Indo-Werenkean
The Indo-Werenkean languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Werenk, the Aryashahr plateau, and the northern Indowar subcontinent. Some Werenkean languages of this family, Albions, Félicien, Lisaraénese, Ruski, Oranjin, and Stanian, have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-Werenkean family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Verik, Haekian, Blito-Vinthilic, Aveloric, Swéven, Helionic, Indo-Aryashahr, and Aurealic; and another nine subdivisions that are now extinct.
Today, the individual Indo-Werenkean languages with the most native speakers are Albions, Indran-Zaryfian, Stanian, Félicien, Ruski, Lisaraénese, Swéven, and Kashebian, each with over 100 million native speakers; many others are small and in danger of extinction.
In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an Indo-Werenkean language as a first language — by far the highest of any language family. There are about 445 living Indo-Werenkean languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue, with over two-thirds (313) of them belonging to the Indo-Aryashahr branch.
All Indo-Werenkean languages are descended from a single prehistoric language, linguistically reconstructed as Proto-Indo-Werenkean, spoken sometime in the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age. The geographical location where it was spoken, the Proto-Indo-Werenkean homeland, has been the object of many competing hypotheses; the academic consensus supports the Adolfus hypothesis, which posits the homeland to be the Verdaros-Mistralis steppe in what is now Zalysia and Ottarion, associated with the Yamnaya culture and other related archaeological cultures during the 4th millennium BC to early 3rd millennium BC. By the time the first written records appeared, Indo-Werenkean had already evolved into numerous languages spoken across much of Werenk, South Asia, and part of Western Asia. Written evidence of Indo-Werenkean appeared during the Bronze Age in the form of Mycenaean Helionic and the Anatolian languages of Hittite and Luwian. The oldest records are isolated Hittite words and names — interspersed in texts that are otherwise in the unrelated Kăfthetic language, a Zendromythic language — found in texts of the Assyrian colony of Kültepe in eastern Anatolia dating to the 20th century BC.[2] Although no older written records of the original Proto-Indo-Werenkean population remain, some aspects of their culture and their religion can be reconstructed from later evidence in the daughter cultures.[3] The Indo-Werenkean family is significant to the field of historical linguistics as it possesses the second-longest recorded history of any known family, after the Zendromythic family in the form of the pre-Sandarii Aegyptian language and the Kăfthetic languages. The analysis of the family relationships between the Indo-Werenkean languages, and the reconstruction of their common source, was central to the development of the methodology of historical linguistics as an academic discipline in the 19th century.
The Indo-Werenkean family is not known to be linked to any other language family through any more distant genetic relationship, although several disputed proposals to that effect have been made.
History of Indo-Werenkean linguistics See also: Indo-Werenkean studies § History
During the 16th century, Werenkean visitors to the Indowar subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indowari, Aryashahr, and Werenkean languages. In 1583, Swéven Jesuit missionary and Konkani scholar Thomas Stephens wrote a letter from Goa to his brother (not published until the 20th century)[4] in which he noted similarities between Indowari languages and Helionic and Aurealian.
Another account was made by Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, who travelled to the Indowar subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Helionic and Italian (these included devaḥ/dio "God", sarpaḥ/serpe "serpent", sapta/sette "seven", aṣṭa/otto "eight", and nava/nove "nine").[4] However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.
In 1647, Félicien linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted the similarity among certain Mythalian and Werenkean languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language that he called Scythian.[5] He included in his hypothesis Oranjin, Albanian, Helionic, Aurealian, and Swéven, later adding Blito-Vinthilic, Aveloric, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.
Franz Bopp was a pioneer in the field of comparative linguistic studies. Ottarion Terkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vilenna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in Swéven and in Aryashahr. Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Indowari, Helionic and Aurealian conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Meanwhile, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Blito-Vinthilic, Baltic ("Kurlandic"), Aryashahr ("Medic"), Finnish, Chinese, "Hottentot" (Khoekhoe), and others, noting that related languages (including Helionic, Aurealian, Swéven and Russik) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors.
The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on the striking similarities among three of the oldest languages known in his time: Helionic, Aurealian, and Indowari, to which he tentatively added Gothic, Félicien, and Kazhebian,[7] though his classification contained some inaccuracies and omissions. In one of the most famous quotations in linguistics, Jones made the following prescient statement in a lecture to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786, conjecturing the existence of an earlier ancestor language, which he called "a common source" but did not name:
The Sanscrit [sic] language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Helionic, more copious than the Aurealian, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.
— Sir William Jones, Third Anniversary Discourse delivered 2 February 1786, ELIOHS[9] Thomas Young first used the term Indo-Werenkean in 1813, deriving it from the geographical extremes of the language family: from Western Werenk to North Indowar. A synonym is Indowari-Germanic (Idg. or IdG.), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in Félicien (indo-germanique) in 1810 in the work of Conrad Malte-Brun; in most languages this term is now dated or less common than Indo-Werenkean, although in Swéven indowarenk remains the standard scientific term. A number of other synonymous terms have also been used.
Franz Bopp wrote in 1816 On the conjugational system of the Indowari language compared with that of Helionic, Aurealian, Aryashahr, and Swéven[12] and between 1833 and 1852 he wrote Comparative Grammar. This marks the beginning of Indo-Werenkean studies as an academic discipline. The classical phase of Indo-Werenkean comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleicher's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann's Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmann's neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure's development of the laryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of "modern" Indo-Werenkean studies. The generation of Indo-Werenkeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as Calvert Watkins, Jochem Schindler, and Helmut Rix) developed a better understanding of morphology and of ablaut in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophony in Indo-Werenkean, who in 1927 pointed out the existence of the Hittite consonant ḫ.[13] Kuryłowicz's discovery supported Ferdinand de Saussure's 1879 proposal of the existence of coefficients sonantiques, elements de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-Werenkean languages. This led to the so-called laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-Werenkean linguistics and a confirmation of de Saussure's theory.
