Talk:Indo-European languages/Archive 2

Chart

Could someone find a chart of all the Indo-European languages? I'm talking about the kind that's in the back of my American Heritage dictionary. Anyone know what I'm talking about? It looks a bit like a family tree, and shows which languages came from another. For example, one of the branches coming from Indo-European is Germanic, which splits into several things, one of which is Old English, which points to Middle English which points to Modern English. I found it interesting and helpful. Could someone find one that can be put on this page?Twilight Realm 22:11, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Does the List of Indo-European languages come close to what you're looking for? --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 07:41, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I'm talking about, though it's much more comprehensible in a graphic format. For example, look here: http://www.intersolinc.com/newsletters/Language_Tree.htm . The problem is that it's copyrighted. So, if we can agree that this would be a good addition to the article, we should ask them for permission.

Ick, you find that more comprehensible? I don't. I get a headache just looking at it! --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 06:23, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I find it easier. If you just glance at it, it looks confusing, but it's easier because it clumps all the languages that evolved from a common ancestor together. The list is more like an outline, and while easier in some ways, it's harder in others. In an outline, all the main points are separated by details, because the main ideas aren't related. But with languages, as well as species and members of a family, they are. Take this "family tree" in outline format as an example:

Grandparents

Child 1

Grandchild 1

Grandchild 2

Grandchild 3

Child 2

Grandchild 4

Great-grandchild

Grandchild 5

Child 3

Child 4

Grandchild 6

I don't know about you, but I find a true family tree easier. It's not a big leap to the language tree.

We need more opinions. Does anyone else have one? Twilight Realm 23:25, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Twilight Realm, I think the listing is hard to read and I didn't even look at it when I first read the page. And while I appreciate that it is in order by attestation, I don't think that's relevant to this article. I think the 'family tree' chart or something showing the gouping would be a much better way to present the information to a lay person. Additionally, I find the section on satem and centum laguages difficult to understand, and I am famliar with the topic. (I was, however, equally disappointed with the Satem site)Kaibab 06:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

What about something similar to the chart in the Merriam-Webster dictionary ("under" Indo-European, its actually a full page in the middle of the dictionary). I haven't seen the American Heritage, but MW seems to be a cross between the Wikipedia list and the family tree. It has them in the groups, and has the languages under "Ancient", "Medieval", and "Modern"? Rt66lt 16:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Baltic and slavic. Again

Could we leave our national feelings aside and have normal discussion ? I knew about this theory before I readed about it here, but it seemed to me that there are many opinions and that there is still argument why there are so many similarities between those languages, but still - latest hypothesis is that slavs were divided form balts so classification should be:

• baltic
  • baltic
  • slavic

But acctualy truth seems to be that there isn`t enough sources to prove if there was or wasn`t balto-slavic or if slavs were balts - maybe those similarities are just because that they lived next to each other, maybe because they spoken one language, maybe they spoke similar dialects of PIE, maybe they spoke PIE longer than others... there are lots of posibilities so we can`t say that there were balto-slavic for sure. Maybe it`s just my opinion but I don`t think any encyclopedia should have such classification in it that is based more on theories than facts Xil 15:37, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with encyclopedias basing their information on theories (for example, Evolution) so long as it's made clear that it's a theory, not proven fact. In the realm of historical linguistics, everything is theory, and proof can only be "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" rather than mathematical proof. The only difference between the classification on the article page and the one you suggest above is terminology: you want to group Baltic and Slavic under a heading "Baltic"; on the main page they're grouped together under a heading "Balto-Slavic". The latter is the standard terminology among people who believe the the modern Baltic and Slavic languages have a common ancestor language more recent than Proto-Indo-European. It also has the advantage of not being ambiguous. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 16:06, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but if balts and slavs are put in same branch then then maybe all classification should be divided in branches to describe hypotetical evolution of indo-europian languages. I just want to say that this classification should show present state and such balto-slavic does not exist today and there is no prove that could tell us what exactly balto-slavic was. As for being ambiguos - it is as ambiguos as it is now only that it is hurtful for balts not slavs because balts are often thought to be russians outside of baltic states (BTW it seems specialy characteristic to USA and UK) - I could bet that most baltic people read only slavic not balto-slavic Xil 22:01, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

