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131-545: The languages of the Balkan sprachbund share their similarities despite belonging to various separate language family (genetic) branches. The Slavic , Hellenic , Romance , Albanian and Indo-Aryan branches all belong to the large Indo-European family, and the Turkish language is non-Indo-European. Some of the languages use these features for their standard language (i.e. those whose homeland lies almost entirely within

262-474: A Japonic language family rather than dialects of Japanese, the Japanese language itself was considered a language isolate and therefore the only language in its family. Most of the world's languages are known to be related to others. Those that have no known relatives (or for which family relationships are only tentatively proposed) are called language isolates , essentially language families consisting of

393-475: A family tree , or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy . Linguists thus describe the daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related . The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages over time. One well-known example of

524-507: A Balkan language is: In the Balkan languages, the genitive and dative cases (or corresponding prepositional constructions) undergo syncretism . Example: Greek Note: In Romanian this is an exception, and it only applies when referring to individual countries, e.g. în Germania , în Franța , etc. The rule is that into translates as ” la ” when trying to express destination, e.g. la Atena , la Madrid , la vale , la mare , etc. but even in this case

655-567: A collection of heroic sagas from the 12th century that was later collated in a verse epic , was the first literary work completely written in the vernacular. The Greek vernacular verse epic appeared in the 12th century, around the time of the French romance novel, almost as a backlash to the Attic renaissance during the dynasty of the Komnenoi in works like Psellos 's Chronography (in the middle of

786-496: A language family is the Romance languages , including Spanish , French , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian , Catalan , and many others, all of which are descended from Vulgar Latin . The Romance family itself is part of the larger Indo-European family, which includes many other languages native to Europe and South Asia , all believed to have descended from a common ancestor known as Proto-Indo-European . A language family

917-509: A linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar unique innovations in Germanic , Baltic and Slavic that are far more likely to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language. But legitimate uncertainty about whether shared innovations are areal features, coincidence, or inheritance from a common ancestor, leads to disagreement over the proper subdivisions of any large language family. The concept of language families

1048-426: A number of sign languages have developed in isolation and appear to have no relatives at all. Nonetheless, such cases are relatively rare and most well-attested languages can be unambiguously classified as belonging to one language family or another, even if this family's relation to other families is not known. Language contact can lead to the development of new languages from the mixture of two or more languages for

1179-470: A rule of Medieval Greek phonotactics that would persist into Early Modern Greek . When dialects started deleting unstressed /i/ and /u/ between two consonants (such as when Myzithras became Mystras ), new clusters were formed and similarly assimilated by sandhi; on the other hand it is arguable that the dissimilation of voiceless obstruents occurred before the loss of close vowels, as the clusters resulting from this development do not necessarily undergo

1310-427: A single language and have no single ancestor. Isolates are languages that cannot be proven to be genealogically related to any other modern language. As a corollary, every language isolate also forms its own language family — a genetic family which happens to consist of just one language. One often cited example is Basque , which forms a language family on its own; but there are many other examples outside Europe. On

1441-512: A single language. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations. Thus, different sources, especially over time, can give wildly different numbers of languages within a certain family. Classifications of the Japonic family , for example, range from one language (a language isolate with dialects) to nearly twenty—until the classification of Ryukyuan as separate languages within

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1572-462: A single language. There are an estimated 129 language isolates known today. An example is Basque . In general, it is assumed that language isolates have relatives or had relatives at some point in their history but at a time depth too great for linguistic comparison to recover them. A language isolate is classified based on the fact that enough is known about the isolate to compare it genetically to other languages but no common ancestry or relationship

1703-567: A slate pencil. This cursive script already showed descenders and ascenders, as well as combinations of letters. In the third century, the Greek uncial developed under the influence of the Latin script because of the need to write on papyrus with a reed pen. In the Middle Ages, uncial became the main script for the Greek language. A common feature of the medieval majuscule script like the uncial

1834-492: A substrate of Macedonian, but this still does not explain the origin of these innovations in Aromanian. The analytic perfect with the auxiliary verb "to have" (which some Balkan languages share with Western European languages), is the only feature whose origin can fairly safely be traced to Latin. The most commonly accepted theory, advanced by Polish scholar Zbigniew Gołąb, is that the innovations came from different sources and

1965-436: A superior civilization compared to its neighbours", Greek could not have borrowed its linguistic features from them. However, no ancient dialects of Greek possessed Balkanisms, so that the features shared with other regional languages appear to be post-classical innovations. Also, Greek appears to be only peripheral to the Balkan language area, lacking some important features, such as the postposed article. Nevertheless, several of

2096-527: Is synizesis ("merging" of vowels). In many words with the combinations [ˈea] , [ˈeo] , [ˈia] and [ˈio] , the stress shifted to the second vowel, and the first became a glide [j] . Thus: Ῥωμαῖος [ro'meos] → Ῥωμιός [ro'mɲos] ('Roman'), ἐννέα [e'nea] → ἐννιά [e'ɲa] ('nine'), ποῖος ['pios] → ποιός ['pços] ('which'), τα παιδία [ta pe'ðia] → τα παιδιά [ta pe'ðʝa] ('the children'). This accentual shift

2227-554: Is Greek, where the verb "to have" is followed by the so-called απαρέμφατο ('invariant form', historically the aorist infinitive): έχω υποσχεθεί . However, a completely different construction is used in Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian, which have inherited from Common Slavic an analytic perfect formed with the verb "to be" and the past active participle: обещал съм , obeštal sǎm (Bul.) / обећао сам , obećao sam (Ser.) - "I have promised" (lit. "I am having-promised"). On

2358-487: Is a geographic area having several languages that feature common linguistic structures. The similarities between those languages are caused by language contact, not by chance or common origin, and are not recognized as criteria that define a language family. An example of a sprachbund would be the Indian subcontinent . Shared innovations, acquired by borrowing or other means, are not considered genetic and have no bearing with

