Talk:Indo-European languages
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Indo-European languages was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. Reviewed version: June 15, 2006

WikiProject Echo has identified Indo-European languages as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the Astur-Leonese language Wikipedia.

This is a controversial topic that may be under dispute. Please read this page and discuss substantial changes here before making them. Make sure to supply full citations when adding information and consider tagging or removing uncited/unciteable information.

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Indo-European tree

Warnow, using the phylogenetic method, figured out the following tree for Indo-European languages:

'''*Albanian could have branched off before Italo-Celtic or after Greco-Armenian.
**Germanic left the Satem area before Satemization was complete and moved next to Italo-Celtic. ^[1]

I've deleted the above and moved it over here for discussion. The reason I moved it is because this is only one of many proposed trees, as far as I know it doesn't have general acceptance. I think a separate page should be created showing the various proposals. Otherwise, just don't list any. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.64.80 (talk) 04:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Including this tree was putting UNDUE weight on one person's analysis and includes several intermediate "nodes" that do not enjoy wide acceptance, such as Italo-Celtic, Greco-Armenian, and "Germano-Balto-Slavic". —Angr 04:24, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Mistakes in the map: Lebanon and Sudan

Neither French nor English are official in Lebanon, contrary to popular opinion. However, English is official in Sudan. Which makes the map look scary actually, man IE is dominating. --Karkaron (talk) 08:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Conjugation comparison

(Moved here from User talk:Angr):

I think the table is there to serve as an illustration of the early stages of IE splitting. It might make more sense to establish sort of a timeline, ie from PIE/IE > protolanguages > old attested > modern. I don't think it's irrelevant, just not complete enough to make sense.

If we put in a link to Old Irish, shouldn't the greek link be to Ancient Greek rather than modern greek? Cheers Akerbeltz (talk) 15:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Without any text explaining its significance, it's just a random table that's not doing anything. Does the article even discuss the similarity of verb conjugations among the oldest languages? —Angr 16:26, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't personally have the data to do that but establishing a timeline would be a good idea. As to the above point, the table is clearly relevant, although maybe you feel it isn't explained well enough, but my point is that it's counter-productive to just delete something without at least discussing first whether it can be improved or not, if it's deemed to be irrelevant by concensus then remove it, don't just delete right off the bat, that doesn't benefit any article. (84.13.253.245 (talk) 17:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC))

Ok I added some more examples and info and established a rough timeline. Nebulosity, I see you've added Old English but I'm not sure if that's needed - I think one example from each major family is enough to give a general idea of what's going on, so on balance I feel we should rather add a church slavonic or baltic conjugation rather than a second germanic example. Otherwise we may end up with a bias towards germanic or a table as wide as my desk ;) Akerbeltz (talk) 17:44, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I've removed the Old English table. I agree we should add one example from the slavic and baltic families, and also indo-iranian to cover the major IE branches. (Nebulousity (talk) 19:40, 31 August 2008 (UTC))

Btw, now that the section has been expanded a bit, Angr do you still have any objection to the relevance tag being removed? (78.150.131.147 (talk) 21:48, 1 September 2008 (UTC))

Angr, glad you feel that way about relevance but the "call for citations" you've added is a little ... odd. Everyone can *see* that the PIE verb was synthetic and that the modern languages use largely periphrastic systems. It's like asking for a citation saying that it's usually brighter during the day ;) Same applies to the similarities/differences I would say, wouldn't you agree? I agree with the need for sourcing information, don't get me wrong but not every little statement is sourced, not even on featured articles if the info is totally obvious Akerbeltz (talk) 09:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not asking for sources showing that the older languages were synthetic and the younger languages are periphrastic. I'm asking for sources showing that "the differences [between the Indo-European languages] have increased significantly over time". The chart of the ancient IE languages shows that there were already tremendous differences between them, and I'm not seeing an increase in differentiation between the ancient languages and the modern ones. —Angr 09:07, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah I see what you mean. I guess I was just wearing my linguist goggles when I wrote that. I'm quite happy to scrap that statement and simply say that the differences have increased over time. How's that? Akerbeltz (talk) 10:39, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think removing the word "significantly" is much of an improvement. The average person is going to see a chart showing several very different-looking ancient languages and then a chart showing several equally different-looking modern languages, and then wonder why we think the differences have increased. And why do we even have to say so? Isn't it fairly unremarkable that as related languages evolve, they diverge from each other more and more? And why should anyone care that they do? It seems to me that section is making a point that is both obvious and uninteresting, and then doesn't even succeed in using evidence to establish that obvious, uninteresting point. —Angr 10:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed... feel free to change/delete, I gotta rush to a workshop right now! Akerbeltz (talk) 10:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, to a linguist the point might well seem obvious, and uninteresting, but to a linguistic layman (like me) the table presents an excellent visual indicator of how closely related the languages were at one time. For example Haitian Creole originates from contact with French, but the language has fundamental differences due it's substratal influences, and who knows some or all of the IE languages may have initially started out as a creole, by contact with PIE speakers, borrowing PIE vocabulary, but not necessarily grammatical structure. This table does show that that wasn't the case. (78.150.131.147 (talk) 12:26, 2 September 2008 (UTC))

But it doesn't. A linguistic layman looking at the tables is only going to see a few tiny similarities (Latin and Greek both end in -ō in the 1st person singular; the 1st person plurals all have an "m" in them somewhere) and otherwise wonder what on earth the table is trying to show. It certainly doesn't succeed in showing laymen any great similarities between the languages; you have to know some things about historical linguistics (like the fact that Greek -ousi is a phonologically regular outcome of -onti) to see through the surface forms and find the similarities. —Angr 12:45, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Different point that aside - any objections to splitting off the PIE bit of the table into a seperate table and adjusting the width so the old forms sit directly above the now? Someone else would have to do that though, I'm no good with the table formatting. Akerbeltz (talk) 14:35, 2 September 2008 (UTC)