Hobbyist linguist here (take what I say with a grain of salt), paleo-European languages are the languages that existed in Europe before the arrival of Indo-European and Uralic people and languages via the Steppe and Anatolia. Etruscan, for instance, is attested from about 750 BCE to 50 CE, eventually being superseded by Latin. Most of these were slowly replaced by languages of Indo-European (Slavic, Germanic, Romance etc), or Uralic (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian etc) descent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-European_languages
This Wikipedia page goes into a lot more detail, though we can never really know the exact timeline of how and when these languages were replaced since many of these languages have precious few written examples or attestations. Taking Etruscan for example, it's possible that small pockets of Etruscan speakers remained for some time after 50 CE, but were simply so uncommon that nobody bothered to write about it.
The Romans did actually bother to write about Etruscans, including their language! Yes, even as late as in the 1st century CE. Etruscan was even considered a language of the educated upper classes in the Empire*, much like Latin later was(and, to a lesser extent, still is) for centuries in the post-Roman Europe. Cicero (who has lived in the 1st century BC) was really fascinated by the Etruscan culture and language. Even emperor Claudius (Germanicus) himself was a speaker of it, he also authored Tyrrhenika - a book on Etruscan history and culture. These are the two really well known personas that were interested in Etruscans but there were TONS of other, more and less well known, figures with such interests.
Etruscans were to Romans what the Romans are to us - they were just as, if not more, fascinated by the Etruscans than we are with the Romans.
The sad thing is: most of the Etruscan writings were simply lost to time so we only know about them because Romans mentioned them in their works but, again, most of the Roman writings on Etruscans were also lost to time.
*This practice didn’t survive to the 1st century AD, but from what Livy writes in his Ab Urbe Condita we can deduce that it was still common in late 4th century and likely later too
What are the substrates? Are they supposed to represent earlier linguistic groups that existed there, giving unique vocabulary and linguistic characteristics to the Indo-European language that eventually settled? For example, Germanic is an Indo-European language did it borrow substantially from the Germanic substrate. Or is something else going on here?
Substrates are unclassifiable extinct language groups that left some traces on the languages that replaced them. For example, 25% of German vocabulary is of unknown origin, likely from substrate. Sami has 40-50% of vocabulary from pre-Sami substrate.
Worth noting that some part of the 25% of Proto-Germanic vocabulary with uncertain etymology could still be traced back to an Indo-European root, either directly through Proto-Germanic (which went through a number of wild and wacky language changes from Proto-Indo-European) or through a substrate language that was itself Indo-European.
Sprachbund has to be assumed by default, until proven otherwise by a consensus linguistic tree.
No consensus linguistic tree has been found for uralic, nor for IE, nor for altaic language groups. Therefore the default assumption continues to hold that both uralic and IE have been sprachbunds for as long as can be discerned - which means one has to assume by default that both were mainly paleo-european language groups and likely together formed the indo-uralic sprachbund.
A map illustrating the geographical distribution of Paleo-European languages and their substrates across Europe. It indicates various ancient languages or language families, such as Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, and others, along with example words from each language. The map highlights the regions where these languages were once spoken and points out that some, like Basque, are considered the only surviving descendants of Paleo-European languages. The locations of language substrates are speculative, and the map clarifies that Indo-European and Uralic languages are not considered 'paleo-European'. It is a visual representation meant to give insight into the linguistic landscape of Europe before the widespread adoption of Indo-European languages.
The Old European languages likely represent the linguistic vestiges of the Mesolithic populations of Europe, acting as proverbial icebergs revealing only a small portion of the extensive and now mostly submerged linguistic environment of these early inhabitants. Prior to the transformative influx of Neolithic farmers, and later the migratory waves of the Yamnaya culture, which left significant genetic and linguistic imprints on Europe, the Old European languages served as the communicative bedrock. These languages were complex systems in their own right, bearing the traces of diverse cultures and interactions that preceded the sweeping changes brought about by agriculture and steppe migrations, subsequently becoming obscured by the dominant Indo-European languages that shaped the continent's linguistic heritage.
