Who could you tell me what exactly the ralation between Indo-European and Germany,Greek, and Latin is. and How influenced each other. such as the sound alteration, consonants interchange, and spelling alteration.
There are a dozen language groups in Europe and southern Asia that all seem to have distant connections. The first person to point this out was William Jones, in a paper in a journal called /Asiatick Researches/, around 1790.
Since then, people have been reconstructing the parent language that must in some way be ancestral to these modern groups. They call it proto-Indo-European, and the languages that descend from it are called Indo-European languages.
Proto-Indo-European is not recorded in any texts. It’s not known where it was spoken or when, but many people guess somewhere north of the Black Sea, maybe 3000 to 5000 BC.
Among the modern groups that descend from pIE are Germanic (including German, English, etc.), Celtic, Italic (including Latin and its modern descendants e.g. French, Portuguese), Greek, Indic (including Sanskrit and its modern descendants e.g. Hindi), Slavic, Baltic, Iranian (including Persian), Armenian, Albanian ...
These languages have also influenced one another directly in many ways, and continue to do so ...
[quote author=tauzi link=board=etymology;num=1139622923;start=0#0 date=02/10/06 at 20:55:23]Who could you tell me what exactly the ralation between Indo-European and Germany,Greek, and Latin is.
Hi Tauzi,
Answering all those questions and explaining the answers would take quite a few pages (or rather books, libraries).
I tried to give a short outline. Although Wikipedia is not my favourite source, i want to refer to this page as a starting point.
A short outline is given in Trask’s "Language, the basics", 2nd edition and Crystal’s "Encyclopedia of Language", which are both easily found in bookshops or libraries.
Maybe it’s my personal dada, but i first like to straighten out some terminological problems. It’s very difficult to have a discussion about a specialized field when people don’t use the same (and widely accepted) terminology.
- Indo-European is used to denote a language family, a group of genetically related languages which all go back to one language, viz. Proto-Indo-European. "One language", but probably in the sense like "German is one language", i mean, a collection of varieties, dialects.
- Here, "proto" means "reconstructed", "not attested", "not found back in old texts". Proto-forms and PIE words/roots are indicated by an asterisk *.
- genetically related has to be taken as a metaphor, a metaphor which ultimately finds its origin in the so-called language family tree model, in which is spoken of daughter and sister languages etc.
- In the language tree model there are several so-called branches, which can be subdivided. Latin, for example, belongs to the Italic branch, while English and German belong to the Germanic branch.
- The Germanic branch groups languages which are believed to have had one common ancestor (namely Proto-Germanic) and which share (or shared) a bunch of features.
Please note the difference between Germanic and German: German is a Germanic language!
- The language family tree model is quite a handy one, but it’s necessary to realize its limitations. It’s like a map of the world with all the countries, capitals and major cities on it. Very handy, but limited. Such a map doesn’t tell you a thing about the relations (e.g. treaties, unions, ...) between those countries.
How influenced each other. such as the sound alteration, consonants interchange, and spelling alteration.
- The clearest influence of language A on language B is the lexical influence, otherwise said ‘words’. One example is the English word ‘landscape’, which is a loan from Dutch (landschap), at the moment that painters of the Low Countries were quite famous.
Another, more complicated example is ‘soldier’, which is a loan from French ‘soudier’ (it appeared in English first as ‘soudier’ and even ‘sawdier’. Under influence of medieval Latin this was "relatinized" as soldier - i mean the ‘l’ of solidus got reinserted).
- Languages change, and they change constantly. And those changes don’t always require an external explanation. I mean, a language doesn’t change per se because of other languages.
The changes (especially the sound changes) are quite well documented (see here) and described in a variety of historical grammar books.
- Influences from two languages other than lexical are quite hard to detect, though a lot of people have (successfully) argued for Frankish (Germanic) influence in French grammatical structures, French in English, etc.
It’s not without dangers, either: the old Germanic language Gothic is only known through Gothic translations of the Bible, translations from Greek. Those Gothic texts hence exhibit major syntactic similarities with Greek. Concluding from this that Gothic and Greek are syntactically similar is too easy and too wrong.
