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Indo-European family of languages: hypotheses of origin. See what the “Indo-European language family” is in other dictionaries

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INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES, one of the largest language families of Eurasia, which over the past five centuries has also spread to North and South America, Australia and partly in Africa. Before the era of the Greats geographical discoveries Indo European languages occupied the territory from Ireland in the west to East Turkestan in the east and from Scandinavia in the north to India in the south. The Indo-European family includes about 140 languages, spoken by a total of about 2 billion people (2007 estimate), with English occupying the first place in the number of speakers.

The role of the study of Indo-European languages in the development of comparative historical linguistics is important. Indo-European languages were one of the first families of languages of great temporal depth to be postulated by linguists. Other families in science, as a rule, were identified (directly or at least indirectly), focusing on the experience of studying Indo-European languages, just as comparative historical grammars and dictionaries (primarily etymological) for other language families took into account the experience of corresponding works on the material of Indo-European languages for which these works were first created. It was during the study of Indo-European languages that the ideas of a proto-language, regular phonetic correspondences, linguistic reconstruction, and the family tree of languages were first formulated; A comparative historical method has been developed.

Within the Indo-European family, the following branches (groups), including those consisting of one language, are distinguished: Indo-Iranian languages, Greek, Italic languages (including Latin), descendants of Latin, Romance languages, Celtic languages, Germanic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages , Armenian language, Albanian language, Hittite-Luwian languages (Anatolian) and Tocharian languages. In addition, it includes a number of extinct languages (known from extremely scarce sources - as a rule, from a few inscriptions, glosses, anthroponyms and toponyms from Greek and Byzantine authors): Phrygian language, Thracian language, Illyrian language, Messapian language, Venetian language, Ancient Macedonian language. These languages cannot be reliably assigned to any of the known branches (groups) and may represent separate branches (groups).

There were undoubtedly other Indo-European languages. Some of them died out without a trace, others left a few traces in toponomastics and substrate vocabulary (see Substrate). Attempts have been made to reconstruct individual Indo-European languages from these traces. The most famous reconstructions of this kind are the Pelasgian language (the language of the pre-Greek population Ancient Greece) and the Cimmerian language, which supposedly left traces of borrowing in the Slavic and Baltic languages. Identification of a layer of Pelasgian borrowings in the Greek language and Cimmerian ones in the Balto-Slavic languages, based on the establishment of a special system of regular phonetic correspondences, different from those that are characteristic of the original vocabulary, allows us to elevate a whole series of Greek, Slavic and Baltic words that previously had no etymology to Indo-European roots. The specific genetic affiliation of the Pelasgian and Cimmerian languages is difficult to determine.

Over the past few centuries, during the expansion of Indo-European languages on a Germanic and Romance basis, several dozen new languages - pidgins - have been formed, some of which were subsequently creolized (see Creole languages) and became fully fledged languages in both grammatical and functionally. These are Tok Pisin, Bislama, Krio in Sierra Leone, Gambia and Equatorial Guinea (on an English basis); Seshelwa on Seychelles, Haitian, Mauritian and Reunion (on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean; see Creoles) creoles (French-based); Unserdeutsch in Papua New Guinea (on a German basis); palenquero in Colombia (Spanish based); Cabuverdianu, Crioulo (both in Cape Verde) and Papiamento on the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao (Portuguese based). In addition, some international artificial languages such as Esperanto are Indo-European in nature.

The traditional branching diagram of the Indo-European family is presented in the diagram.

The collapse of the Proto-Indo-European base language dates back to no later than the 4th millennium BC. The greatest antiquity of the separation of the Hittite-Luwian languages is beyond doubt; the time of the separation of the Tocharian branch is more controversial due to the paucity of Tocharian data.

Attempts were made to unite the various Indo-European branches with each other; for example, hypotheses were expressed about the special closeness of the Baltic and Slavic, Italic and Celtic languages. The most generally accepted is the unification of Indo-Aryan languages and Iranian languages (as well as Dardic languages and Nuristan languages) into the Indo-Iranian branch - in some cases it is possible to restore the verbal formulas that existed in the Indo-Iranian proto-language. The Balto-Slavic unity is somewhat more controversial, other hypotheses in modern science are rejected. In principle, different linguistic features divide the Indo-European language space in different ways. Thus, according to the results of the development of Indo-European back-lingual consonants, Indo-European languages are divided into the so-called Satem languages and Centum languages (unions are named according to their reflection in different languages Proto-Indo-European word “hundred”: in satem languages its initial sound is reflected in the form of “s”, “sh”, etc., in centum languages - in the form of “k”, “x”, etc.). The use of different sounds (bh and sh) in case endings divides Indo-European languages into so-called -mi-languages (Germanic, Baltic, Slavic) and -bhi-languages (Indo-Iranian, Italic, Greek). Different indicators of the passive voice are united, on the one hand, by Italic, Celtic, Phrygian and Tocharian languages (indicator -g), on the other - Greek and Indo-Iranian languages (indicator -i). The presence of an augment (a special verbal prefix that conveys the meaning of the past tense) contrasts Greek, Phrygian, Armenian and Indo-Iranian languages with all others. For almost any pair of Indo-European languages, you can find a number of common linguistic features and lexemes that will be absent in other languages; The so-called wave theory was based on this observation (see Genealogical classification of languages). A. Meillet proposed the above scheme of dialect division of the Indo-European community.

The reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language is facilitated by the presence of a sufficient number of ancient written monuments in the languages of different branches of the Indo-European family: from the 17th century BC, monuments of the Hittite-Luvian languages are known, from the 14th century BC - Greek, dates back to approximately the 12th century BC (recorded significantly later) the language of the hymns of the Rig Veda, by the 6th century BC - monuments of the ancient Persian language, from the end of the 7th century BC - the Italic languages. In addition, some languages that received writing much later retained a number of archaic features.

