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Map of known Paleo-European languages, including substrate languages.. The Paleo-European languages, or Old European languages, are the mostly unknown languages that were spoken in Europe prior to the spread of the Indo-European and Uralic families caused by the Bronze Age invasion from the Eurasian steppe of pastoralists whose descendant languages dominate the continent today.
The Indo-European language family is descended from Proto-Indo-European, which is believed to have been spoken thousands of years ago.Early speakers of Indo-European daughter languages most likely expanded into Europe with the incipient Bronze Age, around 4,000 years ago (Bell-Beaker culture).
Although the first known text by native speakers dates to 1885, the first record of the language is a list of words recorded in 1793 by Alexander MacKenzie. 1885: Motu: grammar by W.G. Lawes: 1886: Guugu Yimidhirr: notes by Johann Flierl, Wilhelm Poland and Georg Schwarz, culminating in Walter Roth's The Structure of the Koko Yimidir Language ...
The oldest Indo-European language texts are Hittite and date from the 19th century BC in Kültepe (modern eastern Turkey), and while estimates vary widely, the spoken Indo-European languages are believed to have developed at the latest by the 3rd millennium BC (see Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses). Thus, the pre-Indo-European languages ...
Map of Basque's postulated geographic retreat since Roman times. The mainstream view of linguists today is that Basque is the last surviving member of one of the ancient "pre-Indo-European" language families that were once spoken widely in Western Europe. [4]
Today, Indo-European languages are spoken by billions of native speakers across all inhabited continents, [73] the largest number by far for any recognised language family. Of the 20 languages with the largest numbers of speakers according to Ethnologue , 10 are Indo-European: English , Hindustani , Spanish , Bengali , French , Russian ...
This is a list of European languages by the number of native speakers in Europe only. List. Rank Name Native speakers
The history of the Slavic languages stretches over 3000 years, from the point at which the ancestral Proto-Balto-Slavic language broke up (c. 1500 BC) into the modern-day Slavic languages which are today natively spoken in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe as well as parts of North Asia and Central Asia.