2
Language Families—Introductory
The languages of the European peoples are to a large extent grouped into Celtic, Romance, Teutonic, and Slavonic families, all of which have sufficiently similar features to be classed together with Sanskrit as Indo-European or, to use a much-disputed term, Aryan. Asiatic immigrants into Europe both in Arctic regions and on the steppes of South Russia have brought in Asiatic languages which have managed to persist as far west as Lapland, Finland, Esthonia, and Hungary, but they are not sufficient to affect the general statement.
The prior home of the Indo-European languages has been discussed almost ad nauseam, and it is still so unsettled a question as to make it unprofitable to discuss afresh whether that home was on the Asiatic steppe, in the mountain and plateau country from Asia Minor to the Hindu Kush, on the grassland borders of South Russia, or somewhere near the Baltic.
It would at any rate seem that these languages did not originate in the Mediterranean, and that the languages of that region in pre-classical times were of other affinities. Minoan, Etruscan, &c., are still undeciphered. If then the classical languages came into that region from outside, the probabilities are that they came in from the north, where are found related languages which have certainly not come from the Mediterranean.
The only language which is of older date in Western Europe than those of the Indo-European family is Basque, still spoken in and near the western Pyrenees. It is a mistake, however, to speak of a Basque race, for the physical types to north and south of the Pyrenees are predominantly broader and longer headed respectively. Educated people in Basque country speak either French or Spanish in addition to the mother tongue, and the Basque language has thus taken up many words from its neighbours; it has very little literature and has contributed extremely little, so far as is known, to French and Spanish. Its affinities are quite unknown, though a kinship with the Bronze Age languages of the Mediterranean is suspected, and suggestions of relations to languages of North Africa have been made.
Of the Indo-European languages it seems to be generally agreed that Lithuanian is the most primitive surviving in Europe, and may be the most primitive of all.
This might be held to imply that Lithuania is near the ancient home of these languages, but it is more probable that old forms survive here because it is a forest country shut off from the great highways of human movement by the immense Pripet swamps to the south of it. It is as likely a place for a 'refuge of the past' as any spot in Europe. Lettish is related to Lithuanian, but the Letts have long been active and commercial, and their language has shed archaisms and borrowed a good deal from Slavonic tongues. Prussian is now quite extinct. Meillet describes this little group as Baltic; and it is related to the Slavonic family. Other writers give the stricter name of Lettic. The Albanian dialects in the Illyrian Alps are another ancient survival with unknown but doubtless Indo-European affinities, and also a considerable Romance element.
Albanian and Letto-Lithuanian apart, the four great families of Indo-European language, Classical and Romance, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic, must have become distinct before the days of the Roman Empire, and must already at that time have developed diverse forms in their various areas. The Classical languages seem to have reached Greece and Italy from the north; how and when we shall not attempt to speculate. The Celtic languages now spoken by the varied and mixed racial stocks on the westernmost fringe of France, Britain, and Ireland, include two groups, one of which, in its use of the q sound and in other features, is held to be fairly close to the root language of Latin, while the other often uses p instead of q.
The q-Celtic languages spoken in parts of Ireland, Isle of Man, and the Highlands of Scotland are usually supposed by archaeologists to have spread westward from Central Europe with the men of the leaf-shaped (bronze) sword about 1000 B.C. The view of Zimmer and Kuno Meyer that the q languages reached Ireland via France without touching Britain is now held to be less probable. The p-Celtic languages are almost universally associated with the invaders of Britain in the pre-Roman Iron Age (the La Tene period). That these men occupied south-east Britain to a considerable extent there can be no doubt, and it is highly probable that their physical type is far more characteristic of the English plain to-day than of any part of Wales, save probably the Severn valley. Yet it is Wales that talks the p-Celtic language, which may have reached it in Roman times, while the Severn valley and the English plain have taken to English speech. Thus we see how inadvisable it is to speak of language-groups as race-groups.
The Baltic or Lettic and the Celtic languages are in essentials survivals of antiquity, of great interest and value as preserving elements which would otherwise have been lost by process of time, but of uncertain future, for no man can say to what extent they are likely to be spoken a few centuries hence. It is otherwise with the Romance, Teutonic, and Slavonic families of languages; they are the definite possessions of the peoples of various regions for centuries to come, and it will be well for us to try to realize how this has come to pass.
Whatever their origins, the Classical tongues spread southward into the Mediterranean. Greek was propagated far and wide by trade and by the movements of which Alexander's march to India was a sign as well as a factor. Rome gathered up into itself the general heritage of antiquity for better and for worse, and associated it with the Latin language, which became a lingua franca in some sort within the bounds of the Roman dominion, so that it influenced deeply not only the language of Gaul but also that of Britain (the p-Celtic language). The power of Latin was so great that only insensibly did the more modern languages, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Provençal, and French, arise out of it, leaving ancient forms like Walloon, Romansch, Ladin, and Frioul in remoter spots. Their rise was an event of the Middle Ages, though the habit of using Latin for scholarly purposes persisted far longer. In earlier times languages evidently were more fluid. Walloon is practically French with Latin and Celtic elements rather stronger than they are in Parisian, and we have little doubt of the Latinization and subsequent Gallicization of a previously Celtic-speaking people. But since the Middle Ages language frontiers have hardly moved.
This fixation of language has several factors.
In the first place, while villagers beginning to conquer a forest may be feeble and isolated, and liable to rapid change of domination and of culture relations, the process of closer settlement brings them into relation with one another, at any rate over small areas, and gives language a much greater hold on a larger number of people.
In the second place, closer settlement generally implies the evolution of markets, substituted in some cases for the seasonal fairs that were sufficient in times of smaller needs and sparser population. And the market with its settled population of tradesfolk and lawyers makes a language centre. With this goes also some development of communications, or at least of their use, and the possibility of the rise of language beyond mere localism. The crusaders, pilgrims, students, and minstrels of the Middle Ages need to be in the student's mind in this connexion.
In the third place, the development of the art of writing and its increased use are great factors of language fixation, and associated with this is the development of a settled legal system.
We should have these points in mind in trying to understand the evolution of the modern distribution of the languages belonging to the three great families, an evolution which has occurred to a large extent since the fall of the Roman Empire.