The main consonant correspondences in the languages of different branches of the Indo-European family are shown in the table.

In addition, the so-called laryngeal consonants are restored - partly on the basis of the consonants h, hh attested in the Hittite-Luwian languages, and partly on the basis of systemic considerations. The number of laryngeals, as well as their exact phonetic interpretation, varies among researchers. The structure of the system of Indo-European stop consonants is presented unequally in different works: some scientists believe that the Indo-European proto-language distinguished between voiceless, voiced and voiced aspirated consonants (this point of view is presented in the table), others suggest a contrast between voiceless, aberrant and voiced or voiceless, strong and voiced consonants (in the last two concepts, aspiration is an optional feature of both voiced and voiceless consonants), etc. There is also a point of view according to which in the Indo-European proto-language there were 4 series of stops: voiced, voiceless, voiced aspirate and voiceless aspirate - just as is the case, for example, in Sanskrit.

The reconstructed Indo-European proto-language appears, like the ancient Indo-European languages, as a language with a developed case system, rich verbal morphology, and complex accentuation. Both the name and the verb have 3 numbers - singular, dual and plural. The problem for the reconstruction of a number of grammatical categories in the Proto-Indo-European language represents the absence of corresponding forms in the oldest Indo-European languages - Hittite-Luwian: this state of affairs may indicate either that these categories developed in Proto-Indo-European quite late, after the separation of the Hittite-Luwian branch, or that the Hittite-Luwian languages have undergone significant changes in their grammatical systems.

The Indo-European proto-language is characterized by rich possibilities of word formation, including word composition; using reduplication. Alternations of sounds were widely represented in it - both automatic and those performing a grammatical function.

The syntax was characterized, in particular, by the agreement of adjectives and demonstrative pronouns with qualified nouns by gender, number and case, and the use of enclitic particles (placed after the first fully stressed word in a sentence; see Clitics). The word order in the sentence was probably free [perhaps the preferred order was “subject (S) + direct object (O) + predicate verb (V)”].

Ideas about the Proto-Indo-European language continue to be revised and clarified in a number of aspects - this is due, firstly, to the emergence of new data (a special role was played by the discovery of the Anatolian and Tocharian languages in the late 19th - early 20th centuries), and secondly, to the expansion of knowledge about the structure human language in general.

The reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European lexical fund makes it possible to judge the culture of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, as well as their ancestral homeland (see Indo-Europeans).

According to the theory of V. M. Illich-Svitych, the Indo-European family is component the so-called Nostratic macrofamily (see Nostratic languages), which makes it possible to verify the Indo-European reconstruction with external comparison data.

The typological diversity of Indo-European languages is great. Among them there are languages with a basic word order: SVO, such as Russian or English; SOV, like many Indo-Iranian languages; VSO, such as Irish [cf. Russian offer“The father praises the son” and its translations in Hindi - pita bete kl tarif karta hai (literally - ‘A father praises his son’) and in Irish - Moraionn an tathar a mhac (literally - ‘A father praises his son’)]. Some Indo-European languages use prepositions, others use postpositions [compare Russian “near the house” and Bengali baritar kache (literally “near the house”)]; some are nominative (like the languages of Europe; see Nominative structure), others have an ergative construction (for example, in Hindi; see Ergative structure); some retained a significant part of the Indo-European case system (like Baltic and Slavic), others lost cases (for example, English), others (Tocharian) developed new cases from postpositions; some tend to express grammatical meanings inside a significant word (synthetism), others - using special function words (analyticism), etc. In Indo-European languages one can find such phenomena as izafet (in Iranian), group inflection (in Tocharian), and the opposition of inclusive and exclusive (Tok Pisin).

Modern Indo-European languages use scripts based on the Greek alphabet (languages of Europe; see Greek script), Brahmi script (Indo-Aryan language; see Indian script), and some Indo-European languages use scripts of Semitic origin. For a number of ancient languages, cuneiform (Hittite-Luwian, Old Persian) and hieroglyphics (Luwian hieroglyphic language) were used; The ancient Celts used the Ogham alphabetic writing.

Lit. : Brugmann K., Delbrück V. Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. 2. Aufl. Strasbourg, 1897-1916. Bd 1-2; Indogermanische Grammatik / Hrsg. J. Kurylowicz. Hdlb., 1968-1986. Bd 1-3; Semereni O. Introduction to comparative linguistics. M., 1980; Gamkrelidze T.V., Ivanov Vyach. Sun. Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans: Reconstruction and historical-typological analysis of the proto-language and protoculture. Tb., 1984. Part 1-2; Beekes R. S. R. Comparative Indo-European linguistics. Amst., 1995; Meillet A. Introduction to the comparative study of Indo-European languages. 4th ed., M., 2007. Dictionaries: Schrader O. Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde. 2. Aufl. IN.; Lpz., 1917-1929. Bd 1-2; Pokorny J. Indoger-manisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bern; Münch., 1950-1969. Lfg 1-18.

Each of us has probably come across the concept of the “Indo-European family of languages” in one way or another. But it is unlikely that anyone, with the exception of linguistic scientists, has a complete understanding of which languages are included in this group, which countries and peoples belong to this language family. In this article we will present the main theories of the origin of Indo-European languages, and also talk about the composition of this language group.

Indo-European family of languages on the world map

In fact, the concept of the Indo-European linguistic community is comprehensive, since there are practically no countries and continents in the world that are not related to it. The peoples of the Indo-European family of languages inhabit a vast territory from Europe and Asia to both American continents, including Africa and even Australia! Whole population modern Europe speaks these languages, with only a few exceptions. Some common European languages are not part of the Indo-European language family. These include, for example, the following: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Turkish. In Russia, some of the Altai and Uralic languages also have a different origin.