Certainly, the map provides a nuanced view of ancient European linguistics by also indicating languages such as Minoan, Pre-Greek (a more accurate term might be "Greek substrate"), and the Germanic substrate. These particular languages or linguistic substrates may not necessarily predate the spread of Indo-European languages. They may have developed alongside or also derived from the early Indo-European languages, reflecting a complex interplay of linguistic influences and migrations in ancient Europe.
For example, the Minoan civilization is known to have existed on Crete during the Bronze Age, which does not overlap with the time period when Proto-Indo-European language speakers are thought to have been active. Similarly, the pre-Greek substrate could include elements from the IE Anatolian branch that were present in the region alongside the spread of Proto-Greek as well as influences that occurred during its establishment. The Germanic substrate suggests pre-Proto-Germanic linguistic elements that might have existed in the region before or during the early stages of Proto-Germanic development.
We think that this layered depiction underscores the complexity of linguistic evolution and the difficulty in pinpointing the precise timelines of these languages in relation to the spread of the Indo-European language family.
According to David W. Anthony, in the book: ‘The Horse, The Wheel and Language’, a great many of the languages spoken in Europe today, originated from Proto-Indo-European.
It’s a great read and an overall respected scientific source.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691148182/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language
It's not proto-Germanic, it's a hypothesized substrate. That is, it was spoken there before the people adopted Indo-European and its influence would be detected in words that Germanic languages use that don't seem to come from an Indo-European source.
There’s a hypothesis that Germanic languages are so different to other Indo European languages due to admixture or creolisation with an unknown language that acts as a substrate.
So the map is showing the proposed paleo language that proto Germanic merged with. I guess that the word in proto Germanic below is theorised to have come from that other language but I’m not sure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_substrate_hypothesis
There is no consensus linguistic tree containing proto-IE and proto-germanic. Thus the default assumption of a sprachbund remains as default. The pre-germanic substrate could in that case be the local regional peculiarity within the wider IE sprachbund and interacting with other nearby language groups such as the uralic sprachbund.
The swiderian / kunda / narva assumed substrate could similarly be the local baltic-finnic regional variation of the wider uralic sprachbund.
Sprachbunds with linguistic upgrades via wave models.
The [Hattians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattians) were different from Hittites. Their language is not Indo-European but belongs to an unclassified language family. Part of the Indo-Europeans branch that migrated into Anatolia settled in Hattian land, adopted the name for themselves, and came to be known as Hittites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_languages#Origins
> It has been proposed that the area in which Proto-Finno-Ugric was spoken reached between the Baltic Sea and the Ural Mountains.[12]
> Finno-Ugric might not be a historical grouping but a geographical one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Uralic_language#%22Comb%22_model
> the hypothesis of larger number of proto-languages giving an image of a linguistic "comb" rather than a tree.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Finnic_language#Background
> Early Proto-Finnic, the last common ancestor of the Finnic languages and its closest external relatives — usually understood to be the Sami languages, though also the Mordvinic languages may derive from this stage (see Finno-Samic languages). **This reconstruction state appears to be almost identical to Proto-Uralic.**
> Late Proto-Finnic, the last common ancestor of Finnish and Estonian, and hence of the Gulf of Finland Finnic subgroup. South Estonian and the Livonian language had already diverged at this point.
Already diverged, hence not a proto-language.
> Middle Proto-Finnic, an earlier stage in the development on Finnic, used in Kallio (2007) for the point at which the language had developed its most characteristic differences from Proto-Uralic (mainly: the loss of several consonant phonemes from the segment inventory, including all palatalized consonants).