To say "Balto-Slavic does not exist today" is the same as saying "Indo-European does not exist today"; it's true the proto-languages don't exist today, but languages descended from them do. The point of the groupings is not to show the state of the languages today, it's to show how the languages evolved. The dominant theory is that the Baltic and Slavic languages shared a common history that was separate from the other Indo-European languages; the most convenient name for the period when they shard a common history is "Balto-Slavic". If there are linguistic reasons to disbelieve that theory, that's fine; and it is mentioned on this page that some linguists don't believe it. But to say the term "Balto-Slavic" is "hurtful for Balts" only makes sense from a sociological/political point of view, not a linguistic one. If Balts are often confused with Slavs outside of the Baltic countries, that's a problem that needs to be solved by education, but it has no effect at all on the historical evidence that Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic descended from a common ancestor later than Proto-Indo-European. The pitch accent system of the two branches, and the way it developed from the interaction between vowels and laryngeals, must (in the opinion of most Indo-Europeanists) have evolved in a single branch before Baltic and Slavic separated from each other. Most Indo-Europeanists feel it to be implausible that the pitch accent system could have developed independently in the two branches, and there's simply no evidence for the kind of "wave" effect one would expect from language contact. So if virtually everyone agrees that Proto-Indo-European evolved into a language X, and this particular pitch accent system was a characteristic of language X, and language X then split into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic, the only remaining question is a simple terminological one: what do we call language X? The well-established answer to that question is "Proto-Balto-Slavic". If that pushes the wrong emotional buttons of Balts, I'm sorry; in principle we could call language X anything (we could call it Fred for all I care), but the fact of the matter is Balto-Slavic is the established name, and has been for well over a century, and so that's the name we're going to use here. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 23:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

It`s not political for me, I just wanted to explain - I think I saw someone asking what is wrong with balts, that they are so mad about this. However my point is that if you want to show how languages evolved than there should be more groups showing for exemple which languages are satem. As for saying indo-europian does not exist - doesn`t indo-europian has much larger differences with non-indoeuropian languages than there could be between two indo-europian languages ?

Hmmmm, I think so, but there are, for different reasons, large differences between, for instance, Icelandic, Hindi and Armenian, so I'm not sure about if it is entirely true.

I don`t think I got idea about that pitch accent system do you mean the way language is spoken or the way sounds folow each other in word or something ? (acctualy I thought that this theory is based on gramar and similarity of words) If it is the way it`s spoken than it would be normal since slavs and balts live next to each other and it is possible that balts spoke slavic as second language

The difference between Balto-Slavic and Satem is that while most IEists believe in Proto-Balto-Slavic, most do not believe in a "Proto-Satem". Satemization is generally believed to have been spread wavelike from one dialect to an adjacent one without the two necessarily having had a common ancestor later than PIE. To your second question, if we only look at modern Indo-European languages, I think there is as much variation within the group of IE languages as there is between IE and non-IE languages in general. The modern Indo-Iranian languages are certainly as different from the IE languages of Europe as many non-IE languages of Asia are. Pitch accent is the way the stressed syllable of a word receives intonation (high tone, low tone, falling tone, rising tone, etc.). Both Baltic languages like Lithuanian and Slavic languages like Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian use pitch accent, and the historical evidence suggests that these characteristic developed after Proto-Indo-European but before Baltic and Slavic separated from each other. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 00:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Pitch accent was a feature of Proto-Indo-European and the Baltic and Slavonic systems can be shown to be related to the Greek and Sanskrit systems through the process of De Saussure's Law et al. CRCulver 02:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I decided to do some searching and now I`ve camed to this question: Is this "pitch accent system", that you are talking about, something related with "mobile accent" ? If I understand everything corectly then answer is "Yes" if it is "No" than there is no sence to keep searching in that direction or to talk about it here since I don`t understand idea. So please answer Xil 14:34, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, they are related. Crculver is right that Balto-Slavic pitch accent is related to the Indo-European pitch accent, but it is true that the accent system underwent many changes in Baltic and Slavic and not in any other languages, implying that they are descended from a single proto-language. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 15:46, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

(I`m asking it here because people who want to know about this issue will, most probably, look here) And what proves that mobile accent is more arhaic then fixed accent ? Xil 10:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