The origin of the languages of the Indo-European group

The very concept of Indo-European languages was introduced in early XIX century by the German scientist Franz Bopp to designate a single group of languages of Europe and Asia (including northern India, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh) with strikingly similar features. This similarity has been confirmed by numerous studies by linguists. In particular, it was proven that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, the language of the Hittites, Old Irish, Old Prussian, Gothic, as well as some other languages, were distinguished by an amazing identity. In this regard, scientists began to put forward various hypotheses about the existence of a certain proto-language, which was the progenitor of all the main languages of this group.

According to some scientists, this proto-language began to develop somewhere in Eastern Europe or Western Asia. The Eastern European theory of origin connects the beginning of the formation of Indo-European languages with the territory of Russia, Romania and the Baltic countries. Other scientists considered the Baltic land to be the ancestral home of Indo-European languages, others linked the origin of these languages with Scandinavia, with the north of Germany and the south of Russia. IN XIX-XX centuries The Asian theory of origin, which was subsequently rejected by linguists, became widespread.

According to numerous hypotheses, the south of Russia is considered the birthplace of the Indo-European civilization. To be more precise, its distribution range covers a vast territory from the northern part of Armenia along the coast of the Caspian Sea all the way to the Asian steppes. The most ancient monuments of Indo-European languages are considered to be Hittite texts. Their origin is attributed to XVII century BC. Hittite hieroglyphic texts are ancient evidence of an unknown civilization, giving an idea of the people of that era, their vision of themselves and the world around them.

Groups of the Indo-European family of languages

In total, Indo-European languages are spoken by 2.5 to 3 billion people in the world, with the largest poles of their distribution being in India, which has 600 million speakers, in Europe and in America - 700 million people in each country. Let's look at the main groups of the Indo-European family of languages.

Indo-Aryan languages

In the large family of Indo-European languages, the Indo-Aryan group forms the most significant part. It includes about 600 languages, these languages are spoken by a total of 700 million people. Indo-Aryan languages include Hindi, Bengali, Maldivian, Dardic and many others. This linguistic zone stretches from Turkish Kurdistan to central India, including parts of Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Germanic languages

The Germanic group of languages (English, German, Danish, Dutch, etc.) is also represented on the map by a very large territory. Including 450 million speakers, it covers northern and central Europe, all of North America, parts of the Antilles, Australia and New Zealand.

Romance languages

Another significant group of the Indo-European family of languages is, of course, the Romance languages. With 430 million speakers, the Romance languages are linked by their common Latin roots. Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and others) are spoken mainly in Europe, but also throughout South America, in parts of the USA and Canada, in North Africa and on individual islands.

Slavic languages

This group is the fourth largest in the Indo-European language family. Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Bulgarian and others) are spoken by more than 315 million inhabitants of the European continent.

Baltic languages

In the Baltic Sea area, the only surviving languages of the Baltic group are Latvian and Lithuanian. There are only 5.5 million speakers.

Celtic languages

The smallest linguistic group of the Indo-European family, whose languages are on the verge of extinction. It includes Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Breton and some other languages. The number of speakers of Celtic languages is less than 2 million.

Linguistic isolates

Languages such as Albanian, Greek and Armenian are isolated languages within the modern Indo-European languages. These are, perhaps, the only surviving languages that do not belong to any of the above groups and have their own characteristics.

Historical reference

Between about 2000 and 1500 BC, the Indo-Europeans, through their highly organized militancy, were able to conquer vast areas of Europe and Asia. Already at the beginning of 2000, Indo-Aryan tribes entered India, and the Hittites settled in Asia Minor. Subsequently, by 1300, the Hittite empire disappeared, according to one version, under the onslaught of the so-called “people of the sea” - a pirate tribe, which, by the way, was of Indo-European origin. By 1800, the Hellenes settled in Europe, on the territory of modern Greece, and the Latins settled in Italy. A little later, the Slavs, and then the Celts, Germans and Baltics, conquered the rest of Europe. And by 1000 BC the division of the peoples of the Indo-European language family was finally completed.

All these peoples spoke different languages by that time. Nevertheless, it is known that all these languages, which had a supposed common mutual language origins were similar in many ways. Having numerous common features, over time they acquired more and more new differences, such as Sanskrit in India, Greek in Greece, Latin in Italy, Celtic language in central Europe, Slavic in Russia. Subsequently, these languages, in turn, split into numerous dialects, acquired new features and ultimately became those modern languages spoken today most of population of the planet.

Considering that the Indo-European family of languages is one of the largest language groups, it represents the most studied linguistic community. Its existence can be judged, first of all, by the presence large quantity ancient monuments. The existence of an Indo-European language family is also supported by the fact that all these languages have established genetic connections.

Indo-European language family- the most widespread in the world. Its distribution area includes almost all of Europe, both Americas and continental Australia, as well as a significant part of Africa and Asia. More than 2.5 billion people speak Indo-European languages. All languages of modern Europe belong to this family of languages, with the exception of Basque, Hungarian, Sami, Finnish, Estonian and Turkish, as well as several Altai and Uralic languages of the European part of Russia. The name "Indo-European" is conditional. In Germany the term "Indo-Germanic" was formerly used, and in Italy "Ario-European" to indicate that ancient people and ancient language from which all later Indo-European languages are generally believed to have descended. The supposed ancestral home of this hypothetical people, whose existence is not supported by any historical evidence (except linguistic) is considered to be Eastern Europe or Western Asia.

