Language:

According to Edward Sapir language can be defined as:

"Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols."

Language Family:

Definition:

A language family can be defined as a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family or the set of languages deriving from a common ancestor is known as language family.

The grouping of languages can be classified on the basis of the following two classes:

1-     Typological classification: it is the classification of the languages on structural similarities such as vocabulary, syntax, sounds, grammar, semantics and pronunciation.

2-     Historical classification: it is the classification of the languages on the base of the historical similarities.

From all the other families The Indo-European family is the most important and is spoken by almost three billion native speakers which is the largest number for any recognised language family. The Indo-European family accordingly falls into eleven principal groups: Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Albanian, Italic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Hittite, and Tocharian.

BALTO-SLAVIC Family:

Introduction:

The Balto-Slavic languages are spoken mainly in Eastern Europe; they were not attested until late in the first millennium AD. There are two major groups: Baltic, and Slavic. These two are generally agreed to be closely related to one another and, as a whole, they have always been spoken in the same geographic area, ranging from what is now eastern Germany to modern-day Russia. However, Baltic languages have exchanged "popularity" with Slavic languages: Baltic languages were originally spoken over a much wider area than is now the case, and Slavic languages were originally spoken in a much smaller area. Nowadays, the territory occupied by speakers of Slavic languages has expanded considerably, whereas the territory dominated by speakers of Baltic languages has shrunk to a very small region.

So we have two major language groups in Balto-Slavic Family:

·        Baltic Group

·        Slavic Group

Baltic Group:

History:

The earliest known writings in Baltic languages were quite recent compared to the earliest writings in other Indo-European languages. However, it is known that the Baltic languages were spoken as early as the late Bronze Age from Poland to the Ural Mountains in western Russia. They seem to have been very influential in Eastern Europe, and they were involved in trade with other peoples. For example they interacted with Finnic peoples to the north, who borrowed many words from Baltic languages; these words included agricultural or farming-related terms, kinship terms, and technologies. The territory occupied by Baltic Languages became smaller due to Gothic and Slavic migrations and, later, to invasions by the Teutonic Knights (German Crusaders).

The Baltic Languages are three in Numbers:

1.      Prussian

2.      Lettish

3.      Lithuanian

1. Prussian:

            Prussian language is now extinct in this group as this language having been displaced by German Language since the seventeenth century. So, we can say that Prussian Language is wiped out and German language has taken its place.

2. Lettish:

            Lettish language belongs to the Baltic Branch of the Indo-European Group. Lettish Language is spoken by the people in Lativa and it is their official language. Lettish language is also known as Latvian. It is the language of about two million people in Latvia. Latvian first appeared in Western print in the mid-16th century with the reproduction of the Lord's Prayer in Latvian in Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia Universalis, in Roman script.

3. Lithuanian:

            Lithuanian is spoken by about three million people in the Baltic State of Lithuania. It is important among the Indo-European Languages because of its conservatism. The Lithuanians controlled a large empire, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, from 1362 to 1569. The earliest written materials in Baltic Languages appeared only after this empire collapsed.

 It is sometimes said that a Lithuanian peasant can understand certain simple phrases in Sanskrit. While the statement implies too much, Lithuanian preserves some very old feature which have disappeared from practically all the other languages of the family. Therefore, although the Baltic languages were attested very late, their conservative nature makes them useful in Indo-European historical linguistics.

Slavic Group:
History:

          The similarities among the various languages of the Slavic group indicate that as late as the seventh or eighth century of the Christian era they were practically identical or at least were united by frequent intercourse. At the present time they fall into three divisions: East Slavic, West Slavic and South Slavic. The first two still cover contiguous areas, but the South Slavic in the Balkan peninsula, are now separated from the rest of by a belt of non-Slavic people, the Hungarians and the Romanians.

            The earliest form in which we possess a Slavic Language is a part of the Bible and certain liturgical texts translated by thy missionaries Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century. The language of these texts is South Slavic, but is probably approximates with considerable closeness with the common Slavic from which all the Slavic Languages have come. It is known as Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian and it continued to be used throughout the Middle Ages and indeed well into modern times as the ecclesiastical language of the Orthodox Church.