2489-504: Is a striking reduction of inflectional categories inherited from Indo-European , especially in the verbal system, and a complementary tendency of developing new analytical formations and periphrastic constructions. In morphology , the inflectional paradigms of declension , conjugation and comparison were regularised through analogy. Thus, in nouns, the Ancient Greek third declension, which showed an unequal number of syllables in

2620-480: Is already reflected in the metre of the 6th century hymns of Romanos the Melodist . In many cases, the vowel o disappeared in the endings -ιον [-ion] and -ιος [-ios] ( σακκίον [sa'cion] → σακκίν [sa'cin] , χαρτίον [xar'tion] → χαρτίν [xar'tin] , κύριος ['cyrios] → κύρις ['cyris] ). This phenomenon

2751-483: Is also a sister language to that fourth branch, then the two sister languages are more closely related to each other than to that common ancestral proto-language. The term macrofamily or superfamily is sometimes applied to proposed groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted historical linguistic methods. Some close-knit language families, and many branches within larger families, take

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2882-452: Is an absolute isolate: it has not been shown to be related to any other modern language despite numerous attempts. A language may be said to be an isolate currently but not historically if related but now extinct relatives are attested. The Aquitanian language , spoken in Roman times, may have been an ancestor of Basque, but it could also have been a sister language to the ancestor of Basque. In

3013-545: Is an abundance of abbreviations (e.g. ΧϹ for "Christos") and ligatures. Several letters of the uncial ( ϵ for Ε , Ϲ for Σ , Ѡ for Ω ) were also used as majuscules especially in a sacral context. The lunate sigma was adopted in this form as " С " in the Cyrillic script. The Greek uncial used the interpunct in order to separate sentences for the first time, but there were still no spaces between words. The Greek minuscule script, which probably emerged from

3144-475: Is another shared feature of the Balkan languages, including Turkish. It is used for statements that are not based on direct observation or common knowledge, but repeat what was reported by others. For example, Патот бил затворен in Macedonian means "The road was closed (or so I heard)". Speakers who use the indicative mood instead and state "Патот беше затворен" imply thereby that they personally witnessed

3275-547: Is assumed that most of the developments leading to the phonology of Modern Greek had either already taken place in Medieval Greek and its Hellenistic period predecessor Koine Greek , or were continuing to develop during this period. Above all, these developments included the establishment of dynamic stress , which had already replaced the tonal system of Ancient Greek during the Hellenistic period. In addition,

3406-956: Is attested to have begun earlier, in the Hellenistic Koine Greek papyri. The shift in the consonant system from voiced plosives /b/ ( β ), /d/ ( δ ), /ɡ/ ( γ ) and aspirated voiceless plosives /pʰ/ ( φ ), /tʰ/ ( θ ), /kʰ/ ( χ ) to corresponding fricatives ( /v, ð, ɣ/ and /f, θ, x/ , respectively) was already completed during Late Antiquity . However, the original voiced plosives remained as such after nasal consonants, with [mb] ( μβ ), [nd] ( νδ ), [ŋɡ] ( γγ ). The velar sounds /k, x, ɣ, ŋk, ŋɡ/ ( κ , χ , γ , γκ , γγ ) were realised as palatal allophones ( [c, ç, ʝ, ɲc, ɲɟ] ) before front vowels. The fricative /h/ , which had been present in Classical Greek, had been lost early on, although it continued to be reflected in spelling through

3537-543: Is based on the historical observation that languages develop dialects , which over time may diverge into distinct languages. However, linguistic ancestry is less clear-cut than familiar biological ancestry, in which species do not crossbreed. It is more like the evolution of microbes, with extensive lateral gene transfer . Quite distantly related languages may affect each other through language contact , which in extreme cases may lead to languages with no single ancestor, whether they be creoles or mixed languages . In addition,

3668-410: Is found only in some dialects. Sentences that include only a subjunctive construction can be used to express a wish, a mild command, an intention, or a suggestion. This example translates in the Balkan languages the phrase "You should go!", using the subjunctive constructions. With the exception of Greek, Serbo-Croatian, and Romani, all languages in the union have their definite article attached to

3799-533: Is found with any other known language. A language isolated in its own branch within a family, such as Albanian and Armenian within Indo-European, is often also called an isolate, but the meaning of the word "isolate" in such cases is usually clarified with a modifier . For instance, Albanian and Armenian may be referred to as an "Indo-European isolate". By contrast, so far as is known, the Basque language

3930-412: Is grouped together with ε /e̞/ ; ει and η together with ι /i/ ; ο with ω /o̞/ , and οι with υ /y/ . At least in educated speech, the vowel /y/ , which had also merged with υι , likely did not lose lip-rounding and become /i/ until the 10th/11th centuries. Up to this point, transliterations into Georgian continue using a different letter for υ/οι than for ι/ει/η , and in

4061-637: Is not a measure of) a genetic relationship between the languages concerned. Linguistic interference can occur between languages that are genetically closely related, between languages that are distantly related (like English and French, which are distantly related Indo-European languages ) and between languages that have no genetic relationship. Some exceptions to the simple genetic relationship model of languages include language isolates and mixed , pidgin and creole languages . Mixed languages, pidgins and creole languages constitute special genetic types of languages. They do not descend linearly or directly from

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4192-451: Is not attested by written records and so is conjectured to have been spoken before the invention of writing. A common visual representation of a language family is given by a genetic language tree. The tree model is sometimes termed a dendrogram or phylogeny . The family tree shows the relationship of the languages within a family, much as a family tree of an individual shows their relationship with their relatives. There are criticisms to

4323-422: Is possible to recover many features of a proto-language by applying the comparative method , a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist August Schleicher . This can demonstrate the validity of many of the proposed families in the list of language families . For example, the reconstructible common ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called Proto-Indo-European . Proto-Indo-European

4454-403: Is reduced to the forms λαμβ- [lamb-] ( imperfective or present system) and λαβ- [lav-] ( perfective or aorist system). One of the numerous forms that disappeared was the dative . It was replaced in the 10th century by the genitive and the prepositional construction of εἰς [is] ('in, to') + accusative . In addition, nearly all the participles and

