Episode 4 Indo-European Languages Spoken in Asia

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

At present 1/6 to 1/5 of the world speaks an Indo-Aryan language derived from Sanskrit, which has even more case endings than Latin. A sub-family of Indo-European languages, the most common Indo-Aryan languages include Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and Romani (spoken by Europeans commonly known as “travelers” or “gypsies”)

The Indo-Aryan languages look and sound very different from most Indo-European languages because they adopted many grammatical constructions and the retroflex consonants* of India’s indigenous Dravidian languages (now only spoken in southern India).

Another Indo-European subfamily, Indo-Iranian languages derive from Old Persian. Like Old English, Old Persian became streamlined (ie lost its case endings) under the Persian empire, when (as in Britain) large number of adults (mainly slaves) learned it as a second language.**

Sogdian, similar to Old Persian, is an obsolete language spoken by Silk Road traders.

Persian is also spoken in Afghanistan (where it’s called Dari) and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (where it’s called Tajik). Bukharen is a Tajik dialect spoken in Central Asia with many words adopted from Hebrew.

Other Indo-Iranian languages:

• Pashto, a language spoken in Afghanistan, is more similar to Old Persian, in that it still uses case endings.
• Kurdish, spoken by Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Syria.
• Hittite, an extinct language spoken on the Anatolia peninsula, believed to be a streamlined version of Proto-Indo-European before it developed complex verb and case endings.

Armenian is considered to be an Indo-Eruopean language but has adopted numerous Indo-Iranian words.

*Retroflex consonants are articulated with the tongue curled back against the roof of the mouth, specifically the alveolar ridge or postalveolar area.

**Similarly large number of Vikings learned English as adults when they occupied large swaths of England from the 8th to the 11th century. In contrast, Icelandic is more like the original Proto-Indo-European language, in that it has preserved many case endings.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120008