85-759: The early Slavs were speakers of Indo-European dialects who lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the 10th centuries AD) in Central , Eastern and Southeast Europe and established the foundations for the Slavic nations through the Slavic states of the Early and High Middle Ages . The Slavs' original homeland is still a matter of debate due to
170-695: A language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe , the Iranian plateau , and the northern Indian subcontinent . Some European languages of this family— English , French , Portuguese , Russian , Dutch , and Spanish —have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian , Armenian , Balto-Slavic , Celtic , Germanic , Hellenic , Indo-Iranian , and Italic ; another nine subdivisions are now extinct . Today,
255-463: A monk , a religiosus or a member of the clergy. Some manuscripts say that he was a bishop, and some even say bishop of Ravenna , but the name Jordanes is not known in the lists of bishops of Ravenna. Jordanes wrote Romana , about the history of Rome , but his best-known work is his Getica , which was written in Constantinople about 551 AD. Jordanes wrote his Romana at
340-675: A common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European . Membership in the various branches, groups, and subgroups of Indo-European is also genealogical, but here the defining factors are shared innovations among various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European groups. For example, what makes the Germanic languages a branch of Indo-European is that much of their structure and phonology can be stated in rules that apply to all of them. Many of their common features are presumed innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic ,
425-558: A confirmation of de Saussure's theory. The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include ten major branches, listed below in alphabetical order: In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages and language-groups have existed or are proposed to have existed: Membership of languages in the Indo-European language family is determined by genealogical relationships, meaning that all members are presumed descendants of
510-803: A diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in German and in Persian. Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Meanwhile, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Slavic, Baltic (" Kurlandic "), Iranian (" Medic "), Finnish , Chinese , "Hottentot" ( Khoekhoe ), and others, noting that related languages (including Latin, Greek, German, and Russian) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors. The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on
595-568: A high-level notarius , or secretary, of a small client state on the Roman frontier in Scythia Minor , modern southeastern Romania and northeastern Bulgaria . Jordanes was notarius , or secretary to Gunthigis Baza , a nephew of Candac and a magister militum of the leading Ostrogoth clan of the Amali . That was ante conversionem meam ("before my conversion"). The nature and
680-539: A lack of historical records; however, scholars generally place it in Eastern Europe , with Polesia being the most commonly accepted location. It is generally agreed that ancient Roman writers referred to the ancestors of Slavs as Venedi . The proto-Slavic term Slav shares roots with Slavic terms for speech , word , and perhaps was used by early Slavic people themselves to denote other people, who spoke languages similar to theirs . The first written use of
765-461: A linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar innovations in Germanic and Balto-Slavic that are far more likely areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the uniform development of a high vowel (* u in the case of Germanic, * i/u in the case of Baltic and Slavic) before the PIE syllabic resonants * ṛ, *ḷ, *ṃ, *ṇ , unique to these two groups among IE languages, which
850-591: A note: "Suevi are not born, they are sown ( seminati )". A similar description of the Sclavenes and Antes is found in the Strategikon of Maurice , a military handbook written between 592 and 602 and attributed to Emperor Maurice . Its author, an experienced officer, participated in the Eastern Roman campaigns against the Sclavenes on the lower Danube at the end of the century. A military staff member
935-509: A number of time periods and regions. They are mainly related to the Kiev culture which flourished from the 2nd to the 5th centuries in the "middle and upper Dnieper basin , akin to it sites of the type Zaozer´e in the upper Dnieper and the upper Daugava basins, and finally the groups of sites of the type Cherepyn–Teremtsy in the upper Dniester basin and of the type Ostrov in the Pripyat basin". It
SECTION 10