The oldest known monuments of Indo-European languages are Hittite texts dating back to the 17th century. BC. To record Indo-European languages they used different systems letters. Hittite cuneiform, Palayan, Luwian and Old Persian were written in cuneiform, Luwian hieroglyphic - with a special hieroglyphic syllabary alphabet, Sanskrit - using Kharostha, Devanagari, Brahmi and other alphabets; Avestan and Pahlavi - in special alphabets, modern Persian - in Arabic writing. According to currently available information, all types of alphabets that the languages of Europe have used and are using come from Phoenician.

The Indo-European family of languages includes at least twelve groups of languages. In order geographical location, moving clockwise from northwestern Europe, these groups are: Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Tocharian, Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Hittite-Luvian, Greek, Albanian, Italic (including Latin and the Romance languages derived from it, which are sometimes classified as a separate group). Of these, three groups (Italic, Hittite-Luwian and Tocharian) consist entirely of dead languages.

The first scientist to logically deduce the possibility of the existence of an original Indo-European proto-language was Sir William Jones. The Indo-European proto-language was undoubtedly an inflected language, i.e. its morphological meanings were expressed by changing the endings of words; this language had no prefixation and almost no infixation; it had three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter; at least six cases were distinguished; nouns and verbs were clearly contrasted; heteroclysis (i.e., irregularity in the paradigm, cf. fero: tuli or I am: I was) was widespread. There was a very developed system of vowel alternations that performed morphological functions, remnants of which are partially preserved - for example, in English (cf. give, gave, given; drive, drove, driven; sing, sang, sung, etc.) and, in to a lesser extent, in Russian (cf. remove, remove, tidy). Roots were modified by adding one or more root qualifiers (suffixes) and endings to the right.

With the help of reconstruction, one can try to identify the “ancestral homeland” of the Indo-Europeans, i.e. last territory their settlement before the first division, which took place at the latest in the 3rd millennium BC. Widespread use of designations for “snow” (English snow, German Schnee, Latin nix, Russian snow, Lithuanian, etc.) and “winter” (Latin hiems, Lithuanian ziemà, Russian winter, Vedic himás), in contrast to the lack of common designations for “summer” and “autumn,” clearly indicate a cold northern ancestral home. This is also evidenced by the presence of the names of the trees given above, in the absence or late appearance of the names of trees growing in the Mediterranean area and requiring warm climate, - such as fig tree, cypress, laurel and grapevine. The names of tropical and subtropical animals (such as cat, donkey, monkey, camel, lion, tiger, hyena, elephant) are also late, while the names of bear, wolf and otter are early. On the other hand, the presence of these names of animals and plants and the absence of names of polar animals (seal, sea lion, walrus) and plants definitely speaks against the polar ancestral home.

One of the scientists who defended the Baltic hypothesis was G. Bender, other researchers named Scandinavia, Northern Germany, Southern Russia together with the Danube area, as well as the Kyrgyz and Altai steppes as the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans. The theory of the Asian ancestral home, very popular in the 19th century, in the 20th century. supported only by some ethnologists, but rejected by almost all linguists. The theory of an Eastern European homeland located in Russia, Romania or the Baltic countries is supported by the fact that the Indo-European people had long and close contacts with the Finnish peoples in the north and with the Sumerian and Semitic cultures of Mesopotamia in the south.

Groups of the Indo-European family of languages

Indo-Aryan languages (Indian)- a group of related languages dating back to the ancient Indian language. Included (together with the Iranian languages and closely related Dardic languages) in the Indo-Iranian languages, one of the branches of the Indo-European languages. Distributed in South Asia: northern and central India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal; outside this region - Romani languages, Domari and Parya (Tajikistan). Total number There are about 1 billion speakers. (Evaluation, 2007). Ancient Indian languages.

Ancient Indian language. Indian languages come from dialects of the ancient Indian language, which had two literary forms - Vedic (the language of the sacred “Vedas”) and Sanskrit (created by Brahmin priests in the Ganges valley in the first half - mid-first millennium BC). The ancestors of the Indo-Aryans left the ancestral home of the “Aryan Expanse” at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium. A language related to Indo-Aryan is reflected in proper names, theonyms and some lexical borrowings in cuneiform texts of the state of Mitanni and the Hittites. Indo-Aryan writing in the Brahmi syllabary arose in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC.

The Central Indian period is represented by numerous languages and dialects, which were in use orally and then in written form from the Middle Ages. 1st millennium BC e. Of these, the most archaic is Pali (the language of the Buddhist Canon), followed by Prakrits (more archaic are the Prakrits of the inscriptions) and Apabkhransha (dialects that developed by the mid-1st millennium AD as a result of the development of Prakrits and are a transitional link to the New Indian languages ).

The New Indian period begins after the 10th century. It is represented by approximately three dozen major languages and a large number of dialects, sometimes very different from each other.

In the west and northwest they border with Iranian (Baluchi language, Pashto) and Dardic languages, in the north and northeast - with Tibeto-Burman languages, in the east - with a number of Tibeto-Burman and Mon-Khmer languages, in the south - with Dravidian languages (Telugu, Kannada). In India, the array of Indo-Aryan languages is interspersed with language islands of other linguistic groups (Munda, Mon-Khmer, Dravidian, etc.).