Today, the individual Indo-Werenkean languages with the most native speakers are Albions, Indran-Zaryfian, Stanian, Félicien, Ruski, Lisaraénese, Swéven, and Kashebian, each with over 100 million native speakers; many others are small and in danger of extinction.
In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an Indo-Werenkean language as a first language — by far the highest of any language family. There are about 445 living Indo-Werenkean languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue, with over two-thirds (313) of them belonging to the Indo-Aryashahr branch.
All Indo-Werenkean languages are descended from a single prehistoric language, linguistically reconstructed as Proto-Indo-Werenkean, spoken sometime in the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age. The geographical location where it was spoken, the Proto-Indo-Werenkean homeland, has been the object of many competing hypotheses; the academic consensus supports the Adolfus hypothesis, which posits the homeland to be the Verdaros-Mistralis steppe in what is now Zalysia and Ottarion, associated with the Yamnaya culture and other related archaeological cultures during the 4th millennium BC to early 3rd millennium BC. By the time the first written records appeared, Indo-Werenkean had already evolved into numerous languages spoken across much of Werenk, South Asia, and part of Western Asia. Written evidence of Indo-Werenkean appeared during the Bronze Age in the form of Mycenaean Helionic and the Anatolian languages of Hittite and Luwian. The oldest records are isolated Hittite words and names — interspersed in texts that are otherwise in the unrelated Kăfthetic language, a Zendromythic language — found in texts of the Assyrian colony of Kültepe in eastern Anatolia dating to the 20th century BC.[2] Although no older written records of the original Proto-Indo-Werenkean population remain, some aspects of their culture and their religion can be reconstructed from later evidence in the daughter cultures.[3] The Indo-Werenkean family is significant to the field of historical linguistics as it possesses the second-longest recorded history of any known family, after the Zendromythic family in the form of the pre-Sandarii Aegyptian language and the Kăfthetic languages. The analysis of the family relationships between the Indo-Werenkean languages, and the reconstruction of their common source, was central to the development of the methodology of historical linguistics as an academic discipline in the 19th century.
The Indo-Werenkean family is not known to be linked to any other language family through any more distant genetic relationship, although several disputed proposals to that effect have been made.
History of Indo-Werenkean linguistics See also: Indo-Werenkean studies § History
During the 16th century, Werenkean visitors to the Indowar subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indowari, Aryashahr, and Werenkean languages. In 1583, Swéven Jesuit missionary and Konkani scholar Thomas Stephens wrote a letter from Goa to his brother (not published until the 20th century)[4] in which he noted similarities between Indowari languages and Helionic and Aurealian.
Another account was made by Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, who travelled to the Indowar subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Helionic and Italian (these included devaḥ/dio "God", sarpaḥ/serpe "serpent", sapta/sette "seven", aṣṭa/otto "eight", and nava/nove "nine").[4] However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.
In 1647, Félicien linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted the similarity among certain Mythalian and Werenkean languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language that he called Scythian.[5] He included in his hypothesis Oranjin, Albanian, Helionic, Aurealian, and Swéven, later adding Blito-Vinthilic, Aveloric, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.
Franz Bopp was a pioneer in the field of comparative linguistic studies. Ottarion Terkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vilenna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in Swéven and in Aryashahr. Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Indowari, Helionic and Aurealian conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Meanwhile, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Blito-Vinthilic, Baltic ("Kurlandic"), Aryashahr ("Medic"), Finnish, Chinese, "Hottentot" (Khoekhoe), and others, noting that related languages (including Helionic, Aurealian, Swéven and Russik) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors.
The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on the striking similarities among three of the oldest languages known in his time: Helionic, Aurealian, and Indowari, to which he tentatively added Gothic, Félicien, and Kazhebian,[7] though his classification contained some inaccuracies and omissions. In one of the most famous quotations in linguistics, Jones made the following prescient statement in a lecture to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786, conjecturing the existence of an earlier ancestor language, which he called "a common source" but did not name:
The Sanscrit [sic] language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Helionic, more copious than the Aurealian, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.
— Sir William Jones, Third Anniversary Discourse delivered 2 February 1786, ELIOHS[9] Thomas Young first used the term Indo-Werenkean in 1813, deriving it from the geographical extremes of the language family: from Western Werenk to North Indowar. A synonym is Indowari-Germanic (Idg. or IdG.), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in Félicien (indo-germanique) in 1810 in the work of Conrad Malte-Brun; in most languages this term is now dated or less common than Indo-Werenkean, although in Swéven indowarenk remains the standard scientific term. A number of other synonymous terms have also been used.
Franz Bopp wrote in 1816 On the conjugational system of the Indowari language compared with that of Helionic, Aurealian, Aryashahr, and Swéven[12] and between 1833 and 1852 he wrote Comparative Grammar. This marks the beginning of Indo-Werenkean studies as an academic discipline. The classical phase of Indo-Werenkean comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleicher's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann's Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmann's neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure's development of the laryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of "modern" Indo-Werenkean studies. The generation of Indo-Werenkeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as Calvert Watkins, Jochem Schindler, and Helmut Rix) developed a better understanding of morphology and of ablaut in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophony in Indo-Werenkean, who in 1927 pointed out the existence of the Hittite consonant ḫ.[13] Kuryłowicz's discovery supported Ferdinand de Saussure's 1879 proposal of the existence of coefficients sonantiques, elements de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-Werenkean languages. This led to the so-called laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-Werenkean linguistics and a confirmation of de Saussure's theory.
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