#17327723635671020-467: A separate language during the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. The Proto-Slavic vocabulary, which was inherited by its daughter languages, described its speakers' physical and social environment, feelings and needs. Proto-Slavic had words for family connections, including svekry ("husband's mother"), and zъly ("sister-in-law"). The inherited Common Slavic vocabulary lacks detailed terminology for physical surface features that are foreign to mountains or
1105-510: Is cited to have been radically non-treelike. Specialists have postulated the existence of higher-order subgroups such as Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Aryan or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, and Balto-Slavo-Germanic. However, unlike the ten traditional branches, these are all controversial to a greater or lesser degree. The Italo-Celtic subgroup was at one point uncontroversial, considered by Antoine Meillet to be even better established than Balto-Slavic. The main lines of evidence included
1190-535: Is in agreement with the wave model. The Balkan sprachbund even features areal convergence among members of very different branches. An extension to the Ringe - Warnow model of language evolution suggests that early IE had featured limited contact between distinct lineages, with only the Germanic subfamily exhibiting a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its evolution. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic
1275-645: Is recognised as the predecessor of the 6th- and 7th-century Prague-Korchak , Prague-Penkovka and Kolochin cultural horizons that encompass Slavic cultures from the Dniester to the Elbe. "Prague culture" in a narrow sense, refers to western Slavic material grouped around Bohemia, Moravia and western Slovakia, distinct from the Mogilla (southern Poland) and Korchak (western-central Ukraine and southern Belarus) groups further east. The Prague and Mogilla groups are seen as
1360-566: Is the area of Slavic settlement in Central and Eastern Europe during the first millennium AD, with its precise location debated by archaeologists, ethnographers and historians. Most scholars consider Polesia the homeland of the Slavs. Theories attempting to place Slavic origin in the Near East have been discarded. None of the proposed homelands reaches the Volga River in the east, over
1445-616: The Alani with their leader, Candac by name, received Scythia Minor and Lower Moesia . Paria, the father of my father Alanoviiamuth (that is to say, my grandfather), was secretary to this Candac as long as he lived. To his sister's son Gunthigis, also called Baza, the Master of the Soldiery, who was the son of Andag the son of Andela, who was descended from the stock of the Amali , I also, Jordanes, although an unlearned man before my conversion,
1530-551: The Alps ), and southwards (into the Balkans , absorbing Illyrian and Thracian peoples in the process), and also moved eastwards (in the direction of the Volga River ). Between the sixth and seventh centuries, large parts of Europe came to be controlled or occupied by Slavs, a process less understood and documented than that of the Germanic ethnogenesis in the west. Yet the effects of Slavicization were far more profound. Beginning in
1615-625: The Chronicle of Fredegar used the word "Venedi" (and variants) to refer to a group of Slavs who were subjugated by the Avars . In the chronicle, "Venedi" formed a state that emerged from a revolt led by the Frankish merchant Samo against the Avars around 623. A change in terminology, the replacement of Slavic tribal names for the collective "Sclavenes" and "Antes", occurred at the end of the century;
1700-860: The Dinaric Alps in the southwest or the Balkan Mountains in the south, or past Bohemia in the west. One of the earliest mention of the Slavs' original homeland is in the Bavarian Geographer circa 900, which associates the homeland of the Slavs with the Zeriuani , which some equate to the Cherven lands . According to historical records, the Slavic homeland would have been somewhere in Central-Eastern Europe. The Prague - Penkova - Kolochin complex of cultures of
1785-726: The Principality of Nitra , Great Moravia , the Duchy of Bohemia , and the Kingdom of Poland . The oldest known Slavic principality in history was Carantania , established in the 7th century by the Eastern Alpine Slavs, the ancestors of present-day Slovenes . Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps comprised modern-day Slovenia , Eastern Friul and large parts of present-day Austria . The early Slavs were known to
SECTION 20
#17327723635671870-579: The Proto-Indo-European , the reconstructed language from which originated a number of languages spoken in Eurasia . The Slavic languages share a number of features with the Baltic languages (including the use of genitive case for the objects of negative sentences ,the loss of Proto-Indo-European kʷ and other labialized velars ), which may indicate a common Proto-Balto-Slavic phase in
