Evolution of the Indo-European Languages - Ancient Civilizations DOCUMENTARY

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I saw this video. Was kind of disappointed by it honestly, since it only goes over the European branches and doesn't even touch Indo-Iranian/Indo-Aryan.

👍︎︎ 12 👤︎︎ u/_vi5in_ 📅︎︎ Jul 14 2022 🗫︎ replies

Most of the maps are wrong concerning historical languages in Gaul then France : about Aquitanian language, extent of occitano-romance languages, etc...

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/gascon_farmer33 📅︎︎ Jul 15 2022 🗫︎ replies

Title is Indo-European, but it is mostly European. I guess it is a decent Pop-Edu video that gives an overview.

👍︎︎ 11 👤︎︎ u/StoneColdCrazzzy 📅︎︎ Jul 14 2022 🗫︎ replies
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Portugal and India share a lot of common history  ever since Vasco Da Gama’s voyage, but what may   come as a surprise is that the Portuguese language  already shared many similarities to the numerous   languages spoken in India, including inflection,  word structure, pronunciation, and vocabulary.   Languages constantly change and adapt, but in the  case of Portuguese, Hindi, Farsi, Latin, Greek,   English, Polish, and many others, there is only  one common ancestor, which binds them all into   a single family. Welcome to the first video on  the evolution of the Indo-European languages.   Wait, did you know you can watch this  video in Spanish and in 4 other languages?   You can simply change the audio  track in the video settings.   We generated these audio tracks using Aloud. Aloud  lets creators translate their videos. At no cost   and no special skills needed. We have been using  Aloud for months already and we see that it brings   value to our viewers. If you think more creators  should make videos available in other languages,   check out the link in the pinned comment. Let’s  overcome the language barrier in videos together.   For millions of years, evolution was  the main pathway of human development,   as genetic information was passed down from one  generation to the next. It was that same force,   which gave humans very unique tools, which we used  to climb the food chain, such as opposable thumbs,   sweating, and larger brains. Then suddenly  the ability to make complex sounds and more   importantly, the acute sensitivity to comprehend  speech ushered in the development of languages,   which allowed us to pass knowledge at a  speed that dramatically surpassed evolution.   Languages to this day remain an essential part of  our everyday life, as they help us communicate,   express ourselves and define our identity.  Over the years thousands of languages have gone   extinct, and yet there are still over 7100 of them  divided into 142 families. The largest among them,   spoken by 3.2 billion people or 46% of the world’s  population is the Indo-European language family.   The story begins with the incredibly influential  Yamnaya culture at around 4000 BC in the Pontic   Steppe of modern day Ukraine. Its people were  semi-nomadic pastoralists who domesticated cattle,   dogs, and above all horses. This is where the  oldest discovered wheels were uncovered, as well   as burial sites that show one of the earliest  forms of ownership. Compared to the widespread   communal tombs we find in most societies, the  Yamnaya burial pits belonged to clans, families,   or even individuals, sometimes buried with entire  wagons. Combined with the fact that they were one   of the first bronze age cultures, this allowed the  Yamnaya to spread across Eurasia on their horses.   This expansion was swift and aggressive, and  rather than developing their own colonies,   they interbred with the local neolithic  cultures spreading their genes,   as well as their Proto Indo-European language. In time, the speakers of this language became   isolated from each other and regional dialects  developed into their own daughter languages,   a process that continues to this day. Using the  comparative method, linguists and archeologists   were able to reconstruct the original ancestor  vocabulary, despite the fact that it was never   written down. In fact, the words for writing,  sea, and iron are vastly different across the   many Indo-European languages, since those  concepts arose after the original migration.   However, the words that were commonly used  by the Yamnaya people, were nearly identical   across Latin, Germanic, Ancient Greek,  Hittite, Slavonic, Avestan, and Sanskrit.   On your screen, you can see how the cognate  words for family remained mostly the same across   Indo-European sister languages, including words  for family members: Mother -Father-Brother-Sister.   This is also the case for various verbs  describing actions that were fundumental   to the lifestyle of the Yamnaya people, like  Sew-Cloth-Eat-Drink-Carry-Give-Die. The same   can be said about various objects, animals,  and particularly the word wine, among them:   Tooth-Bone-Eye-Night-God-Water-Fire-Tree-New-Young-Pig-Sheep-Beaver   -Honey-Brew -Wine . One of the very first things  we learn in a new language are the pronouns and   basic numbers and yet again we see that both are  shared throughout the various different cultures:   I-You-We- As well as the  numbers from one to ten.   Languages and pronunciations changed as they  grew apart and interacted with each other,   as well as other languages outside the  Indo-European family, adding and exporting   loan words, but the writing that these various  cultures developed hints at their shared origin.   The comparisons between the Greek god Zeus  and Roman god Jupiter are often discussed,   but in reality, both of those gods are adaptations  of the original Yamnaya god Perkwunos the Striker,   a concept also shared in Hittite culture as  Tarhuna, in the Thracian tribes as Zibelthiurdos,   while Dacian tribes knew him as Gebeleizis,  Albanian culture groups knew him as Perendi.   