1.
Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
2.
Proto-language
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In the strict sense, a proto-language is the latest common ancestor of a language family, immediately before the start of the familys divergence into the attested daughter languages. It is therefore equivalent with the language or parental language of a language family. Moreover, a group of idioms which are not considered separate languages can also be described as descending from a unitary proto-language, occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead. Typically, the proto-language is not known directly and it is by definition a linguistic reconstruction formulated by applying the comparative method to a group of languages featuring similar characteristics. The tree is a statement of similarity and a hypothesis that the similarity results from descent from a common language, the comparative method, a process of deduction, begins from a set of characteristics, or characters, found in the attested languages. More recently such a tree has been termed perfect and the characters labelled compatible, no trees but the smallest branches are ever found to be perfect, in part because languages also evolve through horizontal transfer with their neighbours. Typically, credibility is given to the hypotheses of highest compatibility, the differences in compatibility must be explained by various applications of the wave model. Not all characters are suitable for the comparative method, for example, lexical items that are loans from a different language do not reflect the phylogeny to be tested, and if used will detract from the compatibility. Getting the right dataset for the method is a major task in historical linguistics. Some universally accepted proto-languages are Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, and Proto-Dravidian, in a few fortuitous instances, which have been used to verify the method and the model, a literary history exists from as early as a few millennia ago, allowing the descent to be traced in detail. The early daughter languages, and even the proto-language itself, may be attested in surviving texts, for example, Latin is the proto-language of the Romance language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Spanish. Likewise, Proto-Norse, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages, is attested, albeit in fragmentary form, the first person to offer systematic reconstructions of an unattested proto-language was August Schleicher, he did so for Proto-Indo-European in 1861. Normally, the term Proto-X refers to the last common ancestor of a group of languages, occasionally attested, an earlier stage of the same language, reconstructed through the method of internal reconstruction, is termed Pre-X. This terminology is used, for example, in the case of Proto-Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European, when multiple historical stages of a single language exist, the oldest attested stage is normally termed Old X. For an earlier, hypothetical stage, reconstructed through the method of reconstruction, terminology differs, with some authors using Proto-X. This is similar to the situation of Old Norse and Proto-Norse, there are no objective criteria for the evaluation of different reconstruction systems yielding different proto-languages. Many researchers concerned with linguistic reconstruction agree that the comparative method is an intuitive undertaking. The bias of the researchers regarding the implicit knowledge can also lead to erroneous assumptions
3.
Tree model
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In historical linguistics, the tree model is a model of the evolution of languages analogous to the concept of a family tree, particularly a phylogenetic tree in the biological evolution of species. As with species, each language is assumed to have evolved from a parent or mother language. Popularized by the German linguist August Schleicher in 1853, the model has always been a common method of describing genetic relationships between languages since the first attempts to do so. The wave model was developed in 1872 by Schleichers student Johannes Schmidt as an alternative to the model that incorporates horizontal transmission. According to the Genesis narrative, the descendants of Noah gathered together in the land of Shinar, in response to their over-reaching God decided to confound their language, that they may not understand one anothers speech and scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of the earth. In other words, if languages were given by God, then they did not evolve, in all he identified 72 nations, tribal founders and languages. The confusion and dispersion occurred in the time of Peleg, son of Heber, son of Shem, most of the 72 languages, however, date to many generations after Heber. St. Augustine solves this first problem by supposing that Heber, St. Augustines hypothesis stood without major question for over a thousand years. Then, in a series of tracts, published in 1684, expressing skepticism concerning various beliefs, especially Biblical, Sir Thomas Browne wrote, yet whether, after a large dispersion, and the space of sixteen hundred years, men maintained so uniform a language in all parts. By then, discovery of the New World and exploration of the Far East had brought knowledge of numbers of new languages far beyond the 72 calculated by St. Augustine. Citing the native American languages, Browne suggests the confusion of tongues at first fell only upon those present in Sinaar at the work of Babel, for those about the foot of the hills, whereabout the ark rested. Their primitive language might in time out into several parts of Europe. This is an inkling of a tree, in Brownes view, simplification from a larger aboriginal language than Hebrew could account for the differences in language. He suggests ancient Chinese, from which the others descended by confusion, admixtion and corruption, later he invokes commixture and alteration. Verstegan made no doubt that he could contrive a letter that might be understood by the English, Dutch, the confusion at the Tower of Babel was thus removed as an obstacle by setting it aside. Attempts to find similarities in all languages were resulting in the uncovering of an ancient master language from which all the other languages derive. Browne undoubtedly did his writing and thinking well before 1684, now the High Dutch or Teutonick Tongue, is one of the prime and most spacious Maternal Languages of Europe. It was the language of the Goths and Vandals, and continueth yet of the greatest part of Poland and Hungary, some of her writers would make this world believe that she was the language spoken in paradise
4.
Family tree
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A family tree, or pedigree chart, is a chart representing family relationships in a conventional tree structure. The more detailed family trees used in medicine and social work are known as genograms, genealogical data can be represented in several formats, for example as a pedigree or ancestry chart. Family trees are presented with the oldest generations at the top. An ancestry chart, which is a showing the ancestors of an individual, will more closely resemble a tree in shape. In some ancestry charts, a appears on the left. A descendancy chart, which all the descendants of an individual will be narrowest at the top. Family trees can have many themes, one might encompass all direct descendants of a single figure, or all known ancestors of a living person. Another might include all members of a particular surname, yet another approach is to construct a tree including all holders of a certain office, such as kings of Germany. This relies on dynastic marriage to hold together the links between dynasties, the image of the tree probably originated with one in medieval art of the Tree of Jesse, used to illustrate the Genealogy of Christ in terms of a prophecy of Isaiah. Fan charts depict paternal and maternal ancestors, however, because a parent must be born before their child is born, a person cannot be their own ancestor, and thus there are no loops, so ancestry forms a directed acyclic graph. The graphs of matrilineal descent and patrilineal descent are trees however, assuming no common ancestor, an ancestry chart is a perfect binary tree, as each person has exactly one mother and one father, for two parents, these thus have a regular structure. A descendancy chart, on the hand, does not in general have a regular structure, as a person can have any number of children. The longest family tree in the world is that of the Chinese philosopher and educator Confucius, the tree spans more than 80 generations from him, and includes more than 2 million members. An international effort involving more than 450 branches around the world was started in 1998 to retrace, a new edition of the Confucius genealogy was printed in September 2009 by the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee, to coincide with the 2560th anniversary of the birth of the Chinese thinker. This latest edition is expected to include some 1.3 million living members who are scattered around the world today, the 1999 edition of the Guinness Book of Records recorded the Lurie family in the longest lineage category as oldest-known living family in the world today. In Europe, the pedigree of Niall Noígíallach would be contender for the longest, the author Pete Frame is notable for having produced family trees of rock bands. In this instance, the entries represent membership of certain groups, several books have been produced with his family trees, which in turn have led to a BBC television series about them, including interviews from the bands depicted in the trees
5.