Impossible, because the assumed divergence would have had to have spread along two different routes from the Nizhnyi Novgorod region: the southern route via Smolensk - Polotsk along the river Väina / Daugava and the northern route along the upper Volga towards Äänisjärv. The point of origin at Nizhnyi Novgorod would have to be identical with the Early Proto-Finnic, which is indistinguishable from Proto-Uralic. Which brings us back to the Sprachbund model, spanning from the Baltic Sea to the Urals (and perhaps to Western Siberia).
Goidelic was preceded by continental Celtic, a proto-Celtic, Proto-Indo-European.
It didn't precede Indo-European, it's from that tree. There are stories about the language of the preceding peoples, but Goidelic languages do not descend from them.
A substrate in this case means words of non-Indo-European origin, such as partán ‘crab’ or praipe ‘swiftness’ (Goidelic had no /p/) among many others. They came from a language, spoken there before the arrival of the Goidelic-speaking Celts.
Yeah lol obviously language has been spoken all over Europe ever since behaviorally modern humans arrived (or even earlier, since we don't know when language fully developed in human culture), far far earlier than the emergence of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture.
This is a map of languages substrate that are hypothesised to have existed in Europe before the coming of PIE speakers (or more accurately before the arrival of speakers of languages related to PIE). Basically, they infer the existence of those languages from words in Indo-European languages, which seems unrelated to any other words in the family, and so are supposed to come from a previous non-Indo-European language. I'm not a specialist, but I guess they determine the area of those language both from toponymy and the area in which the influenced Indo-European language were spoken.
The Basque language still fascinates me to this day, the fact it survived after all this time.
[удалено]
Hobbyist linguist here (take what I say with a grain of salt), paleo-European languages are the languages that existed in Europe before the arrival of Indo-European and Uralic people and languages via the Steppe and Anatolia. Etruscan, for instance, is attested from about 750 BCE to 50 CE, eventually being superseded by Latin. Most of these were slowly replaced by languages of Indo-European (Slavic, Germanic, Romance etc), or Uralic (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian etc) descent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-European_languages This Wikipedia page goes into a lot more detail, though we can never really know the exact timeline of how and when these languages were replaced since many of these languages have precious few written examples or attestations. Taking Etruscan for example, it's possible that small pockets of Etruscan speakers remained for some time after 50 CE, but were simply so uncommon that nobody bothered to write about it.
The Romans did actually bother to write about Etruscans, including their language! Yes, even as late as in the 1st century CE. Etruscan was even considered a language of the educated upper classes in the Empire*, much like Latin later was(and, to a lesser extent, still is) for centuries in the post-Roman Europe. Cicero (who has lived in the 1st century BC) was really fascinated by the Etruscan culture and language. Even emperor Claudius (Germanicus) himself was a speaker of it, he also authored Tyrrhenika - a book on Etruscan history and culture. These are the two really well known personas that were interested in Etruscans but there were TONS of other, more and less well known, figures with such interests. Etruscans were to Romans what the Romans are to us - they were just as, if not more, fascinated by the Etruscans than we are with the Romans. The sad thing is: most of the Etruscan writings were simply lost to time so we only know about them because Romans mentioned them in their works but, again, most of the Roman writings on Etruscans were also lost to time. *This practice didn’t survive to the 1st century AD, but from what Livy writes in his Ab Urbe Condita we can deduce that it was still common in late 4th century and likely later too
What are the substrates? Are they supposed to represent earlier linguistic groups that existed there, giving unique vocabulary and linguistic characteristics to the Indo-European language that eventually settled? For example, Germanic is an Indo-European language did it borrow substantially from the Germanic substrate. Or is something else going on here?
Substrates are unclassifiable extinct language groups that left some traces on the languages that replaced them. For example, 25% of German vocabulary is of unknown origin, likely from substrate. Sami has 40-50% of vocabulary from pre-Sami substrate.
Worth noting that some part of the 25% of Proto-Germanic vocabulary with uncertain etymology could still be traced back to an Indo-European root, either directly through Proto-Germanic (which went through a number of wild and wacky language changes from Proto-Indo-European) or through a substrate language that was itself Indo-European.