4585-516: Is some dispute as to when exactly this development took place but apparently it began during the Byzantine period. The graphemes μπ , ντ and γκ for /b/ , /d/ and /ɡ/ can already be found in transcriptions from neighboring languages in Byzantine sources, like in ντερβίσης [der'visis] , from Turkish : derviş (' dervish '). On the other hand, some scholars contend that post-nasal voicing of voiceless plosives began already in

4716-429: Is strictly differentiated from ἔρως [ˈeros] , ('physical love'). In everyday usage, some old Greek stems were replaced, for example, the expression for "wine" where the word κρασίον [kraˈsion] ('mixture') replaced the old Greek οἶνος [oînos] . The word ὄψον [ˈopson] (meaning 'something you eat with bread') combined with the suffix -αριον [-arion] , which

4847-488: Is the almost complete loss of the infinitive , which has been replaced by subordinate clauses with the particle να. Possibly transmitted through Greek, this phenomenon can also be found in the adjacent languages and dialects of the Balkans. Bulgarian and Romanian , for example, are in many respects typologically similar to medieval and present day Greek, although genealogically they are not closely related. Besides

4978-455: Is the lack of suppletive comparative degrees for the adjective "good" and "bad", unlike other Indo-European languages. Language family This is an accepted version of this page A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to

5109-533: Is usually said to contain at least two languages, although language isolates — languages that are not related to any other language — are occasionally referred to as families that contain one language. Inversely, there is no upper bound to the number of languages a family can contain. Some families, such as the Austronesian languages , contain over 1000. Language families can be identified from shared characteristics amongst languages. Sound changes are one of

5240-428: Is widespread. Greek does not follow this. "unsprã" Albanian has preserved the vigesimal system , which is considered to be an remnant from a Pre-Indo-European language. The number 20 is described një zet and 40 as dy zet . In some dialects tre zet '60' and katër zet '80' still may be used. All other Balkan languages lack at this. Direct and indirect objects are cross-referenced, or doubled , in

5371-512: The Attic literary language and the constantly developing vernacular Koine . By late antiquity, the gap had become impossible to ignore. In the Byzantine era, written Greek manifested itself in a whole spectrum of divergent registers , all of which were consciously archaic in comparison with the contemporary spoken vernacular, but in different degrees. They ranged from a moderately archaic style employed for most every-day writing and based mostly on

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5502-635: The Byzantine Empire . This stage of language is thus described as Byzantine Greek. The study of the Medieval Greek language and literature is a branch of Byzantine studies , the study of the history and culture of the Byzantine Empire. The beginning of Medieval Greek is occasionally dated back to as early as the 4th century, either to 330 AD, when the political centre of the Roman Empire was moved to Constantinople , or to 395 AD,

5633-465: The North Germanic language family, including Danish , Swedish , Norwegian and Icelandic , which have shared descent from Ancient Norse . Latin and ancient Norse are both attested in written records, as are many intermediate stages between those ancestral languages and their modern descendants. In other cases, genetic relationships between languages are not directly attested. For instance,

5764-456: The comparative of adjectives ending in -ων , -ιον , [-oːn, -ion] which was partly irregular, was gradually replaced by the formation using the more regular suffix -τερος , -τέρα (-τερη) , -τερο(ν) , [-teros, -tera (-teri), -tero(n)] : µείζων [méːzdoːn] → µειζότερος [mi'zoteros] ('the bigger'). The enclitic genitive forms of the first and second person personal pronoun , as well as

5895-489: The comparative method of linguistic analysis. In order to test the hypothesis that two languages are related, the comparative method begins with the collection of pairs of words that are hypothesized to be cognates : i.e., words in related languages that are derived from the same word in the shared ancestral language. Pairs of words that have similar pronunciations and meanings in the two languages are often good candidates for hypothetical cognates. The researcher must rule out

6026-441: The contracted verbs ending in -άω [-aoː] , -έω [-eoː] etc., which earlier showed a complex set of vowel alternations, readopted the endings of the regular forms: ἀγαπᾷ [aɡapâːi] → ἀγαπάει [aɣaˈpai] ('he loves'). The use of the past tense prefix, known as augment , was gradually limited to regular forms in which the augment was required to carry word stress. Reduplication in

6157-511: The geopolitical history of the region all seem to be relevant factors, but many disagree over the specifics and degree of these factors. The earliest scholar to notice the similarities between Balkan languages belonging to different families was the Slovenian scholar Jernej Kopitar in 1829. August Schleicher (1850) more explicitly developed the concept of areal relationships as opposed to genetic ones, and Franz Miklosich (1861) studied

6288-418: The particles να and θενά , the negation particle δέν [ðen] ('not') was derived from Ancient Greek : oὐδέν [uːdén] ('nothing'). Lexicographic changes in Medieval Greek influenced by Christianity can be found for instance in words like ἄγγελος [ˈaɲɟelos] ('messenger') → heavenly messenger → angel) or ἀγάπη [aˈɣapi] 'love' → 'altruistic love', which

6419-412: The rough breathing , a diacritic mark added to vowels. Changes in the phonological system mainly affect consonant clusters that show sandhi processes. In clusters of two different plosives or two different fricatives , there is a tendency for dissimilation such that the first consonant becomes a fricative and/or the second becomes a plosive ultimately favoring a fricative-plosive cluster. But if

6550-416: The substrate for modern Balkan languages. But since very little is known about Paleo-Balkan languages, it cannot be determined whether the features were present. The strongest candidate for a shared Paleo-Balkan feature is the postposed article. Another theory, advanced by Kristian Sandfeld in 1930, was that these features were an entirely Greek influence, under the presumption that since Greece "always had

6681-652: The 11th century) or the Alexiad , the biography of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos written by his daughter Anna Komnena about a century later. In fifteen-syllable blank verse (versus politicus), the Digenes Akritas deals with both ancient and medieval heroic sagas, but also with stories of animals and plants. The Chronicle of the Morea , a verse chronicle from the 14th century, is unique. It has also been preserved in French, Italian and Aragonese versions, and covers

