (talk) 11:46, 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)

see above - i suggest a link, not a reference. 'as i said, i´m quite happy to withdraw both "controversy" and "acrimonious", but would encourage that the link to the german talkpage be reinstated in the way i deswcribe above. i don´t want to start having footnotes to footnotes, so i won´t start compiling references documenting the controversy.' Compromiso (talk) 13:18, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
There's simply no acceptable way to link to a talk page at German Wikipedia from this article, because there is nothing that a Wikipedia talk page can be used as evidence for. —Angr 14:01, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Exactly. Moreschi (talk) 14:05, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Your long lost Urheimat is in Siberia,the most expansive and most indigenous european dna ties to siberia

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)

Whatever. DNA evidence proves exactly nothing in linguistics. —Angr 16:14, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Baltic vs Baltic-Slavic or does the reader get the correct picture?

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)

This is certainly not my view. I’m not a linguist. See for example: ” 15/14th cent. BC – crystalization of the proto-Slavs in the southern periphery of the proto-Baltic continuum, localized from Silesia to Central Ukraine (Trziniec-Komarov culture).”- Novotna and Blazek, BALTISTICA XL I I ( 2 ) 2007 185–210, p. 208. The article in E Britannica says the same. Moreover, Endre Bojtár, (FOREWORD TO THE PAST, p. 72) notes that there has been found no archaeological evidence for a common Baltic-Slavic culture.
I’m writing this not in an attempt to deny the Balto-Slavic hypothesis. I have nothing against it. My point is that there are references, which put this hypothesis into question and/or provide a broader context. For example, the interaction between Baltic and Germanic, the widespread Baltic river names vs the relatively compact Proto-Slavic Urheimat, Baltic loanwords in Finish, finally the recent political flavor in “marketing” the Baltic-Slavic hypothesis. Now, I don’t want a discussion on these topics to occupy a half of the IE article, but I propose that an English-speaking user of Wiki with no intention to dig into linguistic theories and hypothesis should get an objective and realistic impression of what “all these Eastern” languages are like and what relative distances are between them.Gotho-Baltic 22:03, 30 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs)
You're right. You're not a linguist and you don't understand what you're talking about (neither am I, but I more or less pretend to know what I'm talking about ^_^). Novotná & Blažek (2007) paper you mention deals with chronological dating of Balto-Slavic split (obviously ipso facto presuming that it does form a genetic clade), and in conclusion, which you shamelessly ripped out of context (where "Proto-Baltic" is used synonymously with "Proto-Balto-Slavic"), explicitely states that the reached numbers of BSl. divergence of 1400-1340 BCE "agree well with Trziniec-Komarov culture, localized from Silesia to Central Ukraine and dated to the period 1500–1200 BCE". And one sentence further from where your "proto-Baltic continuum" is mentioned is: "These results represent unambiguous evidence for Balto-Slavic unity." :)
Archeology alone means nothing. There is even less evidence for Proto-Italic or Proto-Anatolian culture too, but nobody questions those.. Languages only ideally map to archeological cultures or ethnicities, most of the time you have some chained dialect continuum across wide area. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2009 (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)

