THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES BY 2nd GROUP UIN SMH BANTEN (HISTORY OF ENGLISH)
THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY OF
LANGUAGES
Prepared to fullfill the assignment History of English
Lecturer: Drs. H. Abdul Mu’in, S.Ag.,M.M
2nd Group
- Wardah Jamilah ( 171230015)
- Hayatun Nupus ( 171230029)
- Eka Nurhidayati ( 171230030)
TBI 4/A
ENGLISH EDUCATION MAJORS
TARBIYAH FACULTY AND TEACHER TRAINING
STATE UNIVERSITY FOR ISLAMIC STUDIES SULTAN MAULANA
HASAANUDIN BANTEN
2017/2018
PREFACE
First of all the authors say a sence of thanks to
Allah SWT for being able to complete a paper antitled “THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY OF
LANGUAGES’’Peace and
greeting to the last chance of propethood ,the best example of brotherhood and
love each other.
We said thank you so much for everyone that help us to
make this article. We are aware this article is far from perfect,but we hope
this article can useful for everyone eswpecially for writer. This article web
made to fullfill our assignment in HISTORY
OF ENGLISH.
We wait for your constructive critism as well as the
advice from those who really want this article better improved.My sincere
gratitude is of course,addressed to them.
Serang, 28 February 2019
TABLE OF CONTENT
PREFACE
TABLE OF CONTENT
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A.
Background................................................................................................... 4
B.
Problem
Formulation........................................................................ ............4
C.
Purpose..........................................................................................................4
CHAPTER II DISCUSSION
A.
Language
Constantly Changing……………………………………………..5
B.
Dialectal
Differentiation............................................................................... .6
C.
The
Discovery of Sanskrit..............................................................................6
D.
Grimm’s
Law..................................................................................................8
E.
The
Indo-European Family........................................................................... .9
F.
Indian............................................................................................................ .9
G.
Iranian......................................................................................................... .10
H.
Armenian..................................................................................................... .11
I.
Hellenic....................................................................................................... .12
J.
Albanian...................................................................................................... .13
K.
Italic............................................................................................................ .13
L. Balto-Slavic................................................................................................. 14
M.
Germanic..................................................................................................... 16
N.
Celtic........................................................................................................... 17
O.
Twentieth-century
Discoveries.................................................................... 18
P. . The
Home of the Indo-Europeans............................................................. 19
CHAPTER III
A. CONCLUSION......................................................................................... .23
B. SUGGESTION.......................................................................................... .23
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.
PROBLEM BACKGROUND
English is a west Germanic language that originated
from Anglo-frisian dialect brought in the mid 5th to 7th
centuries AD by Anglo-saxons settlers. With the end of Roman rule in 410 AD,latin ceased to be a
major influence on the celtic languPages spoken by the majority of the
population.History of the English
language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded
Britain during the 5th century
AD.These tribes,the Angels ,the Saxons and the Jutes ,crossed he North
sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany.At that time the
inhabitants of Britain spoke a celtic language .But most of the celtic speakers
were pushed west and north by the invaders mainly into what is now
Wales,Scotland,and Ireland. The Angels came from England and their language was
called Englisc- from which the words England and English are derived.
2.
PROBLEM
FORMULATION
a.
How
many language in indo-european ?
b.
What
is Dialectal Differentiation?
c. What is The Discovery of Sanskrit?
d.
What
is The Indo-European Family?
3.
PURPOSE
1.
in
order to know the indo-european family of languages.
2.
In
order to know many language indo-european family.
3.
In
order to know different of many language in indo European family.
CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION
A.
Language
Constantly Changing.
In the mind of the average person language is
associated with writing and calls up apicture of the printed page. From Latin
or French as we meet it in literature we get an impression of something uniform
and relatively fixed. We are likely to forget that writing is only a
conventional device for recording sounds and that language is primarily
speech.Even more important, we tend to forget that the Latin of Cicero or the
French of Voltaire is the product of centuries of development and that language
as long as it lives and is in actual use is in a constant state of change.
Speech is the product of certain muscular movements.
The sounds of language are produced by the passage of a current of air through
cavities of the throat and face
controlled by the muscles of these regions. Any voluntary muscular
movement when
constantly repeated is subject to gradual alteration. This is as true of
the movements ofthe organs of speech as of any other parts of the body, and the
fact that this alteration takes place largely without our being conscious of it
does not change the fact or lessen its effects. Now any alteration in the
position or action of the organs of speech results in a difference in the sound
produced. Thus each individual is constantly and quite unconsciously introducing
slight changes in his or her speech. There is no such thing as uniformity in
language. Not only does the speech of one community differ from that of
another, but the speech of different individuals of a single community, even
different members of the same family, also is marked by individual
peculiarities. Members of a group, however, are influenced by one another, and
there is a general similarity in the speech of a given community at any
particular time. The language of any district or even country is only the sum
total of the individual speech habits of those composing it and is subject to
such changes as occur in the speech of its members, so far as the changes
become general or at least common to a large part of it.
Although the alteration that is constantly going on in
language is for the most part gradual and of such nature as often to escape the
notice of those in whose speech it is taking place, after a period of time the
differences that grow up become appreciable. If we go back to the eighteenth
century we find Alexander Pope writing
Good-nature and good-sense must even join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine....
where it is
apparent that he pronounced join as jine. Again he writes
Here
thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost
sometimes counsel take—and sometimes Tea.
It
is demonstrable that he pronounced tea as tay. Elsewhere he rhymes full—rule;
give—believe; glass—place; ear—repair; lost—boast; thought—fault;
obliged—besieged; reserve—starve. Since Pope’s time the pronunciation of at
least one in each of these pairs has changed so that they are no longer
considered good rhymes. If we go back to Chaucer, or still further, to King
Alfred (871–899), we find still greater differences. King Alfred said bān
(bone), hū (how), hēah (high); in fact all the long vowels of his pronunciation
have undergone such change as to make the words in which they occur scarcely
recognizable to the typical English-speaking person today.[1]
B.
Dialectal
Differentiation.