Baltic mythology has Perkunas, Slavic people  knew him as Perun, Celtic tribes as Taranis,   while the Norse people split the singular concept  into Thor and Odin, Anglo-Saxon mythology knew   him as Thunor, and Hindu people initially believed  that Indra was the king of the heaven and thunder.   Additionally, the very concept of an  overarching conflict between Rain and the Sun,   Water and Fire, Man versus Beast most likely  arose from the Proto-Indo European legends.   While it is easier to imagine the various  subgroups of the Proto Indo-European   as separate branches, it is more accurate to  view them as waves, that constantly moved and   interacted with each other and others. That being  said, the first major branch we will look at is   Italic, a language that spread alongside Celtic,  until the Alps split the two around 1500 BC.   By 300 BC the language was fighting for  survival against its Celtic, Illyrian and   Greek neighbors who dominated the north and  even eliminated the Sicel branch in Sicily,   with only Faliscian, Umbrian, Oscan, and Venetic  remaining. And then suddenly the Roman Republic   rose from obscurity and spread the Latin language  across the Mediterranean and western Europe like   wildfire, obliterating all other Italic and  most of the Celtic languages in the process.   The Latin language itself had two variants,  classical Latin, which was the formal language   and Vulgar Latin, which Cicero describes as  “the speech of the masses”. A standardized   and universal language in the Empire, one that  brought status and economic opportunity was one   of the tools that allowed the Romans to establish  themselves as a military and cultural powerhouse.   However due to the size of the Empire, many  regions began developing a distinct dialect,   unique to the province and when Rome fell,  those dialects evolved into their own languages,   ushering in the dawn of the Romance languages. The  subdivisions of Romance include the now-extinct   British, Pannonian, and African Romance languages,  Sardinian which is an incredibly conservative   language, Romanian , and finally one of the most  dominant subdivisions: Western Romance, featuring   Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. To simplify what could be its own video,   each of these languages underwent significant  changes throughout the middle ages, as various   feudal states and dynasties struggled  for power internally and externally.   This resulted in dozens of dialects within each  language , but if we draw a line between any two   points between these countries, the further  you go, the harder it is to understand the   local language. But as the middle ages came  to a close and states became more centralized,   rulers selected the dialect of their hometown and  emphasized its use, a process mirrored in every   other branch. The Castillian kings choose  Castillian as the foundation for Spanish,   discouraging the use of Galician, Leonese, Basque  , and Catalan, and eliminating Mozarabic, and this   process was finalized by the so-called Catholic  monarchs - Ferdinand and Isabella, who understood   the efficiency of using just one language to rule  their realm. The French kings ruling from Paris   chose the langue d'oïl, spoken in the north,  rather than Occitan or Franco-Provencal,   as king Francis I formalized this in 1539 with  the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts , which was   also aimed against the power of the  Occitan nobles and Catholic church.   The unification of Italy occurred  much later, but a similar process   ensued after the Tuscan dialect was  chosen as the foundation of Italian.   Modern day Italy could give us a glimpse  of what other countries looked like   as there are numerous local dialects with  varying degrees of differences between them.   For example, an Italian from Florence is more  likely to understand a person speaking in Spanish   rather than another Italian from Sicily .  Nationalism, education and literature are always   major drivers of standardization and helped shape  languages within a certain state, but given enough   time and isolation, speech can alter dramatically,  even if the writing system remains the same.   That is exactly what we see in the colonies of  the Romance languages: Mexico, Quebec, and Brazil   all share the languages of their founders, but  they also developed their own unique features.   The next major branch we will review is  Proto-Greek , which arrived in northern   Greece around the 3rd millennium BC. The first  stage of its evolution saw the rise of Mycenaean   Greek as the dominant language of the region, with  its very own writing, which we now call Linear B.   But neither would survive the fall of the  Mycenaean civilization in the 12th century BC,   instead around the same time the Greek alphabet  was created, based on the Phoenician alphabet,   with a few added letters. It was this same  alphabet, which would deeply influence the Latin,   Cyrillic, Coptic and Gothic alphabets. Armed  with one of the first written systems, Greek   colonists settled the coasts of France, Italy,  Anatolia, and the entire Black Sea, but despite   using the alphabet, rival dialects competed for  dominance. As you may have guessed this rivalry   was mostly between the Greek city-states of Athens  and Sparta. Despite the popularity of the Spartan   Doric Greek in the mainland, Crete, and Sicily  and military victory over Athens, the Ionic Greek   won the cultural war, thanks to the works of  Homer, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and others.   And thus Classical Greek became the staple of  Greek culture and would contribute to numerous   loan words, present in many other languages  today. The next crucial figure in this story   is Alexander the Great himself, who spread the  common version of the language called Koine with   his conquests and firmly established it in Greece,  as well as inner Anatolia, Egypt, and India.   