Gotho-Baltic has already commented at Talk:Balto-Slavic languages, and Ivan Štambuk has responded there. (Balto-Slavic is just a disambig.) In Gotho-Baltic's defense, his original comment was about the maps used on this page. —Angr 12:32, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
Certainly, I meant the IE language evolution maps when I started this discussion. I provided with several references, which project the Baltic-Slavic unity into separated geographic locations. Ivan Stambuk felt offended (if so- I apologize) and he suspected me “shamelessly” pulling the evidences from the context, which, of course is not the case- the article by Novotna&Blazek is fully available on-line. Moreover, you can read a nice summary on the Baltic-Slavic in Bojtar’s book (partially online via google books). He also refers to a theory by Ivanov&Toporov, which considers the Slavic originally as a peripheral dialect of proto-Baltic (ref Bojtar, p71). I think it is worth mentioning in this paragraph:
“9. Balto-Slavic languages, believed by most Indo-Europeanists[6] to form from a phylogenetic unit, while a minority ascribes similarities to prolonged language contact.”
And finally, consider extending the Baltic l. language area in the Diversification maps to comprise present-days Estonia and (maybe) the Baltic shore in southern Finland:
“The oldest (proto-)Baltic and (proto-)Germanic loanwords [in Finnish] mainly relate to nature. Particularly interesting in this sense are the sea-related words derived from the Baltic branch, meri (sea) itself and the fish-names lohi (salmon) and ankerias (eel). These words at least seem to imply that the proto-Finns, or more accurately the Finno-Ugrian peoples, had never lived by a salt sea before coming into contact with the Baltic peoples.”
http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=25830
Also in Britannica, “Finnic Peoples”: “In prehistoric times, the Finnic peoples evidently came from central Russia, probably bringing with them the art of cereal agriculture. Those migrating to the area of Estonia may have met a numerous population of Balts and Germans already there, but those going on to Finland entered an almost uninhabited country”.
Good luck and see you at Talk:Balto-Slavic.Gotho-Baltic 13:59, 2 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs)

[edit] Map question: China

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. Tomertalk 20:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Interesting point. The Tajiks are an official minority in Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County. The Russians are an official minority too but have no autonomous area - it's only a tiny minority. So the languages have whatever status national minority languages in China have. Akerbeltz (talk) 21:21, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Changed 'Snake' to 'Serpent'

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)

Are you sure this is more accurate though? It is my understanding that in English "serpent" refers not to mundane snakes but to snakes in some kind of ritual or mythological context. I recognise that the word serpent may be preferable as it is a cognate to the examples given, but it may also not be the best translation. --86.144.101.159 (talk) 01:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] made a few corrections in the starting line

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)

[edit] Whe greek is missing from the family trees?

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 board you're talking about includes Hellenic languages. garik (talk) 18:50, 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)

[edit] Early cases

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)

[edit] Loss

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)

I changed it to "loss of intervocalic *s in Proto-Greek" so it can refer to things like *genesos > γένεος. +Angr 13:40, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bad French

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)

See: semantic change. It's a derived verb with different than meaning the original verbal base. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Köszönöm. I should have thought about that. Then again, maybe there should be a note that the meaning has changed since. CielProfond (talk) 03:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
It's just being used as an example of the conjugation, no claims as to its meaning are made. +Angr 05:27, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Indoeuropean

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)

Indo-European is a reconstructed language that was never written down. Archaeologists don't find evidence of languages unless the languages were written down. +Angr 18:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, that is why indoeuropean theory, is a theorem that stands on air, there is no fundamental evidence to its existance. Never was. Angr, the language was never written down, but the society must have lived somewhere. A drawing, a pot, something of this great civilisation has never been found. Ever. Still, as if a matter of "faith", linguists insists that this great first european civilisation existed and gave its language to the masses. With this tactic one can support anything. It is irrational and nothing more than just a linguists impression of what was. Even if this great civilization never written anything down, surely their settings, utensils would have been found somewhere. Since they are not, why would anyone support the existence but not the inexistance of this imaginary civilisation? Perhaps not everyone is related, but they borrowed words from each other. Anyway indoeuropean to my understanding is simply another theory far from being scientifically proven. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.207.162.51 (talk) 11:31, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
While I disagree a lot with what you say, this isn't the place for debate. Your issue seems to be less with the Wikipedia article, and more with those in the Indo-European linguist and history research community. This article is about what mainstream IE linguist and history researchers believe, not a place to debate their opinions. If you can cite criticism of the IE/PIE theories that exists in academia, feel free to add it to the article but remember to cite your sources and discuss it dispassionitly. David Reiss (talk) 13:58, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Removed suggested subfamilies

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)