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6812-410: The 13th century, examples of texts written in vernacular Greek are very rare. They are restricted to isolated passages of popular acclamations , sayings, and particularly common or untranslatable formulations which occasionally made their way into Greek literature. Since the end of the 11th century, vernacular Greek poems from the literary realm of Constantinople are documented. The Digenes Akritas ,

6943-559: The Arabs in the course of the Muslim conquests a few years later. Alexandria , a centre of Greek culture and language, fell to the Arabs in 642. During the seventh and eighth centuries, Greek was gradually replaced by Arabic as an official language in conquered territories such as Egypt, as more people learned Arabic. Thus, the use of Greek declined early on in Syria and Egypt. The invasion of

7074-469: The Balkans. The grammatical features shared (especially regarding the tense system) were most likely borrowed from Greek. The source of these features as well as the directions have long been debated, and various theories were suggested. Early researchers, including Kopitar, believed they must have been inherited from the Paleo-Balkan languages (e.g. Illyrian , Thracian and Dacian ) which formed

7205-688: The Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, and Cappadocian , spoken in central Asia Minor, began to diverge. In Griko , a language spoken in the southern Italian exclaves , and in Tsakonian , which is spoken on the Peloponnese, dialects of older origin continue to be used today. Cypriot Greek was already in a literary form in the late Middle Ages, being used in the Assizes of Cyprus and the chronicles of Leontios Makhairas and Georgios Boustronios . It

7336-659: The Byzantine emperors were active writers themselves and wrote chronicles or works on the running of the Byzantine state and strategic or philological works. Furthermore, letters, legal texts, and numerous registers and lists in Medieval Greek exist. Concessions to spoken Greek can be found, for example, in John Malalas's Chronography from the 6th century, the Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor (9th century) and

7467-716: The Eastern Mediterranean, altering the spoken language's pronunciation and structure. Medieval Greek is the link between this vernacular , known as Koine Greek , and Modern Greek . Though Byzantine Greek literature was still strongly influenced by Attic Greek , it was also influenced by vernacular Koine Greek, which is the language of the New Testament and the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church . Constantine (the Great) moved

7598-614: The Greek language, for example ὁσπίτιον [oˈspition] ( Latin : hospitium , 'hostel', therefore "house", σπίτι [ˈspiti] in Modern Greek ), σέλλα [ˈsela] ('saddle'), ταβέρνα [taˈverna] ('tavern'), κανδήλιον [kanˈdilion] ( Latin : candela , 'candle'), φούρνος [ˈfurnos] ( Latin : furnus , 'oven') and φλάσκα [ˈflaska] ( Latin : flasco , 'wine bottle'). Other influences on Medieval Greek arose from contact with neighboring languages and

7729-525: The Indo-European languages: In 2000, the Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt computed a Balkanization factor, which gives each Balkan language a score proportional to the number of features shared in the Balkan language area. The results were: Another language that may have been influenced by the Balkan language union is the Judaeo-Spanish variant that used to be spoken by Sephardi Jews living in

7860-531: The Koine , as interchanges with β , δ , and γ in this position are found in the papyri. The prenasalized voiced spirants μβ , νδ and γγ were still plosives by this time, causing a merger between μβ/μπ , νδ/ντ and γγ/γκ , which would remain except within educated varieties, where spelling pronunciations did make for segments such as [ɱv, n̪ð, ŋɣ] Many decisive changes between Ancient and Modern Greek were completed by c.  1100 AD. There

7991-569: The Middle Ages. However, each language created its own internal articles, so the Romanian articles are related to the articles (and demonstrative pronouns ) in Italian, French, etc., whereas the Bulgarian articles are related to demonstrative pronouns in other Slavic languages. article article article article muiere muiere a The Slavic way of composing the numbers between 10 and 20, e.g. "one + on + ten" for eleven, called superessive,

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8122-478: The Modern Greek future particle θα Medieval Greek : [θa] , which replaced the old future forms. Ancient formations like the genitive absolute , the accusative and infinitive and nearly all common participle constructions were gradually substituted by the constructions of subordinate clauses and the newly emerged gerund . The most noticeable grammatical change in comparison to ancient Greek

8253-579: The Peloponnese in 1459 or 1460, the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, Athens in 1465, and two centuries later the Duchy of Candia in 1669, the Greek language lost its status as a national language until the emergence of modern Greece in the year 1821. Language varieties after 1453 are referred to as Modern Greek. As early as in the Hellenistic period , there was a tendency towards a state of diglossia between

8384-630: The Romance languages and the North Germanic languages are also related to each other, being subfamilies of the Indo-European language family , since both Latin and Old Norse are believed to be descended from an even more ancient language, Proto-Indo-European ; however, no direct evidence of Proto-Indo-European or its divergence into its descendant languages survives. In cases such as these, genetic relationships are established through use of

8515-773: The Slavs into the Balkan Peninsula reduced the area where Greek and Latin was spoken (roughly north of a line from Montenegro to Varna on the Black Sea in Bulgaria ). Sicily and parts of Magna Graecia , Cyprus, Asia Minor and more generally Anatolia, parts of the Crimean Peninsula remained Greek-speaking. The southern Balkans which would henceforth be contested between Byzantium and various Slavic kingdoms or empires. The Greek language spoken by one-third of

8646-473: The capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople) in 330. The city, though a major imperial residence like other cities such as Trier , Milan and Sirmium , was not officially a capital until 359. Nonetheless, the imperial court resided there and the city was the political centre of the eastern parts of the Roman Empire where Greek was the dominant language. At first, Latin remained

8777-812: The change to [fricative + stop], e.g. κ(ου)τί as [kti] not [xti] . The resulting clusters were: For plosives: For fricatives where the second was not /s/ : For fricatives where the second was /s/ : The disappearance of /n/ in word-final position, which had begun sporadically in Late Antiquity, became more widespread, excluding certain dialects such as South Italian and Cypriot. The nasals /m/ and /n/ also disappeared before voiceless fricatives, for example νύμφη ['nyɱfi] → νύφη ['nifi] , ἄνθος ['an̪θos] → ἄθος ['aθos] . A new set of voiced plosives [(m)b] , [(n)d] and [(ŋ)ɡ] developed through voicing of voiceless plosives after nasals . There

