Portugal and India share a lot of common history ever since Vasco Da Gama’s
voyage, but what may come as a surprise is that the Portuguese language already shared
many similarities to the numerous languages spoken in India, including inflection, word
structure, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Languages constantly change and adapt, but in
the case of Portuguese, Hindi, Farsi, Latin, Greek, English, Polish, and many others,
there is only One common ancestor, which binds them all into a single family. Welcome
to the first video on the evolution of the Indo-European languages.
For millions of years, evolution was the main pathway of human development, as
genetic information was passed down from one generation to the next. It was that same
force, which gave humans very unique tools, which we used to climb the food chain, such
as opposable thumbs, sweating, and larger brains. Then suddenly the ability to make
complex sounds and more importantly, the acute sensitivity to comprehend speech
ushered in the development of languages, which allowed us to pass knowledge at
a speed that dramatically surpassed evolution.
Languages to this day remain an essential part of our everyday life, as they help
us communicate, express ourselves and define our identity. Over the years thousands
of languages have gone extinct, and yet there are still over 7100 of them divided into 142
families. The largest among them, spoken by 3.2 billion people or 46% of the
world’s population, is the Indo-European language family. The story begins with the
incredibly influential Yamnaya culture at around 4000 BC in the Pontic Steppe of modern
day Ukraine. Its people were semi-nomadic pastoralists who domesticated cattle, dogs,
and above all horses. This is where the oldest discovered wheels were uncovered, as
well as burial sites that show one of the earliest forms of ownership. Compared to the
widespread tombs we find in most societies, the Yamnaya burial pits belonged to clans,
families, or even individuals, sometimes buried with entire wagons. Combined with the
fact that they were one of the first bronze age cultures, this allowed the Yamnaya to
spread across Eurasia on their horses.
This expansion was swift and aggressive, and rather than developing their own
colonies, they interbred with the local neolithic cultures spreading their genes, as well as
their Proto Indo-European language. In time, the speakers of this language became
isolated from each other and regional dialects developed into their own daughter
languages, a process that continues to this day. Using the comparative method, linguists
and archeologists were able to reconstruct the original ancestor vocabulary, despite the
fact that it was never written down. In fact, the words for writing, sea, and iron are vastly
different across the many Indo-European languages, since those concepts arose after
the original migration.
However, the words that were commonly used by the Yamnaya people, were
nearly identical across Latin, Germanic, Ancient Greek, Hittite, Slavonic, Avestan, and
Sanskrit. On your screen, you can see how the cognate words for family remained mostly
the same across Indo-European sister languages, including words for family members:
Mother -Father-Brother-Sister. This is also the case for various verbs describing actions
that were fundamental to the lifestyle of the Yamnaya people, like Sew-Cloth-Eat-Drink-
Carry-Give-Die. The same can be said about various objects, animals, and particularly
the word wine, among them: Tooth-Bone-Eye-Night-God-Water-Fire-Tree-New-YoungPig-Sheep-Beaver-Honey-Brew -Wine. One of the very first things we learn in a new
language are the pronouns and basic numbers and yet again we see that both are shared
throughout the various different cultures: I-You-We- As well as the numbers from one to
ten.
Languages and pronunciations changed as they grew apart and interacted with
each other, as well as other languages outside the Indo-European family, adding and
exporting loan words, but the writing that these various cultures developed hints at their
shared origin. The comparisons between the Greek god Zeus and Roman god Jupiter
are often discussed, but in reality, both of those gods are adaptations of the original
Yamnaya god Perkwunos the Striker, a concept also shared in Hittite culture as Tarhuna,
in the Thracian tribes as Zibelthiurdos, while Dacian tribes knew him as
Gebeleizis, Albanian culture groups knew him as Perendi.
Baltic mythology has Perkunas, Slavic people knew him as Perun, Celtic tribes as
Taranis, while the Norse people split the singular concept into Thor and Odin, AngloSaxon mythology knew him as Thunor, and Hindu people initially believed that Indra was
the king of the heaven and thunder. Additionally, the very concept of an overarching
conflict between Rain and the Sun, Water and Fire, Man versus Beast most likely arose
from the Proto-Indo European legends. While it is easier to imagine the various subgroups
of the Proto Indo-European as separate branches, it is more accurate to view them as
waves, that constantly moved and interacted with each other and others. That being said,
the first major branch we will look at is Italic, a language that spread alongside Celtic, until
the Alps split the two around 1500 BC.