Phylogenetic tree
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The taxa joined together in the tree are implied to have descended from a common ancestor. Phylogenetic trees are central to the field of phylogenetics, each node is called a taxonomic unit. Internal nodes are generally called hypothetical taxonomic units, as they cannot be directly observed, Trees are useful in fields of biology such as bioinformatics, systematics, and phylogenetic comparative methods. Unrooted trees illustrate only the relatedness of the nodes and do not require the ancestral root to be known or inferred. The idea of a tree of life arose from ancient notions of a progression from lower to higher forms of life. Charles Darwin also produced one of the first illustrations and crucially popularized the notion of a tree in his seminal book The Origin of Species. Over time, species classification has become static and more dynamic. A rooted phylogenetic tree is a tree with a unique node corresponding to the most recent common ancestor of all the entities at the leaves of the tree. The most common method for rooting trees is the use of an uncontroversial outgroup—close enough to allow inference from trait data or molecular sequencing, unrooted trees illustrate the relatedness of the leaf nodes without making assumptions about ancestry. They do not require the ancestral root to be known or inferred, unrooted trees can always be generated from rooted ones by simply omitting the root. By contrast, inferring the root of an unrooted tree requires some means of identifying ancestry, both rooted and unrooted phylogenetic trees can be either bifurcating or multifurcating, and either labeled or unlabeled. In contrast, a rooted multifurcating tree may have more than two children at some nodes and an unrooted multifurcating tree may have more than three neighbors at some nodes. A labeled tree has specific values assigned to its leaves, while a tree, sometimes called a tree shape. The last distinction is the most biologically relevant, it arises because there are places on an unrooted tree to put the root. For labeled bifurcating trees, there are,2 n −2. for n ≥2 total rooted trees and. 2 n −3. for n ≥3 total unrooted trees, among labeled bifurcating trees, the number of unrooted trees with n leaves is equal to the number of rooted trees with n −1 leaves. A dendrogram is a term for the diagrammatic representation of a phylogenetic tree. A cladogram is a phylogenetic tree formed using cladistic methods and this type of tree only represents a branching pattern, i. e. its branch spans do not represent time or relative amount of character change
6.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
7.
Language death
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In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. Language death may affect any language idiom, including dialects and languages, Language death should not be confused with language attrition, which describes the loss of proficiency in a language at the individual level. Top-to-bottom language death, when language shift begins in an environment such as the government. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population and this process is gradual and can occur from either bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom. Languages with a small, geographically isolated population of speakers can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide, disease, a language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few speakers of a language remaining. A language that has reached such a stage of use is generally considered moribund. Half of the languages of the world are not being taught to new generations of children. This is rarely a sudden event, but a process of each generation learning less and less of the language, until its use is relegated to the domain of traditional use, such as in poetry. One example of this process reaching its conclusion is that of the Dalmatian language, Language death can be fast, when the children are taught to avoid their parents language for reasons such as work opportunities and social status. Many children are rather being taught a lingua franca with English being the most widespread, at other times, minority languages survive much longer, for example when the speakers try to isolate themselves against a majority population. Often, especially historically, governments have tried to promote language death and this process of change has been described by Appel in two categories, though they are not mutually exclusive. Often speakers replace elements of their own language with something from the language they are shifting toward, also, if their heritage language has an element that the new language does not, speakers may drop it. Language revitalization is an attempt to slow or reverse language death, revitalization programs are ongoing in many languages, and have had varying degrees of success. Even in the case of Hebrew, there is a theory that argues that the Hebrew revivalists who wished to speak pure Hebrew failed, the result is a fascinating and multifaceted Israeli language, which is not only multi-layered but also multi-sourced. The revival of a dead language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists mother tongue. Other cases of language revitalization which have some degree of success are Irish, Welsh, Hawaiian, Cherokee. There are various ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival—for example, historical justice, diversity and employability, linguists distinguish between language death and the process where a language becomes a dead language through normal language change, a linguistic phenomenon analogous to pseudoextinction
8.
Extinct language
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An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if it has no living descendants. A dead language is one that is no longer the language of any community, even if it still in use. A language that currently has living native speakers is called a modern language, as of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are languages in danger of extinction, one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050. Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death while being replaced by a different one. For example, some Native American languages were replaced by English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, such languages are sometimes also referred to as dead languages, but more typically as classical language. g. Old English or Old High German relative to their descendants, English. Minor languages are endangered due to economic and cultural globalization. Second, the gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant languages grammar. Institutions such as the system, as well as forms of media such as the Internet, television. Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce a recently-extinct language in use by a new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism sleeping beauty languages has been used to such a hope. Hebrew is an example of a language that has successfully been revived for everyday use. The revival of Hebrew has been successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions. Revival attempts of minor languages with no status as liturgical language typically have more modest results and this is a list of languages reported as having become extinct after the year 2000. For a more complete list, see List of extinct languages
9.
Speech community
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A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations with regard to how their language should be used. Exactly how to define speech community is debated in the literature and it has also been assumed that within a community a homogeneous set of norms should exist. Each speech community has different norms that tend to share only partially. Communities may be de-localized and unbounded rather than local, and they often comprise different sub-communities with differing speech norms, such groups can be villages, countries, political or professional communities, communities with shared interests, hobbies, or lifestyles, or even just groups of friends. Speech communities may share both particular sets of vocabulary and grammatical conventions, as well as styles and genres, and also norms for how. The adoption of the concept of the community as a unit of linguistic analysis emerged in the 1960s. Dialectologists rather realized that traits spread through diffusion and that social factors were decisive in how this happened. They also realized that traits spread as waves from centers and that several competing varieties would exist in some communities. This could be done by focusing on the aspect of language. This definition gives equal importance to the structural and interactional layers, the community is a group of people that frequently interact with each other. This is not a definition of a group because frequency of interaction is relative and graduated. The definition of the system is also not exclusive because it is defined as being set off from other systems by significant differences in usage. Here Gumperz again identifies two important components of the community, its members share both a set of linguistics forms and a set of social norms that govern the use of those forms. Gumperz also sought to set up a framework for describing how linguistic systems can be in use within a single speech community. Where Gumperz formulation was designed to incorporate heterogeneity, by focusing on shared norms of language use rather than a linguistic system. Like that of Gumperz, Labovs formulation stressed that a community was defined more by shared norms than by shared linguistic forms. But like Chomsky, Labov also saw each of the formally distinguished linguistic varieties within a community as homogeneous, invariant. Probably because of their considerable power, Labovs and Chomskys understandings of the speech community became widely influential in linguistics
10.