8908-498: The clitic is obligatory in the case of a topicalized object (with OVS-word order), which serves also as the common colloquial equivalent of a passive construction. " Георги го гледам ." The replacement of synthetic adjectival comparative forms with analytic ones by means of preposed markers is common. These markers are: Macedonian and Modern Greek have retained some of the earlier synthetic forms. In Bulgarian and Macedonian these have become proper adjectives in their own right without

9039-496: The common ancestor of the Germanic subfamily, was itself a descendant of Proto-Indo-European , the common ancestor of the Indo-European family. Within a large family, subfamilies can be identified through "shared innovations": members of a subfamily will share features that represent retentions from their more recent common ancestor, but were not present in the overall proto-language of the larger family. Some taxonomists restrict

9170-452: The construction contrasts with the clitic-less construction and marks the cross-referenced object as a topic. Southwest Macedonia appears to be the location of innovation. For example, "I see George" in Balkan languages: Note: The neutral case in normal ( SVO ) word order is without a clitic: " Гледам Георги ." However, the form with an additional clitic pronoun is also perfectly normal and can be used for emphasis: " Гледам го Георги ." And

9301-558: The cursive writing in Syria , appears more and more frequently from the 9th century onwards. It is the first script that regularly uses accents and spiritus, which had already been developed in the 3rd century BC. This very fluent script, with ascenders and descenders and many possible combinations of letters, is the first to use gaps between words. The last forms which developed in the 12th century were Iota subscript and word-final sigma ( ς ). The type for Greek majuscules and minuscules that

9432-410: The dialects that have the most "balkanisms" are those in regions where people had contact with people of many other languages. The number of cases is reduced, several cases being replaced with prepositions, the only exception being Serbo-Croatian. In Bulgarian and Macedonian , on the other hand, this development has actually led to the loss of all cases except the vocative . A common case system of

9563-407: The different cases, was adjusted to the regular first and second declension by forming a new nominative form out of the oblique case forms: Ancient Greek ὁ πατήρ [ho patɛ́ːr] → Modern Greek ὁ πατέρας [o pa'teras] , in analogy to the accusative form τὸν πατέρα [tom ba'tera] . Feminine nouns ending in -ις [-is] and -ας [-as] formed

9694-474: The division of the empire. However, this approach is rather arbitrary as it is more an assumption of political, as opposed to cultural and linguistic, developments. Indeed, by this time the spoken language, particularly pronunciation, had already shifted towards modern forms. The conquests of Alexander the Great , and the ensuing Hellenistic period , had caused Greek to spread to peoples throughout Anatolia and

9825-483: The east, had become extinct and replaced by Greek by the 5th century. In any case, all cities of the Eastern Roman Empire were strongly influenced by the Greek language. In the period between 603 and 619, the southern and eastern parts of the empire ( Syria , Egypt , North Africa ) were occupied by Persian Sassanids and, after being recaptured by Heraclius in the years 622 to 628, were conquered by

9956-489: The end of the noun, instead of before it. None of the related languages (like other Romance languages or Slavic languages) share this feature, with the notable exception of the northern Russian dialects , and it is thought to be an innovation created and spread in the Balkans. It is possible that postposed article in Balkan Slavic is the result of influence from Eastern Romance languages (Romanian or Aromanian) during

10087-563: The family tree model. Critics focus mainly on the claim that the internal structure of the trees is subject to variation based on the criteria of classification. Even among those who support the family tree model, there are debates over which languages should be included in a language family. For example, within the dubious Altaic language family , there are debates over whether the Japonic and Koreanic languages should be included or not. The wave model has been proposed as an alternative to

10218-415: The family. The largest five language families in terms of number of speakers (Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo and Austronesian) make up five-sixths (almost 83.3%) of the world’s population. Two languages have a genetic relationship , and belong to the same language family, if both are descended from a common ancestor through the process of language change , or one is descended from

10349-415: The family. Thus, the term family is analogous to the biological term clade . Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, sometimes referred to as "branches" or "subfamilies" of the family; for instance, the Germanic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European family. Subfamilies share a more recent common ancestor than the common ancestor of the larger family; Proto-Germanic ,

10480-502: The features that Greek does share with the other languages (loss of dative, replacement of infinitive by subjunctive constructions, object clitics, formation of future with auxiliary verb "to want") probably originated in Medieval Greek and spread to the other languages through Byzantine influence. The Roman Empire ruled all the Balkans, and local variation of Latin may have left its mark on all languages there, which were later

10611-431: The first consonant was a fricative and the second consonant was /s/ , the first consonant instead became a plosive, favoring a plosive- /s/ cluster. Medieval Greek also had cluster voicing harmony favoring the voice of the final plosive or fricative; when the resulting clusters became voiceless, the aforementioned sandhi would further apply. This process of assimilation and sandhi was highly regular and predictable, forming

10742-495: The following families that contain at least 1% of the 7,164 known languages in the world: Glottolog 5.0 (2024) lists the following as the largest families, of 7,788 languages (other than sign languages , pidgins , and unclassifiable languages ): Language counts can vary significantly depending on what is considered a dialect; for example Lyle Campbell counts only 27 Otomanguean languages, although he, Ethnologue and Glottolog also disagree as to which languages belong in

10873-468: The form of dialect continua in which there are no clear-cut borders that make it possible to unequivocally identify, define, or count individual languages within the family. However, when the differences between the speech of different regions at the extremes of the continuum are so great that there is no mutual intelligibility between them, as occurs in Arabic , the continuum cannot meaningfully be seen as

11004-563: The form of the proclitic third-person-singular present form of the verb 'to want': će vidim ( ће видим ) 'I will see', će vidiš ( ће видиш ) "you will see", će vidi ( ће види ) 'he/she/it will see'. The analytic perfect tense is formed in the Balkan languages with the verb "to have" and, usually, a past passive participle, similarly to the construction found in Germanic and other Romance languages: e.g. Romanian am promis "I have promised", Albanian kam premtuar "I have promised". A somewhat less typical case of this

