For the people who don’t get it: To the Greeks (who primarily spoke Greek and Latin,) Germanic and proto European languages (like old English) sounded funny. The Greeks joked that it sounded like “barbar barbar” which is basically the Greek version of “blah blah blah blah”. So the people who spoke those foreign languages got referred to as barbarians.
It was basically used as a pejorative. It was a way for Greeks to discriminate against non-Greeks.
It’s technically Proto-Indo-European. PIE is the base language that later developed into most of the European languages. It’s a simple language that evolved into the various European languages as people spread out and groups became more isolated. Basically, as they became more isolated they formed their own unique dialects, which then became distinct languages.
PIE is believed to be the root language for Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Hindi, Urdu, and a handful of others.
Your examples are a bit odd given the context. Spanish, French, and Italian developed from Latin (which you stated the Greeks spoke). English, German, and Scandinavian languages developed from Proto-Germanic. I’m assuming you didn’t mean to imply that Latin wasn’t a PIE language?
For the people who don’t get it: To the Greeks (who primarily spoke Greek and Latin,) Germanic and proto European languages (like old English) sounded funny. The Greeks joked that it sounded like “barbar barbar” which is basically the Greek version of “blah blah blah blah”. So the people who spoke those foreign languages got referred to as barbarians.
It was basically used as a pejorative. It was a way for Greeks to discriminate against non-Greeks.
What’s proto European?
It’s technically Proto-Indo-European. PIE is the base language that later developed into most of the European languages. It’s a simple language that evolved into the various European languages as people spread out and groups became more isolated. Basically, as they became more isolated they formed their own unique dialects, which then became distinct languages.
PIE is believed to be the root language for Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Hindi, Urdu, and a handful of others.
Your examples are a bit odd given the context. Spanish, French, and Italian developed from Latin (which you stated the Greeks spoke). English, German, and Scandinavian languages developed from Proto-Germanic. I’m assuming you didn’t mean to imply that Latin wasn’t a PIE language?
Yes, except it’s not as simple as you think. It is heavily inflected and has a lot of cases, 8, I think.
I know this because I speak Lithuanian, which is the oldest living language and the one most similar to PIE.
Greek is also Indo-European though.
Civilisations on the European continent before Europe became a concept.
But is it a language? I only know of Proto Germanic and Proto Indo-European that would be relevant here but I’m not a linguist.
No, it’s a category, and the two languages you mentioned would, I assume, fit into that category.
That makes sense somewhat, although it would be a rather broad category.
blahbarians
Babblearians.