By 300 BC the language was fighting for survival against its Celtic, Illyrian and
Greek neighbors who dominated the north and even eliminated the Sicel branch in Sicily,
with only Faliscian, Umbrian, Oscan, and Venetic remaining. And then suddenly the
Roman Republic rose from obscurity and spread the Latin language Across the
Mediterranean and western Europe like wildfire, obliterating all other Italic and most of
the Celtic languages in the process.
The Latin language itself had two variants, classical Latin, which was the formal
language and Vulgar Latin, which Cicero describes as “the speech of the masses”. A
standardized and universal language in the Empire, one that brought status and
economic opportunity was one of the tools that allowed the Romans to
establish themselves as a military and cultural powerhouse. However due to the size of
the Empire, many regions began developing a distinct dialect, unique to the province and
when Rome fell, those dialects evolved into their own languages, ushering in the dawn of
the Romance languages. The subdivisions of Romance include the now-extinct British,
Pannonian, and African Romance languages, Sardinian which is an incredibly
conservative language, Romanian, and finally one of the most dominant subdivisions:
Western Romance, featuring Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. To simplify what
could be its own video, each of these languages underwent significant changes
throughout the middle ages, as various feudal states and dynasties struggled for power
internally and externally.
This resulted in dozens of dialects within each language, but if we draw a line
between any two points between these countries, the further you go, the harder it is to
understand the local language. But as the middle ages came to a close and states
became more centralized, rulers selected the dialect of their hometown and emphasized
its use, a process mirrored in every other branch. The Castillian kings choose Castillian
as the foundation for Spanish, discouraging the use of Galician, Leonese, Basque, and
Catalan, and eliminating Mozarabic, and this process was finalized by the so-called
Catholic monarchs - Ferdinand and Isabella, who understood the efficiency of using just
one language to rule their realm. The French kings ruling from Paris chose the langue
d'oïl, spoken in the north, rather than Occitan or Franco-Provencal, as king Francis I
formalized this in 1539 with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, which was also aimed
against the power of the Occitan nobles and Catholic church.
The unification of Italy occurred much later, but a similar process ensued after the
Tuscan dialect was chosen as the foundation of Italian. Modern day Italy could give us a
glimpse of what other countries looked like as there are numerous local dialects
with varying degrees of differences between them.
For example, an Italian from Florence is more likely to understand a person
speaking in Spanish rather than another Italian from Sicily. Nationalism, education and
literature are always major drivers of standardization and help shapE languages within a
certain state, but given enough time and isolation, speech can alter dramatically, even if
the writing system remains the same. That is exactly what we see in the colonies of the
Romance languages: Mexico, Quebec, and Brazil all share the languages of their
founders, but they also developed their own unique features.
The next major branch we will review is Proto-Greek, which arrived in
northern Greece around the 3rd millennium BC. The first stage of its evolution saw the
rise of Mycenaean Greek as the dominant language of the region, with Its very own
writing, which we now call Linear B.
But neither would survive the fall of the Mycenaean civilization in the 12th century
BC, instead around the same time the Greek alphabet was created, based on the
Phoenician alphabet, with a few added letters. It was this same alphabet, which would
deeply influence the Latin, Cyrillic, Coptic and Gothic alphabets. Armed with one of the
first written systems, Greek colonists settled the coasts of France, Italy, Anatolia, and the
entire Black Sea, but despite using the alphabet, rival dialects competed for dominance.
As you may have guessed this rivalry was mostly between the Greek city-states of Athens
and Sparta. Despite the popularity of the Spartan, Doric Greek in the mainland, Crete,
and Sicily and military victory over Athens, the Ionic Greek won the cultural war, thanks
to the works of Homer, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and others. And thus Classical Greek
became the staple of Greek culture and would contribute to numerous loan words,
present in many other languages today. The next crucial figure in this story is Alexander
the Great himself, who spread the common version of the language called Koine with his
conquests and firmly established it in Greece, as well as inner Anatolia, Egypt, and India.