1955-786: The Roman writers of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD under the name of Veneti . Authors such as Pliny the Elder , Tacitus and Ptolemy described the Veneti as inhabiting the lands east of the Vistula river and along the Venedic Bay ( Gdańsk Bay ). Later, having split into three groups during the migration period , the early Slavs were known to the Byzantine writers as Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni . The 6th century historian Jordanes referred to
2040-572: The Slavs ( Sclaveni ) in his 551 work Getica , noting that "although they derive from one nation, now they are known under three names, the Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni" ( ab una stirpe exorti, tria nomina ediderunt, id est Veneti, Antes, Sclaveni ). Procopius wrote that "the Sclaveni and the Ante actually had a single name in the remote past; for they were both called Sporoi in olden times". Possibly
2125-432: The " wave model " is a more accurate representation. Most approaches to Indo-European subgrouping to date have assumed that the tree model is by-and-large valid for Indo-European; however, there is also a long tradition of wave-model approaches. In addition to genealogical changes, many of the early changes in Indo-European languages can be attributed to language contact . It has been asserted, for example, that many of
2210-736: The (Celtic) La Tène culture , (Germanic) Jastorf culture beyond the Oder and the Bell-Grave culture of the Polish plain. The Venethi may have played a part; other groups included the Vandals , Burgundians and Sarmatians . East of the Przeworsk zone was the Zarubinets culture , which is sometimes considered part of the Przeworsk complex. Early Slavic hydronyms are found in the area occupied by
2295-775: The 1300–500 BC culture and the 2nd century BC–4th century AD Przeworsk culture . The Danube basin hypothesis, postulated by Oleg Trubachyov and supported by Florin Curta and Nestor's Chronicle , theorises that the Slavs originated in central and southeastern Europe. Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Slavic began to evolve from
2380-459: The 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan , Iranian , and European languages. In 1583, English Jesuit missionary and Konkani scholar Thomas Stephens wrote a letter from Goa to his brother (not published until the 20th century) in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin . Another account
2465-411: 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-European studies. The generation of Indo-Europeanists 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
2550-503: The 6th and the 7th centuries AD is generally accepted to reflect the expansion of Slavic-speakers at the time. Core candidates are cultures within the territories of modern Belarus , Poland and Ukraine . According to the Polish historian Gerard Labuda , the ethnogenesis of Slavic people is the Trzciniec culture from about 1700 to 1200 BC. The Milograd culture hypothesis posits that the pre-Proto-Slavs (or Balto-Slavs) originated in
2635-518: The 7th century BC–1st century AD culture geographically located in northwestern Ukraine and southern Belarus. According to the Chernoles culture theory, the pre-Proto-Slavs originated in the 1025–700 BC culture located in northwestern Ukraine and the 3rd century BC–1st century AD Zarubintsy culture . According to the Lusatian culture hypothesis, they were present in northeastern Central Europe in
Early Slavs - Misplaced Pages Continue
2720-627: The 7th century, the Slavs were gradually Christianized (both by the Greek and pre-Schism Roman Orthodox Catholic Churches). By the 12th century, they formed the core populations of a number of medieval Christian states: East Slavs in the Kievan Rus' , South Slavs in the Bulgarian Empire , the Principality of Serbia , the Duchy of Croatia and the Banate of Bosnia , and West Slavs in
2805-533: The Anatolian and Tocharian language families, in that order. The " tree model " is considered an appropriate representation of the genealogical history of a language family if communities do not remain in contact after their languages have started to diverge. In this case, subgroups defined by shared innovations form a nested pattern. The tree model is not appropriate in cases where languages remain in contact as they diversify; in such cases subgroups may overlap, and
2890-400: The Anatolian subgroup left the Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as Indo-Iranian and later than the Greek or Armenian divisions. A third view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in non- satem languages in general—including Anatolian—might be due to their peripheral location in
2975-574: The Bronze Age in the form of Mycenaean Greek 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 Akkadian language , a Semitic language —found in texts of the Assyrian colony of Kültepe in eastern Anatolia dating to the 20th century BC. Although no older written records of
3060-710: The Chernyakov zone, the Slavs gradually became a culturally-unified people; the multiethnic environment of the Chernyakhov zone presented a "need for self-identification in order to manifest their differentiation from other groups". The Przeworsk culture , northwest of the Chernyakov zone, extended from the Dniester to the Tisza valley and north to the Vistula and Oder . It was an amalgam of local cultures, most with roots in earlier traditions modified by influences from