As previously remarked, where constant communication
takes place among the people speaking a language, individual differences become
merged in the general speech of the community, and a certain conformity
prevails. But if any separation of one community from another takes place and
lasts for a considerable length of time, differences grow up between them. The
differences may be slight if the separation is slight, and we have merely local
dialects. On the other hand, they may become so considerable as to render the
language of one district unintelligible to the speakers of another. In this
case we generally have the development of separate languages. Even where the
differentiation has gone so far, however, it is usually possible to recognize a
sufficient number of features which the resulting languages still retain in
common to indicate that at one time they were one. It is easy to perceive a
close kinship between English and German. Milch and milk, brot and bread,
fleisch and flesh, wasser and water are obviously only words that have diverged
from a common form. In the same way a connection between Latin and English is
indicated by such correspondences as pater with English father, or frāter with
brother, although the difference in the initial consonants tends somewhat to
obscure the relationship. When we notice that father corresponds to Dutch
vader, Gothic fadar, Old Norse faðir, German vater, Greek patēr, Sanskrit
pitar-, and Old Irish athir (with loss of the initial consonant), or that
English brother corresponds to Dutch broeder, German bruder, Greek phrātēr,
Sanskrit bhrātar-, Old Slavic bratŭ, Irish brathair, we are led to the
hypothesis that the languages of a large part of Europe and part of Asia were
at one time identical.
C.
The Discovery of
Sanskrit.
The most important discovery leading to this
hypothesis was the recognition that Sanskrit, a language of ancient India, was
one of the languages of the group. This was first suggested in the latter part
of the eighteenth century and fully established by the beginning of the
nineteenth. The extensive literature of India, reaching back further than that
of any of the European languages, preserves features of the common language
much older than most of those of Greek or Latin or German.
It is easier, for example, to see the resemblance
between the English word brother and the Sanskrit bhrātar-than between brother
and frāter. But what is even more important, Sanskrit preserves an unusually
full system of declensions and conjugations by which it became clear that the
inflections of these languages could likewise be traced to a common origin.
Compare the following forms of the verb to be:
Old English
|
Gothic
|
Latin
|
Greek
|
Sanskrit
|
Eom (am)
|
im
|
sum
|
eimi
|
asmi
|
Eart (art)
|
is
|
es
|
ei
|
asi
|
Is (is)
|
ist
|
est
|
esti
|
asti
|
Sindon (are)
|
sijum
|
sumus
|
esmen
|
smas
|
Sindon (are)
|
sijuþ
|
estis
|
este
|
stha
|
Sindon (are)
|
sind
|
sunt
|
eisi
|
santi
|
The
Sanskrit forms particularly permit us to see that at one time this verb had the
same endings (mi, si, ti, mas, tha, nti) as were employed in the present tense
of other verbs, for example:
Sanskrit Greek
dádāmi dídōmi (I give)
dádāsi dídōs
dádāti dídōsi
dadmás dídomen (dial. didomes)
datthá dídote
dáda(n)ti didóāsi (dial. dídonti)
The
material offered by Sanskrit for comparison with the other languages of the
group, both in matters of vocabulary and inflection, was thus of the greatest
importance. When we add that Hindu grammarians had already gone far in the
analysis of the language, had recognized the roots, classified the formative
elements, and worked out the rules according to which certain sound-changes
occurred, we shall appreciate the extent to which the discovery of Sanskrit
contributed to the recognition and determination of the relation that exists
among the languages to which it was allied.[2]
D.
Grimm’s Law
A further important step was taken when in 1822 a
German philologist, Jacob Grimm, following up a suggestion of a Danish
contemporary, Rasmus Rask, formulated an explanation that systematically
accounted for the correspondences between certain consonants in the Germanic
languages and those found for example in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. His
explanation, although subsequently modified and in some of the details of its
operation still a subject of dispute, is easily illustrated. According to
Grimm, a p in Indo-European, preserved as such in Latin and Greek, was changed
to an f in the Germanic languages. Thus we should look for the English
equivalent of Latin piscis or pēs to begin with an f, and this is what we
actually find, in fish and foot respectively. What is true of p is true also of
t and k: in other words, the original voiceless stops (p, t, k) were changed to
fricatives (f, þ, h). So Latin trēs=English three, Latin centum=English
hundred. A similar correspondence can be shown for certain other groups of
consonants, and the Consequently Sanskrit bhárāmi (Greek )=English bear,
Sanskrit dhā=English do, Latin hostis (from *ghostis)=English guest. And the
original voiced stops (b, d, g) changed to voiceless ones in the Germanic
languages, so that Latin cannabis=English hemp (showing also the shift of
initial k to h), Latin decem=English ten, Latin genu=English knee. In High
German some of these consonants underwent a further change, known as the Second
or High German Sound-Shift. It accounts for such differences as we see in
English open and German offen, English eat and German essen.formulation of
these correspondences is known as Grimm’s Law. The cause of the change is not
known. It must have taken place sometime after the segregation of the Germanic
from neighboring dialects of the parent language. There are words in Finnish
borrowed from Germanic that do not show the change and that therefore must have
resulted from a contact between Germanic and Finnish before the change
occurred. There is also evidence that the shifting was still occurring as late
as about the fifth century B.C. It is often assumed that the change was due to
contact with a non-Germanic population. The contact could have resulted from
the migration of the Germanic tribes or from the penetration of a foreign
population into Germanic territory. Whatever its cause, the Germanic
sound-shift is the most distinctive feature marking off the Germanic languages
from the languages to which they are related.
Certain apparent exceptions to Grimm’s Law were
subsequently explained by Karl Verner and others. It was noted that between
such a pair of words as Latin centum and English hundred the correspondence
between the c and h was according to rule, but that between the t and d was
not. The d in the English word should have been a voiceless fricative, that is,
a þ. In 1875 Verner showed that when the Indo-European accent was not on the
vowel immediately preceding, such voiceless fricatives became voiced in
Germanic. In West Germanic the resulting ð became a d, and the word hundred is
therefore quite regular in its correspondence with centum. The explanation was
of importance in accounting for the forms of the preterite tense in many strong
verbs. Thus in Old English the preterite singular of cweþan (to say) is ic cwœþ
but the plural is we In the latter word the accent was originally on the
ending, as it was in the past participle (cweden), where we also have a d. The
formulation of this explanation is known as Verner’s Law, and it was of great
significance in vindicating the claim of regularity for the sound-changes that
Grimm’s Law had attempted to define.
E.
The
Indo-European Family.
The languages thus brought into relationship by
descent or progressive differentiation from a parent speech are conveniently called
a family of languages. Various names have been used to designate this family.