- Substratum languages is another issue. Imagine that English becomes the major language in Germany, and that the Germans start to speak like "Tomorrow comes ze voman". Both the syntax and the pronunciation could be explained as subtstratum influence of German upon English.
But for quite some time "substratum language" was the buzzphrase, the "explanation" for feaures that could not be readily explained.
For example: Latin was introduced in what’s now Spain and Portugal, and the local languages are believed to have had an influence upon that Latin, they are believed to have acted as substrata. The problem here is that linguists hardly know anything about those formerly spoken languages.
Quite short an answer, i know. And short here also means incomplete and (probably) to simplistic (or wrong).
I strongly suggest to do some reading on the wikipedia website.
Or to visit following sites:
- On PIE and IE languages
- IE language families
- On IE languages
- Ask a linguist: if you search for indo european, you find quite a few FAQs and answers.
Until recently, most linguists divided Indo- European into two groups: Satem and Centum (or Kentom).
The "Satem" group includes all the Slavic languages, all of the Indo-Iranian languages plus Latvian, Lithuanian and probably Albanian and Armenian. The "Centum" group includes all of the Celtic, Germanic, and Romance languages plus Latin and Greek.
Newer models proposed in the 1980’s divide Indo-European into a "Northern" group and a "Southern" group instead. This is the one I am inclined to go along with.
In this scheme, Germanic, Balto-Slavic and Indo Iranian are part of the Northern group; Celtic, Lepontic, Latin / Italic, Greek, Phrygian, Armenian, Albanian and Tocharian are all part of the Southern Group.
The Southern group is the older of the two. This group separated from the ancestral Proto-Indo European language sooner than the Northern group did. Therefore, it might actually be a tad bit closer related to some of the language families outside the Indo-European group like Finno-Ugrian or even Hamito-Semitic than the Northern branch of Indo-European. :)
[quote author=brian_costello link=board=etymology;num=1139622923;start=0#3 date=02/19/06 at 03:36:08]The Southern group is the older of the two. This group separated from the ancestral Proto-Indo European language sooner than the Northern group did. Therefore, it might actually be a tad bit closer related to some of the language families outside the Indo-European group like Finno-Ugrian or even Hamito-Semitic than the Northern branch of Indo-European.
Could you please explain the logic of the last sentence. Apart from people who believe in Nostratic, I think it is difficult to find somebody who thinks that there is a relationship between IE, F-U and/or Afro-Asiatic languages that is closer than having exchanged a few loanwords.
Hello. One linguist I read a few years ago proposed that Indo-European (i.e. "Proto-IndoEuropean" ; "Urindoeuropaisch") may have started out about 6,000 years ago as a dialect of Finnish but he made no mention of the proposed Nostratic theory. "Nostraticism" sounds plausible to me and whether it’s true or not, I think it needs to be continually thought about.
Remember that the conventional wisdom today is that all modern humans (or Homo Sapiens) originated in Africa about 35-40,000 years ago.
Two migrations of them crossed the Red Sea into Asia with one group migrating to Central Asia and another group migrating around the Indian subcontient and Southeast Asia, eventually to New Guinea and Australia.
The group that migrated to Central Asia went on to populate Europe, Siberia, China, North & South America; Some of them backtracked into the Middle East.
According to geneticist Mary-Claire King who lives right here in my hometown of Seattle, DNA testing indicates a northern European origin for most of the people living in the Middle East and most of India today (This would include the Semites). The evidence comes from a common genetic immunity to a certain AIDS-like disease which appeared in northern Europe, near the Baltic, about 10,000 years ago. All of the people today from Scandinavia and the British Isles all the way to Greece, North Africa, Arabia and India have this genetic mutation in varying degrees.
A common genetic or anthropological origin certainly points to common shared languages the further back in time you go. Indo-European is only about 4,000 to 6,000 years old yet humans were running around Eurasia and even Africa long before that and they must have spoken languages that belonged to some language family or macrolinguistic group preceding Indo-European. ;)
In spite of this however, I’m still not going to go as far as saying "Argument settled." In fact, I wish that more people would be willing to discuss or debate this topic on this forum. I take the dimmest view of those people out there who read our posts and choose to remain silent. Nevertheless, Anders, this is how I see things at the present time. As always any countervailing views are still welcome - anytime. Take care!