Language shift
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Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. Often, languages that are perceived to be higher status stabilise or spread at the expense of other languages that are perceived by their own speakers to be lower-status. For prehistory, Forster et al. and Forster and Renfrew observe that there is a correlation of language shift with intrusive male Y chromosomes but not necessarily with intrusive female mtDNA. They conclude that technological innovation or military prowess causes immigration of at least some males, the process whereby a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language is called assimilation. When a linguistic community ceases to use their language, language death is said to occur. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a mother tongue who speak another language more often in the home. The data are used to measure the use of a language in the lifetime of a person. In the context of the Indo-European migrations, it has noted that small groups can change a larger cultural area. Michael Witzel refers to Ehret’s model which stresses the osmosis, or a ball, or Mallory’s Kulturkugel. According to Ehret, ethnicity and language can shift with relative ease in small societies, due to the cultural, economic, the group bringing new traits may initially be small, contributing features that can be fewer in number than those of the already local culture. The emerging combined group may then initiate a recurrent, expansionist process of ethnic, ethnohistorical cases demonstrate that small elite groups have successfully imposed their languages in non-state situations. Anthony gives the example of the Luo-speaking Acholi in northern Uganda in the 17th and 18th century, anthony notes that elite recruitment may be a suitable term for this system. Historical examples for status shift are the early Welsh and Lutheran Bible translations, leading to the liturgical languages Welsh, in the course of the 19th century, this number dropped significantly. By 1920, already a third of the population of the area had shifted to German as their language of communication. After the Carinthian Plebiscite in the 1920s, and especially after World War II, in the same region, today only some 13% of the people still speaks Slovene, while more than 85% of the population speaks German. The figures for the region are equally telling, in 1818, around 35% of the population of Carinthia spoke Slovene, by 1910. These changes were almost entirely the result of a shift in the population, with emigration. Despite the withdrawal of Belarus from the USSR proclaimed in 1991, according to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, and Belarusian is used by only 11. 9% of Belarusians
11.
Germanic languages
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It is the third most spoken Indo-European subdivision, behind Italic and Indo-Iranian, and ahead of Balto-Slavic languages. Limburgish varieties have roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, the main North Germanic languages are Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, the last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken in the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea. The total number of Germanic languages throughout history is unknown, as some of them—especially East Germanic languages—disappeared during or after the Migration Period. Proto-Germanic, along all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic tribes moving south from Scandinavia in the 2nd century BC, to settle in the area of todays northern Germany, furthermore, it is the de facto language of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. It is also a language in Nicaragua and Malaysia. German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland and has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico, a German dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch, is still present amongst Anabaptist populations in Pennsylvania in the United States. Dutch is a language of Aruba, Belgium, Curaçao. The Netherlands also colonised Indonesia, but Dutch was scrapped as a language after Indonesian independence. Dutch was until 1925 an official language in South Africa, but evolved in and was replaced by Afrikaans, Afrikaans is one of the 11 official languages in South Africa and is a lingua franca of Namibia. It is used in other Southern African nations as well, low German is a collection of sometimes very diverse dialects spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and northern Germany. Scots is spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, frisian is spoken among half a million people who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. Luxembourgish is mainly spoken in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, though it extends into small parts of Belgium, France. Limburgish varieties are spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, Swedish is also one of the two official languages in Finland, along with Finnish, and the only official language in the Åland Islands. Danish is also spoken natively by the Danish minority in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Norwegian is the official language of Norway. Icelandic is the language of Iceland, and is spoken by a significant minority in the Faroe Islands
12.
Proto-Germanic
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Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. The end of the Common Germanic period is reached with the beginning of the Migration Period in the fourth century, the Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any coherent surviving texts, it has been reconstructed using the comparative method. Fragmentary direct attestation exists of Common Germanic in early runic inscriptions, the Proto-Germanic language developed in southern Scandinavia, the Urheimat of the Germanic tribes. Proto-Germanic developed out of pre-Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe, Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after c. Early Germanic expansion in the Pre-Roman Iron Age placed Proto-Germanic speakers in contact with the Continental Celtic La Tène horizon, a number of Celtic loanwords in Proto-Germanic have been identified. By the 1st century AD, Germanic expansion reaches the Danube and the Upper Rhine in the south, at about the same time, extending east of the Vistula, Germanic speakers come into contact with early Slavic cultures, as reflected in early Germanic loans in Proto-Slavic. By the 3rd century, LPGmc speakers had expanded over significant distance, the period marks the breakup of Late Proto-Germanic and the beginning of the Germanic migrations. The earliest coherent text in Proto-Norse become available c.400 in runic inscriptions, the delineation of Late Common Germanic from Proto-Norse about then is largely a matter of convention. Early West Germanic becomes available in the 5th century with the Frankish Bergakker inscription, between the two points, many sound changes occurred. Phylogeny as applied to historical linguistics involves the descent of languages. The Germanic languages form a tree with Proto-Germanic at its root that is a branch of the Indo-European tree, borrowing of lexical items from contact languages makes the relative position of the Germanic branch within Indo-European less clear than the positions of the other branches of Indo-European. In the course of the development of linguistics, various solutions have been proposed, none certain. In the evolutionary history of a family, philologists consider a genetic tree model appropriate only if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. The internal diversification of West Germanic developed in an especially non-treelike manner, Proto-Germanic is generally agreed to have begun about 500 BC. Its hypothetical ancestor between the end of Proto-Indo-European and 500 BC is termed Pre-Proto-Germanic, whether it is to be included under a wider meaning of Proto-Germanic is a matter of usage. The fixation of the led to sound changes in unstressed syllables. For Lehmann, the boundary was the dropping of final -a or -e in unstressed syllables, for example, post-PIE *wóyd-e > Gothic wait. Antonsen agreed with Lehmann about the boundary but later found runic evidence that the -a was not dropped, ékwakraz … wraita, I, Wakraz
13.