In books written a century ago the term Aryan was commonly employed. It has now
been generally abandoned and when found today is used in a more restricted
sense to designate the languages of the family located in India and the plateau
of Iran. A more common term is Indo-Germanic, which is the most usual
designation among German philologists, but it is open to the objection of
giving undue emphasis to the Germanic languages. The term now most widely
employed is Indo-European, suggesting more clearly the geographical extent of
the family. The parent tongue from which the Indo-European languages have
sprung had already become divided and scattered before the dawn of history. When
we meet with the various peoples by whom these languages are spoken they have
lost all knowledge of their former association. Consequently we have no written
record of the common Indo-European language. By a comparison of its
descendants, however, it is possible to form a fair idea of it and to make
plausible reconstructions of its lexicon and inflections. The surviving
languages show various degrees of similarity to one another, the similarity
bearing a more or less direct relationship to their geographical distribution.
They accordingly fall into eleven principal groups: Indian, Iranian, Armenian,
Hellenic, Albanian, Italic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Hittite, and
Tocharian. These are the branches of the Indo-European family tree, and we
shall look briefly at each.[3]
F.
Indian.
The
oldest literary texts preserved in any Indo-European language are the Vedas or
sacred books of India. These fall into four groups, the earliest of which, the
Rig-veda, is a collection of about a thousand hymns, and the latest, the
Atharva-veda, a body of incantations and ritual formulas connected with many
kinds of current religious practice. These books form the basis of Brahman
philosophy and for a long time were preserved by oral transmission by the
priests before being committed to writing. It is therefore difftcult to assign
definite dates to them, but the oldest apparently go back to nearly 1500 B.C.
The language in which they are written is known as Sanskrit, or to distinguish
it from a later form of the language, Vedic Sanskrit. This language is also
found in certain prose writings containing directions for the ritual,
theological commentary, and the liken (the Brahmanas), meditations for the use
of recluses (the Aranyakas), philosophical speculations (the Upanishads), and
rules concerning various aspects of religious and private life (the Sutras).
The use of Sanskrit was later extended to various writings outside the sphere
of religion, and under the influence of native grammarians, the most important
of whom was Panini in the fourth century B.C., it was given a fixed, literary
form. In this form it is known as Classical Sanskrit. Classical Sanskrit
is
the medium of an extensive Indian literature including the two great national
epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, a large body of drama, much lyric and
didactic poetry, and numerous works of a scientific and philosophical
character. It is still cultivated as a learned language and formerly held a
place in India similar to that occupied by Latin in medieval Europe. At an
early date it ceased to be a spoken language. Alongside of Sanskrit there
existed a large number of local dialects in colloquial use, known as Prakrits.
A number of these eventually attained literary form; one in particular, Pāli,
about the middle of the sixth century B.C. became the language of Buddhism.
From these various colloquial dialects have descended the present languages of
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, spoken by some 600 million people. The most
important of these are Hindi, Urdu (the official language of Pakistan), Bengali
(the official language of Bangladesh), Punjabi, and Marathi. Urdu is by origin
and present structure closely related to Hindi, both languages deriving from
Hindustani, the colloquial form of speech that for four centuries was widely
used for intercommunication throughout northern India. Urdu differs from Hindi
mainly in its considerable mixture of Persian and Arabic and in being written
in the Perso-Arabic script instead of Sanskrit characters. Romany, the language
of the Gypsies, represents a dialect of northwestern India which from about the
fifth century A.D. was carried through Persia and into Armenia and from there
has spread through Europe and even into America.
G. Iranian.
Northwest of India and covering the great plateau of
Iran is the important group of languages called Iranian. The Indo-European
population that settled this region had lived and probably traveled for a
considerable time in company with the members of the Indian branch. Such an
association accounts for a number of linguistic features that the two groups
have in common. Of the people engaged in this joint migration a part seem to
have decided to settle down on this great tableland while the rest continued on
into India. Subsequent movements have carried Iranian languages into
territories as remote as southern Russia and central China. From early times
the region has been subjected to Semitic influence, and many of the early texts
are preserved in Semitic scripts that make accurate interpretation difftcult.
Fortunately the past few decades have seen the recovery of a number of early
documents, some containing hitherto unknown varieties of Iranian speech, which
have contributed greatly to the elucidation of this important group of
languages. The earliest remains of the Iranian branch fall into two divisions,
an eastern and a western, represented respectively by Avestan and Old Persian.
Avestan is the language of the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians. It is
some-times called Zend, although the designation is not wholly accurate.
Strictly speaking, Zend is the language only of certain late commentaries on
the sacred text. The Avesta consists of two parts, the Gathas or metrical
sermons of Zoroaster, which in their original form may go back as far as 1000
B.C., and the Avesta proper, an extensive collection of hymns, legends,
prayers, and legal prescriptions that seem to spring from a period several
hundred years later. There is considerable difference in the language of the
two parts. The other division of Iranian, Old Persian, is preserved only in
certain cuneiform inscriptions which record chiefly the conquests and
achievements of Darius (522–486 B.C.) and Xerxes (486–466 B.C.). The most
extensive is a trilingual record (in Persian, Assyrian, and Elamite) carved in
the side of a mountain at Behistan, in Media, near the city of Kirmanshah.
Besides a representation of Darius with nine shackled prisoners, the rebel
chieftains subjugated by him, there are many columns of text in cuneiform
characters. A later form of this language, found in the early centuries of our
era, is known as Middle Iranian or Pahlavi, the official language of church and
state during the dynasty of the Sassanids (A.D. 226– 652). This is the ancestor
of modern Persian. Persian, also known as Farsi, has been the language of an
important culture and an extensive literature since the ninth century. Chief
among the literary works in this language is the great Persian epic the
Shahnamah. Persian contains a large Arabic admixture so that today its
vocabulary seems almost as much Arabic as Iranian. In addition to Persian,
several other languages differing more or less from it are today in use in
various provinces of the old empire—Afghan or Pashto
and Baluchi in the eastern territories of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and
Kurdish in the
west, in Kurdistan. Besides these larger groups there are numerous
languages and dialects in the highlands of the Pamir, on the shores of the
Caspian Sea, and in the valleys of the
Caucasus.
H. Armenian.
Armenian is found in a small area south of the
Caucasus Mountains and the eastern end of the Black Sea. The penetration of
Armenians into this region is generally put between the eighth and sixth
centuries B.C. They evidently came into their present location by way of the
Balkans and across the Hellespont. The newcomers conquered a population of
which remnants are still perhaps to be found in the Caucasus and whose language
may have influenced Armenian in matters of accent and phonology. Armenian shows
a shifting of certain consonants that recalls the shifts in Germanic described
above and which, like those, may be due to contact with other languages.