The fact that it's there in Greek and Sanskrit. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 14:24, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Let me ask that in different way - it appears that in latvian there is fixed accent , but it is mobile in lithuanian, so if there are only two languages that can be compered in group, how fact that something is in one language proves that this languge group belongs to same proto-group than other languge group ? -- Xil - talk 13:38, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

if I may briefly interrupt -- Wikipedia does not usually develop articles by the Socratic method. If Angr is prepared to do so, that's great of course. But, we have discussed the Balto-Slavic issue in depth, in the past, leading to a rather solid Balto-Slavic article, where you can read up on the main reasons for the grouping (Szemerényi 1957). Any suggestions for further change in the matter should be aware of the history of the topic here, as well as providing spot-on, rock-solid scholarly references, the merit of which, and position relative to the mainstream scholarly community we can then debate. Personally, I am not prepared to discuss Balto-Slavic any more, except reference by reference, sorry. dab (ᛏ) 20:16, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 21:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Aryan Language

A new page with this title has just been created by User:172.203.147.132 . I'm not sure whether its separate existence is valuable. Contributers here may have their own thoughts. Aryan language (small L) already redirects to this page. Perhaps that should become a disambiguation page. Paul B 09:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a copyvio from http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Languages/aryan/aryan_language.htm, and I've marked it for speedy deletion as such. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 10:14, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

no need to speedy it, just make it a redirect to Indo-Iranian languages. dab (ᛏ) 20:21, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I've decided to make Aryan language a disambig page, and Aryan Language will redirect to it, as will Aryan languages and Aryan Languages. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 21:07, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Mehrgarh

Can any one tell me that photos given in main page is how much valid now when Indus Valley civilization dates are going at 6500 BC as per Mehrgarh findings and recently exavated submerged town near Surat coastline in Western India in Gulf of Cambay.

There should be some modifications in photos given.

does this bear any relation to this article? dab (ᛏ) 20:21, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

None, whatsoever.--Eupator 21:20, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

*b is a PIE phoneme

It isn't common, but it does exist. It is listed in Calvert Watkins and he is a qualified authority on the matter. I have never seen sources which said it does not exist. Our Wikipedia article on PIE phonology includes it.Imperial78

Correct errors, but don't blanket revert.

Certitudes are not warranted in a construct such as PIE. There are only a few roots reconstructed with *b, so few that several IEists have expressed doubt about this phoneme. (Many of the *b words are listed as *b(h).) We should probably leave it in but with a note that its existance is questioned. kwami 08:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we should probably leave it in with a note. PIE *bel-, "strong", seems relatively well-attested. I seem to remember that there is a Sanskrit cognate from this root which indicates a *b- as well, not an aspirate. Alexander 007 08:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, *bel- is in Calvert Watkins. I have listed my source. His is a clear authority of IE. Kwami, please do not remove the information before we are finished discussing it. I suggest leaving it and putting in a not about the phoneme *b. Imperial78

I am not removing info, I am supplying it. I thought that parentheses around the phoneme in question would be sufficient. You should not delete indications that some reconstructions are doubtful; Watkins is not "the" authority on PIE. (One alledgedly widespread root could still be spurious.) Also, please edit for content. I will continue to revert you when you make blind reverts, regardless of your arguments. kwami 08:54, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

My reference states that Pokorny also lists it as *bel- (pg. 96). Alexander 007 08:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Reading over my response, I see I'm being awfully short-tempered. Sorry about that. Bear in mind though that Watkins and Pokorny are old refs, from before the glottalic controversy that addressed this odd gap and got people wondering if the few *b roots might be spurious. Before that people had reconstructed a *b if for no other reason than symmetry. kwami 09:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I must say I wonder what the chart of consonant correspondences is doing on this page anyway. I think it would make more sense on Proto-Indo-European language (or perhaps on its own page) than here. To the point at hand, Watkins is not an "old ref", as the second edition of the Dictionary of IE roots is just a few years old, well after the glottalic theory (which he dismisses as "raising more questions than it answers") became known. The other roots I can think of off the top of my head that are said to have *b are *(s)lab- and *dheub-. *abal- is also very old but possibly not as old as PIE since it's only around in western languages. --Angr (tɔk) 09:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Angr. Communis opinio is clearly that *b was a phoneme, albeit maybe a marginal one (but maybe not even marginal). Glottalic theory is clearly not communis opinio, for good reasons. GT may boast to explain why *b is marginal even if its existence is undisputed. As Angr says, this table should go on PIE, or on its own article (IE phonology/sound changes or similar) dab (ᛏ) 10:57, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Albanian sound-changes