Nostratics is a very active research field, and deserves to be mentioned. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:18, 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)

Lingual Community? What on earth are you talking about? ^_^ Illyč-Svityč, Dogolpolsky, Bomhard etc. are/were top linguists, their works are published in credible books and academic journals and hardly fit into some "propaganda" theory. There is a lot of skepticism for Nostratics in the West, but it doesn't invalidate the fact that it is being actively researched in the highest possible academic standards. This touches PIE as PIE is grouped as one of the Nostratic branches and it must be mentioned. All the other articles on major language families mention their still-controversial supergroupings (Nostratic, Altaic..), and the article on IE should be no exception. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 05:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree that it should be mentioned; however, I also agree that it is very controversial in the field and not accepted by the majority of linguists. I've attempted to make this clearer. garik (talk) 09:51, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Language grouping: Baltic and Slavic

We have to take this topic again. Certainly, the Balto-Slavic group is a sort of mainstream view, especially if one judges from the available sources in English on Internet. Beside scientific arguments there are political reasons (systematic manipulation and propaganda of the Soviet science) that explain why the Balto-Slavic hypothesis became widespread compared to the other ones (see above, Bojtar, 1999). However, there is no doubt that the scientific dispute is not solved, the discussion is going on and this should be reflected in this article. Proofs? Henning Andersen (UCLA professor) states in his article “Slavic and Indo-European Migrations”, 2003, p 49, that there are at least three groups of theories dealing with the relationships between Baltic and Slavic. Moreover, organizers of a very recent special workshop (German, Austrian, Dutch) put it like this: “Despite many years of research, the reason for the striking similarity remains unclear. There are two competing, although not mutually exclusive hypotheses. One assumes an intermediate Balto-Slavic stage after the break up of Proto-Indo-European. The other hypothesis seeks to explain the similarities within the framework of language contact, i.e as a result of their longstanding geographic relationship. Both positions have been argued, but neither has been generally accepted.”, http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/curric/colloq2.htm. Note, these are secondary or tertiary references.
The situation has to be reflected properly in this article, see WP:UNDUE, or we will need to look for some other remedies, e.g. WP:POV tag. My personal message to a couple of particular enthusiasts of Balto-Slavic hypothesis- Ivan S. and Angr: stop misusing WP policy for pushing your OR. This will be dealt accordingly.Gotho-Baltic 22:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs)

[edit] Diversification Section

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)

[edit] 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 ?

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)

[edit] Problem under "Diversification"

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:

  1. ^ a b c Sahoo, Sanghamitra; Anamika Singh, G. Himabindu, Jheelam Banerjee, T. Sitalaximi, Sonali Gaikwad, R. Trivedi, Phillip Endicott, Toomas Kivisild, Mait Metspalu, Richard Villems and V. K. Kashyap (2006-01-24). "A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion scenarios". Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of United States of America 103 (4): 843–848. doi:10.1073/pnas.0507714103. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/103/4/843.
  2. ^ a b Sengupta, S.; et al. (2006-02-01). "Polarity and temporality of high-resolution y-chromosome distributions in India identify both indigenous and exogenous expansions and reveal minor genetic influence of Central Asian pastoralists.". Am J Hum Genet. (The American Society of Human Genetics) 78 (2): 201–221. PMID 16400607. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16400607. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
  3. ^ a b Sharma, S.; Saha A, Rai E, Bhat A, Bamezai R. (2005). "Human mtDNA hypervariable regions, HVR I and II, hint at deep common maternal founder and subsequent maternal gene flow in Indian population groups.". J Hum Genet. 50 (10): 497–506. doi:10.1007/s10038-005-0284-2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16205836&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum. Retrieved 2007-12-03.

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 (Standford University Press). I will come back with more sources to further substantiate this, if need be.

Derived (talk) 06:47, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

This is an article on languages, not genetics, which are of absolutely no use in determining how languages spread. +Angr 16:22, 20 September 2009 (UTC)


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