Moreover, like the south Caucasus languages, Armenian lacks grammatical gender.
Armenian is not linked to any other special group of the Indo-European family
by common features such as connect Indian with Iranian. It occupies a somewhat
isolated position. But in ancient times Thrace and Macedonia were occupied by
two peoples—the Thraco-Phrygians, whom Herodotus mentions as very numerous, and
the Macedonians, whose kings for a time adopted Greek and enjoyed a short but
brilliant career in Greek history. The Phrygians, like the Armenians, passed
into Asia Minor and are familiar to us as the Trojans of Homer. Their language
shows certain affinities with Armenian; and, if we knew more about it, we
should probably find in it additional evidence for the early association of the
two peoples. Unfortunately we have only scanty remains of Phrygian and
Macedonian—chiefly place names, glosses, and inscriptions—enough merely to
prove their Indo-European character and give a clue to the linguistic
affiliation. Armenian is known to us from about the fifth century of our era
through a translation of the Bible in the language. There is a considerable
Armenian literature, chiefly historical and theological. The Armenians for
several centuries were under Persian domination, and the vocabulary shows such
strong Iranian influence that Armenian was at one time classed as an Iranian
language. Numerous contacts with Semitic languages, with Greek, and with
Turkish have contributed further to give the vocabulary a rich character.
I.
Hellenic.
At the dawn of history the Aegean was occupied by a
number of populations that differed in race and in language from the Greeks who
entered these regions later. In Lemnos, in Cyprus, and Crete especially, and
also on the Greek mainland and in Asia Minor, inscriptions have been found
written in languages which may in some cases be Indo-European and in others are
certainly not. In the Balkans and in Asia Minor were languages such as Phrygian
and Armenian, already mentioned, and certainly Indo-European, as well as others
(Lydian, Carian, and Lycian) that show some resemblance to the Indo-European
type but whose relations are not yet determined. In Asia Minor the Hittites,
who spoke an Indo-European language (see § 27), possessed a kingdom that lasted
from about 2000 to 1200 B.C.; and in the second millennium B.C. the eastern Mediterranean
was dominated, at least commercially, by a Semitic people, the Phoenicians, who
exerted a considerable influence upon the Hellenic world. Into this mixture of
often little-known populations and languages the Greeks penetrated from the
north shortly after a date about 2000 B.C. The entrance of the Hellenes into
the Aegean was a gradual one and proceeded in a series of movements by groups
speaking different dialects of the common language. They spread not only
through the mainland of Greece, absorbing the previous populations, but also
into the islands of the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor. The earliest great
literary monuments of Greek are the Homeric poems the Iliad and the Odyssey,
believed to date from the eighth century B.C. Of the Greek language we
recognize five principal dialectal groups: the Ionic, of which Attic is a
subdialect, found (except for Attic) in Asia Minor and the islands of the
Aegean Sea; Aeolic in the north and northeast; Arcadian-Cyprian in the
Peloponnesus and Cyprus; Doric, which later replaced Arcadian in the
Peloponnesus; and Northwest Greek in the north central and western part of the
Greek mainland. Of these, Attic, the dialect of the city of Athens, is by far
the most studied. It owes its supremacy partly to the dominant political and
commercial position attained by Athens in the fifth century, partly to the
great civilization that grew up there. The achievements of the Athenians in
architecture and sculpture, in science, philosophy, and literature in the great
age of Pericles (495–429 B.C.) and in the century following were extremely
important for subsequent civilization. In Athens were assembled the great
writers of Greece—the dramatists Æchylus, Euripides, and Sophocles in tragedy,
Aristophanes in comedy, the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the orator
Demosthenes, the philosophers Plato and
Aristotle. Largely because of the political and
cultural prestige of Athens, the Attic dialect became the basis of a koiné or
common Greek that from the fourth century superseded the other dialects; the
conquests of Alexander (336–323 B.C.) established this language in Asia Minor
and Syria, in Mesopotamia and Egypt, as the general language of the eastern
Mediterranean for purposes of international communication. It is chiefly familiar
to modern times as the language of the New Testament and, through its
employment in Constantinople and the Eastern Empire, as the medium of an
extensive Byzantine literature. The various dialects into which the language of
modern Greece is divided represent the local differentiation of this koiné
through the course of centuries. At the present time two varieties of Greek
(commonly called Romaic, from its being the language of the eastern Roman
Empire) are observable in Greece. One, the popular or demotic, is the natural
language of the people; the other, the “pure,” represents a conscious effort to
restore the vocabulary and even some of the inflections of ancient Greek. Both
are used in various schools and universities, but the current official position
favors the demotic.
J.
Albanian.
Northwest of Greece on the eastern coast of the
Adriatic is the small branch named Albanian. It is possibly the modern remnant
of Illyrian, a language spoken in ancient times in the northwestern Balkans,
but we have too little knowledge of this early tongue to be sure. Moreover, our
knowledge of Albanian, except for a few words, extends back only as far as the
fifteenth century of our era, and, when we first meet with it, the vocabulary
is so mixed with Latin, Greek, Turkish, and Slavonic elements—owing to
conquests and other causes—that it is somewhat difficult to isolate the
original Albanian. For this reason its position among the languages of the
Indo-European family was slow to be recognized. It was formerly classed with
the Hellenic group, but since the beginning of the present century it has been
recognized as an independent member of the family.
K. Italic.
The Italic
branch has its center in Italy, and to most people Italy in ancient times
suggestsRome and the language of Rome, Latin. But the predominant position
occupied by Latin in the historical period should not make us forget
that Latin was only one of a number of languages once
found in this area. The geographical situation and agreeable climate of nothing
more than the Latin language as this language has continued to be spoken in the streets of Rome from the founding of the city. It is
particularly important as the language of Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and the vernacular language in which the cultural achievements
of the Renaissance first found expression. Romanian is the easternmost of the
Romance languages, representing the continued influence of Roman legions in ancient
Dacia. In addition to these six languages, about a dozen Romance languages are spoken by smaller populations. Other languages on
the Iberian peninsula are Catalan, a language of the
northeast but also found in Corsica, and one with an extensive literature, and
Galician in the northwest, similar to both Spanish and Portuguese, having features
of each, just as Catalan shares features of Provençal
and Spanish. The Rhaeto-Romanic group in
southeastern Switzerland and adjacent parts of the Tyrol includes Romansch and dialects
in which Germanic elements are especially prominent. Walloon is a dialect of French
spoken in southern Belgium.