I'm not too familiar with Albanian sound-changes beyond some basic features and some examples that I've seen discussed, but the chart lists *k--->k in Albanian, and *g--->g in Albanian. How constant is this? I have a linguistic reference, for example, that derives Albanian bardhë ("white") from PIE *bherəg-, "white", by way of Proto-Albanian barz- (g-->z-->dh). Alexander 007 09:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

we'll find that most Albanian sound changes are disputed anyway, and thus difficult to present in a table. Per Angr above, this table should find another home. dab (ᛏ) 10:54, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Probably moved to its own article. Alexander 007 10:57, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

note Proto-Semitic which has a fine example of such a table, in the article on the Proto-language. dab (ᛏ) 11:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

As long as the stuff will be fully detailed, PIE seems fine. Alexander 007 11:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Unlike Proto-Semitic language, Proto-Indo-European language is already quite long even without the table. That's why I suggest a separate page called Table of Indo-European sound correspondences or something. --Angr (tɔk) 11:23, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

any/all of Indo-European sound correspondences, Indo-European sound laws, Indo-European sound changes will be fine. dab (ᛏ) 13:50, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

For sure the table is not complete. There needs to be fixes. For example, Armenian has two "r" phonemes and they need to be both included etc. User:Imperial78_Imperial78

Properties of the IE languages

It would be nice to have a table that describes the structural features found in most IE languages (such as genders, syntax, etc). Such tables can be found in articles on other families such as afro-asiatic languages and finno-ugric languages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.235.16.146 (talk • contribs) 15:20, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I see alot of info on which languages fall under this category, but what makes a language Indo-European? When someone says X is Indo-European, what does can I then say about the features of X? Danielx 22:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

The only thing that makes a language Indo-European is being descended from the Indo-European proto-language. Although there are certainly morphological, syntactic, and phonological characteristics that are vaguely "typically Indo-European", there's probably no linguistic property that all IE languages share to the exclusion of all non-IE languages. Angr (talk) 22:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Dardic and Nuristani

OK, I added the Dardic and Nuristani languages, but I have no idea on how early they are attested... =S Does someone else know? Maybe there hasn't been much research on the languages, because they haven't been classified in their own group for that long. 惑乱 分からん 16:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Forgotten large IE-speaker population

Forgotten large IE-speaker population

There are over 15 millon in eastern Turkey (20% of population), plus 2 million in northeastern Syria (10% of population) IE-speakers which has not been colored on the map. This large population speak Kurdish language.

I Suggest to show countries (or at least part of them) which have IE-speakers. Whether those languages are unofficial or banned. Thanks Diyako Talk + 16:53, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

How many Languages encompass this family?

Does anyone know an approximate number of how many Languages, both living and dead, encompass the indo european family? - Christopher 05:33, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, Ethnologue gives the estimate 449[1], but that excludes many dead languages, and includes controversial assumptions like (1) Albanian is four languages, (2) Danish is two languages, (3) Swedish is four languages, (4) Yinglish is a distinct language from English, (5) German is 18 languages, (6) Yiddish is two languages, (7) Greek is six languages, and so on. Angr/talk 07:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

it's impossible to count languages for fundamental reasons. At best, you can count officially endorsed standard languages, begging the question, of course, who gets to declare official definitions (the answer is, sovereign states, evidently making the question a purely political one). dab (ᛏ) 14:44, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Image:IndoEuropeanTreeA.PNG

ok, I think this image is too large at the moment, and what's more, it is not arranged in a very useful way. It looks very complicated, but tells us nothing that an indented list couldn't. If we want a "list of languages" here, I suggest the image is replaced with a clickable list. Otherwise, I suggest the image is simply removed. dab (ᛏ) 14:44, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I for one think this is one of the few IE trees I like, although, maybe boxing the language groups within IE might be more clear

Question: Why do you think it's complicated?