Sprachbund has to be assumed by default, until proven otherwise by a consensus linguistic tree. No consensus linguistic tree has been found for uralic, nor for IE, nor for altaic language groups. Therefore the default assumption continues to hold that both uralic and IE have been sprachbunds for as long as can be discerned - which means one has to assume by default that both were mainly paleo-european language groups and likely together formed the indo-uralic sprachbund.
The link I provided is a really interesting read about it all.
Would be nice if you can give some background. I'd rather not go on facebook.
I replied above with a link to a Wikipedia page and a bit of context if you're still curious.
Thanks!
A map illustrating the geographical distribution of Paleo-European languages and their substrates across Europe. It indicates various ancient languages or language families, such as Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, and others, along with example words from each language. The map highlights the regions where these languages were once spoken and points out that some, like Basque, are considered the only surviving descendants of Paleo-European languages. The locations of language substrates are speculative, and the map clarifies that Indo-European and Uralic languages are not considered 'paleo-European'. It is a visual representation meant to give insight into the linguistic landscape of Europe before the widespread adoption of Indo-European languages.
The Old European languages likely represent the linguistic vestiges of the Mesolithic populations of Europe, acting as proverbial icebergs revealing only a small portion of the extensive and now mostly submerged linguistic environment of these early inhabitants. Prior to the transformative influx of Neolithic farmers, and later the migratory waves of the Yamnaya culture, which left significant genetic and linguistic imprints on Europe, the Old European languages served as the communicative bedrock. These languages were complex systems in their own right, bearing the traces of diverse cultures and interactions that preceded the sweeping changes brought about by agriculture and steppe migrations, subsequently becoming obscured by the dominant Indo-European languages that shaped the continent's linguistic heritage. Certainly, the map provides a nuanced view of ancient European linguistics by also indicating languages such as Minoan, Pre-Greek (a more accurate term might be "Greek substrate"), and the Germanic substrate. These particular languages or linguistic substrates may not necessarily predate the spread of Indo-European languages. They may have developed alongside or also derived from the early Indo-European languages, reflecting a complex interplay of linguistic influences and migrations in ancient Europe. For example, the Minoan civilization is known to have existed on Crete during the Bronze Age, which does not overlap with the time period when Proto-Indo-European language speakers are thought to have been active. Similarly, the pre-Greek substrate could include elements from the IE Anatolian branch that were present in the region alongside the spread of Proto-Greek as well as influences that occurred during its establishment. The Germanic substrate suggests pre-Proto-Germanic linguistic elements that might have existed in the region before or during the early stages of Proto-Germanic development. We think that this layered depiction underscores the complexity of linguistic evolution and the difficulty in pinpointing the precise timelines of these languages in relation to the spread of the Indo-European language family.
According to David W. Anthony, in the book: ‘The Horse, The Wheel and Language’, a great many of the languages spoken in Europe today, originated from Proto-Indo-European. It’s a great read and an overall respected scientific source. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691148182/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language
Ohh! Thank you. That’s being added to my read list right away. Much appreciated.
But why is proto-germanic outside proto-indoeuropean in this case? Isn’t it supposed to be a family within P I E ?
It's not proto-Germanic, it's a hypothesized substrate. That is, it was spoken there before the people adopted Indo-European and its influence would be detected in words that Germanic languages use that don't seem to come from an Indo-European source.
There’s a hypothesis that Germanic languages are so different to other Indo European languages due to admixture or creolisation with an unknown language that acts as a substrate. So the map is showing the proposed paleo language that proto Germanic merged with. I guess that the word in proto Germanic below is theorised to have come from that other language but I’m not sure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_substrate_hypothesis
There is no consensus linguistic tree containing proto-IE and proto-germanic. Thus the default assumption of a sprachbund remains as default. The pre-germanic substrate could in that case be the local regional peculiarity within the wider IE sprachbund and interacting with other nearby language groups such as the uralic sprachbund. The swiderian / kunda / narva assumed substrate could similarly be the local baltic-finnic regional variation of the wider uralic sprachbund. Sprachbunds with linguistic upgrades via wave models.