3145-682: The Dniester, the Dnieper and the Don). A connection between Proto-Slavic and Iranian languages is also demonstrated by the earliest layer of loanwords in the former; the Proto-Slavic words for god (*bogъ) , demon (*divъ) , house (*xata) , axe (*toporъ) and dog (*sobaka) are of Scythian origin. The Iranian dialects of the Scythians and the Sarmatians influenced Slavic vocabulary during
3230-582: The Egyptian pharaoh Vesosis (47). The less fictional part of Jordanes's work begins when the Goths encounter Roman military forces in the third century AD. The work concludes with the defeat of the Goths by the Byzantine general Belisarius . Jordanes concludes the work by stating that he writes to honour those who were victorious over the Goths after a history spanning 2,030 years. Jordanes wrongly equated
3315-468: The Indo-European language-area and to early separation, rather than indicating a special ancestral relationship. Hans J. Holm, based on lexical calculations, arrives at a picture roughly replicating the general scholarly opinion and refuting the Indo-Hittite hypothesis. Jordanes Jordanes ( / dʒ ɔːr ˈ d eɪ n iː z / ; Greek : Ιορδάνης), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes ,
3400-596: The Indo-Iranian branch. All Indo-European languages are descended from a single prehistoric language, linguistically reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European , spoken sometime during the Neolithic or early Bronze Age . The geographical location where it was spoken, the Proto-Indo-European homeland , has been the object of many competing hypotheses; the academic consensus supports the Kurgan hypothesis , which posits
3485-616: The Sclavenes and Antes spoke the same languages but traced their common origin not to the Venethi but to a people he called "Sporoi". Sporoi ("seeds" in Greek; compare "spores") is equivalent to the Latin semnones and germani ("germs" or "seedlings"), and the German linguist Jacob Grimm believed that Suebi meant "Slav". Jordanes and Procopius called the Suebi "Suavi". The end of the Bavarian Geographer 's list of Slavic tribes contains
Early Slavs - Misplaced Pages Continue
3570-464: The Slavic homeland in the Pripet Marshes of Polesia , which lack those plants. Common Slavic dialects before the 4th century AD cannot be detected since all of the daughter languages emerged from later variants. Tonal word stress (a 9th-century AD change) is present in all Slavic languages, and Proto-Slavic reflects the language that was probably spoken at the end of the 1st millennium AD. Jordanes , Procopius and other Late Roman authors provide
3655-444: The Wars , and Secret History ) during the 550s. Each book contains detailed information on raids by Sclavenes and Antes on the Eastern Roman Empire , and the History of the Wars has a comprehensive description of their beliefs, customs and dwellings. Although not an eyewitness, Procopius had contacts among the Sclavene mercenaries who were fighting on the Roman side in Italy . Agreeing with Jordanes's report, Procopius wrote that
3740-724: The Zarubinets culture, and Irena Rusinova proposed that the most prototypical examples of Prague-type pottery later originated there. The Zarubinets culture is identified as proto-Slavic, or an ethnically mixed community that became Slavicized. Indo-European languages Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Indo-European languages are
3825-423: The archaeological reflection of the 6th-century Western Slavs . Previously, the 2nd-to-5th-century Chernyakhov culture encompassed modern Ukraine, Moldova and Wallachia . Chernyakov finds include polished black-pottery vessels, fine metal ornaments and iron tools. Soviet scholars, such as Boris Rybakov , saw it as the archaeological reflection of the proto-Slavs. The Chernyakov zone is now seen as representing
3910-421: The behest of a brother Castalius, who apparently knew that Jordanes possessed the twelve volumes of the History of the Goths by Cassiodorus . Castalius wanted a short book about the subject, and Jordanes obliged with an excerpt based on memory, possibly supplemented with other material to which he had access. The Getica sets off with a geography/ethnography of the North, especially of Scandza (16–24). He lets
3995-414: The behest of a certain Vigilius. Although some scholars have identified this person with Pope Vigilius , there is nothing else to support the identification besides the name. The form of address that Jordanes uses and his admonition that Vigilius "turn to God " would seem to rule out this identification. In the preface to his Getica , Jordanes writes that he is interrupting his work on the Romana at
