A Babel of Tongues
The great family of languages.—Few languages in Europe not
belonging to the family.—The dying Celtic languages.—The three
branches of the Germanic family.—The influence of the Latin
tongue on the south of Europe.—The many Slavic peoples.—The map
as divided by kings without regard to peoples and languages.—The
strange mixture in Austria-Hungary.—The southeast of Europe.—The
Greeks and Dacians.—The Roman colonists.—The Slavs.—The
Volgars.—The Skipetars.—A hopeless mixture.
In Chapter II it was pointed out that almost all the peoples of
Europe were related, in one big family of tribes. It is likely
that the forefathers of the Celts, the Latins, the Germans, the
Greeks, and the Slavs belonged to one big tribe which had its
home back in the highlands of Central Asia. As a general rule,
the relationship of peoples to each other can be told by the
languages which they speak. If two tribes are related because
their forefathers once belonged to the same tribe, it is almost
certain that they will show this relationship in their languages.
The language of England a thousand years ago was very much like
the language of the Germans, for the English were originally
German tribes. Even today, it is easy to see that English is a
Germanic language. Take the English words house, father, mother,
brother, water, here, is, etc. The German words which mean the
same are _haus, vater, mutter, bruder, wasser, hier, ist_. It is
very plain that the two languages must have come from the same
source.
There are professors in European colleges who have spent their
whole lives studying this relationship of languages. These men
have proved not only that almost all the languages of Europe are
related, but that the language of the Persians, and that of some
of the old tribes in Hindustan also belong to one great family of
tongues. Let us take the word for mother. In one of the ancient
languages of Hindustan it was _matr_; in the Greek, it was
_mātār_; in the Latin _mater_ (mätār); in the Bohemian
_matka_; in the German _mu̠tter_; in the Spanish mädre; in the
Norwegian _mōder_, etc. This great family of languages is called
“the Indo-European group,” because the tribes which spoke them,
originally inhabitants of Asia, have scattered all over India and
Europe. The only peoples in Europe whose languages do not belong
to it are the Finns and Laplanders of the north, the Basques
(Bȧsks) of the Pyrenees Mountains, the Hungarians, the Gypsies,
and the Turks.
The descendants of the old Celtic peoples have not kept up the
Celtic languages to any great extent. The reason for this is that
first the Romans and then the Germanic tribes conquered most of
the lands where the Celts lived. In this way, Spain, Portugal,
France, and Belgium now talk languages that have grown from the
Latin, the language of Rome. The Celts in the British Isles now
all talk English, because the English, who were a Germanic
people, conquered them and forced them to use their language.
Patriotic Irishmen and Welshmen (who are descendants of the
Celtic tribes) are trying to keep alive the Irish and Welsh
languages, but all of the young people in the British Isles learn
English, and they are generally content to talk only one
language. The other Celtic languages which have existed within
the last one hundred years are the Gaelic of the north of
Scotland, the Breton of western France, and the Cornish of the
southwestern corner of England.
The Germanic languages (sometimes called Teutonic) are found in
three parts of Europe today. The Scandinavian languages, Danish,
Norwegian, and Swedish, belong to this family. Western Austria
and Germany form, with Holland and Western Belgium, a second
group of German-speaking nations. (The people of eastern Belgium
are Celts and talk a kind of French.) The third part of Europe
which uses a Germanic language is England.
In an earlier chapter we learned how the Celts in France, Spain,
and Portugal gave up their own languages and used the Latin.
Latin languages today are found also in the southern and western
parts of Switzerland, all over Italy, and in Roumania.
We learned also about the Slavs who lived to the eastward of the
Germanic tribes. When the Germans moved west, these Slavs
followed them and occupied the lands which had just been left
vacant. In this way, we find Slavic peoples talking Slavic
(sometimes called Slavonic) languages in the parts of Europe to
the east and south of the Germans. More than half of the
inhabitants of Austria-Hungary are Slavs, although the Austrians
proper are a Germanic people, and the Hungarians do not belong to
the Indo-European family at all. The Serbians and Montenegrins
are Slavs. The Poles and Russians are Slavs. The Bulgarians speak
a Slavic language and have some Slavic blood in them, although,
as will be pointed out later, originally they did not belong to
the Slavic family.
[Illustration: Map: Distribution Of Peoples According to Relationship]
The Greeks and Albanians belong to the great Indo-European family
of tribes, but their languages are not closely related to any of
the four great branches.