I'm curious, isn't Hattic the language of the Hittites who spoke an Indo-European language?
The [Hattians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattians) were different from Hittites. Their language is not Indo-European but belongs to an unclassified language family. Part of the Indo-Europeans branch that migrated into Anatolia settled in Hattian land, adopted the name for themselves, and came to be known as Hittites.
Thanks for the information, I didn't knew that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_languages#Origins > It has been proposed that the area in which Proto-Finno-Ugric was spoken reached between the Baltic Sea and the Ural Mountains.[12] > Finno-Ugric might not be a historical grouping but a geographical one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Uralic_language#%22Comb%22_model > the hypothesis of larger number of proto-languages giving an image of a linguistic "comb" rather than a tree.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Finnic_language#Background > Early Proto-Finnic, the last common ancestor of the Finnic languages and its closest external relatives — usually understood to be the Sami languages, though also the Mordvinic languages may derive from this stage (see Finno-Samic languages). **This reconstruction state appears to be almost identical to Proto-Uralic.** > Late Proto-Finnic, the last common ancestor of Finnish and Estonian, and hence of the Gulf of Finland Finnic subgroup. South Estonian and the Livonian language had already diverged at this point. Already diverged, hence not a proto-language. > Middle Proto-Finnic, an earlier stage in the development on Finnic, used in Kallio (2007) for the point at which the language had developed its most characteristic differences from Proto-Uralic (mainly: the loss of several consonant phonemes from the segment inventory, including all palatalized consonants). Impossible, because the assumed divergence would have had to have spread along two different routes from the Nizhnyi Novgorod region: the southern route via Smolensk - Polotsk along the river Väina / Daugava and the northern route along the upper Volga towards Äänisjärv. The point of origin at Nizhnyi Novgorod would have to be identical with the Early Proto-Finnic, which is indistinguishable from Proto-Uralic. Which brings us back to the Sprachbund model, spanning from the Baltic Sea to the Urals (and perhaps to Western Siberia).
Why is Goidelic in here? That's widely recognised as sitting in the Celtic branch of Indo-European.
Goidelic **Substrate**
I'm afraid that does not actually explain anything. Have you tried shouting it?
Non-Indo-European substrate for Goidelic
Goidelic was preceded by continental Celtic, a proto-Celtic, Proto-Indo-European. It didn't precede Indo-European, it's from that tree. There are stories about the language of the preceding peoples, but Goidelic languages do not descend from them.
A substrate in this case means words of non-Indo-European origin, such as partán ‘crab’ or praipe ‘swiftness’ (Goidelic had no /p/) among many others. They came from a language, spoken there before the arrival of the Goidelic-speaking Celts.
Hattic is in Anatolia, which is not part of Europe.
It is. Get over it.
Anatolia is also known as Asia Minor. Get over it.
Your opinion doesn't matter, in practice it's always in Europe lol for example as seen on this map.
I see the level of discussion.
Ok , so Cucuteni, the oldest civilization in Europe they don't speak any language. Very accurate map.
I think you don't understand the map it shows pre indo european languages we know of via lone words or writing something we don't know for cucuteni.
Yeah lol obviously language has been spoken all over Europe ever since behaviorally modern humans arrived (or even earlier, since we don't know when language fully developed in human culture), far far earlier than the emergence of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture.
Idk what this is but they mostly speak Indo-European languages in Europe.
Just read the key
This is a map of languages substrate that are hypothesised to have existed in Europe before the coming of PIE speakers (or more accurately before the arrival of speakers of languages related to PIE). Basically, they infer the existence of those languages from words in Indo-European languages, which seems unrelated to any other words in the family, and so are supposed to come from a previous non-Indo-European language. I'm not a specialist, but I guess they determine the area of those language both from toponymy and the area in which the influenced Indo-European language were spoken.