Monophyly
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In common cladistic usage, a monophyletic group is a taxon which forms a clade, meaning that it consists of an ancestral species and all its descendants. The term is synonymous with the uncommon term holophyly, monophyletic groups are typically characterized by shared derived characteristics. Monophyly is contrasted with paraphyly and polyphyly, as shown in the second diagram, a paraphyletic group consists of all of the descendants of a common ancestor minus one or more monophyletic groups. These definitions have taken time to be accepted. When the cladistic school of thought became mainstream in the 1960s, indeed, taxonomists sometimes used terms without defining them, leading to confusion in the early literature, a confusion which persists. On the broadest scale, definitions fall into two groups, willi Hennig defined monophyly as groups based on synapomorphy. Some authors have sought to define monophyly to include paraphyly as any two or more groups sharing a common ancestor, however, this broader definition encompasses both monophyletic and paraphyletic groups as defined above. Therefore, most scientists today restrict the term monophyletic to refer to groups consisting of all the descendants of one common ancestor, however, when considering taxonomic groups such as genera and species, the most appropriate nature of their common ancestor is unclear. Assuming that it would be one individual or mating pair is unrealistic for sexually reproducing species, some argue that using a broader definition, such as a species and all its descendants, does not really work to define a genus. According to D. M. Glossary of scientific naming Clade Paraphyly Polyphyly Crown group Abbey, graphical explanation of basic phylogenetic terms. Carr, Steven M. Concepts of monophyly, polyphyly & paraphyly
14.
Clade
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A clade is a group of organisms that consists of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants, and represents a single branch on the tree of life. The common ancestor may be an individual, a population, a species, clades are nested, one in another, as each branch in turn splits into smaller branches. These splits reflect evolutionary history as populations diverged and evolved independently, over the last few decades, the cladistic approach has revolutionized biological classification and revealed surprising evolutionary relationships among organisms. Increasingly, taxonomists try to avoid naming taxa that are not clades, the term clade was coined in 1957 by the biologist Julian Huxley to refer to the result of cladogenesis, a concept Huxley borrowed from Bernhard Rensch. Many commonly named groups are clades, for example, rodents or insects, because in each case, their name refers to a common ancestor with all its descendant branches. Rodents, for example, are a branch of mammals that split off after the end of the period when the clade Dinosauria stopped being the dominant terrestrial vertebrates 66 million years ago, the original population and all its descendants are a clade. The rodent clade corresponds to the order Rodentia, and insects to the class Insecta and these clades include smaller clades, such as chipmunk or ant, each of which consists of even smaller clades. The clade rodent is in included in the mammal, vertebrate. The phenomenon of convergent evolution is, however, responsible for cases where there are misleading similarities in the morphology of groups that evolved from different lineages. The publication of Darwins theory of evolution in 1859 gave this view increasing weight, thomas Henry Huxley, an early advocate of evolutionary theory, proposed a revised taxonomy based on clades. For example, he grouped birds with reptiles, based on fossil evidence, german biologist Emil Hans Willi Hennig is considered to be the founder of cladistics. Taxonomists have increasingly worked to make the taxonomic system reflect evolution, when it comes to naming, however, this principle is not always compatible with the traditional rank-based nomenclature. For these and other reasons, phylogenetic nomenclature has been developed, a clade is by definition monophyletic, meaning that it contains one ancestor and all its descendants. The ancestor can be known or unknown, any and all members of a clade can be extant or extinct, the science that tries to reconstruct phylogenetic trees and thus discover clades is called phylogenetics or cladistics, the latter term coined by Ernst Mayr, derived from clade. The results of analyses are tree-shaped diagrams called cladograms, they. Three methods of defining clades are featured in phylogenetic nomenclature, node-, stem-, the relationship between clades can be described in several ways, A clade located within a clade is said to be nested within that clade. In the diagram, the clade, i. e. the apes. Two clades are sisters if they have a common ancestor
15.
Celtic languages
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The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. Modern Celtic languages are spoken on the north-western edge of Europe, notably in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall. There are also a number of Welsh speakers in the Patagonia area of Argentina. Some people speak Celtic languages in the other Celtic diaspora areas of the United States, Canada, Australia, in all these areas, the Celtic languages are now only spoken by minorities though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO, the spread to Cape Breton and Patagonia occurred in modern times. SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are the Goidelic languages and the Brittonic languages, the other two, Cornish and Manx, died in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. For both these languages, however, revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children, taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages, shelta, based largely on Irish with influence from an undocumented source. Some forms of Welsh-Romani or Kååle also combined Romany itself with Welsh language, beurla-reagaird, Highland travellers language Celtic divided into various branches, Lepontic, the oldest attested Celtic language. Anciently spoken in Switzerland and in Northern-Central Italy, from the Alps to Umbria, coins with Lepontic inscriptions have been found in Noricum and Gallia Narbonensis. Celtiberian, anciently spoken in the Iberian peninsula, in parts of modern Galicia, Asturias, La Rioja, Aragón, Cantabria, Old Castile, the relationship of Celtiberian with Gallaecian, in the northwest of the peninsula, is uncertain. Gallaecian, anciently spoken in the former Gallaecia, northwest of the peninsula, Gaulish languages, including Galatian and possibly Noric. These languages were spoken in a wide arc from Belgium to Turkey. Brittonic, including the living languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, there may have been a Brittonic language in the Isle of Man. Goidelic, including the living languages Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic, scholarly handling of the Celtic languages has been rather argumentative owing to scarceness of primary source data. Other scholars distinguish between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic, putting most of the Gaulish and Brittonic languages in the former group, the P-Celtic languages are sometimes seen as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was Gaelic and it has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages
16.
