European Languages. An Oil Painting

I N F O C U S

European languages. AN OIL PAIN T ING IF WE LOOK AT THE OVERALL PICTURE OF MODERN EUROPE FROM A LINGUISTIC POINT OF VIEW, IT WILL APPEAR AS A SORT OF MULTILAYER CAKE, WHICH CONSISTS OF SEVERAL LARGE COMPOSITE PIECES, A LOT OF SMALL AND TINY ONES. THE ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE DIVERSITY OF OUR CONTINENT IS IMPRESSIVE AND INCREDIBLY EXCITING. SO WE WILL TRY TO DESCRIBE THE COLOURFUL LINGUISTICS OF OUR CONTINENT AS AN OIL PAINTING PERFORMED IN A VERY RICH COLOR PALETTE. of the pre-Indo-European language. According the so-called «Kurgan hypothesis», the place of origin of this language was the steppe zone, which extends from the territory of modern Ukraine to Kazakhstan.

This hypothesis was suggested by archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas in 1956 in order to combine the data of archaeological and linguistic research to locate the ancestral home of peoples-speakers of the pre-Indo-European language. According to this theory, the ancestral home of Indo-Europeans was the territory of the Northern Black Sea Coast between the rivers Dnieper and Volga, and our ancestors were semi-nomadic population of the steppe regions of modern Eastern Ukraine and Sothern Russia, who lived in these places in the 5th-4th millenia BC.

E

urope is known for its linguistic diversity: in this part of the world, there are 24 official languages and more than 60 regional languages of indigenous population. In addition, many immigrants speak their native languages. According to the European Commission, 54% of Europeans are able to speak at least one language other than their native. Each fourth European speaks two or more foreign languages, every tenth knows three or more.

Conventionally, Europe can be divided into two major language families: Finno-Ugric and Indo-European.

The genealogy of the Finno-Ugric family (which includes Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian and several other languages) is quite simple. But the family tree of Indo-Europeans is much more complicated. It is branched into German, Roman, Slavic and other lines.

It is no accident that the Indo-European language family is the most common in the world: the number of its speakers exceeds 2.5 billion people. Indo-Europeans include many ancient and modern peoples, among others - Armenians, Balts, Germans, Greeks, 128

Illyrians, Indians, Iranians, Italics, Celts, Slavs, Tochars, Thracians, Phrygians, Hittites. In a certain way, the history of Indo-Europeans can be described as a fascinating family saga. According to the author of the bestseller «Lingo: A Language Spotter’s Guide to Europe « Gaston Dorren, in the Indo-European family, there are conservative patriarchs (the Lithuanian language), pugnacious youth (the Romanche language), identical twins (Slavic languages), distant relatives (the Ossetian language), orphans (Romanian and other Balkan languages), and kids that cling to the mother’s skirt (the French language).

Anyway, the same family that appeared approximately 6,000 years ago gave birth to 400 languages and dialects, including French, English and Hindi. The debate on the geographical origin of this pre-Indo-European language is still ongoing. It is understood that in today’s world, more than half of the people speak languages belonging to the Indo-European family. Today, in Europe, 95% of the modern Europeans speak the languages considered descendants

CONSERVATIVE PATRIARCHS Among all the living languages, the Lithuanian language is the most similar to pre-Indo-European.

A contemporary Lithuanian would hardly be able to talk to the Indo-Europeans from the ancient past, however, he would have understood the essence of the language. Lithuanian has retained the sounding of many words from pre-Indo-European, while in other languages the pronunciation has changed.

More surprising is the grammatical relation of these languages. Indo-European had eight cases, while Lithuanian still has seven. There are other languages with seven cases, such as Polish, but only in Lithuanian the cases are much like in the language of our ancestors. In some Lithuanian dialects, as in pre-Indo-European, except for singular and plural, there is dual - meaning that it is used for two subjects. The third form of number of nouns is quite rare among the modern Indo-European languages. Perhaps, the only exception is Slovenian. Many nuances of Lithuanian (among other things - verb conjugation, syntax, accent patterns, suffixes) indicate its relationship to pre-Indo-European. All these characteristics exist even today after the change of over two hundred generations with fairly minor differences.

PUGNACIOUS YOUTH One of the four official languages of Switzerland, in addition to French, Italian and somewhat distorted version of German, is the Romanche language.

Most people have probably never heard about this

language. However, this language is recognized by the constitution of Switzerland. Almost 35,000 people speak it in the canton of Grisons, but each valley its own variation of it. Romanche is not the only of Roman languages that goes its own regional way. It is part of the Rhaeto-Romance subgroup that consists of three eccentric languages. Two others - Ladin and Friulian - originated in Italy. About 30,000 people, who live on the border of the German and Italian language habitats, speak Ladin. But its story is as sad as that of Romanche: every village of several hundred inhabitants has its own dialect, which sometimes is misunderstood in a neighbouring village. Friulian, on the other hand, is in some way standardized. It is considered to be the mother tongue by over half a million residents of Northeast Italy, and the literary works written in Friulian are known far beyond the region.

IDENTICAL TWINS Slavic languages are very similar. Let us take, for example, the word «Slavic». Ukrainian — слов’янський, Polish — słowiański, Serbo-Croatian — slavenski.

