Talk:Pre-Indo-European languages

Logic of this article
"non-classified languages that existed in prehistoric Europe and South Asia before the arrival of bearers of Indo-European languages". Excuse me, but there are still many non-indo-european languages alive in Europe. Except for Basque they have also bee classified.

"The only surviving pre-Indo-European language so far is the Basque language." Again, excuse me but the list of these so called pre-Indo-European languages contains also Finno-Ugric languages that are still very much alive.

This alone proves that the whole logic of the concept of "Pre-Indo-European languages" is faulty - this is probably due to the sources which in my opinion just reflect an Indo-European-centic attitude that is not scientifically valid. Secondly the writer of the article should have been able to recognise these discrepancies and also point them out.--Nedergard (talk) 17:05, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * As Uralic languages are not, as you rightly notice, unclassified languages, they do not fall under the definition, just like Dravidian, Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan. However, Siangic and other isolates of the Arunachal Pradesh region could be included, just like Kusunda and a few other isolates and non-Indo-European substrate languages in South Asia that Witzel mentions in his papers on the topic (available on his website). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:36, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

This article currently seems to be missing much of the recent scholars and scholarship in the field. I have a couple projects going now, but I'll try to circle back and and some more recent references and info. But if anyone else feels energetic on this, please be my guest! :)Johundhar (talk) 00:59, 23 June 2023 (UTC)


 * The article Paleo-European languages begins:
 * The Paleo-European languages, or Old European languages, are the mostly unknown languages that were spoken in Europe prior to the spread of the Indo-European and Uralic families caused by the Bronze Age invasion from the Eurasian steppe of pastoralists whose descendant languages dominate the continent today.
 * I think that elegantly does away with any doubts about whether Uralic should be considered Paleo-European.
 * Would it not make sense for the article on Pre-Indoeuropean languages to do the same? Nø (talk) 08:05, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Finno-Ugric languages
I was surprised at the omission of these as well. Finnish, Hungarian, Sami and Estonian as well as a smattering of other Finno-Ugric languages have been spoken in Europe way before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans and are still alive and kicking. Of these, Sami languages have been around the longest. --Snowgrouse (talk) 01:06, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem is that there is the possibility, and even good reason to think that Uralic languages were not actually spoken in Europe when Proto-Indo-European started to expand from its homeland (wherever and whenever that was). According to Häkkinen (2012) (see Yukaghir language), Pre-Proto-Uralic was spoken in South Siberia, in the Lake Baikal area, close to the Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic group, by about 3000 BC, and then migrated to the region where the Kama enters the Volga, from whence Proto-Uralic then expanded within Europe from about 2000 BC on. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:45, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Hungarian moreover arrived to the Pannonian plain only circa 900 CE, while the Samic and Finnic languages according to current thinking expanded across Fennoscandia starting around 0 CE. So they're quite certainly "post-Indo-European". (Genetically the Sami peoples can be counted as pre-Indo-European, though.)
 * In the taiga zone of Russia Uralic is indeed older than IE, but hardly anywhere else. Also, this region has only been "Indo-Europeanized" (Russified, to be exact) relatively recently, within the last 500 years or so. To call such languages "pre-Indo-European" makes not much more sense than to call American/Australian/Eastern Siberian indigenous languages "pre-Indo-European" by virtue that they have also been within the last 500 years overrun by English/Spanish/Portuguese/French/Russian. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 15:33, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed. In fact, there is a high probability that in some parts of Northern Russia, as well as Finland, Uralic replaced Indo-European during the Bronze and Iron Ages (for Finland, see Heikkilä 2011). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:37, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I've sort of revived this discussion, but since the newst previous post on Uralic was in the section above ("Logic of this article"), I added my comment there. Nø (talk) 08:07, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Pre-Indo-European?
I was just wondering if it's its own language, or the parent language of other pre-languages. What I'm asking is this:

Proto-Indo-European> Pre-Indo-European> Indo-European> Pre-Germanic

correct? Or would it be

Proto-Indo-European> Pre-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European> Pre-Germanic