There are three divisions of Slavic group:

1.      East Slavic

2.      West Slavic

3.      South Slavic

1. East Slavic:

East Slavic languages were so strongly influenced by Old Church Slavonic

that they did not become distinct until the 13th century and there were no large numbers of literary works in distinct East Slavic languages until about 1600. The East Slavic Languages includes the following languages:

·        Great Russian

·        White Russian

·        Little Russian or Ukrainian

Great Russian:

            Chief of East Slavic Languages is Great Russian and it is the Language of over 200 million people. It is found throughout the north, east, and central parts of the Soviet Union. It was formerly the court language and it is still the official and literary language of the country.

White Russian:

White Russian is the language of about 9 million people in the Belorussian S.S.R and adjacent parts of the Poland. It was the official language of the Lithuanian principality afterwards merged in Poland and hence was under strong Polish influence.

Little Russian or Ukrainian:

            Ukrainian or Little Russian is spoken by about 40 million people in the south. Nationalist ambitions in the past have led the Ukrainians to stress the difference between their language and Russian, a difference which, from the point of view of mutual intelligibility, causes some difficulty with the spoken language. The Little Russian dialect claims to be a literary language; it has established this claim in Galicia, but its use as such is much restricted in Russia.

            Great, White and Little Russian constitute the largest and the most important group of the Slavic Languages.

2. West Slavic:

West Slavic languages are those that have been least influenced by Old Church Slavonic; this is because Old Church Slavonic spread from the region of the Southern Slavs, and Hungary separated speakers of Western Slavic languages from that region. In addition, Old Church Slavonic was the liturgical (religious) language of the East Orthodox Church. Since speakers of West Slavic languages were converted to Roman Catholicism rather than to East Orthodox Christianity, Latin was generally used as their liturgical language instead of Old Church Slavonic. The earliest full-length texts in West Slavic languages generally seem to date to the 14th century.

           

West Slavic language includes four languages:

·        Polish

·        Czech

·        Slovak

·        Sorbian or Wendish

Polish:

            Out of the four West Slavic Languages, Polish is the largest spoken language by about 36 million people within Poland, by about three million in the United States, and by smaller numbers in the Soviet Union and other countries. Polish is the third most widely spoken Slavic Language today and the most widely spoken West Slavic Language.

Czech:

            Czech is the one of the official languages of Czechoslovakia and is spoken by about 10 million people.

Slovak:

            Slovak is the other official language spoken in Czechoslovakia and it is spoken by about 5 million people.

Sorbian or Wendish:

            Sorbian or Wendish is spoken by only a little over 100,000 people in Germany, in a district a little northeast of Dresden.

3. South Slavic:

            Like the East Slavic languages, the South Slavic languages were strongly influenced by Old Church Slavonic. In fact Old Church Slavonic is often considered to be a South Slavic language, though it also seems to be closely related to the Proto-Slavic language from which all Slavic languages descended. The first modern South Slavic language to be written appears to be Slovenian, in the 10th century.

South Slavic Languages include:

·        Bulgarian

·        Serbo-Croatian

·        Solvenian

Bulgarian:

            Old Bulgarian was spoken in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula when the region was overrun by a non-Slavic race. But the conqueror was absorbed by the conquered and adopted his language. Modern Bulgarian has borrowed extensively from Turkish for the language of everyday use, while the literary language is even more heavily indebted to Russian.

Serbo-Croatian:

            Serbo-Croatian represents the Union of Serbian, formerly the language of Serbia. Croatian, spoken before World War I by the Croats of Bosnia and Croatia. The two languages are practically identical.

Solvenian:

            Solvenian is spoken by about a million and a half people at the head of the Adriatic. Serbo-Croatian and most of the Solvenian are within the territory of Yugoslavia.

Conclusion:

            Balto-Slavic group constitute a more homogeneous group than the languages of some of the other branches. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to the period of common development.