Presumably, you’re aware that the English language and, in all likelihood, the foreign languages you studied in high school or college, are members of a far-flung family of languages called the “Indo-European language family”. Not only does it include English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Irish Gaelic, and Greek but Persian, Armenian, and Hindi, too. Something like 300 languages in all which 500 years ago were spoken across a swathe of territory that reached from Iceland to Sri Lanka. (Just as a reminder, I’m a language junkie. I learned a smattering of German from my dad at home, studied French in grade school, studied Russian, Latin, and Greek in high school, and studied Russian and Chinese in college.)
Just where the Indo-European language family started has been a matter of some debate since the similarities among the languages of this family were noticed 150 years ago. The majority view has been that the family originated north of the Black Sea in Central Asia about 6,000 years ago. A recent study using genetic and epidemiological methods has placed that majority view in some doubt:
The majority view in historical linguistics is that the homeland of Indo-European is located in the Pontic steppes (present day Ukraine) around 6,000 years ago. The evidence for this comes from linguistic paleontology: in particular, certain words to do with the technology of wheeled vehicles are arguably present across all the branches of the Indo-European family; and archaeology tells us that wheeled vehicles arose no earlier than this date. The minority view links the origins of Indo-European with the spread of farming from Anatolia 8,000 to 9,500 years ago.
Assume that’s true. I think it brings up a host of questions including:
- What does it say about the rate of language change?
- What about Tocharian?
- Does this cast more doubt or support the idea of a Nostratic superfamily? Or when Proto-Nostratic was spoken?
The “Nostratic superfamily” is a hypothesized family of language families that includes the Indo-European family; the Afroasiatic family with its Semitic (Arabic, Aramaic), Cushitic, Chadic, and other subgroups; the Uralic family (Finnish, Hungarian); the Dravidian family;and other language families.