Hindi and Urdu (Hindustani) are two varieties of one modern Indian literary language; Urdu - official language Pakistan (Capital Islamabad), has a writing system based on the Arabic alphabet; Hindi (the official language of India (New Delhi) - based on the Old Indian Devanagari script.
Bengal (Indian state - West Bengal, Bangladesh (Kolkata))
Punjabi ( East End Pakistan, Punjab state of India)
Lahnda
Sindhi (Pakistan)
Rajasthani (northwest India)
Gujarati - southwest subgroup
Marathi - Western subgroup
Sinhalese - insular subgroup
Nepali - Nepal (Kathmandu) - central subgroup
Bihari - Indian state Bihar - eastern subgroup
Oriya - Indian state Orissa - eastern subgroup
Assamese - ind. State of Assam, Bangladesh, Bhutan (Thimphu) - eastern. subgroup
Gypsy -
Kashmiri - Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan - Dardic group
Vedic - the language of the ancients holy books Indians - the Vedas, which developed in the first half of the second millennium BC.
Sanskrit is the literary language of the ancient Indians from the 3rd century BC. to 4th century AD
Pali - Central Indian literary and cult language of the medieval era
Prakrits - various spoken Central Indian dialects

Iranian languages- a group of related languages within the Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Distributed mainly in the Middle East, Central Asia and Pakistan.

The Iranian group was formed according to the generally accepted version as a result of the separation of languages from the Indo-Iranian branch in the Volga region and Southern Urals during the Andronovo culture. There is also another version of the formation of Iranian languages, according to which they separated from the main body of Indo-Iranian languages on the territory of the BMAC culture. The expansion of the Aryans in ancient times took place to the south and southeast. As a result of migrations, Iranian languages spread to the 5th century BC. in large areas from the Northern Black Sea region to Eastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Altai (Pazyryk culture), and from the Zagros mountains, eastern Mesopotamia and Azerbaijan to the Hindu Kush.

The most important milestone in the development of Iranian languages was the identification of Western Iranian languages, which spread west from Dasht-e-Kevir across the Iranian plateau, and the Eastern Iranian languages contrasted with them. The work of the Persian poet Ferdowsi Shahnameh reflects the confrontation between the ancient Persians and the nomadic (also semi-nomadic) Eastern Iranian tribes, nicknamed Turanians by the Persians, and their habitat Turan.

In the II - I centuries. BC. The Great Central Asian Migration of Peoples takes place, as a result of which eastern Iranians populate the Pamirs, Xinjiang, Indian lands south of the Hindu Kush, and invade Sistan.

As a result of the expansion of Turkic-speaking nomads from the first half of the 1st millennium AD. Iranian languages begin to be replaced by Turkic languages, first in the Great Steppe, and with the beginning of the 2nd millennium in Central Asia, Xinjiang, Azerbaijan and a number of regions of Iran. What remained from the steppe Iranian world was the relict Ossetian language (a descendant of the Alan-Sarmatian language) in the Caucasus mountains, as well as the descendants of the Saka languages, the languages of the Pashtun tribes and the Pamir peoples.

The current state of the Iranian-speaking massif was largely determined by the expansion of Western Iranian languages, which began under the Sassanids, but gained full strength after the Arab invasion:

The spread of the Persian language throughout the entire territory of Iran, Afghanistan and the south of Central Asia and the massive displacement of local Iranian and sometimes non-Iranian languages in the corresponding territories, as a result of which the modern Persian and Tajik communities were formed.

Expansion of the Kurds into Upper Mesopotamia and the Armenian Highlands.

Migration of the semi-nomads of Gorgan to the southeast and the formation of the Balochi language.

The phonetics of Iranian languages shares many similarities with Indo-Aryan languages in development from an Indo-European state. The ancient Iranian languages belong to the inflectional-synthetic type with a developed system of inflectional forms of declension and conjugation and are thus similar to Sanskrit, Latin and Old Church Slavonic. This is especially true of the Avestan language and, to a lesser extent, Old Persian. In Avestan there are eight cases, three numbers, three genders, inflectional-synthetic verbal forms of present, aorist, imperfect, perfect, injunctive, conjunctive, optative, imperative, and there is developed word formation.

Persian - writing based on the Arabic alphabet - Iran (Tehran), Afghanistan (Kabul), Tajikistan (Dushanbe) - southwestern Iranian group.
Dari is the literary language of Afghanistan
Pashto - since the 30s the state language of Afghanistan - Afghanistan, Pakistan - Eastern Iranian subgroup
Baloch - Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan (Ashgabat), Oman (Muscat), UAE (Abu Dhabi) - northwestern subgroup.
Tajik - Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan (Tashkent) - Western Iranian subgroup.
Kurdish - Turkey (Ankara), Iran, Iraq (Baghdad), Syria (Damascus), Armenia (Yerevan), Lebanon (Beirut) - Western Iranian subgroup.
Ossetian - Russia (North Ossetia), South Ossetia(Tskhinvali) - East Iranian subgroup
Tatsky - Russia (Dagestan), Azerbaijan (Baku) - western subgroup
Talysh - Iran, Azerbaijan - northwestern Iranian subgroup
Caspian dialects
Pamir languages are the unwritten languages of the Pamirs.
Yagnobian is the language of the Yagnobi people, the inhabitants of the Yagnob River valley in Tajikistan.
Old Persian - this and further dead
Avestan
Pahlavi
Median
Parthian
Sogdian
Khorezmian
Scythian
Bactrian
Saki

Slavic group. Slavic languages are a group of related languages of the Indo-European family. Distributed throughout Europe and Asia. The total number of speakers is about 400-500 million [source not specified 101 days]. They are distinguished by a high degree of closeness to each other, which is found in the structure of the word, the use of grammatical categories, sentence structure, semantics, a system of regular sound correspondences, and morphonological alternations. This closeness is explained by the unity of origin of the Slavic languages and their long and intensive contacts with each other at the level of literary languages and dialects.