Slavic languages
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The Slavic languages are the Indo-European languages native to the Slavic peoples, originally from Eastern Europe. The Slavic languages are divided intro three subgroups, East, West, and South, which constitute more than twenty languages. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples have established isolated minorities of speakers of their languages all over the world, the number of speakers of all Slavic languages together is estimated to be 315 million. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group, mutual intelligibility also plays a role in determining the West, East, and South branches. Speakers of languages within the branch will in most cases be able to understand each other at least partially. The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take account the spoken dialects of each language. For example, Slovak and Ukrainian are bridged by the Rusyn of Eastern Slovakia, similarly, Polish shares transitional features with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects. The Croatian Kajkavian dialect is similar to Slovene than to the standard Croatian language. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree. The secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE, the imposition of Church Slavonic on Orthodox Slavs was often at the expense of the vernacular. The use of such media hampered the development of the languages for literary purposes. Lockwood also notes that these languages have enriched themselves by drawing on Church Slavonic for the vocabulary of abstract concepts, the situation in the Catholic countries, where Latin was more important, was different. The Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski and the Croatian Baroque writers of the 16th century all wrote in their respective vernaculars, although Church Slavonic hampered vernacular literatures, it fostered Slavonic literary activity and abetted linguistic independence from external influences. Only the Croatian vernacular literary tradition nearly matches Church Slavonic in age, the most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the Baška tablet from the late 11th century. It is a stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor on the Croatian island of Krk. The independence of Dubrovnik facilitated the continuity of the tradition, more recent foreign influences follow the same general pattern in Slavic languages as elsewhere and are governed by the political relationships of the Slavs. In the 17th century, bourgeois Russian absorbed German words through direct contacts between Russians and communities of German settlers in Russia, in the 19th century, Russian influenced most literary Slavic languages by one means or another. The Proto-Slavic language existed until around AD500, by the 7th century, it had broken apart into large dialectal zones
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Romance languages
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Today, around 800 million people are native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe, Africa and the Americas, but also elsewhere. Additionally, the major Romance languages have many speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas. This is especially the case for French, which is in use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of speakers are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian. Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the modern Romance languages are given, for example, Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility. Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, western Germany and the Balkans north of the Jireček Line. Despite other influences, the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of all Romance languages consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin, however, some notable differences occur between todays Romance languages and their Roman ancestor. With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure. From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, the word romance with the modern sense of romance novel or love affair has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular, for example, the Portuguese word fresta is descended from Latin fenestra window, but now means skylight and slit. Cognates may exist but have become rare, such as finiestra in Spanish, the Spanish and Portuguese terms defenestrar meaning to throw through a window and fenestrado meaning replete with windows also have the same root, but are later borrowings from Latin. Galician has both fiestra and the frequently used ventá and xanela. As an alternative to lei, Italian has the pronoun ella, a cognate of the words for she. Sardinian balcone comes from Old Italian and is similar to other Romance languages such as French balcon, Portuguese balcão, Romanian balcon, Spanish balcón, Catalan balcó and Corsican balconi. Documentary evidence is limited about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of research. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples, other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and register differences normally found within any language. Both were mutually intelligible as one and the language, which was true until the second half of the 7th century. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by the Germanic and Slavic tribes, as well as by the Huns, over the course of the fourth to eighth centuries, Vulgar Latin, by this time highly dialectalized, broke up into discrete languages that were no longer mutually intelligible
18.
Indo-Iranian languages
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The Indo-Iranian languages, or Indo-Iranic languages, constitute the largest and easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family. It has more than 1 billion speakers, stretching from the Caucasus and the Balkans eastward to Xinjiang and Assam, the common ancestor of all of the languages in this family is called Proto-Indo-Iranian—also known as Common Aryan—which was spoken in approximately the late 3rd millennium BC. The three branches of modern Indo-Iranian languages are Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and Nuristani, additionally, sometimes a fourth independent branch, Dardic, is posited, but recent scholarship in general places Dardic languages as archaic members of the Indo-Aryan branch. Among the Iranian branch, major languages are Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, the Indo-Iranian languages derive from a reconstructed common proto-language, called Proto-Indo-Iranian. The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages are Vedic Sanskrit, Older and Younger Avestan, a few words from another Indo-Aryan language are attested in documents from the ancient Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia and Syria and the Hittite kingdom in Anatolia. A comparative study of Santali and Bengali, ISBN 81-7074-128-9 Nicholas Sims-Williams, ed. Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples. Swadesh lists of Indo-Iranian basic vocabulary words
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Indo-European languages
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The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD
20.
Dialect continuum
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That happens, for example, across large parts of India or the Maghreb. Historically, it happened in various parts of Europe such as between Portugal, southern Belgium and southern Italy, and between Flanders and Austria. Leonard Bloomfield used the dialect area. It is analogous to a species in evolutionary biology. Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from their various points of origin as waves, in this situation, hierarchical classifications of varieties are impractical. Instead, dialectologists map variation of language features across a dialect continuum. The influential Atlas linguistique de la France pioneered the use of a trained fieldworker and these atlases typically consist of display maps, each showing local forms of a particular item at the survey locations. Secondary studies may include maps, showing the areal distribution of various variants. A common tool in these maps is an isogloss, a line separating areas where different variants of a particular feature predominate, in a dialect continuum, isoglosses for different features are typically spread out, reflecting the gradual transition between varieties. A bundle of coinciding isoglosses indicate a stronger dialect boundary, as might occur at geographical obstacles or long-standing political boundaries, in other cases, intersecting isoglosses and more complex patterns are found. Standard varieties may be developed and codified from one or more locations in a continuum, in such cases the local variety is said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, the standard variety. The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are cited as examples. Conversely, a defined in this way may include local varieties that are mutually unintelligible. The choice of standard is determined by a political boundary. As a results, speakers on either side of the boundary may use almost identical varieties, but treat them as dependent on different standards, the choice may be a matter of national, regional or religious identity, and may be controversial. In the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, a standard was developed from local varieties within a continuum with Serbia to the north, the standard was deliberately based on varieties from the west of the republic that were most different from standard Bulgarian. Now known as Macedonian, it is the standard of the independent Republic of Macedonia. Europe provides several examples of dialect continua, the largest of which involve the Germanic, Romance and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family
21.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
22.