instead? Or even something similar, like ProtoIE>PreIE>PreGermanic? I'm just curious as to what hypothetical steps happened after PIE. Google yielded nothing except the same articles I'd been reading that didn't as much as indirectly hint at the answer. (And even if there was no such language as Indo-European [I know it's a family {or phylum, if we must}], it's something to think about, right? ;D) Hope you understand what I'm asking. 98.71.147.45 (talk) 04:31, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Nah, it would be: Pre-Proto-Indo-European (until ca. 5th mill. BC) > Proto-Indo-European (ca. 4th mill. BC) > Pre-Proto-Germanic (ca. 4th–1st mill. BC) > Proto-Germanic (1st mill. BC). Pre-Proto-Indo-European reconstructions are speculative (although some results achieved by internal reconstruction are plausible), and the further relationships of the Indo-European family are uncertain. Be careful to distinguish Pre-X and Pre-Proto-X: For example, Pre-Proto-French would be something like Late Latin or Early Romance, and Pre-French would be Gaulish. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:55, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Urbian
The "Urbian" speculation, while properly referenced to a relevant and reputable academic journal, was basically added merely for amusement, see. I don't wish to mislead our readers into mistaking this foolish idea for a serious hypothesis just because it has a RS, so I it; there is more than enough pseudolinguistics and assorted other pseudoscience around already. JFYI. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:30, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * @Florian Blaschke: Read "funny" as "can't be rejected out of hand", which is relative, or at least assume good faith, and don't neglect the part where @dab said "interesting and ...".
 * Notability criteria don't cover article content like lists directly. I'm not sure about fringe. I wouldn't go there lest risking that we end up here with an empty article. In that sense, as long as Urbian still has an urticle, I'd prefer to have it listed here.
 * I'll repeat: Nobody mistakes anything on this page for a serious theory. Don't confuse theory and hypothesis. If you cannot point to a serious theory, instead of the nebulous, not to say handwaving, Old European, that you yourself mentioned critically in the Urbian talk-page as well, I'd say a diverse, heterogenic presentation is self-similar to the subject matter that it describes; That is, rather chaotic.
 * I'm impartial about the theory, haven't read it, but find the hypothesis appealing and don't accept pejorative criticism. WP is not your Soap Box, and not a place for censorship. If there's a lexicographic argument about inclusion, that would be a different matter.
 * I mean, if I want it to be included again, I need to make an argument in its favour. I understand that a secondary source would establish notability, lesser content criteria notwithstanding. I expect any JIES publication receives a review, and even a disfavourable review counts for something, but I'm not sure a review under the same editor counts. Help me out here, please.
 * Please excuse me if I haven't looked for a review myself yet: indexing of reviews is often terribly inaccessible. Rhyminreason (talk) 04:39, 30 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Censorship? Really? See WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. Beware of a common fallacy: If there are no reviews of a hypothesis, this doesn't mean it "hasn't been refuted nor disproved" and deserves coverage – it means disinterest from experts, and equals rejection. Urbian arguably fails WP:N and should be deleted altogether. It's pseudolinguistic speculation relying on ridiculously vague soundalikes. That kind of "scholarship" suffers from such a low methodological standard that it can be rejected out of hand as baseless. By the way, I wrote "foolish", not "funny". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:24, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Surviving languages
Is this really a correct title? Can it be proven that they existed in the relevant areas that long ago or is it (more or less) likely that the languages have spread into the area just as the Indo-European languages have? It is, as I understand it, hard to prove that people of a certain archeological culture spoke a certain language. Gunnar Larsson (talk) 17:22, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think we can actually prove that conclusively, no. For example, if Etruscan and Raetic are not indigenous to Italy, they may actually have replaced Italic and Celtic dialects respectively, and Basque may well have replaced ancient Celtic dialects in the southwestern part of the Basque Country. (There is even speculation that Sumerian was preceded by a form of Indo-European in Southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC – and perhaps even in Northern Mesopotamia in view of the Akkadian prepositions ana and ina, which look un-Semitic but strikingly Indo-European.) It's just that we have no concrete reason to think, for example, that Minoan on Crete was preceded by Indo-European or in fact any other language, or that (say) Dravidian or Munda was preceded by Indo-European in South Asia (even if Dravidian may well itself have been intrusive in South Asia, and Munda almost certainly was), so in this sense they are definitely Pre-Indo-European (even if they may well not have been the oldest languages ever spoken there); on Crete, Minoan is the oldest linguistic layer we can recover, and in South Asia, Dravidian and Munda precede Indo-European languages but are not themselves preceded by any identifiable older layers – although Witzel mentions possible substrates of Dravidian in the south of India, substrates that cannot be connected with any known languages themselves and would therefore seem to be autochthonous; however, autochthony is always a relative term. According to Ante Aikio, Sami languages were preceded by identifiable substrates in Northern Europe which he terms "Paleo-Laplandic" (in Lapland/Sápmi) and "Paleo-Lakelandic" (in central and southern Finland), which were neither Indo-European nor Uralic nor related to any other identifiable language, hence the deepest recoverable "autochthonous" layer in Northern Europe, even though from the point of view of living and attested languages, Sami is considered autochthonous because there is nothing older actually left. There's generally a lot of linguistic prehistory we may only have the faintest clue of, if at all. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:52, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Merge proposal with Paleo-European languages
The (rather fuzzy) topic of Paleo-European languages seem to be the same. I propose to merge them, and maybe rename the result as "Pre-Indo-European languages of Europe" --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:06, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Do a proper WP:PM listing please, with tags etc. Johnbod (talk) 02:18, 10 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Oppose. While PIE cannot be dated any more precisely than 4500-2500 BC, it hardly overlap with the paleolithic by definition, ending ca 10k BC. In shorter timelines, pre-PIE would even reach into the bronze age; though no specifically metallurgic PIE roots are reconstructed. Rhyminreason (talk) 04:53, 30 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Agree with Rhyminreason. Pre-Indo-European refers to something attested either directly (inscriptions, glossary, names etc.) or indirectly (by prominent substrate lexicon, sometimes accompanied by mentioning of respective "ancient people" in local legends etc.) Paleo-European is a wider term that encompasses as well something hypothetic. In addition, Paleo-European also encompasses substrate to non-Indo-European languages of Europe, that is, Finno-Ugric - most notably the pre-Saamic substrate. Dmitri Lytov (talk) 04:15, 2 January 2020 (UTC)