The Romance languages, while representing a continuous
evolution from Latin, are not derived from the Classical Latin of Cicero and
Virgil. Classical Latin was a literary language with an elaborate and somewhat
artificial grammar. The spoken language of the masses, Vulgar Latin (from Latin
vulgus, the common people), differed from it not only in being simpler in
inflection and syntax but also to a certain extent divergent in vocabulary. In
Classical Latin the word for horse was equus, but the colloquial word was
caballus. It is from the colloquial word that French cheval, Provençal caval,
Spanish caballo, Italian cavallo, etc., are derived. In like manner where one
wrote pugna (fight), urbs (city), os (mouth), the popular, spoken word was
battualia (Fr. bataille), villa (Fr.ville), bucca (Fr. bouche). So
verberare=battuere (Fr. battre), osculari=basiare (Fr.baiser), ignis=focus (Fr.
feu), ludus=jocus (Fr. jeu). It was naturally the Vulgar Latin of the
marketplace and camp that was carried into the different Roman provinces. That
this Vulgar Latin developed differently in the different parts of Europe in
which it was introduced is explained by a number of factors. In the first
place, as Gustav Gröber observed, Vulgar Latin, like all language, was
constantly changing, and because the Roman provinces were established at
different times and the language carried into them would be more or less the
language then spoken in the streets of Rome, there would be initial differences
in the Vulgar Latin of the different colonies.5 These differences wouldbe
increased by separation and the influence of the languages spoken by the native
populations as they adopted the new language. The Belgae and the Celts in Gaul,
described by Caesar, differed from the Iberians in Spain. Each of these peoples
undoubtedly modified Latin in accordance with the grammars of their own
languages, as normally happens when languages come into contact.6 It is not
difficult to understand the divergence of the Romance languages, and it is not
the least interesting feature of the Romance group that we can observe here in
historical time the formation of a number of distinct
languages from single parent
speech. Such a process of progressive differentiation has brought about, over
a greater area and a longer period of time, the differences among the languages
of the whole Indo-European family.
L.
Balto-Slavic.
The
Balto-Slavic branch covers a vast area in the eastern part of Europe. It falls
into two groups,
the Baltic and the Slavic, which, in spite of differences, have sufficient
features incommon to justify their being classed together. There are three Baltic languages:
Prussian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. Prussian is now extinct, having been displaced by
German since the seventeenth century. Latvian is the language of about two million
people in Latvia. Lithuanian is spoken by about three million people in the Baltic
state of Lithuania. It is important among the Indo-European languages because of its
conservatism. It is sometimes said that a Lithuanian peasant can understand certain simple phrases
in Sanskrit. Although the statement implies too much, Lithuanian preserves some very
old features that have disappeared from practically all the other languages of the family. The similarities among the
various languages of the Slavic group indicate that as late as the seventh or eighth century
of our era they were practically identical or at least were united by frequent intercourse.
At the present time they fall into three divisions: East Slavic, West Slavic, and South
Slavic. The first two still cover contiguous areas, but the South Slavs, in the Balkan
peninsula, are now separated from the rest by a belt of non- Slavic people, the Hungarians and
the Romanians.
The
earliest form in which we possess a Slavic language is a part of the Bible and certain liturgical texts
translated by the missionaries Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century. The language of these
texts is South Slavic, but it probably approximates with considerable closeness the common
Slavic from which all the Slavic languages have come. It is known as Old Church
Slavonic or Old Bulgarian and continued to be use throughout the Middle Ages and
indeed well into modern times as the ecclesiastical language of the Orthodox Church. East Slavic includes three
varieties. Chief of these is Russian, the language of about 175 million people. It is found
throughout the north, east, and central parts of Russia, was formerly the court language, and
is still the official and literary language of the country. Belorussian (White Russian) is
the language of about 9 million people in Belarus and adjacent parts of Poland.
Ukrainian is spoken by about 50 million people in Ukraine. Nationalist ambitions have led
the Ukrainians to stress the difference between their language and Russian, a
difference that, from the point of view of mutual intelligibility, causes some difficulty with the
spoken language. Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian constitute the largest group of
Slavic languages.
West Slavic
includes four languages. Of these Polish is the largest, spoken by about 36 million
people within Poland, by about 5 million in the United States, and by smaller numbers
in the former Soviet Union and other countries. Next in size are the mutually intelligible
languages of the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Czech, spoken by about 10 The
Indo-European family of languages 27 million people,
and Slovak, spoken by 5 million. The fourth language, Sorbian, is spoken by
only 100,000 people in Germany, in a district a little northeast of Dresden. South
Slavic includes Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, and modern Macedonian, not to be
confused with ancient Macedonian, an Indo-European language of uncertain affinity.
Bulgarian was spoken in the eastern part of Balkan peninsula
when the region was overrun by a non-Slavic people.
But the
conqueror was absorbed by the conquered and
adopted their language. Modern Bulgarian has borrowed extensively from Turkish
for the language of everyday use, while the literary language is much closer to Russian.
The history of Yugoslavia and the fortunes of its languages illustrate
tragically the quip that “a
language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” Serbo-Croatian represents the union
of Serbian, formerly the language of Serbia, and Croatian, spoken before World War
I by the Croats of Bosnia and Croatia. The two languages are practically
identical but use different
alphabets. With the breakup of Yugoslavia we can expect references to Serb Croatian
to be replaced by references separately to Serbian and Croatian. Slovene is
spoken by about 1.5 million people in Slovenia, at the head of the Adriatic. The
Slavic languages constitute a more homogeneous group than the languages of some
of the other branches. They have diverged less from the common type than
those, for example, of the Germanic branch and in a number
of respects preserve a rather archaic aspect.
Moreover the people speaking the Baltic languages must have lived for many
centuries in fairly close contact with the Slavs after the two had separated
from the parent Indo-European community.