[Illustration: Distribution Of Languages]
The two maps on pages 65 and 66 are very much alike and yet in
some respects very different. The first shows how Europe is
largely inhabited by peoples of the great Indo-European family.
Those who are descended from the Celts are marked Celtic even
though today they have given up their Celtic language, as have
the Cornish in England and the inhabitants of Spain, France,
eastern Belgium, and the greater part of Ireland. The Bulgarians
are marked as not belonging to the great family, although they
speak a Slavic language.
In the second map, the distribution of languages is shown. You
will notice that the Celtic languages are found only in small
parts of the British Isles, and in the westernmost point of
France. The Bulgarians are here marked Slavic because their
language belongs to that branch. One of the most curious things
about the two maps is the presence of little spots like islands,
particularly made up of German-speaking peoples. There are
several of these little islands in Russia. They have been there
for nearly two hundred years. A traveler crossing the southern
part of Russia is astonished to find districts as large as an
American county where not a word of Russian is spoken. The people
are all of Germanic blood, although they live under the
government of Russia. In the same way, there is a large German
island in the midst of the Roumanians in Transylvania and another
between the Slovaks and Poles at the foot of the Carpathian
Mountains. There is a large Hungarian island in Transylvania
also, entirely surrounded by Germans and Roumanians. The table on
the opposite page shows the main branches of the Indo-European
family that are found in Europe.
The Indo-European Family of Languages
(_a_) Hindu branch
(_b_) Persian branch
(_c_) Celtic branch
Gāe′lic (northern Scotland) Welsh Cornish (dead)
Erse (Irish) Brē′ton (western France)
(_d_) Latin branch
Portuguese Spanish French Romansh (southeastern Switzerland)
Italian Roumanian
(_e_) Germanic branch
Norwegian Danish Swedish Dutch Flemish (Belgium)
Low German High German English
(_f_) Slavonic branch
Russian Polish Lettish Lithuanian Old Prussian (dead) Czech
(Bohemian [pronounced Chĕck]) Slō vak′ (northern Hungary)
Serbian Bulgarian Slove′nian (southwestern Austria)
Crōa′tian (southern Austria)
Ruthē′nian (northeastern Austria-Hungary, and southwestern
Russia)
} } Baltic states of Russia }
(_g_) Greek
(_h_) Albā′nian
The main source of the present trouble in Europe is that kings
and their ministers and generals, like their ancestors, the
feudal lords, never considered the wishes of the people when they
changed the boundaries of kingdoms. Austria-Hungary is a good
example. The Austrians and Hungarians were two very different
peoples. They had nothing in common and did not wish to be joined
under one ruler, but a king of Hungary, dying, left no son to
succeed him, and his only daughter was married to the archduke of
Austria. This archduke of Austria (a descendant of the counts of
Hapsburg) was also emperor of Germany and king of Bohemia,
although the Bohemian people had not chosen him as their ruler.
The Hungarians, before their union with Austria, had conquered
certain Slavic tribes and part of the Roumanians. Later Austria
annexed part of Poland. In this way, the empire became a jumble
of languages and nationalities. When its congress is called
together, the official announcement is read in eleven different
languages. Forty-one different dialects are talked in an area not
as large as that of the state of Texas.
We must remember that besides the literary or written languages
of each country there are several spoken dialects. A man from
Devonshire, England, meeting a man from Yorkshire in the north of
the same country, has difficulty in understanding many words in
his speech. The language of the south of Scotland also is
English, although it is very different from the English that we
in America are taught. A Frenchman from the Pyrenees Mountains
was taught in school to speak and read the French language as we
find it in books. Yet besides this, he knows a dialect that is
talked by the country people around him, that can not be
understood by the peasants from the north of France near the
Flemish border. The man who lives in the east of France can
understand the dialect of the Italians from the west of Italy
much better than he can that of the Frenchman from the Atlantic
coast.
In America, with people moving around from place to place by
means of stage coach, steamboat, and railroad, there has been no
great chance to develop dialects, although we can instantly tell
the New Englander, the southerner, or the westerner by his
speech. It should be remembered that in Europe, for centuries,
the people were kept on their own farms or in their own towns.
The result of this was that each little village or city has its
own peculiar language. It is said that persons who have studied
such language matters carefully, after conversing with a man from
Europe, can tell within thirty miles where his home used to be in
the old country. There are no sharply marked boundaries of
languages. The dialects of France shade off into those of Spain
on the one hand and into those of the Flemish and the Italian on
the other.