Sandertje 15:52, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

there is no rhyme or reason to the arrangement. Topologically, it's identical to a simple bulletlist. I would tend to reject any "list of languages" on this article, unless we want to be bogged down by list of English dialects with a vengeance. Let us list the families, and people can click on the links to get a list of members of those families. If we start drawing trees or compiling lists, we will clutter the article with material that is already perfectly accessible, one click away. dab (ᛏ) 16:16, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

If there is one thing that is unclear it's those lists, just look at the 'list' on the germanic languages article... Sandertje 17:32, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

yes, what is wrong with it? it is perfectly clear and contains no meaningless redundancy. You can add touches of design with CSS magic, if you feel it is necessary. dab (ᛏ) 20:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

If I could, I would add Haitian Creole and Cajun as distinct from French and derived from it. Haitian Creole and Cajun 'French' are both different enough from French to require a native speaker to learn French as a foreign language to communicate with the French. The distinctions with Parisian French are far greater than that between the French dialect in Québec or between British English and American, Australian, or Caribbean English. --66.231.41.57 22:10, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

No offence, but if start adding creoles, mixed languages and pidgins the graph becomes totally incomprehensible. Sander 23:05, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I must really object to this image now. Design is all very well, but not at the cost of precision. It seems to suggest that Celtic and Indo-Iranian, branched off "first", and at exactly the same time. This is probably not intended, but it makes the image look like nonsense. Please draw it properly, or I will remove it. Again, I really don't see the advantage of having text in an image; the disadvantage being that it is not searchable (layout issues aside). I strongly recommend that instead of redrawing it, you implement it with CSS. See Template:CSS_IPA_vowel_chart for a nice example of how it is done. dab (ᛏ) 20:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

3RR

I already reverted 3 times, so... I'd rather take it to talk. To the anon IP: the sentence mentioning "a nationalistic flavor" and "national mysticism" do not refer exclusively to the Indian hypothesis, but to many others as well, usually hypotheses proposed by a person of a certain ethnicity or nationality, claiming that his/her homeland is the Urheimat etc. I suspect there are authoritative citations which have deemed such ideas as having a nationalist/national mystic flavor, so it would not be Original Research, and they would be usable opinions. Alexander 007 18:25, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

well, the "AIT" debate is a prime example of nationalistic highjacking of an academic debate. But there are others, many more than mentioned at the moment. In order not to expose the Indian nationalists unduly, more examples should be added. The phenomenon was very typical indeed in 19th and early 20th century Europe, the Hindutva crowd are not any worse, they are just a century late. I'll try to present a more coherent picture. dab (ᛏ) 09:41, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Diachronic Map of the Centum-Satem isogloss

This map is incorrect in what refers to the Iberian peninsula, since it reverses the geographical/linguistic areas. In Iberia the area presented in blue should be grey and the one in grey should be blue. In fact the one presently in blue was globaly the area of the Iberian language and Tartessian language (non-Indo-European languages), while the one presently in gray was in fact the one with Celtic and Proto-Celtic languages. See, for instance, this detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples and Languages of Iberia. This needs to be corrected. The Ogre 13:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

You are right; I will try to fix it. Maybe I should leave Iberia aside altogether and say the map represents the situation at 500 BC? dab (ᛏ) 20:50, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Avars

please could some one tell me about my languge in more simplistic way. I tried to, but it is too comlicated...

Avar language might help (assuming thats what you mean, judging by the title)? what's this got to do with Indo-European languages? --Krsont 14:18, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Wheel

Re: "common Indo-European word for "wheel" (invented in the 5th millennium), incidentially one of the most solidly reconstructed Indo-European lexemes." Begging to differ here:

I'm assuming that "Indo-European" here is referring to the superfamily over Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Latin. I'll even throw in Tocharian (kukäl/kokale). But what evidence is there for "wheel" in Anatolian? The Luwian language has the verb kaluti, which means "turn" or "circle"; but it's not a concrete wheel.

"Proto-Indo-European" as originally defined is the superfamily over all living I.E. languages, and this does indeed have a word for "wheel". But the superfamily over Proto-Indo-European and Anatolian only has a word for "turning about", which any three year old looking for a cheap high can do.

The common "wheel" may validate the Kurgan hypothesis for PIE with Anatolian excepted, but not when you throw in Anatolian. - Zimriel 14:13, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps Anatolian lost the word for wheel. Languages do lose words over time; just because one branch lacks a word doesn't prove the word wasn't there in the proto-language. Angr (talk) 15:07, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

We also can't prove that proto-Anatolian lacked a word for "alien spacecraft"; and besides, why should the Anatolians, lodged between the steppes and Mesopotamia, have been the only IE people who forgot how to roll a cart?