11135-591: The future marker is still an inflected auxiliary. In modern Greek, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Albanian, Aromanian, and spoken Romanian, decategorization and erosion have given rise to an uninflected tense form, where the frozen third-person singular of the verb has turned into an invariable particle followed by the main verb inflected for person (compare Rom 1.sg. voi , 2.sg. vei , 3.sg. va > invariable va > mod. o ). Certain Torlakian dialects also have an invariant future tense marker in

11266-403: The genitive forms of the third person demonstrative pronoun , developed into unstressed enclitic possessive pronouns that were attached to nouns: µου [mu] , σου [su] , του [tu] , της [tis] , µας [mas] , σας [sas] , των [ton] . Irregularities in verb inflection were also reduced through analogy. Thus,

11397-503: The global scale, the site Glottolog counts a total of 423 language families in the world, including 184 isolates. One controversial theory concerning the genetic relationships among languages is monogenesis , the idea that all known languages, with the exceptions of creoles , pidgins and sign languages , are descendant from a single ancestral language. If that is true, it would mean all languages (other than pidgins, creoles, and sign languages) are genetically related, but in many cases,

11528-748: The history of Frankish feudalism on the Peloponnese during the Latinokratia of the Principality of Achaea , a crusader state set up after the Fourth Crusade and the 13th century fall of Constantinople . The earliest evidence of prose vernacular Greek exists in some documents from southern Italy written in the tenth century. Later prose literature consists of statute books, chronicles and fragments of religious, historical and medical works. The dualism of literary language and vernacular

11659-513: The imperative forms of the 3rd person were lost. The subjunctive was replaced by the construction of subordinate clauses with the conjunctions ὅτι [ˈoti] ('that') and ἵνα [ˈina] ('so that'). ἵνα first became ἱνά [iˈna] and was later shortened to να [na] . By the end of the Byzantine era, the construction θέλω να [ˈθelo na] ('I want that…') + subordinate clause developed into θενά [θeˈna] . Eventually, θενά became

11790-426: The imperial court's life like Αὔγουστος [ˈavɣustos] ('Augustus'), πρίγκιψ [ˈpriɲɟips] ( Latin : princeps , 'Prince'), μάγιστρος [ˈmaʝistros] ( Latin : magister , 'Master'), κοιαίστωρ [cyˈestor] ( Latin : quaestor , 'Quaestor'), ὀφφικιάλος [ofiˈcalos] ( Latin : officialis , 'official'). In addition, Latin words from everyday life entered

11921-510: The inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire, around eight million people, were native speakers of Greek. The number of those who were able to communicate in Greek may have been far higher. The native Greek speakers consisted of many of the inhabitants of the southern Balkan Peninsula , south of the Jireček Line , and all of the inhabitants of Asia Minor , where the native tongues ( Phrygian , Lycian , Lydian , Carian etc.), except Armenian in

12052-542: The language family concept. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages ( Latin , Oscan , Umbrian , etc.) might well be " areal features ". However, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, since English and continental West Germanic were not

12183-523: The language of both the court and the army. It was used for official documents, but its influence waned. From the beginning of the 6th century, amendments to the law were mostly written in Greek. Furthermore, parts of the Roman Corpus Iuris Civilis were gradually translated into Greek. Under the rule of Emperor Heraclius (610–641 AD), who also assumed the Greek title Basileus ( Greek : βασιλεύς , 'monarch') in 610, Greek became

12314-502: The languages influenced each other: some features can be traced from Latin, Slavic, or Greek languages, whereas others, particularly features that are shared only by Romanian, Albanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, could be explained by the substratum kept after Romanization (in the case of Romanian) or Slavicization (in the case of Bulgarian). Albanian was influenced by both Latin and Slavic, but it kept many of its original characteristics. Several arguments favour this theory. First, throughout

12445-461: The languages of Venetian, Frankish and Arab conquerors. Some of the loanwords from these languages have been permanently retained in Greek or in its dialects: Middle Greek used the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet which, until the end of antiquity, were predominantly used as lapidary and majuscule letters and without a space between words and with diacritics. The first Greek script, a cursive script, developed from quick carving into wax tablets with

12576-444: The latter case, Basque and Aquitanian would form a small family together. Ancestors are not considered to be distinct members of a family. A proto-language can be thought of as a mother language (not to be confused with a mother tongue ) being the root from which all languages in the family stem. The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known directly since most languages have a relatively short recorded history. However, it

12707-561: The nominative according to the accusative -ιδα [-iða] -αδα [-aða] , as in ἐλπίς [elpís] → ἐλπίδα [elˈpiða] ('hope'), πατρίς [patrís] → πατρίδα [paˈtriða] ('homeland'), and in Ἑλλάς [hellás] → Ἑλλάδα [eˈlaða] ('Greece'). Only a few nouns remained unaffected by this simplification, such as τὸ φῶς [to fos] (both nominative and accusative ), τοῦ φωτός [tu fo'tos] ( genitive ). The Ancient Greek formation of

12838-545: The official language of the Eastern Roman Empire . This was in spite of the fact that the inhabitants of the empire still considered themselves Rhomaioi ('Romans') until its end in 1453, as they saw their State as the perpetuation of Roman rule. Latin continued to be used on the coinage until the ninth century and in certain court ceremonies for even longer. Despite the absence of reliable demographic figures, it has been estimated that less than one third of

12969-423: The oldest demonstrable language family, Afroasiatic , is far younger than language itself. Estimates of the number of language families in the world may vary widely. According to Ethnologue there are 7,151 living human languages distributed in 142 different language families. Lyle Campbell (2019) identifies a total of 406 independent language families, including isolates. Ethnologue 27 (2024) lists

13100-403: The other hand, Macedonian, the third Slavic language in the sprachbund, is like Romanian and Albanian in that it uses quite typical Balkan constructions consisting of the verb to have and a past passive participle ( имам ветено , imam veteno = "I have promised"). Macedonian also has a perfect formed with the verb "to be", like Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian. The so-called renarrative mood

