Category: Europe
Starting from a center between Central Europe and the Urals, the Indo-Europeans grew up around 2000 BC. Dissolved in expanding nations. While one thrust was aimed at the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, the other movement went into Europe. The emergence of the Indo-European individual languages resulted from both splitting off and mixing with autochthonous language elements.
The Germanic languages are divided into two groups: the West Germanic (English, German, Dutch, Frisian) and the North Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic).
The Slavic languages are divided into East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian; Cyrillic script), West Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, Polish, Kashubian; Latin script) and South Slavic (Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Montenegrin; except for Slovenian and Croatian Cyrillic script). The Romance languages – all of which arose from Latin, which reached large parts of Europe through the expansion of the Roman Empire and also had a lasting influence – are not further subdivided.
The warlike and peaceful expansion of the European peoples over the millennia resulted in areas of retreat and island formation of languages. Examples of this are provided by the Celtic languages in Wales, Brittany and Ireland, Catalan and Galician in Spain, the Slavic-Sorbian language island in central Germany or Romansh in Switzerland. These retreat languages also include Basque in Spain and France or Kurdish in the four-country corner of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Some of the ethnic groups who speak these languages insist on their linguistic, cultural and ethnic identity and demand national autonomy or independence.
Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian belong to the Urals language family, whose area of origin can be found on the Volga and the Urals. While the main Finnish people, the Suomi, were already around 1000 BC. BC reached its present-day residence, the Hungarians did not arrive until around AD 900. in the plains between the Tisza and the Danube. For more information about the continent of Europe, please check ezinereligion.com.