[quote author=brian_costello link=board=etymology;num=1139622923;start=0#5 date=02/21/06 at 03:36:00]Anders,
Hello. One linguist I read a few years ago proposed that Indo-European (i.e. "Proto-IndoEuropean" ; "Urindoeuropaisch") may have started out about 6,000 years ago as a dialect of Finnish
Indo-European is only about 4,000 to 6,000 years
Crackpots can be amusing. A book I read names Brihaspati as the second great elucidator of Sanskrit grammar (after Brahma). Brihaspati was born in 4000 BCE, so PIE, by definition preceding Sanskrit, must be much older than 6000 years. I read B.N. Jha: A glimpse of the historyof the Sanskrit grammar. Can you find the title of what you read?
Remember that the conventional wisdom today is that all modern humans (or Homo Sapiens) originated in Africa about 35-40,000 years ago.
Perhaps. But we don’t know how many dialects (if even having invented speech) they spoke when leaving Africa.
The group that migrated to Central Asia went on to populate Europe, Siberia, China, North & South America; Some of them backtracked into the Middle East.
Again perhaps, because we don’t even have proof of the Aryan Invasion Theory, saying that IE people migrated from perhaps Central Asia into the Indian subcontinent, like we have no proof that IE languages started in India and spread from there (the Indigenous Aryanism Theory).
According to geneticist Mary-Claire King who lives right here in my hometown of Seattle, DNA testing indicates a northern European origin for most of the people living in the Middle East and most of India today (This would include the Semites). The evidence comes from a common genetic immunity to a certain AIDS-like disease which appeared in northern Europe, near the Baltic, about 10,000 years ago. All of the people today from Scandinavia and the British Isles all the way to Greece, North Africa, Arabia and India have this genetic mutation in varying degrees.
A common genetic or anthropological origin certainly points to common shared languages the further back in time you go. Indo-European is only about 4,000 to 6,000 years old yet humans were running around Eurasia and even Africa long before that and they must have spoken languages that belonged to some language family or macrolinguistic group preceding Indo-European.
There are three facets of human life that I want to keep separate from one another when discussing origins. They are genetics, language and culture. Pots and other artifacts don’t speak. Neither do genes.
And anyway, any theory about language in prehistoric times will be guesses only. Some guesses are more credible then others. For example, it is not imposible that languages like English and German share an "ancestor". There are so many similarities in grammar and lexicon. Personally, I think that a similar relationship between the established language families, like between Semitic and IE or between Finno-Ugrian and IE, is rather inconceivable.
Re: "I love that expression "conventional wisdom". It’s so snobby… so elitist,so well, since we believe it it must be right. ‘
Not true; patently false. You are uncomfortable with the expression probably because you have had no college.
Even without a formal college education however you can still always broaden your horizons on you own, read up on topics and learn new vocabulary. If you do this, I don’t think you will find that "conventional wisdom" sounds all that unusual.
Latest Google results for "Conventional wisdom" = 2,094,230 - Quite a lot! :)
We are getting way off-topic here however if I may say one final thing regarding the connotations of "conventional wisdom":
It is not necessarily a sign of sneering. "Conventional wisdom" in the English language is usually just another way of saying "common wisdom" or "popular wisdom" as when someone says "Sometimes there is more truth in the conventional wisdom than the professional". This statement means that sometimes the average man in the street might have ideas which are closer to the truth than a scientist." But there is certainly nothing snobbish about it.
I don’t believe that Katy has had any college. Nothing condescending about that just an honest opinion and free speech too. On the other hand, what is inapproriate on an internet forum are vicious personal attacks, spamming and the use of four letter words some of which I have seen on this forum and reported to the moderator.
I have heard that there is already legislation before the U.S. Congress that will enable internet users to sue people who slime them on the Internet if it is approved of; I also read in the paper that the use of anonymous user ID’s on the Internet will probably be gone in 10 years at the most. Anyhow, don’t get me started on this I would rather get back to the original topic " "Relation, influence between IE and German, Greek.."