4080-465: The borders of the Carolingian Empire were referred to as Wends ( Vender ), with the term being a corruption of the earlier Roman-era name. The earliest, archaeological findings connected to the early Slavs are associated with the Zarubintsy , Chernyakhov and Przeworsk cultures from around the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD. However, in many areas, archaeologists face difficulties in distinguishing between Slavic and non-Slavic findings, as in
4165-507: The case of Chernyakhov and Przeworsk, since the cultures were also attributed to Iranian or Germanic peoples and were not exclusively connected with a single ancient tribal or linguistic group. Later, beginning in the 6th century, Slavic material cultures included the Prague-Korchak , Penkovka , Ipotești–Cândești , and the Sukow-Dziedzice group cultures. With evidence ranging from fortified settlements ( gords ), ceramic pots, weapons, jewellery and open abodes. The Proto-Slavic homeland
4250-406: The cultural interaction of several peoples, one of which was rooted in Scytho-Sarmatian traditions, which were modified by Germanic elements that were introduced by the Goths. The semi-subterranean dwelling with a corner hearth later became typical of early Slavic sites, with Volodymir Baran calling it a Slavic "ethnic badge". In the Carpathian foothills of Podolia , at the northwestern fringes of
4335-535: The details of the conversion remain obscure. The Goths had been converted with the assistance of Ulfilas (a Goth), made bishop on that account. However, the Goths had adopted Arianism . Jordanes's conversion may have been a conversion to the trinitarian Nicene Creed , which may be expressed in anti-Arianism in certain passages in Getica . In the letter to Vigilius he mentions that he was awakened vestris interrogationibus – "by your questioning". Alternatively, Jordanes's conversio may mean that he had become
SECTION 50
#17327723635674420-457: The development of those two linguistic branches of Indo-European. Frederik Kortlandt places the territory of the common language near the Proto-Indo-European homeland : "The Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations became speakers of Balto-Slavic ". According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis , the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. Proto-Slavic developed into
4505-650: 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 Greek, more copious than the Latin, 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. Thomas Young first used
4590-485: The family relationships between the Indo-European 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-European language family is not considered by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics to have any genetic relationships with other language families, although several disputed hypotheses propose such relations. During
4675-499: The first tribal names were recorded in the second book of the Miracles of Saint Demetrius , around 690. The unknown "Bavarian Geographer" listed Slavic tribes in the Frankish Empire around 840, and a detailed description of 10th-century tribes in the Balkan Peninsula was compiled under the auspices of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in Constantinople around 950. In the archaeological literature, attempts have been made to assign an early Slavic character to several cultures in
4760-432: The gender or the verb system) have been interpreted alternately as archaic debris or as innovations due to prolonged isolation. Points proffered in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the (non-universal) Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia and the preservation of laryngeals. However, in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence. According to another view,
4845-416: The genitive suffix -ī ; the superlative suffix -m̥mo ; the change of /p/ to /kʷ/ before another /kʷ/ in the same word (as in penkʷe > *kʷenkʷe > Latin quīnque , Old Irish cóic ); and the subjunctive morpheme -ā- . This evidence was prominently challenged by Calvert Watkins , while Michael Weiss has argued for the subgroup. Evidence for a relationship between Greek and Armenian includes
4930-407: The history of the Goths commence with the emigration of Berig with three ships from Scandza to Gothiscandza (25, 94), in a distant past. In the pen of Jordanes, Herodotus's Getian demigod Zalmoxis becomes a king of the Goths (39). Jordanes tells how the Goths sacked " Troy and Ilium" just after they had recovered somewhat from the war with Agamemnon (108). They are also said to have encountered
5015-461: The homeland to be the Pontic–Caspian steppe in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia , 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-European had already evolved into numerous languages spoken across much of Europe , South Asia , and part of Western Asia . Written evidence of Indo-European appeared during
5100-567: The individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindustani , Bengali , Punjabi , French and German 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-European language as a first language —by far the highest of any language family. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue , with over two-thirds (313) of them belonging to