13231-600: The other language. Medieval Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek , Byzantine Greek , or Romaic ) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages , conventionally dated to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. From the 7th century onwards, Greek was the only language of administration and government in

13362-454: The other. The term and the process of language evolution are independent of, and not reliant on, the terminology, understanding, and theories related to genetics in the biological sense, so, to avoid confusion, some linguists prefer the term genealogical relationship . There is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of

13493-459: The population of Sicily at the time of the Norman conquest 1060–1090 remained vibrant for more than a century, but slowly died out (as did Arabic) to a deliberate policy of Latinization in language and religion from the mid-1160s. From the late 11th century onwards, the interior of Anatolia was invaded by Seljuq Turks, who advanced westwards. With the Ottoman conquests of Constantinople in 1453,

13624-721: The possibility of [further] comparison. This is more evident in Macedonian : виш = "higher, superior", ниж = "lower, inferior". Compare with similar structures in Bulgarian : висш(-(ия(т))/а(та)/о(то)/и(те)) = "(the) higher, (the) superior" ( по-висш(-(ия(т))/а(та)/о(то)/и(те)) = "(the) [more] higher, (the) [more] superior"; ' най-висш(-(ия(т))/о(то)/а(та)/и(те)) ' = "(the) ([most]) highest, supreme"; нисш (also spelled as ни з ш sometimes) = "low, lower, inferior", it can also possess further comparative or superlative as with ' висш ' above. Another common trait of these languages

13755-470: The possibility that the two words are similar merely due to chance, or due to one having borrowed the words from the other (or from a language related to the other). Chance resemblance is ruled out by the existence of large collections of pairs of words between the two languages showing similar patterns of phonetic similarity. Once coincidental similarity and borrowing have been eliminated as possible explanations for similarities in sound and meaning of words,

13886-653: The purposes of interactions between two groups who speak different languages. Languages that arise in order for two groups to communicate with each other to engage in commercial trade or that appeared as a result of colonialism are called pidgin . Pidgins are an example of linguistic and cultural expansion caused by language contact. However, language contact can also lead to cultural divisions. In some cases, two different language speaking groups can feel territorial towards their language and do not want any changes to be made to it. This causes language boundaries and groups in contact are not willing to make any compromises to accommodate

14017-536: The putative phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically (by ancestry) as opposed to horizontally (by spatial diffusion). In some cases, the shared derivation of a group of related languages from a common ancestor is directly attested in the historical record. For example, this is the case for the Romance language family , wherein Spanish , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian , and French are all descended from Latin, as well as for

14148-428: The region) whilst other populations to whom the land is not a cultural pivot (as they have wider communities outside of it) may still adopt the features for their local register. While some of these languages may share little vocabulary, their grammars have very extensive similarities; for example: The reason for these similarities is not a settled question among experts. Genetic commonalities, language contact , and

14279-413: The relationships may be too remote to be detectable. Alternative explanations for some basic observed commonalities between languages include developmental theories, related to the biological development of the capacity for language as the child grows from newborn. A language family is a monophyletic unit; all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all descendants of that ancestor are included in

14410-459: The relationships of Balkan Slavic and Romance more extensively. Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1923), Kristian Sandfeld-Jensen (1926), and Gustav Weigand (1925, 1928) developed the theory in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1930s, the Romanian linguist Alexandru Graur criticized the notion of “Balkan linguistics,” saying that one can talk about “relationships of borrowings, of influences, but not about Balkan linguistics”. The term "Balkan language area"

14541-570: The remaining explanation is common origin: it is inferred that the similarities occurred due to descent from a common ancestor, and the words are actually cognates, implying the languages must be related. When languages are in contact with one another , either of them may influence the other through linguistic interference such as borrowing. For example, French has influenced English , Arabic has influenced Persian , Sanskrit has influenced Tamil , and Chinese has influenced Japanese in this way. However, such influence does not constitute (and

14672-489: The road's closure. The use of the infinitive (common in other languages related to some of the Balkan languages, such as Romance and Slavic) is generally replaced with subjunctive constructions, following early Greek innovation. For example, "I want to write" in several Balkan languages: Vreau a scrie (with infinitive) But here is an example of a relict form, preserved in Bulgarian: The last example

14803-579: The same class, adopted a new set of endings modelled on the passive of regular verbs, as in the following examples: In most cases, the numerous stem variants that appeared in the Ancient Greek system of aspect inflection were reduced to only two basic stem forms, sometimes only one. Thus, in Ancient Greek the stem of the verb λαμβάνειν [lambáneːn] ('to take') appears in the variants λαμβ- [lamb-] , λαβ- [lab-] , ληψ- [lɛːps-] , ληφ- [lɛːpʰ-] and λημ- [lɛːm-] . In Medieval Greek, it

14934-641: The same original phoneme had merged with /i/ in mainstream varieties at roughly the same time (the same documents also transcribe υ/οι with ი /i/ very sporadically). In the original closing diphthongs αυ , ευ and ηυ , the offglide [u] had developed into a consonantal [v] or [f] early on (possibly through an intermediate stage of [β] and [ɸ] ). Before [n] , υ turned to [m] ( εὔνοστος ['evnostos] → ἔμνοστος ['emnostos] , χαύνος ['xavnos] → χάμνος ['xamnos] , ἐλαύνω [e'lavno] → λάμνω ['lamno] ), and before [m] it

15065-567: The same preposition is used to express direction and location. The future tense is formed in an analytic way using an auxiliary verb or particle with the meaning "will, want", referred to as de-volitive, similar to the way the future is formed in English. This feature is present to varying degrees in each language. Decategorization is less advanced in fossilized literary Romanian voi and in Serbo-Croatian ću, ćeš, će , where

15196-823: The strongest pieces of evidence that can be used to identify a genetic relationship because of their predictable and consistent nature, and through the comparative method can be used to reconstruct proto-languages. However, languages can also change through language contact which can falsely suggest genetic relationships. For example, the Mongolic , Tungusic , and Turkic languages share a great deal of similarities that lead several scholars to believe they were related . These supposed relationships were later discovered to be derived through language contact and thus they are not truly related. Eventually though, high amounts of language contact and inconsistent changes will render it essentially impossible to derive any more relationships; even

