|
( Baltic languages)
The Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. The language group is sometimes divided into two sub-groups Western Baltic, containing only extinct languages, and Eastern Baltic, containing both extinct and the two living languages in the group Lithuanian (including both Standard Lithuanian and Samogitian) and Latvian (including both literary Latvian and Latgalian). While related, the Lithuanian, the Latvian, and particularly the Old Prussian vocabularies differ substantially from each other and are not mutually intelligible. The now-extinct Old Prussian language has been considered the most archaic of the Baltic languages. Lithuanian and Latvian are two of the most archaic and least changed of all the living Indo-European languages. Speakers of modern Baltic languages [1] are generally concentrated within the borders of Lithuania and Latvia, and in emigrant communities in the United States, Canada, Australia and former Soviet states. Historically the languages were spoken over a larger area West to the mouth of the Vistula river in present-day Poland, at least as far East as the Dniepr river in present-day Belarus, perhaps even to Moscow, perhaps as far south as Kiev. Key evidence of Baltic language presence in these regions is found in hydronyms (names of bodies of water) in the regions that are characteristically Baltic. Use of hydronyms is generally accepted to determine the extent of these cultures' influence, but not the date of such influence. Historical expansion of the usage of Slavic languages in the South and East, and Germanic languages in the West reduced the geographic distribution of Baltic languages to a fraction of the area which they had formerly covered. Indo-European topics extinct Anatolian&_160;· Paleo-Balkans (Dacian,
Phrygian, Thracian)&_160;· Tocharian
|
Baltic languages Subcategories
Baltic languages Articles
|
|