This was the language in which the New Testament  was written. Despite centuries under Roman rule,   the prestige of the language with its deeply  embedded written form, allowed it to avoid   the Celtic fate, and when the West collapsed  Koine Greek transformed into Medieval Greek,   spoken in the Eastern Roman Empire. By this point,  there was a huge disparity between the Classic   and spoken versions of the language, with the  former being used primarily in court and writing.   The fall of Constantinople, triggered many  events, one of which was the transformation of   both of these languages. The spoken Medieval Greek  turned into Demotic Greek meaning by the people   and the written language called Katharevousa,  which added some elements of the spoken language,   but mostly resembles Classical Greek. The  substantial differences in both languages   made daily transactions incredibly confusing and  this problem persisted for centuries, until it   was finally solved in 1976, when Demotic Greek  was made the official language still used today.   As for Doric Greek, it is spoken by only a few  hundred elderly people in Southern Greece and is   expected to become extinct in the coming years. It took a significant amount of time for   Proto-Germanic to expand beyond a small area  in North Europe, during which it already split   into three distinct dialect s: East, West and  North . We know very little about the early   stage of this branch, as it used a runic  writing system, usually carved on trees.   But as the Roman Empire fell, the most famous  language from the eastern dialect spread all   over Europe. Gothic was incredibly influential and  left a lasting mark on the continent, despite the   fact that it would eventually become extinct.  The North dialect, which we now call Old Norse   was also very popular due to the Viking era. It  would create west and east variants of its own   from which modern Icelandic, Norwegian,  and then Danish and Swedish descended.   It is important to note that Icelandic stands out  as a very conservative language, which has more   in common with Old Norse than any of them, once  again outlining the important role of geography.   During the first millenium BC, Celtic was the  lingua franca of Western and Central Europe,   largely due to the dominant Urnfield culture.  As the branch spread it split into various other   forms like Lepontic, Celtiberian, Gaulish,  Galatian and others. However the rise of the   Roman Republic would lead to the extinction of all  continental Celtic languages. The few surviving   speakers migrated to the British isles, forming  what is known as the Insular Celtic languages,   further divided in Goedelic languages, featuring  Irish, Scottish and Manx Gaelic and Brythonic   languages, featuring Breton , Cornish and Welsh.  Despite being so closely connected to each other,   the two groups are not intelligible. Each  of these languages struggled to endure the   centuries of deliberate censorship and  oppression from various states. In total   there are just under 1 million speakers of the  Celtic languages, with half of them being Welsh.   In the 19th century Cornish came very close  to joining Pictish and Cumbric in extinction,   but has since undergone a revival and now boasts  a few hundred speakers. The Celtic language group   stands as a clear example of how politics can  affect culture in incredibly impactful ways.   Lastly, we have West Germanic, which spread  towards areas disconnected from each other by   forests, mountains, wide rivers, and the English  channel. Naturally, this split the language into   four notable branches: Old High German, Old Low  German, Old Low Franconian, and Anglo-Frisian,   which will inevitably form German, Dutch and  English. The evolution, development and spread   of each of these languages are very interesting,  but extends far beyond the scope of this video,   so we will just share one interesting  fact about each of them. The Gutenberg   printing press and the Luther Bible set the  foundation of a standardized German language,   which was essential in the later unification  process. When we look at places like Iceland,   Albania or Sardinia it is easy to understand  why those languages are conservative,   yet despite having few natural defenses and  being surrounded by more powerful states,   the Dutch language is incredibly conservative.  English is a member of the Germanic language   family, yet only 26% of its vocabulary is  Germanic, 29% of it is French, and 29% is Latin.   Alongside these four major branches, there are  several others, which we would love to cover   in futures videos including the Balto-Slavic,  Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Albanian, not to mention   the now extinct Anatolian, Phrygian, Dacian,  and Tocharian. Each of these language groups   has a fascinating story as it changed throughout  the years and under different regimes.   The languages spread around the world, while other  language groups left a lasting impact on them,   particularly Arabic, Turkic, and Hungarian. Like  this video and share it with your friends if you   want us to delve deeper into the field of  historical linguistics and tell us which   branch or language family deserves an entire  video with more details.
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Channel: Kings and Generals
Views: 627,027
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Keywords: evolution, indo-european, languages, foundation, carthage, phoenicia, bosporan kingdom, ancient greek, Macedon, Alexander, Alexander the Great, Hellenic, Greek, empire, rome, macedonian wars, persian invasion, ancient history, ancient greece, kings and generals, history lesson, full documentary, decisive battles, documentary film, military history, animated documentary, history channel, animated historical documentary, history documentary, king and generals, ancient rome, ancient
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Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)
Published: Sat Jul 09 2022
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