Long-term independent development Slavic peoples in different ethnic, geographical and historical-cultural conditions, their contacts with various ethnic groups led to the emergence of differences in material, functional, etc. Slavic languages within the Indo-European family are most similar to the Baltic languages. The similarities between the two groups served as the basis for the theory of the “Balto-Slavic proto-language”, according to which the Balto-Slavic proto-language first emerged from the Indo-European proto-language, which later split into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. However, many scientists explain their special closeness by the long-term contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language. It has not been established in what territory the separation of the Slavic language continuum from the Indo-European/Balto-Slavic occurred. It can be assumed that it occurred to the south of those territories that, according to various theories, belong to the territory of the Slavic ancestral homelands. From one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic), the Proto-Slavic language was formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages. The history of the Proto-Slavic language was longer than the history of individual Slavic languages. For a long time it developed as a single dialect with an identical structure. Dialectal variants arose later. The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language into independent languages took place most actively in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD. e., during the period of formation of the early Slavic states in the territory of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. During this period, the territory of Slavic settlements increased significantly. Areas of various geographical zones with various natural and climatic conditions, the Slavs entered into relationships with the population of these territories, standing at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of Slavic languages.

The history of the Proto-Slavic language is divided into 3 periods: the oldest - before the establishment of close Balto-Slavic linguistic contact, the period of the Balto-Slavic community and the period of dialect fragmentation and the beginning of the formation of independent Slavic languages.

Eastern subgroup

Russian
Ukrainian
Belorussian

Southern subgroup

Bulgarian - Bulgaria (Sofia)
Macedonian - Macedonia (Skopje)
Serbo-Croatian - Serbia (Belgrade), Croatia (Zagreb)
Slovenian - Slovenia (Ljubljana)

Western subgroup

Czech - Czech Republic (Prague)
Slovak - Slovakia (Bratislava)
Polish - Poland (Warsaw)
Kashubian is a dialect of Polish
Lusatian - Germany

Dead: Old Church Slavonic, Polabian, Pomeranian

Baltic group. The Baltic languages are a language group that represents a special branch of the Indo-European group of languages.

The total number of speakers is over 4.5 million people. Distribution: Latvia, Lithuania, formerly the territories of (modern) northeastern Poland, Russia ( Kaliningrad region) and northwestern Belarus; even earlier (before the 7th-9th, in some places the 12th centuries) up to the upper reaches of the Volga, the Oka basin, the middle Dnieper and Pripyat.

According to one theory, the Baltic languages are not a genetic formation, but the result of early convergence [source not specified 374 days]. The group includes 2 living languages (Latvian and Lithuanian; sometimes the Latgalian language is distinguished separately, officially considered a dialect of Latvian); the Prussian language, attested in monuments, which became extinct in the 17th century; at least 5 languages known only by toponymy and onomastics (Curonian, Yatvingian, Galindian/Golyadian, Zemgalian and Selonian).

Lithuanian - Lithuania (Vilnius)
Latvian - Latvia (Riga)
Latgalian - Latvia

Dead: Prussian, Yatvyazhsky, Kurzhsky, etc.

German group. The history of the development of Germanic languages is usually divided into 3 periods:

ancient (from the emergence of writing to the 11th century) - the formation of individual languages;
middle (XII-XV centuries) - development of writing in Germanic languages and expansion of their social functions;
new (from the 16th century to the present) - the formation and normalization of national languages.

In the reconstructed Proto-Germanic language, a number of researchers identify a layer of vocabulary that does not have an Indo-European etymology - the so-called pre-Germanic substrate. In particular, these are the majority of strong verbs, the conjugation paradigm of which also cannot be explained from the Proto-Indo-European language. The shift of consonants compared to the Proto-Indo-European language is the so-called. “Grimm’s law” - supporters of the hypothesis also explain the influence of the substrate.

The development of Germanic languages from antiquity to the present day is associated with numerous migrations of their speakers. Germanic dialects of ancient times were divided into 2 main groups: Scandinavian (northern) and continental (southern). In the II-I centuries BC. e. some tribes from Scandinavia moved to South coast Baltic Sea and formed an East German group opposing the West German (formerly southern) group. The East German tribe of the Goths, moving south, penetrated into the territory of the Roman Empire right up to the Iberian Peninsula, where they mixed with local population(V-VIII centuries).

Within the West Germanic area in the 1st century AD. e. 3 groups of tribal dialects were distinguished: Ingveonian, Istveonian and Erminonian. The resettlement in the 5th-6th centuries of part of the Ingveonian tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) to the British Isles predetermined the further development in English The complex interaction of West Germanic dialects on the continent created the preconditions for the formation of Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Low Frankish and Old High German languages. Scandinavian dialects after their isolation in the 5th century. from the continental group were divided into eastern and Western subgroup, on the basis of the first, Swedish, Danish and Old Gutnic languages were later formed, on the basis of the second - Norwegian, as well as the island languages - Icelandic, Faroese and Norn.

The formation of national literary languages was completed in England in the 16th-17th centuries, in the Scandinavian countries in the 16th century, in Germany in the 18th century. The spread of the English language beyond England led to the creation of its variants in the USA, Canada, and Australia. German in Austria it is represented by its Austrian variant.