M. Germanic.
The
common form that the languages of the Germanic branch had before they became
differentiated
is known as Germanic or Proto-Germanic. It antedates the earliest written records of the family and is reconstructed
by philologists in the same way as is the parent Indo-European. The languages
descended from it fall into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic, and West
Germanic. The
principal language of East Germanic is Gothic. By the third century the Goths
had spread
from the Vistula to the shore of the Black Sea and in the following century
they were
Christianized by a missionary named Ulfilas (311–383), whose father seems to
have
been
a Goth and his mother a Greek (Cappadocian). Our knowledge of Gothic is almost wholly due to a translation of
the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament made by Ulfilas. Except for some runic
inscriptions in Scandinavia it is the earliest record of a Germanic language we possess. For
a time the Goths played a prominent part in European history, including in their
extensive conquests both Italy, by the Ostrogoths, and Spain, by the Visigoths. In
these districts, however, their language soon gave place to Latin, and even elsewhere it
seems not to have maintained a very tenacious existence. Gothic survived longest in the
Crimea, where vestiges of it were noted down in the sixteenth century. To the East
Germanic branch belonged also Burgundian and Vandalic, but our knowledge of these
languages is confined to a small number of proper names. North Germanic is found in
Scandinavia, Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. Runic inscriptions from the third
century
preserve our earliest traces of the language. In its earlier form
the common Scandinavian language is conveniently spoken of as Old.[4]
Norse. From
about the eleventh century on, dialectal differences become noticeable. The Scandinavian
languages fall into two groups: an eastern group including Swedish and Danish,
and a western group including Norwegian and Icelandic. Norwegian ceased to be a
literary language in the fourteenth century, and Danish (with Norwegian
elements) is one written language of Norway.7 Of the early
Scandinavian languages Old Icelandic is by far the most
literary. Iceland was colonized by settlers from Norway about A.D. 874 and
early preserved a body of heroic literature unsurpassed among the Germanic
peoples .Among the more important monuments are the Elder or
Poetic Edda, a collection of poems that probably date from the tenth
or eleventh century, the Younger or Prose Edda compiled by
Snorri Sturluson (1178–1241), and about forty sagas, or prose epics, in which
the lives and exploits of various traditional figures are related. West
Germanic is of chief interest to us as the group to which English belongs. It
is divided into two branches, High and Low German, by
the operation of a Second (or High German)
Sound-Shift analogous to that described above as Grimm’s Law. This change, by
which West Germanic p, t, k, d, etc. were changed into other sounds,
occurred about A.D. 600 in the southern or mountainous part of the
Germanic area but did not take place in the lowlands
to the north. Accordingly in early times we distinguish as Low German tongues
Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian, Old Frisian, and Old English.
The last two are closely
related and constitute a special or Anglo-Frisian subgroup.8 Old Saxon has become
the essential constituent of modern Low German or Plattdeutsch; Old Low Franconian,
with some mixture of Frisian and Saxon elements, is the basis of modern Dutch
in the Netherlands and Flemish in northern Belgium; and Frisian survives in the Netherland
province of Friesland, in a small part of Schleswig, in the islands along the coast,
and other places. High German comprises a number of dialects (Middle, Rhenish, and
East Franconian, Bavarian, Alemannic, etc.). It is divided chronologically into
Old High German (before 1100), Middle High German
(1100–1500), and Modern High German (since
1500). High German, especially as spoken in the midlands and used in the imperial
chancery, was popularized by Luther’s translation of the Bible (1522–1532) and since
the sixteenth century has gradually established itself as the literary language
of Germany.
N. Celtic.
The Celtic languages formed at one time
one of the most extensive groups in the Indo-European family. At the beginning
of the Christian era the Celts were found in Gaul and Spain,
in Great Britain, in western Germany, and northern Italy—indeed, they covered the
greater part of Western Europe. A few centuries earlier their triumphal
progress had extended even into Greece and Asia Minor. The steady
retreat of Celtic before advancing Italic and
Germanic tongues is one of the surprising phenomena of history. Today Celtic languages
are found only in the far corners of France and the British Isles; in the areas
in which they were once dominant they have left but
little trace of their presence. The language of
the Celts in Gaul who were conquered by Caesar is known as Gallic. Since
it was early replaced by Latin we know next to nothing about it. A few
inscriptions, some proper names (cf. Orgetorix), one
fragmentary text, and a small number of words preserved in
modern French are all that survive. With respect to the Celtic languages in Britain
we are better off, although the many contradictory theories of Celticists9 make
it impossible to say with any confidence how the Celts
came to England. The older view, which is now
questioned, holds that the first to come were Goidelic or Gaelic Celts. Some
of these may have been driven to Ireland by the later invaders and from there
may have spread into Scotland and the Isle of Man.
Their language
is represented in modern times by Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. The later
Brythonic Celts, after occupying for some centuries
what is now England, were in turn driven westward by Germanic invaders in
the fifth century. Some of the fugitives crossed over into Brittany. The modern representatives
of the Brythonic division are Welsh, Cornish, and Breton.The remnants of this
one-time extensive group of languages are everywhere losing ground at the
present day. Spoken by minorities in France and the British
Isles, these languages are faced with the competition
of two languages of wider communication, and some seem destined not to
survive this competition. Cornish became extinct in the eighteenth century, and
Manx, once spoken by all the native inhabitants of the
Isle of Man, has died out since World War II. In
Scotland Gaelic is found only in the Highlands. It is spoken by 75,000 people, of
whom fewer than 5,000 do not know English as well. Welsh is still spoken by
about one-quarter of the people, but the spread of English
among them is indicated by the fact that the number
of those who speak only Welsh had dropped from 30 percent in 1891 to 2 percent
in 1950 and is still slowly decreasing.
rish is spoken
by about 500,000 people, most of whom are bilingual. Whether nationalist
sentiment will succeed in arresting the declining trend
that has been observable here as in the other Celtic territory remains to be seen.
If language planning efforts fail, it seems inevitable that eventually another
branch of the Indo-European family of languages will
disappear.
O. Twentieth-century
Discoveries.