15327-473: The substrate to Slavic newcomers. This was proposed by Georg Solta . The weak point of this theory is that other Romance languages have few of the features, and there is no proof that the Eastern Romans were isolated for enough time to develop them. An argument for this would be the structural borrowings or "linguistic calques " into Macedonian from Aromanian, which could be explained by Aromanian being

15458-426: The term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus on how to do so. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups , and groups into complexes . A top-level (i.e., the largest) family is often called a phylum or stock . The closer the branches are to each other, the more closely the languages will be related. This means if a branch of a proto-language is four branches down and there

15589-502: The tree model. The wave model uses isoglosses to group language varieties; unlike in the tree model, these groups can overlap. While the tree model implies a lack of contact between languages after derivation from an ancestral form, the wave model emphasizes the relationship between languages that remain in contact, which is more realistic. Historical glottometry is an application of the wave model, meant to identify and evaluate genetic relations in linguistic linkages . A sprachbund

15720-409: The turbulent history of the Balkans , many groups of people moved to another place, inhabited by people of another ethnicity. These small groups were usually assimilated quickly and sometimes left marks in the new language they acquired. Second, the use of more than one language was common in the Balkans before the modern age, and a drift in one language would quickly spread to other languages. Third,

15851-450: The turn of the first millennium AD. Written literature reflecting this Demotic Greek begins to appear around 1100. Among the preserved literature in the Attic literary language, various forms of historiography take a prominent place. They comprise chronicles as well as classicist, contemporary works of historiography , theological documents, and saints' lives . Poetry can be found in the form of hymns and ecclesiastical poetry. Many of

15982-444: The verb phrase by a clitic (weak) pronoun, agreeing with the object in gender, number, and case or case function. This can be found in Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Albanian. In Albanian and Macedonian, this feature shows fully grammaticalized structures and is obligatory with indirect objects and to some extent with definite direct objects; in Bulgarian, however, it is optional and therefore based on discourse. In Greek,

16113-419: The verb stem, which was a feature of the old perfect forms, was gradually abandoned and only retained in antiquated forms. The small ancient Greek class of irregular verbs in -μι [-mi] disappeared in favour of regular forms ending in -ω [-oː] ; χώννυμι [kʰóːnnymi] → χώνω ['xono] ('push'). The auxiliary εἰμί [eːmí] ('be'), originally part of

16244-494: The vowel system was gradually reduced to five phonemes without any differentiation in vowel length, a process also well begun during the Hellenistic period. Furthermore, Ancient Greek diphthongs became monophthongs . The Suda , an encyclopedia from the late 10th century, gives some indication of the vowel inventory. Following the antistoichic system, it lists terms alphabetically but arranges similarly pronounced letters side by side. In this way, for indicating homophony , αι

16375-495: The works of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (mid-10th century). These are influenced by the vernacular language of their time in choice of words and idiom , but largely follow the models of written Koine in their morphology and syntax . The spoken form of Greek was called γλῶσσα δημώδης ( glōssa dēmōdēs 'vernacular language'), ἁπλοελληνική ( haploellēnikē 'basic Greek'), καθωμιλημένη ( kathōmilēmenē 'spoken') or Ῥωμαιϊκή ( Rhōmaiïkē 'Roman language'). Before

16506-530: The written Koine of the Bible and early Christian literature, to a highly artificial learned style, employed by authors with higher literary ambitions and closely imitating the model of classical Attic, in continuation of the movement of Atticism in late antiquity. At the same time, the spoken vernacular language developed on the basis of earlier spoken Koine, and reached a stage that in many ways resembles present-day Modern Greek in terms of grammar and phonology by

16637-482: The year 1030, Michael the Grammarian could still make fun of the bishop of Philomelion for confusing ι for υ . In the 10th century, Georgian transliterations begin using the letter representing /u/ ( უ ) for υ/οι , in line with the alternative development in certain dialects like Tsakonian , Megaran and South Italian Greek where /y/ reverted to /u/ . This phenomenon perhaps indirectly indicates that

16768-563: Was borrowed from the Latin -arium , became 'fish' ( ὀψάριον [oˈpsarion] ), which after apheresis, synizesis and the loss of final ν [n] became the new Greek ψάρι [ˈpsari] and eliminated the Old Greek ἰχθύς [ikʰtʰýs] , which became an acrostic for Jesus Christ and a symbol for Christianity. Especially at the beginning of the Byzantine Empire , Medieval Greek borrowed numerous words from Latin , among them mainly titles and other terms of

16899-589: Was coined by the Romanian linguist Alexandru Rosetti in 1958, when he claimed that the shared features conferred the Balkan languages a special similarity. Theodor Capidan went further, claiming that the structure of Balkan languages could be reduced to a standard language. Many of the earliest reports on this theory were in German , hence the term "Balkansprachbund" is often used as well. The languages that share these similarities belong to five distinct branches of

17030-456: Was dropped ( θαῦμα ['θavma] → θάμα ['θama] ). Before [s] , it occasionally turned to [p] ( ἀνάπαυση [a'napafsi] → ἀνάπαψη [a'napapsi] ). Words with initial vowels were often affected by apheresis : ἡ ἡμέρα [i i'mera] → ἡ μέρα [i 'mera] ('the day'), ἐρωτῶ [ero'to] → ρωτῶ [ro'to] ('(I) ask'). A regular phenomenon in most dialects

17161-549: Was to persist until well into the 20th century, when the Greek language question was decided in favor of the vernacular in 1976. The persistence until the Middle Ages of a single Greek speaking state, the Byzantine Empire, meant that, unlike Vulgar Latin , Greek did not split into separate languages. However, with the fracturing of the Byzantine state after the turn of the first millennium, newly isolated dialects such as Mariupol Greek , spoken in Crimea, Pontic Greek , spoken along

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