5185-433: The lake called Mursianus to the Danaster [Dniester] and northward as far as the Vistula. They have swamps and forests for their cities. The Antes, who are the bravest of these peoples dwelling in the curve of the sea of Pontus [Black Sea] spread from the Danaster to the Danaper [Dnieper] rivers that are many days' journey apart". Procopius completed his three works on Emperor Justinian I 's reign ( Buildings , History of
SECTION 60
#17327723635675270-415: The lands that the Venethi (a people named in Tacitus 's Germania ) lived during the last decades of the 1st century AD. Pliny the Elder wrote that the territory extending from the Vistula to Aeningia (probably Feningia, or Finland), was inhabited by the Sarmati, Wends, Sciri and Hirri . Jordanes in De origine actibusque Getarum (Ch. 34-35), wrote that "Within these rivers lies Dacia, encircled by
5355-427: The later history of the Goths. Getica has been the object of much critical review. Jordanes wrote in Late Latin rather than the classical Ciceronian Latin. According to his own introduction, he had only three days to review what Cassiodorus had written and so he must also have relied on his own knowledge. Jordanes writes about himself almost in passing: The Sciri , moreover, and the Sadagarii and certain of
5440-409: The lofty Alps [Carpathian Mountains] as by a crown. Near their left ridge, which inclines toward the north, and beginning at the source of the Vistula, the populous race of the Venethi dwell, occupying a great expanse of land. Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sclaveni and Antes. The abode of the Sclaveni extends from the city of Noviodunum and
5525-420: The millennium of contact between them and early Proto-Slavic. A connection between Proto-Slavic and the Germanic languages can be assumed from the number of Germanic loanwords, such as *kupiti ("to buy"), *xǫdogъ ("skillful"), *šelmъ ("helmet") and *xlěvъ ("barn"). The Common Slavic words for beech , larch and yew were also borrowed from Germanic, which led Polish botanist Józef Rostafiński to place
5610-404: The more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be areal features . More certainly, 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, because English and continental West Germanic were not
5695-408: The name "Slavs" dates to the 6th century, when the Slavic tribes inhabited a large portion of Central and Eastern Europe . By then, the nomadic Iranian -speaking peoples living in the European Pontic Steppe (the Scythians , Sarmatians , Alans , etc.) had been absorbed by the region's Slavic-speaking population . Over the next two centuries, the Slavs expanded westwards (to the Elbe river and in
5780-407: The oldest mention of Slavs in historical writing Slověne is attested in Ptolemy 's Geography (2nd century) as Σταυανοί (Stavanoi) and Σουοβηνοί (Souobenoi/Sovobenoi, Suobeni, Suoweni), likely referring to early Slavic tribes in a close alliance with the nomadic Alanians , who may have migrated east of the Volga River . In the 8th century during the Early Middle Ages , early Slavs living on
5865-415: The original Proto-Indo-European population remain, some aspects of their culture and their religion can be reconstructed from later evidence in the daughter cultures. The Indo-European family is significant to the field of historical linguistics as it possesses the second-longest recorded history of any known family, after the Afroasiatic Egyptian language and Semitic languages . The analysis of
5950-557: The perfect active particle -s fixed to the stem, link this group closer to Anatolian languages and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to later contacts. The Indo-Hittite hypothesis proposes that the Indo-European language family consists of two main branches: one represented by the Anatolian languages and another branch encompassing all other Indo-European languages. Features that separate Anatolian from all other branches of Indo-European (such as
6035-431: The probable earliest references to the southern Slavs in the second half of the 6th century AD. Jordanes completed his Gothic History , an abridgement of Cassiodorus 's longer work, in Constantinople in 550 or 551. He also used additional sources: books, maps or oral tradition. Jordanes wrote that "After the slaughter of the Heruli , Hermanaric also took arms against the Venethi. This people, though despised in war,
6120-461: The regular change of the second laryngeal to a at the beginnings of words, as well as terms for "woman" and "sheep". Greek and Indo-Iranian share innovations mainly in verbal morphology and patterns of nominal derivation. Relations have also been proposed between Phrygian and Greek, and between Thracian and Armenian. Some fundamental shared features, like the aorist (a verb form denoting action without reference to duration or completion) having