Take care,
Brian
(P.S. This off the Internet:
"We help teachers teach, students learn, and parents measure the educational and INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS of their children."
"Intellectual progress" is a term I came across in an academic journal today and there are also lots of hits for it on the Intenet. It is another example of a term which might be considered "snobbish" by some people who haven’t had exposure to college but it doesn’t bother me.
With the stiff international competition the U.S. is facing today from China, Japan, The EEC even Canada maybe Americans should be more concerned the intellectual progress of their children.)
[quote author=tauzi link=board=etymology;num=1139622923;start=0#0 date=02/10/06 at 20:55:23]Who could you tell me what exactly the ralation [sic] between Indo-European and Germany[sic],Greek, and Latin is. and How influenced each other. such as the sound alteration, consonants interchange, and spelling alteration.
These modern and/or literary types of speech—namely German, Greek and Latin—all stem from embryonic forms, called respectively proto-Germanic, proto-Hellenic and proto-Italic which may in time, or may not, turn out just as purely hypothetical as the IE prototype, quite naturally proto-Indo-European. In the previous century, the highly distinguished school of Russian & Ukrainian philologists, arguably the world’s most proficient savants in divining linguistic cosmogony, stunned the orthodox point of view, by tendering a possible East and West branch of the IE family of languages, which can itself be said to include such contemporary favorites as Spanish, French, Russian & English, not to mention historically relevant exemplars as Hittite, Albanian, Celtic, Greek & Latin.
Now in a more jugular vein: Speculative results of excavation, conducted on the Mediterranean islet of digsite Pithekoussai back in the twentieth century, lend further credence to the widely held notion that emerging Romans inherited Latin ethnonym Graeci from wealthy Ἰταλιῶται “Italiotes” living around the Bay of Naples in the fifth century BC or thereabouts—i.e. approximately when Capitoline dominion began on Vulcan’s fiery shores, with the historic departure of Etruscan hegemony already well beforehand. For although citizens of virile Rome waxed passionately fond of Greek eloquence & culture, nothing but tragic arrogance could prevent these new rulers from adopting politically correct Ἕλληνες “Hellenes” for all transplanted Greeks in cherished Italy, while choosing instead pejorative Γραικοί “Greeks” (derived from yon pastoral city of Γγραία “Graia” in hermetic Boeotia, so dear to oracles and the muse) which Chalcidian masters once used to denote Aeolian slaves probably held in common.
Intriguing post, bandito. I think the history naming of foreign cultures sometimes reveals more about ourselves than we like to admit.
As for the expression "conventional wisdom", I always took that as a semi-marketing/management phrase, aimed at finding a way of feigning some kind of authority in a given matter, but more of an authority by proxy… as it were.
In most cases nowadays, I hear "conventional wisdom" used in the negative, as a way of explaining what might be taken for granted, but is actually wrong.
-Tim
P.S. I decided to look… and found interesting results!
Conventional wisdom is a term coined by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in The Affluent Society, used to describe certain ideas or explanations that are generally accepted as true by the public.
Conventional wisdom may be either true or false. Many urban legends, for example are accepted on the basis of being "conventional wisdom". Conventional wisdom is also often seen as an obstacle to introducing new theories, explanations, or revisionism.
The idea of Conventional Wisdom is also used in a political sense, often related closely with the phenomenon of Talking Points. It is used pejoratively to refer to the idea that statements which are repeated over and over become conventional wisdom regardless of whether or not they are true.
[quote author=Tim link=board=etymology;num=1139622923;start=15#15 date=02/23/06 at 23:18:15]In most cases nowadays, I hear "conventional wisdom" used in the negative, as a way of explaining what might be taken for granted, but is actually wrong.
I try not to use the word ‘proud’, but at least I’m rather satisfied that my impression on the first time I read the phrase matches that quote.
Since the eighteenth century, political geography divided the eastern satem from the western centum languages, with Greek and Latin together in the latter group. This proved to be a veritable leap of taxonomy, which was later shown to be more influenced by contemporary attitudes, than by germane linguistic analysis. Once the term for "hundred" became obsolete as a heading for the principle