Ryukyuan language
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The Ryukyuan languages are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language, they make up the Japonic language family, although the Ryukyuan languages have sometimes been considered to be dialects of Japanese, they are not mutually intelligible with Japanese or even with each other. Phonologically, the Ryukyuan languages have some unusual features. Southern Ryukyuan languages have a number of consonants, including unvoiced syllabic fricatives. Some Ryukyuan languages have central vowels, e. g. Yuwan Amami /kɨɨ/ tree. Ikema Miyako has a nasal phoneme /n̥/. Many Ryukyuan languages, like Standard Japanese and most Japanese dialects, have contrastive pitch accent, Ryukyuan languages are generally SOV, dependent-marking, modifier-head, nominative-accusative languages, like the Japanese language. Adjectives are generally bound morphemes, occurring either with noun compounding or using verbalization, many Ryukyuan languages mark both nominatives and genitives with the same marker. This marker has the feature of changing form depending on an animacy hierarchy. The Ryukyuan languages have topic and focus markers, which may take different forms depending on the sentential context, Ryukyuan also preserves a special verbal inflection for clauses with focus markers—this unusual feature was also found in Old Japanese, but lost in Modern Japanese. The Ryukyuan languages belong to the Japonic language family, related to the Japanese language, the Ryukyuan languages are not mutually intelligible with Japanese—in fact, they are not even mutually intelligible with each other—and thus may be considered separate languages. However, for socio-political and ideological reasons, they have often classified within Japan as dialects of Japanese, starting in the 1890s, the Japanese government began to suppress the Ryukyuan languages as part of their policy of forced assimilation in the islands. Since the beginning of World War II, most mainland Japanese have regarded the Ryukyuan languages as a dialect or group of dialects of Japanese, the Okinawan language is only 71% lexically similar to, or cognate with, standard Tokyo Japanese. Even the southernmost Japanese dialect is only 72% cognate with the northernmost Ryukyuan language, the Kagoshima dialect of Japanese, however, is 80% lexically similar to Standard Japanese. A widely accepted hypothesis among linguists categorizes the Ryukyuan languages into two groups, Northern Ryukyuan and Southern Ryukyuan. Many speakers of the Amami, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni languages may also be familiar with Okinawan since the language counts the most speakers, speakers of Yonaguni are also likely to know the Yaeyama language due to its proximity. In Okinawa proper, a dialect of standard Japanese known as Okinawan Japanese has developed, each Ryukyuan language is generally unintelligible to others in the same family. There is a wide diversity between them, for example, Yonaguni has only three vowels, whereas varieties of Amami may have up to seven, excluding length distinctions
23.
Japonic language family
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The Japonic language family includes the Japanese language spoken on the main islands of Japan as well as the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is widely accepted by linguists, and the term Japonic languages was coined by Leon Serafim, the common ancestral language is known as Proto-Japonic. The essential feature of this classification is that the first split in the family resulted in the separation of all dialects of Japanese from all varieties of Ryukyuan, according to Shiro Hattori, this separation occurred during the Yamato period. Scholarly discussions about the origin of Japonic languages present a set of related issues. The clearest connections seem to be with toponyms in southern Korea, western Japanese, Most dialects west of Nagoya, including the former standard dialect Kyoto dialect. Kyushu Japanese, Dialects on the island of Kyushu, Most are considered dialects of Japanese in Japan, despite little intelligibility with Japanese or amongst each other. Northern Ryukyuan languages, Languages spoken in the part of the Ryukyu Islands chain, consisting of the major Amami. Amami language /Amami dialect /Shimayumuta, Language spoken in most of the Amami Islands, particularly Amami Ōshima, Kikaijima, main dialect spoken in the cities of Nakijin and Nago. Main dialect spoken in Naha, and the city of Shuri. Southern Ryukyuan languages, Languages spoken in the part of the Ryukyu Islands chain. Miyako language /Miyako dialect /Myaaku-futsu /Suma-futsu, Language spoken in the Miyako Islands, with dialects on Irabu, Yonaguni language /Yonaguni dialect /Dunan-munui, Language spoken on Yonaguni Island, unique from the language and dialects of the other Yaeyama Islands. The relationship of the Japonic languages to other languages and language families is controversial, there are numerous hypotheses, none of which are generally accepted. Japonic is classified as a language family. ISBN9780415305754, OCLC51163755 Shimabukuro, Moriyo, the Accentual History of the Japanese and Ryukyuan Languages, a Reconstruction
24.
Japanese language
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Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic language family, whose relation to language groups, particularly to Korean. Little is known of the prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, during the Heian period, Chinese had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese. Late Middle Japanese saw changes in features that brought it closer to the modern language, the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region in the Early Modern Japanese period. Following the end in 1853 of Japans self-imposed isolation, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, English loanwords in particular have become frequent, and Japanese words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person, Japanese equivalents of adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener. Japanese has no relationship with Chinese, but it makes extensive use of Chinese characters, or kanji, in its writing system. Along with kanji, the Japanese writing system uses two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana. Latin script is used in a fashion, such as for imported acronyms. Very little is known about the Japanese of this period, Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. Through the spread of Buddhism, the Chinese writing system was imported to Japan, the earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, but they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun method. Some of these Chinese texts show the influences of Japanese grammar, in these hybrid texts, Chinese characters are also occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles. The earliest text, the Kojiki, dates to the early 8th century, the end of Old Japanese coincides with the end of the Nara period in 794
25.
Basque language
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Basque is the language spoken by the Basques. Linguistically, Basque is unrelated to the languages of Europe and indeed, as a language isolate. The Basques are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit, the Basque Country, the Basque language is spoken by 27% of Basques in all territories. Of these, 93% are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country, native speakers live in a contiguous area that includes parts of four Spanish territories and the three ancient provinces in France. However, in those Basque-speaking regions that supported the uprising the Basque language was more than merely tolerated, overall, in the 1960s and later, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish. As a part of process, a standardized form of the Basque language. Besides its standardised version, the five historic Basque dialects are Biscayan, Gipuzkoan, and Upper Navarrese in Spain and they take their names from the historic Basque provinces, but the dialect boundaries are not congruent with province boundaries. Euskara Batua was created so that Basque language could be easily understood by all Basque speakers—in formal situations. In both Spain and France, the use of Basque for education varies from region to region, a language isolate, Basque is believed to be one of the few surviving pre-Indo-European languages in Europe, and the only one in Western Europe. Basque has adopted a good deal of its vocabulary from the Romance languages, the Basque alphabet uses the Latin script. In Basque, the name of the language is officially Euskara, three etymological theories of the name Euskara are taken seriously by linguists and Vasconists. In French, the language is normally called basque, though in recent times euskara has become common, Spanish has a greater variety of names for the language. Today, it is most commonly referred to as el vasco, la lengua vasca, both terms, vasco and basque, are inherited from Latin ethnonym Vascones, which in turn goes back to the Greek term οὐασκώνους, an ethnonym used by Strabo in his Geographica. The Spanish term Vascuence, derived from Latin vasconĭce, has acquired negative connotations over the centuries and is not well-liked amongst Basque speakers generally, Basque is geographically surrounded by Romance languages but is a language isolate unrelated to them. It is the last remaining descendant of one of the languages of Western Europe. Consequently, its prehistory may not be reconstructible by means of the comparative method except by applying it to differences between dialects within the language. Little is known of its origins, but a form of the Basque language likely was present in Western Europe before the arrival of the Indo-European languages to the area. Others find this unlikely, see the aizkora controversy, Latin inscriptions in Gallia Aquitania preserve a number of words with cognates in the reconstructed proto-Basque language, for instance, the personal names Nescato and Cison
26.