6205-541: The similarity among certain Asian and European languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language that he called Scythian. He included in his hypothesis Dutch , Albanian , Greek , Latin , Persian , and German , later adding Slavic , Celtic , and Baltic languages . However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of
6290-434: The source of all the Germanic languages. In the 21st century, several attempts have been made to model the phylogeny of Indo-European languages using Bayesian methodologies similar to those applied to problems in biological phylogeny. Although there are differences in absolute timing between the various analyses, there is much commonality between them, including the result that the first known language groups to diverge were
6375-605: 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 Sanskrit language compared with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic and between 1833 and 1852 he wrote Comparative Grammar . This 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 Schleicher 's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann 's Grundriss , published in
6460-454: The steppe: the sea, coastal features, littoral flora or fauna or saltwater fish. Proto-Slavic hydronyms have been preserved between the source of the Vistula and the middle basin of the Dnieper . Its northern regions adjoin territory in which river names of Baltic origin ( Daugava , Neman and others) abound. On the south and east, it borders the area of Iranian river names (including
6545-482: The striking similarities among three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin , Greek , and Sanskrit , to which he tentatively added Gothic , Celtic , and Persian , 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
6630-532: The term Indo-European in 1813, deriving it from the geographical extremes of the language family: from Western Europe to North India . A synonym is Indo-Germanic ( Idg. or IdG. ), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in French ( indo-germanique ) in 1810 in the work of Conrad Malte-Brun ; in most languages this term is now dated or less common than Indo-European , although in German indogermanisch remains
6715-675: The term "Venethi". The Franks (in the Life of Saint Martinus , the Chronicle of Fredegar and Gregory of Tours ), Lombards ( Paul the Deacon ) and Anglo-Saxons ( Widsith ) referred to Slavs in the Elbe-Saale region and Pomerania as "Wenden" or "Winden" (see Wends ). The Franks and the Bavarians of Styria and Carinthia called their Slavic neighbours "Windische". The unknown author of
6800-506: The wake of Kuryłowicz 's 1956 Apophony in Indo-European, who in 1927 pointed out the existence of the Hittite consonant ḫ. 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-European languages. This led to the so-called laryngeal theory , a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics and
6885-431: Was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat, widely believed to be of Gothic descent , who became a historian later in life. He wrote two works, one on Roman history ( Romana ) and the other on the Goths ( Getica ). The latter, along with Isidore of Seville 's Historia Gothorum , is one of only two extant ancient works dealing with the early history of the Goths . Other writers, such as Procopius , wrote works on
6970-486: Was also the source of Theophylact Simocatta 's narrative of the same campaigns. Although Martin of Braga was the first western author to refer to a people known as "Sclavus" before 580, Jonas of Bobbio included the earliest lengthy record of the nearby Slavs in his Life of Saint Columbanus (written between 639 and 643). Jonas referred to the Slavs as "Veneti" and noted that they were also known as "Sclavi". Western authors, including Fredegar and Boniface , preserved
7055-606: Was made by Filippo Sassetti , a merchant born in Florence in 1540, who travelled to the Indian subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included devaḥ / dio "God", sarpaḥ / serpe "serpent", sapta / sette "seven", aṣṭa / otto "eight", and nava / nove "nine"). However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry. In 1647, Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted
7140-512: Was secretary. Paria was Jordanes's paternal grandfather. Jordanes writes that he was secretary to Candac , dux Alanorum , an otherwise unknown leader of the Alans. Jordanes was asked by a friend to write Getica as a summary of a multi-volume history of the Goths by the statesman Cassiodorus that existed then but has since been lost. Jordanes was selected for his known interest in history and because of his own Gothic background. He had been
7225-468: Was strong in numbers and tried to resist him. [...] These people, as we started to say at the beginning of our account or catalogue of nations, though off-shoots from one stock, have now three names, that is, Venethi, Antes and Sclaveni". His claim was accepted more than a millennium later by Wawrzyniec Surowiecki , Pavel Jozef Šafárik and other historians, who searched the Slavic Urheimat in
#566433