Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 February 16

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 16

proto-language

How many is the proto-languages?--95.251.179.126 (talk) 19:04, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Just the one, I'm afraid. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 27 Shevat 5775 19:09, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

If the OP meant how many branches there are from the original proto-language (that is, how many language groups like Proto-Indo-European language or Proto-Semitic language there are), that part of the tree hasn't been figured out yet. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:33, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I would interpret the question as meaning "How many times (do we know about) that language has independently developed?" This is a perfectly reasonable question, and the answer is, we don't know. Proponents Proto-World believe that the answer is once, and that we can go some way to reconstructing the one. Most linguists, I think do not accept that. My opinion is that all known languages probably do go back to a single proto-language, but that we will never be able to demonstrate this. But nobody knows, and I suspect that nobody ever will. --ColinFine (talk) 23:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

List of proto-languages --— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• Caveat lector: what is ranked as a proto-language is almost always a matter of current reconstructed knowledge, not of any necessarily important node in actual history. See, for example, Ritwan and Algonquin versus Algonquian-Ritwan and Anatolian languages and PIE versus Indo-Hittite. μηδείς (talk) 02:14, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The number of proto-languages is actually quite large, if you consider all the intermediate proto-languages such as Proto-Germanic. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:21, 21 February 2015 (UTC)