However, these languages are relatively far from each other: they belong to the East Slavic, West Slavic and South Slavic groups, respectively. Here is one more eloquent example: «water». Ukrainian — вода, Slovakian — voda, Bulgarian — вода, and again, the eastern, western and southern groups are represented.

However, this similarity creates a lot of hassle. For example, in Czech, slovenský means not Slovenian, as you might expect, but Slovak. And Slovenian is slovinský. Moreover, there is one more word: slovanský — Slavic. In Bulgarian, словенськи means Slovenian, but in Macedonian, it is слов’янський. Also in Macedonian словінскі means Slovincian — the extinct dialect of the Poland residents... But oh well, enough of confusion.

ORPHANS Languages greatly influence each other, particularly in the regions where representatives from different language families live side-by-side for centuries.

In Europe, such region is first of all, the Balkans: this is where the neighbouring languages influence each other since ancient times, very intensively and gracefully. In the south-east corner of the European continent, there is a whole bunch of languages - from Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Macedonian to Romanian, Gypsy, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish, which, so to speak, left their families. None of the Albanian and Greek families have survived at all. Romanian was hundreds of kilometres away from its nearest Roman relative - Italian. Thousands of kilometres separate Gypsy and Indian from their South Asian family, and the majority of relatives of Turkish live far east. Finally, the territory of Balkan Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian) are closely adjacent

to the Slovenian area, but they are all isolated from their family (Russian, Ukrainian and Polish). Therefore, the Balkans remind of a shelter for linguistic orphans.

MUM’S LITTLE CHILDREN Modern French is too tied to its mother. It has, so to speak, the mother complex. It would seem that such a highly developed language would have grown up long time ago. It is more than a thousand years old; it affected many languages wandering the world. However, if you look closer, it still clings to the mother’s skirt of Latin. The first seeds of French were sown by Julius Caesar whose legions conquered Gaul. He came, saw and conquered, and when the Romans left the area five hundred years later, the abandoned nation was speaking Latin. Specifically, the Latin of soldiers and merchants flavoured with Gallic. This Latin would not be approved by any serious expert in classical languages.

However, despite its «illegitimate» status and traces of outside blood, this Latin was spoken and understood.

This is how French was «impregnated». In other words, every Frenchman who respects himself and history must never forget Latin, because the French language was created by its likeness and «dressed» in its spelling.

THE MAGNIFICENT EIGHT Among the most popular languages of Europe, given their importance in the world (distribution, economic and political influence), ease of learning and usefulness for an average person (like during travelling or in employment), we can select «a magnificent eight».

1. Today English is the most popular language, a kind of global lingua franca. It is in some form understood by about one-third of the world population. Virtually all the international business, academic and diplomatic negotiations are held in the language of Shakespeare.

In many European countries, English is a prerequisite for a good job. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to learn.

2. French is not only the official language of France, but also of the French-speaking population of Belgium, Switzerland and Canada (there, it is one of the official languages). French is also used by the population of many countries of Africa, the Caribbean and French Guiana. In general, it is official in 29 countries and one of the six official languages of the UN, and has a very important historical value. Almost 200 million people speak French.

3. Russian is also one of the most popular languages in Europe. It is native to more than 1.6 million people in the Baltic countries, as well as to part of the population of Germany. Most of the population of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania of middle and older generations understand and can speak Russian, since in the USSR it was mandatory to study at schools and universities.

In addition, many older people in Eastern Europe understand Russian, in such countries as Hungary, the

Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia. Almost 250 million people in Eurasia speak the language of Tolstoy, Pushkin and Chekhov.

Russian is quite difficult to learn, its grammar is complicated, but logical.

4. German is quite popular in Europe. It is used in business communication (Germany has an economic impact on euro-zone countries). Most young Germans today know English. Unfortunately, the population of the country is decreasing and German might continue losing ground. This language is similar to English for the ease of learning, although, it has a more complex grammar.

5. About 407 million people speak Spanish as their first language (by this indicator, it is the most common in the world after Chinese). In addition, 60 million people use Spanish as a second language, and 20 million know it as a foreign language. Spanish is one of the six official UN languages, as well as the official language of the European Union and Mercosur. But most important is that it is the language of Borges, Garcia Lorca, Lope de Vega and Cervantes.

Moreover, Spanish is considered one of the easiest languages to learn.

6. Portuguese is becoming increasingly important because of the development of Brazil and its formation as a world economic and resource state. It occupies the seventh position among world languages by the number of speakers (over 200 million) and the first in South America (186 million, over 51% of the population). This language is somewhat more complicated than Spanish, however, can compete with English or French by the ease of learning.

7. Italian is the official language of Italy, the Vatican (along with Latin), San Marino and Switzerland (along with German, French and Rhaeto-Romance). It is accepted as the second official language in several regions of Croatia and Slovenia.

8. Polish is the official language of Poland and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Also, it is common in other European countries - Germany, France, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Latvia, etc. In several European countries, Polish gained the status of a regional language. It is one of the most common Slavic languages and the most common West Slavic language by the number of speakers and the area occupied by them. The total number of those who speak Polish is more than 40 million people.

Interesting Fact: since 2002, the European Union has been introducing a new principle of language education for its residents: «Native language plus two foreign ones», which replaced the formula: «Native language + English». And if we discard various prejudices as for the use of «foreign» languages, it is worth noting that the majority of young Europeans successfully cope with this formula.

5/2017

129