Armenian language
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The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
27.
Aquitanian language
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The Aquitanian language was spoken on both sides of the western Pyrenees in ancient Aquitaine and in the areas south of the Pyrenees in the valleys of the Basque Country before the Roman conquest. It probably survived in Aquitania until the Early Middle Ages, archaeological, toponymical, and historical evidence show that it was a Vasconic language or group of languages that represent a precursor of the Basque language. The most important pieces of evidence are a series of votive, Aquitanian and its related descendant, Basque, are commonly thought to be a remnant of the languages spoken in Western Europe before the arrival of Indo-European speakers. Cavalli-Sforza describes this weakest of the five patterns he obtained as isolated remnants of the population of Europe. It corresponds roughly to the spread of rhesus negative blood types. Cavalli-Sforzas conclusion that the Basques are a genetic isolate as well as a one has since been widely discussed. It may be possible to trace the Aquitanians more or less back to the Chalcolithic culture of Artenac, but the age of the Aquitanian language. Almost all of the Aquitanian inscriptions that have been north of the Pyrenees are in the territory that Greek. Anthroponyms, Belexeia, Lavrco, Borsei, Andereseni, Nescato, Cissonbonnis, Sembecconi, Gerexo, Bihossi, theonyms, Baigorixo, Ilunno, Arixoni, Artahe, Ilurberrixo, Astoiluno, Haravsoni, Leherenno etc. Theonyms, Larrahe, Loxae / Losae, Lacubegi, Selatse / Stelaitse, Helasse, since ancient times there have been indications of a relationship between Southwestern France and the Basques. During the Roman conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, Aquitania was the territory between Garonne and the Pyrenees and it was inhabited by tribes of horsemen who Caesar said were very distinct in customs and language from the Celts of Gaul. During the Middle Ages, this territory was named Gascony, derived from Vasconia, there are many clues that indicate that Aquitanian was spoken in the Pyrenees, at least as far east as Val dAran. This strong formal element can be traced at either side of the range as far west as an imaginary line roughly stretching from Pamplona to Bayonne. Other than place-names and little evidence, the picture is not very clear at the west of the Basque Country. Archaeological findings in Iruña-Veleia in 2006 were initially claimed as evidence of the antiquity of Basque in the south but were dismissed as forgery. The Cantabrians are also mentioned as relatives or allies of Aquitanians, the Vascones who occupied modern Navarra, are usually identified with the Basques, their name being one of the most important pieces of evidence. In 1960, a stele with Aquitanian names was found in Lerga, Gorrochategui, Joaquín, Onomástica indígena de Aquitania, Bilbao. 609–34 Gorrochategui, Joaquín, The Basque Language and its Neighbors in Antiquity, Towards a History of the Basque Language, hoz, Javier de, El poblamiento antiguo de los Pirineos desde el punto de vista lingüístico, Muntanyes i Població
28.
Comparative method (linguistics)
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The comparative method was developed over the 19th century. Key contributions were made by the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask and Karl Verner, the comparative method aims to prove that two or more historically attested languages are descended from a single proto-language by comparing lists of cognate terms. From them, regular sound correspondences between the languages are established, and a sequence of sound changes can then be postulated. Relation is deemed certain only if at least a partial reconstruction of the ancestor is feasible. For example, a chain of speakers across the centuries links Vulgar Latin to all of its modern descendants. Two languages are related if they descended from the same ancestor language. For example, Italian and French both come from Latin and therefore belong to the family, the Romance languages. However, it is possible for languages to have different degrees of relatedness, English, for example, is related to both German and Russian, but is more closely related to the former than it is to the latter. Although all three share a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European, English and German also share a more recent common ancestor, Proto-Germanic. Therefore, English and German are considered to belong to a different subgroup, shared retentions from the parent language are not sufficient evidence of a sub-group. For example, German and Russian both retain from Proto-Indo-European a contrast between the case and the accusative case, which English has lost. Languages have been compared since antiquity, the Scythian theory was further developed by Andreas Jäger and William Wotton, who made first forays to reconstruct this primitive common language. In 1710 and 1723, Lambert ten Kate first formulated the regularity of sound laws, introducing among others, the root vowel. ”The comparative method developed out of attempts to reconstruct the proto-language mentioned by Jones, which he did not name. The first professional comparison between the Indo-European languages known then was made by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1816, though he did not attempt a reconstruction, he demonstrated that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit shared a common structure and a common lexicon. Both Rask and Grimm were unable to explain apparent exceptions to the laws that they had discovered. This Neogrammarian Hypothesis led to application of the method to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European. Linguists working with other families followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships. The abbreviated summary below is based on their concepts of how to proceed and this step involves making lists of words that are likely cognates among the languages being compared
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August Schleicher
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August Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, to show how Indo-European might have looked, he created a short tale, Schleichers fable, to exemplify the reconstructed vocabulary and aspects of Indo-European society inferred from it. Schleicher was born in Meiningen, in the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen and he died from tuberculosis at the age of 47 in Jena, in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, in present-day Thuringia. Schleicher was educated at the University of Bonn and taught at the Charles University in Prague and he began his career studying theology and Oriental languages, especially Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Persian. Influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he formed the theory that a language is an organism, with periods of development, maturity, in 1850, Schleicher completed a monograph systematically describing European languages, Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Übersicht. He explicitly represented languages as perfectly natural organisms that could most conveniently be described using terms drawn from biology, genus, species, Schleicher claimed that he himself had been convinced of the natural descent and competition of languages before he had read Darwin’s Origin of Species. He invented a system of classification that resembled a botanical taxonomy, tracing groups of related languages. His model, the Stammbaumtheorie, was a development in the study of Indo-European languages. He first introduced a representation of a Stammbaum in an article published in 1853 entitled Die ersten Spaltungen des indogermanischen Urvolkes. By the time of the publication of his Deutsche Sprache he had begun to use trees to illustrate language descent, Schleicher is commonly recognized as the first linguist to portray language development using the figure of a tree. Largely in reaction to this, Johannes Schmidt later proposed his Wave Theory as an alternative model, Schleicher believed that languages pass through a life cycle, similar to that of living beings. They start simpler than they will become, Language declines both in sound and in form. The transition from the first to the period is one of slower progress. Schleicher was an advocate of the polygenesis of languages, since languages are continually dying out, whilst no new ones practically arise, there must have been originally many more languages than at present. The number of languages was therefore certainly far larger than has been supposed from the still-existing languages. Schleichers ideas on polygenesis had long-lasting influence, both directly and via their adoption by the biologist Ernst Haeckel, in 1866, August Leskien, a pioneer of research into sound laws, began studying comparative linguistics under August Schleicher at the University of Jena. Bonn, H. B. Koenig Linguistische Untersuchungen, part 2, Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Uebersicht. Koenig, new ed. by Konrad Koerner, Amsterdam, John Benjamins Formenlehre der kirchenslavischen Sprache, Die ersten Spaltungen des indogermanischen Urvolkes