Besides the nine branches described above, discoveries
in the twentieth century added two new groups to the family: Hittite and
Tocharian. Until recently the Hittites have been known to us chiefly from
references in the Old Testament. Abraham bought the burial place for Sarah from
a Hittite (Gen. 23), and Bathsheba, whom David coveted, was the wife of Uriah
the Hittite (2 Sam. 11). Their language was preserved only in a few
uninterpreted documents. In 1907, however, an archaeological expedition
uncovered the site of the Hittite capital in Asia Minor, at Boghazköi, about
ninety miles east of Ankara, containing the royal archives of nearly 10,000
clay tablets. The texts were writtenin Babylonian cuneiform characters, and
some were in the Babylonian language (Akkadian), the diplomatic language of the
day. Most of the tablets, however, were in an unknown language. Although a
number of different languages seem to have been spoken in the Hittite area, nine-tenths of the
tablets are in the principal language of the kingdom.It is apparently not the
original language of the district, but it has been given the nameHittite. The
sudden opening up of so extensive a collection of texts has permitted considerable
progress to be made in the study of this language. The most remarkable effect
upon Indo-European studies has been the confirmation of a hypothesis made by
Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879. On the basis of internal evidence Saussure had
proposed for Indo-European certain sound patterns that did not occur in any of
the languages thenknown. Twenty years after the discovery of the Hittite
tablets it could be demonstrate that Saussure’s phonological units, which had
become known as “laryngeals,” occurred in Hittite much as he had proposed for
Indo-European. The number and phonetic features
of laryngeals in Indo-European are still a matter of debate, but there
is general agreement that at least one laryngeal must be posited for the parent
language.10 In the reconstruction of
Indo-European syntax, Hittite has provided invaluable evidence.
A strong
argument can now be made that Hittite and the oldest hymns of the Rig-veda
represent the Object- Verb structure of Indo-European, which by the time of
Classical Greek and Latin had nbeen largely modified to a Verb-Object
pattern.11 A large proportion of the Hittite vocabulary comes from a
non-Indo-European source. The blending with foreign elements appears to be as
great as in Albanian. By some scholars Hittite is treated as coordinate with
Indo-European, and the period of joint existence is designated Indo-Hittite. It
issufficient, however, to think of Hittite as having separated from the
Indo-Europeancommunity some centuries (perhaps 500 years or more) before any of
the other group began to detach themselves. Tocharian is the name given to the
language in which some fragmentary texts were discovered in
the early part of the present century in western China (Xinjiang Uygur). Some
of them contain the name of a king who according to Chinese evidence reigned in the
early part of the seventh century of our era.
To the
philologist the discovery is of some importance
because the language belongs with the Hellenic, Italic, Germanic, and= Celtic groups as a centum language rather
than with the eastern or satem with which we should expect it to be
most closely related.
P.
The Home of the
Indo-Europeans.
It is obvious that if the languages just described
represent the progressive differentiation of an original speech, this speech,
which we may for convenience call the Indo-European language, must have been
spoken by a population somewhere at some time. What can be learned of these
people and their early location?
Concerning their physical character, practically
nothing can be discerned. Continuity in language and culture does not imply
biological descent. It is not an uncommon phenomenon in history for a people to
give up their own language and adopt another. Sometimes they adopt the language
of their conquerors, or of those whom they have conquered, or that of a people
with whom they have simply become merged in a common territory. The
Indo-European languages are spoken today in many cultures that until recently
have had completely unrelated heritages. And to judge by the large variety of
people who have spoken these languages from early times, it is quite possible
that the people of the original Indo-European community already represented a
wide ethnic diversity. Neither can we form any very definite idea of the date
at which this people lived as a single, more or less coherent community. The
period of their common life must have extended over a considerable stretch of
time. It is customary to place the end of their common existence somewhere
between 3500 and 2500 B.C.
With respect to the location of this community at a
time shortly before their dispersal,
we have at least a basis for inference. To begin with,
we may assume that the original
home was in that part of the world in which the
languages of the family are chiefly to be found today, and we may omit from
consideration Africa, Australia, and the American continents because we know
that the extension of Indo-European languages in these areas has occurred in
historical times. History and its related sciences, anthropology and
archaeology, enable us also to eliminate certain other regions, such as the
British Isles and the peninsulas of Southern Europe. Early literary tradition
occasionally preserves traces of a people at a former stage in their history.
The earliest books of the Hindus, for example, the Vedas, show an acquaintance
with the Indus but not with the Ganges, indicating that the Indo-Europeans
entered India from the northwest. In general, we may.
Be fairly sure that the only
regions in which it is reasonable to seek the original home ofthe Indo-European
family are the mainland of Europe and the western part of Asia.Priorto the
middle of the nineteenth century it was customary to assume an Asiatic home
forthe family. Such an opinion was the natural result of biblical tradition
that placed theGarden of Eden in the neighborhood of Mesopotamia. This notion
seemed to findconfirmation in the discovery that Sanskrit, situated in Asia, not
only was an Indo-European language but was also in many ways closest in form to
the parent speech.Finally, Europe had seen the invasion of the Hun and the Turk
and other Asiatic peoples,and it seemed natural to think of the movements of
population as generally westward. Butit was eventually recognized that such
considerations formed a very slender basis forvalid conclusions.
It was observed that by far the larger part of
the languages of thisfamily have been in Europe from the earliest times to
which our knowledge extends. Wasit not more natural to suppose that the few
representatives of the family in Asia shouldhave made their way eastward than
that nearly all the languages of Europe should havebeen the result of Asiatic
incursions? In the course of the nineteenth century thecomparative study of the
Indo-European languages brought to light a number of facts thatseemed to
support such a supposition.The evidence of language itself furnishes the most
satisfactory criterion yet discoveredon which to base a solution of the
problem. It is obvious that those elements of thevocabulary which all or a
considerable number of the branches of the family have incommon must have
formed a part of the original word-stock. In fact, a word common totwo or three
branches of the family, if the branches have not been in such proximity toeach
other as to suggest mutual influence, is likely to have been in the original
language.Now the Indo-European languages generally have a common word for winter
and forsnow.
It
is likely that the original home of the family was in a climate that at
certainseasons at least was fairly cold. On the other hand it is not certain
that there was acommon word for the sea. Instead, some branches of the family,
when in the course oftheir wanderings they came into contact with the sea, had
to develop their own words forthe new conception. The original community was
apparently an inland one, although notnecessarily situated at a great distance
from the coast. Still more instructive is theevidence of the fauna and flora
known to the Indo-European community. As HaroldH.Bender, whose Home of the
Indo-Europeans is an admirable survey of the problem,puts it, “There are no
anciently common Indo-European words for elephant, rhinoceros,camel, lion,
tiger, monkey, crocodile, parrot, rice, banyan, bamboo, palm, but there
arecommon words, more or less widely spread over Indo-European territory, for
snow andfreezing cold, for oak, beech, pine, birch, willow, bear, wolf, otter,
beaver, polecat,marten, weasel, deer, rabbit, mouse, horse, ox, sheep, goat,
pig, dog, eagle, hawk, owl,jay, wild goose, wild duck, partridge or pheasant,
snake, tortoise, crab, ant, bee, etc.” Theforce of this list is not in the
individual items but in the cumulative effect of the twogroups. Two words in
it, however, have been the object of special consideration, beechand bee.