North German subgroup

Danish - Denmark (Copenhagen), northern Germany
Swedish - Sweden (Stockholm), Finland (Helsinki) - contact subgroup
Norwegian - Norway (Oslo) - continental subgroup
Icelandic - Iceland (Reykjavik), Denmark
Faroese - Denmark

West German subgroup

English - UK, USA, India, Australia (Canberra), Canada (Ottawa), Ireland (Dublin), New Zealand (Wellington)
Dutch - Netherlands (Amsterdam), Belgium (Brussels), Suriname (Paramaribo), Aruba
Frisian - Netherlands, Denmark, Germany
German - Low German and High German - Germany, Austria (Vienna), Switzerland (Bern), Liechtenstein (Vaduz), Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg
Yiddish - Israel (Jerusalem)

East German subgroup

Gothic - Visigothic and Ostrogothic
Burgundian, Vandal, Gepid, Herulian

Roman group. Romance languages (Latin Roma "Rome") are a group of languages and dialects that are part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family and genetically go back to a common ancestor - Latin. The name Romanesque comes from the Latin word romanus (Roman). The science that studies Romance languages, their origin, development, classification, etc. is called Romance studies and is one of the subsections of linguistics (linguistics). The peoples who speak them are also called Romanesque. The Romance languages developed as a result of the divergent (centrifugal) development of the oral tradition of different geographical dialects of the once united vernacular Latin language and gradually became isolated from the source language and from each other as a result of various demographic, historical and geographical processes. The beginning of this epoch-making process was laid by Roman colonists who settled regions (provinces) of the Roman Empire remote from the capital - Rome - during a complex ethnographic process called ancient Romanization in the period of the 3rd century. BC e. - 5th century n. e. During this period, the various dialects of Latin were influenced by the substrate, For a long time Romance languages were perceived only as colloquial dialects of the classical Latin language, and therefore were practically not used in writing. The formation of the literary forms of the Romance languages was largely based on the traditions of classical Latin, which allowed them to become closer again in lexical and semantic terms in modern times.

French - France (Paris), Canada, Belgium (Brussels), Switzerland, Lebanon (Beirut), Luxembourg, Monaco, Morocco (Rabat).
Provencal - France, Italy, Spain, Monaco
Italian -Italy, San Marino, Vatican City, Switzerland
Sardinian - Sardinia (Greece)
Spanish - Spain, Argentina (Buenos Aires), Cuba (Havana), Mexico (Mexico City), Chile (Santiago), Honduras (Tegucigalpa)
Galician - Spain, Portugal (Lisbon)
Catalan - Spain, France, Italy, Andorra (Andorra la Vella)
Portuguese - Portugal, Brazil (Brasilia), Angola (Luanda), Mozambique (Maputo)
Romanian - Romania (Bucharest), Moldova (Chisinau)
Moldavian - Moldova
Macedonian-Romanian - Greece, Albania (Tirana), Macedonia (Skopje), Romania, Bulgarian
Romansh - Switzerland
Creole languages - crossed Romance languages with local languages

Italian:

Latin
Medieval Vulgar Latin
Oscian, Umbrian, Sabelian

Celtic group. Celtic languages are one of the western groups of the Indo-European family, close, in particular, to the Italic and Germanic languages. Nevertheless, the Celtic languages, apparently, did not form a specific unity with other groups, as was sometimes previously thought (in particular, the hypothesis of Celto-Italic unity, defended by A. Meillet, is most likely incorrect).

The spread of Celtic languages, as well as Celtic peoples, in Europe is associated with the spread of Hallstatt (VI-V centuries BC) and then La Tène (2nd half of the 1st millennium BC) archaeological cultures. The ancestral home of the Celts is probably localized in Central Europe, between the Rhine and the Danube, but they settled very widely: in the 1st half of the 1st millennium BC. e. they entered the British Isles around the 7th century. BC e. - to Gaul, in the 6th century. BC e. - to the Iberian Peninsula, in the 5th century. BC e. they spread to the south, cross the Alps and come to Northern Italy, finally, by the 3rd century. BC e. they reach Greece and Asia Minor. We know relatively little about the ancient stages of development of the Celtic languages: the monuments of that era are very scarce and not always easy to interpret; nevertheless, data from Celtic languages (especially Old Irish) play important role in the reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language.

Goidelic subgroup

Irish - Ireland
Scottish - Scotland (Edinburgh)
Manx - dead - language of the Isle of Man (in the Irish Sea)

Brythonic subgroup

Breton - Brittany (France)
Welsh - Wales (Cardiff)
Cornish - dead - in Cornwall - peninsula southwest of England

Gallic subgroup

Gallic has become extinct since the formation of the French language; was widespread in Gaul, Northern Italy, in the Balkans and Asia Minor

Greek group. The Greek group is currently one of the most unique and relatively small language groups (families) within the Indo-European languages. At the same time, the Greek group is one of the most ancient and well-studied since antiquity. Currently, the main representative of the group with a full range of linguistic functions is the Greek language of Greece and Cyprus, which has a long and complex history. The presence of a single full representative in our days brings the Greek group closer to the Albanian and Armenian, which are also actually represented by one language each.

At the same time, there were other Greek languages and highly distinct dialects that have either become extinct or are on the verge of extinction as a result of assimilation.

1. Modern Greek - Greece (Athens), Cyprus (Nicosia)
2. ancient Greek
3. Central Greek, or Byzantine

Albanian group.

Albanian language (Alb. Gjuha shqipe) is the language of the Albanians, the indigenous population of Albania proper and part of the population of Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Lower Italy and Sicily. The number of speakers is about 6 million people.

The self-name of the language - “shkip” - comes from the local word “shipe” or “shkipe”, which actually means “rocky soil” or “rock”. That is, the self-name of the language can be translated as “mountain”. The word "shkip" can also be interpreted as "understandable" (language).

Armenian group

The Armenian language is an Indo-European language, usually classified as a separate group, less often combined with Greek and Phrygian languages. Among the Indo-European languages, it is one of the oldest written languages. The Armenian alphabet was created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405-406. n. e.. The total number of speakers around the world is about 6.4 million people. During its long history, the Armenian language has been in contact with many languages. Being a branch of the Indo-European language, Armenian subsequently came into contact with various Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages - both living and now dead, taking over from them and bringing to the present day much of what direct written evidence could not preserve. With Armenian language different time Hittite and hieroglyphic Luwian, Hurrian and Urartian, Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac, Parthian and Persian, Georgian and Zan, Greek and Latin came into contact. For the history of these languages and their speakers, data from the Armenian language are in many cases of paramount importance. This data is especially important for urartologists, Iranianists, and Kartvelists, who draw many facts about the history of the languages they study from Armenian.