My point is that for the Kurgan hypothesis to hold for Anatolian, then its proponents need to find a proto-Anatolian word which literally means "wheel" and not a word which means something else. And since we're being asked to believe that this word is intrusive to Anatolia, this word should be free of (or at least precede) any cognates in the surrounding languages of the Caucasus, Sumer, and Akkad. Otherwise, Kurganists have to do without Anatolian. I'm a proponent of Kurgan myself, and it beats me why its devotees insist on shoehorning Anatolian into it. Kurgan is fully compatible with an Anatolian origin for PIE (or "Indo-Hittite" if you like). - Zimriel 17:47, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Is the Kurgan hypothesis relevant to an "Indo-European languages" article?

I thought the Kurgan hypothesis was about archaeology, not linguistics. Angr (talk) 21:14, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, yeah. But when I found this article, it was using linguistics to disprove the Anatolian hypothesis. The example chosen was a rickety wheel, as it were, so I took a kick at it. If some reader feels that this discussion belongs elsewhere (as it probably should), let him propose a better place for it... - Zimriel 21:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I propose Proto-Indo-Europeans. Angr (talk) 07:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

the entire point of the Kurgan hypothesis is the attempt to align archaeology with historical linguistics. I agree it should not be treated at length here, and a briefer summary should do. But please don't just delete material you cut from this article, move it to Kurgan hypothesis or Proto-Indo-Europeans instead. dab (ᛏ) 10:11, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Huh?

Why is it "indogermanische Sprachen" - "Indo-Germanic languages" in the German article? --84.249.252.211 21:58, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

To very loosely translate what the German Wikipedia aticle says on that topic,

The linguists of the 19th century used the term "Indo-Germanic" to bring together the names of the two most widely separated languate groups in the family, i.e. the Indian languages in the east, and in the west, the germanic languages, the westermost being Icelandic. The Celtic languages were at that time not yet considered a part of the family due to grammatical specializations, and Tocharian further east was first added in 1890.

The term "Indo-Germanic" continued in use in the German language. Other languages use the term "Indo-European" almost exclusively. The American linguist Merritt Ruhlen uses the term "Indo-Hittite", putting Hittite in a special position to draw the Analtolian languages into the family. Most linguists do not agree with this classification as a general statement (with current research and evidence), but some researchers contend that the Anatolian languages were the first to split from the common mother-tongue (the Anatolian Hypothesis).

That might explain the difference. Dpv 23:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I reckon there might be a bit of chauvinism in there, as well -- after all, "indogermanisch" includes "germanisch". ;) —Nightstallion (?) 12:24, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

it's just the conventional term. See Indo-European studies#Origin_of_the_Term for details. Note that German is known as Deutsch in German, so that Indo-Germanisch has no association with German in particular, just with Germanic (of which English is a member just as much as German). dab (ᛏ) 10:13, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

the intro

Since we get a lot of Persians determined to mention Farsi in the intro, maybe the list of languages given in the intro should be discussed? We settled for the seven largest living languages (more than 100M speakers). Per List of languages by number of native speakers, listing those with more than 50M would result in a list of twelve, including Farsi. But there are other possibilities: Hindustani could be grouped as a single language. We could list the most prominent language of each branch instead of the globally largest. Or other possibilities. dab (ᛏ) 12:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I think since this is the lead section of the article, and all languages are mentioned further down the page, the list should be kept as short as possible. Since List of languages by number of native speakers does not group Hindi and Urdu together as Hindustani, I would say this page shouldn't either. I'm for keeping the 100 million mark and listing them in order per List of languages by number of native speakers: Hindi, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, French, German, Punjabi. Does anybody have a problem with that? User:Angr 13:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

that's fine with me. Precisely because the intro should be very brief, I would find it useful to link to Hindustani, but I don't mind much. dab (ᛏ) 14:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's five letters longer than Hindi, and Urdu doesn't make the list anyway. Besides, even though I know it's a legitimate linguistic term, it still has connotations of British colonialism to me. ("The colonel is quite fluent in Hindoostanee," said Lord Featherstonehaugh as he poured the brandy..., that sort of thing.) User:Angr 15:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

fair enough :) dab (ᛏ) 17:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest a comparative chart or table with words from every indo-european language that are similar to each other, like they do in linguistics. E.g. Greek τρία, Latin tres, German drei etc., but including all indo-european languages and not just the ones of Europe.