GEO-1400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Real Academia Española, Official Language, Proto-Indo-European Language
Document Summary
A language family is a collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history. A language branch is a collection of languages within a family related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not extensive or as old as between language families. Archeological evidence confirms that the branches derived from the same family. A language group is a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display many similarities in grammar and vocabulary. Many languages have a literary tradition --> system of written communication. Most languages use one or four principle writing systems. 4 branches are spoken by large numbers. Linguistics and anthropologists disagree on when and where proto-indo-european originated and the process and routes by which it diffused. Vikings remaining in the country contributed many words (call, die, leg)