[Illustration: Southeastern Europe, 600 B.C.]
The British Isles furnish us with four or five different
nationalities. The people of the north of Ireland are really
lowland Scotch of Germanic descent, while the other three-fourths
of Ireland is inhabited by Celts. To make the difference all the
greater, the Celts are almost universally Catholics, while the
Scotch-Irish are Protestants. The people of the north of Scotland
are Gaels, a Celtic race having no connection in language or
blood with the people of the southern half of that country. The
Welsh are a Celtic people, having no relationship with the
English, who are a Germanic people. The Welsh and the Cornish of
Cornwall and the people of highland Scotland are the descendants
of the ancient Britons and Gaels who inhabited the island when
Julius Caesar and the Romans first landed there. Then five
hundred years afterwards, as has already been told, came great
swarms of Germans (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes), who drove the
Britons to the west and north, and settled the country now known
as England. After these, you will recall, came a number of Danes,
another Germanic people, who settled the east coast of England.
Two hundred years later, the Normans came from France. These
Normans had been living in France for a century or two, but had
come originally from Norway. Normans, Danes, Angles, and Saxons
all mixed to make the modern English. Together, they fought the
Scotch, the Welsh and the Irish, and having conquered them,
oppressed them harshly for many centuries.
[Illustration: Southeastern Europe, 975 A.D.]
But it is in the southeastern corner of Europe that one finds the
worst jumble of nationalities. Six hundred years before Christ,
the Greeks and their rougher cousins, the Thracians, Macedonians,
and Dacians inhabited this district. When one of the Roman
Emperors conquered the Dacians about 100 A.D., he planted a large
Roman colony north of the Danube River. Then came the West Goths,
who swept into this country, but soon left it for the west of
Europe. Next came the Slavic tribes who are the ancestors of the
modern Serbs. Following these, came a large tribe which did not
belong to the Indo-European family, but was distantly related to
the Finns and the Turks. These people were called the Volgars,
for they came from the country around the River Volga. Before
long, we find them called the Bulgars. (The letters B and V are
often interchanged in the languages of south-eastern Europe. The
people of western Europe used to call the country of the Serbs
Servia, but the Serbs objected, saying that the word _servio_, in
Latin, means “to be a slave,” and that as they were not slaves,
they wanted their country to be called by its true name, Serbia.
The Greeks, on the other hand, pronounce the letter B as though
it were V.)
A strange thing happened to the Volgars or Bulgars. They
completely gave up their Asiatic language and adopted a new one,
which became in time the purest of the Slavic tongues. They
intermarried with the Slavs around them and adopted Slavic names.
They founded a flourishing nation which lay between the kingdom
of Serbia and the Greek Empire of Constantinople.
North of the Bulgars lay the country of the Roumani (ro͞o
mä′nï). These people claimed to be descended from the Roman
Emperor’s colonists, as was previously told, but the reason their
language is so much like the Italian is that a large number of
people from the north of Italy moved into the country nearly a
thousand years after the first Roman colonists settled there.
From 900 to 1300 A.D., south-eastern Europe was inhabited by
Serbians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, and Greeks.
[Illustration: A Typical Bulgarian Family]
A fifth people perhaps ought to be counted here, the Albanians.
(See map) This tribe is descended from the Illyrians, who
inhabited the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea even before the
time of the Roman Empire. Their language, like the Greek, is a
branch of the Indo-European family which is neither Latin,
Celtic, Germanic, nor Slavic. They are distant cousins of the
Italians and are also slightly related to the Greeks. They are a
wild, fierce, uncivilized people, and have never known the
meaning of law and order. Robbery and warfare are common. Each
village is always fighting with the people of the neighboring
towns. The Albanians, or Skipetars (skïp′ĕtars) as they call
themselves, were Christians until they were conquered by the
Turks about 1460. Since that time, the great majority of them
have been staunch believers in the Mohammedan religion.
Questions for Review
Where did the great Indo-European family of languages have
its beginning?
Why is it that the Celtic languages are dying out?
What killed the Celtic languages in Spain and France?
What are the three parts of Europe where Germanic languages
are spoken?
In what parts of Europe are languages spoken which are
descended from the Latin?
Explain the presence in Austria-Hungary of eleven different
peoples?
Are the Bulgarians really a Slavic people?