Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
We still do not know where the Proto-Indo-
European language was born, or the location of its hearth.
Like all other languages that gave rise to language fami-
lies, Proto-Indo-European has deeper roots that link it
to languages outside of the Indo-European family. Some
scholars have even suggested that Nostratic (and its con-
temporaries, variously named Eurasiatic, Indo-Pacifi c,
Amerind, and Austric) is a direct successor of a proto-
world language that goes back to the dawn of human his-
tory, but this notion is highly speculative. The inset in
Figure 6.9 reminds us how little of the human language
tree we know with any certainty.
reading between the two languages is easier than
speaking between them.
The Germanic languages (English, German,
Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) refl ect the expansion
of peoples out of northern Europe to the west and
south. Some Germanic peoples spread into areas domi-
nated by Rome, and at the northern and northeast-
ern edges of the Roman Empire their tongues gained
ascendancy. Other Germanic peoples spread into areas
that were never part of an ancient empire (present-day
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the northern part of
the Netherlands). The Germanic character of English
bears the imprint of a further migration—that of the
Normans into England in 1066, bringing a Romance
tongue to the British Isles. The essential Germanic
character of English remained, but many new words
were added that are Romance in origin.
The Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech,
Slovak, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and
Bulgarian) developed as Slavic people migrated from
a base in present-day Ukraine close to 2000 years ago.
Slavic tongues came to dominate much of eastern
Europe over the succeeding centuries. They, too, over-
whelmed Latin-based tongues along much of the east-
ern part of the old Roman Empire—with the notable
exception of an area on the western shores of the Black
Sea, where a Latin-based tongue either survived the
Slavic invasion or was reintroduced by migrants. That
tongue is the ancestor of the modern-day Romance lan-
guage: Romanian.
The Languages of Europe
The map of world languages (Fig. 6.8) demonstrates
how widely spread the Indo-European language family
is across the globe, dominating Europe, signifi cant parts
of Asia (including Russia and India), North and South
America, Australia, and portions of Southern Africa.
About half the world's people speak Indo-European lan-
guages. The Indo-European language family is broken
into subfamilies including Romance, Germanic, and
Slavic. And each subfamily is broken into individual lan-
guages, such as English, German, Danish, and Norwegian
within the Germanic subfamily.
The language map of Europe (Fig. 6.2) shows
that the Indo-European language family prevails in this
region, with pockets of the Uralic family occurring in
Hungary (the Ugric subfamily) and in Finland and adja-
cent areas (the Finnic subfamily), and a major Altaic lan-
guage, Turkish, dominating Turkey west of the Sea of
Marmara.
Celtic people brought Indo-European tongues into
Europe when they spread across the continent over 3000
years ago. Celtic speech survives at the western edges of
Europe, but in most places Celtic tongues fell victim to
subsequent migrations and empire building. These his-
torical developments led to the creation of a European
linguistic pattern characterized by three major subfami-
lies: Romance, Germanic, and Slavic.
Language and Politics
A comparison of Europe's linguistic and political
maps shows a high correlation between the languages
spoken and the political organization of space. The
Romance languages, of Romanic-Latin origin, domi-
nate in five countries, including Romania. The east-
ern boundaries of Germany coincide almost exactly
with the transition from Germanic to Slavic tongues.
Even at the level of individual languages, boundar-
ies can be seen on the political map: between French
and Spanish, between Norwegian and Swedish, and
between Bulgarian and Greek.
Although Figure 6.2 shows a signifi cant correlation
between political and linguistic boundaries in Europe,
there are some important exceptions. The French lin-
guistic region extends into Belgium, Switzerland, and
Italy, but in France, French coexists with Basque in the
southwest, a variant of Dutch in the north, and a Celtic
tongue in the northwest. The Celtic languages survive
in the western region of France called Brittany (Breton),
in the northern and western parts of Wales (Welsh),
in western Ireland (Irish Gaelic), and in the western
The Subfamilies
The Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian,
Romanian, and Portuguese) lie in the areas of Europe
that were once controlled by the Roman Empire.
Over time, local languages mixed with Latin, which
the Roman Empire introduced to the region. The
Romance languages that have much in common
because of their Latin connection, but they are not
mutually comprehensible. Spanish and Portuguese
remain closely related to each other, but even there,
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