A word corresponding to English beech is found in a number of
Indo-Europeanlanguages and was undoubtedly part of the parent vocabulary. The
common beech (Fagus
silvatica Linnaeus) is of relatively limited range: It is practically
confined to central Europe and is
not native east of Poland and Ukraine.13 The testimony of this word as
to the original home of the Indo-European family would be
persuasive if we could be sure that in the parent speech the word always
designated what we know as the beech tree. But
although this is its meaning in Latin and the Germanic languages, the word means
“oak” in Greek, “elder” and “elm” in other languages.14 In like manner the familiarity
of the Indo-European community with the bee is evident from a common word
for honey (Latin mel, Greek English mildew, etc.) and a common
word for an intoxicating drink made from honey, called mead
in Old English. The honeybee is indigenous over
almost all Europe but is not found in those parts of Asia that have ever been
considered as possible locations of the Indo-European community. From evidence such
as this a European home for the Indo-European family has come to be considered more
probable.
One other linguistic
consideration that figured prominently in past discussions is worth citing
because of its intrinsic interest. The branches of the Indo-European family fall
into two well-defined groups according to the modification that certain
consonants of the parent speech underwent in each. They are known
as the centum and satem groups from the words
for hundred in Latin and Avestan, respectively. The centum group includes
the Hellenic, Italic, Germanic, and Celtic branches. To the satem group
belong Indian, Iranian, Armenian,
Balto-Slavic, and Albanian. A line running roughly from Scandinavia
to Greece separates the two and suggests a line of cleavage from which dispersion
eastward and westward might have taken place. Although this division has been
cited as supporting a homeland in central Europe—in the general area of the
present Baltic states—linguists have been unable to find
additional characteristics that would have been
associated with such a fundamental split. With increasing knowledge about the classification
of dialects and the spread of linguistic change, it has become more plausibleo
view the centum-satum division as the result of a sound change in the
eastern section of the Indo-European speech community that spread
through Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Slavic, and into
Baltic.15 It is still useful to speak of centum and satem languages,
but the classification itself does not permit deductions
about early migrations.16 From the nature of the case, the original home of
the Indo-European languages is still a matter of much
uncertainty, and many divergent views are held by scholars.
During the past thirty years impressive new
discoveries have come from archaeological excavations in Russia and Ukraine.
Graves in the steppe area between the River Don and the Urals have yielded
evidence of an Indo-European “Kurgan” culture that existed north of the Caspian
Sea from the fifth through the third millennia B.C. It isespecially interesting
to note the characteristic flora and fauna of the area during that period, as
described by Marija Gimbutas: “The Kurgan people lived in the steppe and
forest-steppe zone, but in the fifth and fourth millennia the climate was
warmer and damper than at present and what is now the steppe zone was more
forested. Mixed forests, including oak, birch, fir, beech, elder, elm, ash,
aspen, apple, cherry and willow, extended along rivers and rivulets in which
such forest animals as aurochs, elk, boar, wild horse, wolf, fox, beaver,
squirrel, badger, hare, and roe deer were present.”17 Gimbutas, who first
proposed the name of the culture, believes that the Kurgan people were the
original Indo-Europeans, an opinion shared by many archaeologists and
linguists. Some scholars accept the descriptions by American and Soviet
archaeologists of the early periods of Kurgan culture but propose different
directions of migration.18 Although the Indo-European homeland may prove
impossible to locate precisely, one can expect new evidence and new
interpretations of old evidence from both linguistics and archaeology. At
present it is sufficient to observe that most of the proposed locations can be
accommodated in the district east of the Germanic area stretching from central
Europe to the steppes of southern Russia
The civilization that had been attained
by the people of this community at the time their dispersal was approximately
that known as neolithic.
Copper was, however,
already in use
to a limited extent. The Indo-Europeans were no longer purely nomadic but had settled homes with houses and some
agriculture. Here the evidence drawn from the vocabulary
must be used with caution. We must be careful not to attribute to words their modern significance. The existence
of a word for plow does not necessarily indicate anything
more than the most primitive
kind of implement. The Indo-Europeans raised
grain
and wool and had learned to spin and weave. They kept cattle and had for food
not only the products of their own
labor but such fruit and game as have always served the nneeds of primitive communities.
They recognized the existence of a soul, believed in gods, and had developed certain
ethical ideas. Without assuming complete uniformity of chievement throughout the area
covered by this linguistic group, we may believe that the tural development attained by the
Indo-European was already considerable.
CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION
The languages thus brought into relationship by
descent or progressive differentiation from a parent speech are conveniently
called a family of languages. Various names have been used to designate this
family. In books written a century ago the term Aryan was commonly employed. It
has now been generally abandoned and when found today is used in a more
restricted sense to designate the languages of the family located in India and
the plateau of Iran. A more common term is Indo-Germanic, which is the most
usual designation among German philologists, but it is open to the objection of
giving undue emphasis to the Germanic languages. The term now most widely employed
is Indo-European, suggesting more clearly the geographical extent of the
family. The parent tongue from which the Indo-European languages have sprung
had already become divided and scattered before the dawn of history. The
surviving languages show various degrees of similarity to one another, the
similarity bearing a more or less direct relationship to their geographical
distribution. They accordingly fall into eleven principal groups: Indian,
Iranian, Armenian, Hellenic, Albanian, Italic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Celtic,
Hittite, and Tocharian. These are the branches of the Indo-European family
tree, and we shall look briefly at each.
SUGGESTION
After
read and learn this article we hope we can understand more about “indo-european
family of languages”.We hope
after hear our presentation we can improve our English skill especially in
History of English.
REFERENCE
Baugh C. Albert,
A History of The English Language,Francis
: Pearon Educationj,2005)
Cannon Garland,
The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones,(Cambridge : UK,1990)
Renfrew Colin,
The Origins of Indo-European Languages,1989.
Einar Haugen,
Languages Conflict and Languages Planning:The Case of Modern Nowergian,(Cambridge,1966)
[1] Albert C. Baugh, A History of The English Language,Francis
: Pearon Educationj,2005)
[2] Garland Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones,(Cambridge : UK,1990)
[3] Colin Renfrew, The Origins of Indo-EuropeaN Languages,1989.
[4] Einar Haugen, Languages Conflict and Languages Planning:The Case of Modern Nowergian,(Cambridge,1966).
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