Talk:Indo-European languages

minor mistake on map legend

baltic (blue) and slavic (green) are shown separately on the map. according to the map legend though green shows "balto-slavic" spread.

Incorrect legend

 The following legend, though understandable, is incorrect.
"Countries where Indo-European language family is majority native
 Countries where Indo-European language family is official but not majority native
 Countries where Indo-European language family is not official"

For example, the U.S. does not have an official language, but it clearly does not fit into the third category. The third category's description should be modified to some- thing like "Countries where [one or more members of the] Indo-European language family is[/are] not [the] majority native [?] or official language." Wordy, but more accurate. Kdammers (talk) 19:39, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Italic 125.164.97.185 (talk) 21:20, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Outdated population figure

The population figure says that native IE speakers number 3.2 billion at 46% of the world population, but those figures calculate to a world population of 7 billion, when it's known to have exceeded 8 billion by now. Long story short, the population figure needs to be updated. 23.93.181.240 (talk) 20:26, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Page content changes

Could we make a change where instead of showing the evolution of PIE to English as the example, it’s PIE to Portuguese instead? 2601:C6:D200:E9B0:94DC:3747:D33E:5B16 (talk) 20:34, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Albanian and Messapic

@Βατο: You repeatedly claim that the inclusion of Albanian and Messapic in a unified branch of the IE languages is the "mainstream view". I am aware that this is a widely held view in Albanian studies, often cited/echoed but rarely expounded with comparative evidence that fulfils the only valid criterion for subgrouping, i.e. exclusively shared innovations. But things are not as easy from the Indo-Europeanist perspective. In order to evaluate the mainstream view per WP:RS/AC, I am aware of three books published in the last ten years that cover the Indo-European languages in their entirety and address the question of the relation between Albanian and Messapic.

Starting with the most recent, there is Olander (2022), The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective. The relevant chapter is "Albanian" by Hyllested & Joseph who write:

Technically speaking, from a genealogical standpoint, Messapic likely is the closest IE language to Albanian (Matzinger 2005). However, in the absence of sufficient evidence, that connection must remain speculative (p. 240).

Then there's Rusakov's chapter "Albanian" in Kapović's Routledge Handbook The Indo-European Languages:

There are some reliable etymological correspondences between Albanian words and both Illyrian (including Messapian) and Thracian language material [...] Lexical data of this kind are obviously insufficient for any kind of decisive conclusions about the relations between Albanian and the two ancient Balkan languages. The same is also true of phonetic Illyrian-Albanian and Thracian-Albanian isoglosses. Given the limits of our knowledge, it is preferable to consider Illyrian, Thracian and Albanian as separate branches within the Indo-European language family.

And then there's three-volume Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics edited by Klein, Joseph and Fritz. The question of the affiliation of Messapic is mentioned in two chapters, "The lexicon of Albanian" by Matzinger and "Messapic" by de Simone, which represent the two poles of assessment within Indo-European studies:

• Matzinger:

Albanian is closely related to Illyrian and also Messapic (a language spoken in Southern Italy in antiquity but originally of Balkan origin), which is why Albanian in some instances may shed some light on the explanation of Messapic as well as Illyrian words (see Matzinger 2005).

• De Simone:

At the present time, realistically speaking, it is not possible to situate Messapic within the framework of the Indo-European language family.

So where does the mainstream view of Indo-Europeanists stand here? Messapic is only fragmentarily attested, so there are limited comparanda to start with. Those that have been found (mainly by Hamp, and further pruned and refined by Matzinger) are very compelling, but as Hyllested & Joseph summarize: "in the absence of sufficient evidence, that connection must remain speculative", which is a statement that I think we can safely echo in Wikivoice, more than anything else.

I don't say we shouldn't embolden ourselves to mention the proposed Albanian–Messapic branch in the infobox. But then we must qualify its status and also include Graeco-Phrygian, which has a much better established evidential base than Albanian–Messapic, not only because of the larger corpus of Phrygian in comparison to Messapic, but also the depth of study devoted to it. I haven't seen anything comparable to Obrador-Cursach's work on Graeco–Phrygian when it comes to Albanian–Messapic comparisons (and this includes all sources mentioned in the stock cite bomb that has been placed over multiple articles). In any case, Albanian–Messapic is certainly not an unequivocally established branch of the IE family on par with Indo-Iranian or Balto-Slavic.

Pinging also @Hemiauchenia, who has contested the recent inclusion of Albanian–Messapic in the infobox as an established fact and @Khassanu who made the relevant modifications in 08 June 2024. Austronesier (talk) 10:55, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Indo-European linguistics is really not my area of expertise, but if scholars are describing the grouping as speculative, we should reflect that cautiousness. I'm not opposed to including Albanoid in the infobox, but it should include a question mark to indicate its tentativeness, and Albanian and Messapic should be listed as subgroups of it in the main infobox. Hemiauchenia (talk) 11:14, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Austronesier:, the Albanian-Messapic relation is the one proposed in the recently published Indo-European phylogenetic trees, although it is considered inconclusive by some. But above all, there are many examples of common features between Albanian and Messapic that indicate their close relationship, and there are fiew or none that suggest otherwise. That relationship is also strongly indicated by recent archaeogenetic studies. Anyway, since many scholars say that the relationship is often supported by linguists, I thought not mentioning Messapic in the infobox would be better than mentioning it as a separate IE branch. But I do agree that a clarification in the infobox would solve the issue. Also the clarification about the Graeco-Phrygian relation needs to be included. Hemiauchenia's edit edit seems good. – Βατο (talk) 11:55, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

This looks like a good solution to me as it reflects the assessment of a very good and recent source. The Albanian–Messapic hypothesis is the best we have at this time, given the limited material about Messapic as of now. I'm optimistic that research will eventually bring more light to the question as more Messapic inscriptions continue to be discovered, and my hunch is that it will eventually raise the status of Albanian–Messapic from "speculative" to "proven". –Austronesier (talk) 16:14, 16 June 2024 (UTC)