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Old Norse
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Old Norse was a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during about the 9th to 13th centuries. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century, Old Norse was divided into three dialects, Old West Norse, Old East Norse and Old Gutnish. Old West and East Norse formed a continuum, with no clear geographical boundary between them. For example, Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway, although Old Norwegian is classified as Old West Norse, most speakers spoke Old East Norse in what is present day Denmark and Sweden. Old Gutnish, the more obscure dialectal branch, is included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations. It developed its own features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders and Danes spoke the same language, another term used, used especially commonly with reference to West Norse, was norrœnt mál. In some instances the term Old Norse refers specifically to Old West Norse, the Old East Norse dialect was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, settlements in Kievan Rus, eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language, in Kievan Rus, it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod, probably lasting into the 13th century there. Norwegian is descended from Old West Norse, but over the centuries it has heavily influenced by East Norse. Old Norse also had an influence on English dialects and Lowland Scots and it also influenced the development of the Norman language, and through it and to a smaller extent, that of modern French. Various other languages, which are not closely related, have heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman dialects, Scottish Gaelic. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi, of the modern languages, Icelandic is the closest to Old Norse. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system, contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the phonemes, has changed at least as much as in the other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, although Swedish, Danish and the Norwegian languages have diverged the most, they still retain asymmetric mutual intelligibility. Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, the languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders
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Norwegian language
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Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is the official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as extinct languages. Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them, as established by law and governmental policy, the two official forms of written Norwegian are Bokmål and Nynorsk. The official Norwegian Language Council is responsible for regulating the two forms, and recommends the terms Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk in English. Two other written forms without official status also exist, one and it is regulated by the unofficial Norwegian Academy, which translates the name as Standard Norwegian. Nynorsk and Bokmål provide standards for how to write Norwegian, no standard of spoken Norwegian is officially sanctioned, and most Norwegians speak their own dialects in all circumstances. Thus, unlike in other countries, the use of any Norwegian dialect. Outside Eastern Norway, this variation is not used. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subject to strong controversy related to nationalism, rural versus urban discourse, historically, Bokmål is a Norwegianised variety of Danish, while Nynorsk is a language form based on Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to Danish. The unofficial form known as Riksmål is considered more conservative than Bokmål, Norwegians are educated in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. A2005 poll indicates that 86. 3% use primarily Bokmål as their written language,5. 5% use both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and 7. 5% use primarily Nynorsk. Thus, 13% are frequently writing Nynorsk, though the majority speak dialects that resemble Nynorsk more closely than Bokmål. Broadly speaking, Nynorsk writing is widespread in western Norway, though not in major urban areas, examples are Setesdal, the western part of Telemark county and several municipalities in Hallingdal, Valdres, and Gudbrandsdalen. It is little used elsewhere, but 30–40 years ago, it also had strongholds in rural parts of Trøndelag. Today, not only is Nynorsk the official language of four of the 19 Norwegian counties, NRK, the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, broadcasts in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, and all governmental agencies are required to support both written languages. Bokmål is used in 92% of all publications, and Nynorsk in 8%
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Swedish language
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Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken natively by more than 9 million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish, along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is currently the largest of the North Germanic languages by number of speakers, Standard Swedish, spoken by most Swedes, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descended from the rural dialects still exist. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages, V2, Swedish morphology is similar to English, that is, words have comparatively few inflections. There are two genders, no cases, and a distinction between plural and singular. Older analyses posit the cases nominative and genitive and there are remains of distinct accusative and dative forms as well. Adjectives are compared as in English, and are inflected according to gender, number. The definiteness of nouns is marked primarily through suffixes, complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles, the prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless velar fricative, a highly variable consonant phoneme. Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages, by many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had some changes. This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, the dialects of Old East Norse that were spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish while the dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish. The dialects are described as runic because the body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, from 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é. This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain, there was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr dead
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Danish language
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There are also minor Danish-speaking communities in Norway, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas, around 15–20% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their home language. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, until the 16th century, Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions. With the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of printing, a language was developed which was based on the educated Copenhagen dialect. It spread through use in the system and administration though German. Today, traditional Danish dialects have all but disappeared, though there are variants of the standard language. The main differences in language are between generations, with youth language being particularly innovative, Danish has a very large vowel inventory comprising 27 phonemically distinctive vowels, and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon stød, a kind of laryngeal phonation type. The grammar is moderately inflective with strong and weak conjugations and inflections, nouns and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender. As in English, Danish only has remnants of a case system, particularly in the pronouns. Its syntax is V2, with the verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence. Danish is a Germanic language of the North Germanic branch, other names for this group are the Nordic or Scandinavian languages. Along with Swedish, Danish descends from the Eastern dialects of the Old Norse language, Scandinavian languages are often considered a dialect continuum, where there are no sharp dividing lines between the different vernacular languages. Like Norwegian and Swedish, Danish was significantly influenced by Low German in the Middle Ages, Danish itself can be divided into three main dialect areas, West Danish, Insular Danish, and East Danish. Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish, both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they understand each others languages. By the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had some changes. This language was called the Danish tongue, or Norse language. Norse was written in the alphabet, first with the elder futhark. From the 7th century the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway
. PMID 23077256.