This was the language in which the New Testament was written. Despite centuries
under Roman rule, the prestige of the language with its deeply embedded written form,
allowed it to avoid the Celtic fate, and when the West collapsed Koine Greek transformed
into Medieval Greek, spoken in the Eastern Roman Empire. By this point, there was a
huge disparity between the Classic and spoken versions of the language, with the former
being used primarily in court and writing.
The fall of Constantinople, triggered many events, one of which was the
transformation of both of these languages. The spoken Medieval Greek turned into
Demotic Greek meaning by the people and the written language called Katharevousa,
which added some elements of the spoken language, but mostly resembles Classical
Greek. The substantial differences in both languages made daily transactions incredibly
confusing and this problem persisted for centuries, until it was finally solved in 1976, when
Demotic Greek was made the official language still used today.
As for Doric Greek, it is spoken by only a few hundred elderly people in Southern
Greece and is expected to become extinct in the coming years. It took a significant
amount of time for Proto-Germanic to expand beyond a small area in North Europe,
during which it already split into three distinct dialect s: East, West and North. We know
very little about the early stage of this branch, as it used a runic writing system, usually
carved on trees.
But as the Roman Empire fell, the most famous language from the eastern dialect
spread all over Europe. Gothic was incredibly influential and left a lasting mark on the
continent, despite the fact that it would eventually become extinct. The North dialect,
which we now call Old Norse was also very popular due to the Viking era. It would create
west and east variants of its own from which modern Icelandic, Norwegian, and then
Danish and Swedish descended. It is important to note that Icelandic stands out as a very
conservative language, which has more in common with Old Norse than any of them,
once again outlining the important role of geography.
During the first millenium BC, Celtic was the lingua franca of Western and Central
Europe, largely due to the dominant Urnfield culture. As the branch spread it split into
various other forms like Lepontic, Celtiberian, Gaulish, Galatian and others. However, the
rise of the Roman Republic would lead to the extinction of all continental Celtic
languages. The few surviving
speakers migrated to the British Isles, forming what is known as the Insular Celtic
languages, further divided in Goedelic languages, featuring Irish, Scottish and Manx
Gaelic and Brythonic languages, featuring Breton, Cornish and Welsh. Despite being so
closely connected to each other, the two groups are not intelligible. Each of these
languages struggled to endure the centuries of deliberate censorship and oppression
from various states. In total there are just under 1 million speakers of the Celtic languages,
with half of them being Welsh. In the 19th century Cornish came very close to joining
Pictish and Cumbric in extinction, but has since undergone a revival and now boasts a
few hundred speakers. The Celtic language group stands as a clear example of how
politics can affect culture in incredibly impactful ways.
Lastly, we have West Germanic, which spread towards areas disconnected from
each other by forests, mountains, wide rivers, and the English channel. Naturally, this
split the language into four notable branches: Old High German, Old Low German, Old
Low Franconian, and Anglo-Frisian, which will inevitably form German, Dutch
and English. The evolution, development and spread of each of these languages are very
interesting, but extends far beyond the scope of this video, so we will just share one
interesting fact about each of them. The Gutenberg printing press and the Luther Bible
set the foundation of a standardized German language, which was essential in the later
unification process. When we look at places like Iceland, Albania or Sardinia it is easy to
understand why those languages are conservative, yet despite having few natural
defenses and being surrounded by more powerful states, the Dutch language is incredibly
conservative. English is a member of the Germanic language family, yet only 26% of its
vocabulary is Germanic, 29% of it is French, and 29% is Latin.
Alongside these four major branches, there are several others, which we would
love to cover in futures videos including the Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Armenian,
Albanian, not to mention the now extinct Anatolian, Phrygian, Dacian, and Tocharian.
Each of these language groups has a fascinating story as it changed throughout the years
and under different regimes.
The languages spread around the world, while other language groups left a lasting
impact on them, particularly Arabic, Turkic, and Hungarian. Like this video and share it
with your friends if you want us to delve deeper into the field of historical linguistics and
tell us which branch or language family deserves an entire video with more details.