Hittite-Luwian group. Anatolian languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages (also known as the Hittite-Luwian languages). According to glottochronology, they separated from other Indo-European languages quite early. All languages in this group are dead. Their carriers lived in the 2nd-1st millennium BC. e. on the territory of Asia Minor (the Hittite kingdom and the small states that arose on its territory), were later conquered and assimilated by the Persians and/or Greeks.

The oldest monuments of Anatolian languages are Hittite cuneiform and Luwian hieroglyphics (there were also short inscriptions in Palayan, the most archaic of the Anatolian languages). Through the works of the Czech linguist Friedrich (Bedrich) the Terrible, these languages were identified as Indo-European, which contributed to their decipherment.

Later inscriptions in Lydian, Lycian, Sidetian, Carian and other languages were written in Asia Minor alphabets (partially deciphered in the 20th century).

Dead

Hittite
Luuvian
Palayskiy
Carian
Lydian
Lycian

Tocharian group. Tocharian languages are a group of Indo-European languages consisting of the dead "Tocharian A" ("East Tocharian") and "Tocharian B" ("West Tocharian"). They were spoken in what is now Xinjiang. The monuments that have reached us (the first of them were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century by the Hungarian traveler Aurel Stein) date back to the 6th-8th centuries. The self-name of the speakers is unknown; they are called “Tocharians” conventionally: the Greeks called them Τοχάριοι, and the Turks called them toxri.

Dead

Tocharian A - in Chinese Turkestan
Tocharsky V - ibid.

In fact, the concept of the Indo-European linguistic community is comprehensive, since there are practically no countries and continents in the world that are not related to it. The peoples of the Indo-European family of languages inhabit a vast territory from Europe and Asia to both American continents, including Africa and even Australia! The entire population of modern Europe speaks these languages, with only a few exceptions. Some common European languages are not part of the Indo-European language family. These include, for example, the following: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Turkish. In Russia, some of the Altai and Uralic languages also have a different origin.

The origin of the languages of the Indo-European group

The very concept of Indo-European languages was introduced at the beginning of the 19th century by the German scientist Franz Bopp to designate a single group of languages of Europe and Asia (including northern India, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh) with strikingly similar features. This similarity has been confirmed by numerous studies by linguists. In particular, it was proven that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, the language of the Hittites, Old Irish, Old Prussian, Gothic, as well as some other languages, were distinguished by an amazing identity. In this regard, scientists began to put forward various hypotheses about the existence of a certain proto-language, which was the progenitor of all the main languages of this group.

According to some scientists, this proto-language began to develop somewhere in Eastern Europe or Western Asia. The Eastern European theory of origin connects the beginning of the formation of Indo-European languages with the territory of Russia, Romania and the Baltic countries. Other scientists considered the Baltic land to be the ancestral home of Indo-European languages, others linked the origin of these languages with Scandinavia, with the north of Germany and the south of Russia. In the 19th-20th centuries, the Asian theory of origin became widespread, which was subsequently rejected by linguists.

According to numerous hypotheses, the south of Russia is considered the birthplace of the Indo-European civilization. To be more precise, its distribution range covers a vast territory from the northern part of Armenia along the coast of the Caspian Sea all the way to the Asian steppes. The most ancient monuments of Indo-European languages are considered to be Hittite texts. Their origin dates back to the 17th century BC. Hittite hieroglyphic texts are ancient evidence of an unknown civilization, giving an idea of the people of that era, their vision of themselves and the world around them.

Groups of the Indo-European family of languages

Indo-Aryan languages

Germanic languages

The Germanic group of languages (English, German, Danish, Dutch, etc.) is also represented on the map by a very large territory. With 450 million speakers, it covers northern and central Europe, all of North America, parts of the Antilles, Australia and New Zealand.

Romance languages

Another significant group of the Indo-European family of languages is, of course, the Romance languages. With 430 million speakers, the Romance languages are linked by their common Latin roots. Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and others) are distributed mainly in Europe, as well as throughout South America, parts of the USA and Canada, North Africa and on individual islands.

Slavic languages

Baltic languages

In the Baltic Sea area, the only surviving languages of the Baltic group are Latvian and Lithuanian. There are only 5.5 million speakers.

Celtic languages

Linguistic isolates

Historical reference

All these peoples spoke different languages by that time. However, it is known that all these languages, which had a supposed common language of origin, were similar in many ways. Having numerous common features, over time they acquired more and more new differences, such as Sanskrit in India, Greek in Greece, Latin in Italy, Celtic in central Europe, Slavic in Russia. Subsequently, these languages, in turn, split into numerous dialects, acquired new features and ultimately became the modern languages spoken by most of the world's population today.

Considering that the Indo-European family of languages is one of the largest language groups, it represents the most studied linguistic community. Its existence can be judged, first of all, by the presence of a large number of ancient monuments. The existence of an Indo-European language family is also supported by the fact that all these languages have established genetic connections.

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Indo-European family of languages ​​on the world map

The origin of the languages ​​of the Indo-European group

Groups of the Indo-European family of languages

Indo-Aryan languages

Germanic languages

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Slavic languages

Baltic languages

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Historical reference

Groups of the Indo-European family of languages

The origin of the languages ​​of the Indo-European group

Groups of the Indo-European family of languages

Indo-Aryan languages

Germanic languages

Romance languages

Slavic languages

Baltic languages

Celtic languages

Linguistic isolates

Historical reference

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Indo-European family of languages on the world map

The origin of the languages of the Indo-European group

The origin of the languages of the Indo-European group