In previous posts, I mentioned 70 words inherited by Albanian directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and another 68 words borrowed by Albanian from other languages (mostly Indo-European). In this post, I look at another 32 Albanian words with no confirmed source in PIE or in borrowings. Together, these 3 posts cover the 170 Standard Albanian words…… Continue reading Albanian words of unknown or uncertain origin
Tag: Germanic
Where did Albanian borrow words from?
In this post, I look at 68 words that Albanian borrowed from other languages,. Most of the words were borrowed from other Indo-European languages. In a previous post, I mentioned 70 other words that Albanian inherited directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the presumed ancestor of the Indo-European family of languages. https://languagemiscellany.com/2025/09/where-did-albanian-words-come-from/ The information comes from the…… Continue reading Where did Albanian borrow words from?
Where did Albanian words come from?
In this post, I look at 70 words that Albanian inherited directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the presumed ancestor of the Indo-European family of languages. The information comes from the IE-COR database—a database of cognates for 109 modern and 52 older Indo-European languages. I’ve written before about IE-COR. Database of Indo-European cognates – Language Miscellany IE-COR…… Continue reading Where did Albanian words come from?
Some things I like about Hungarian
Hungarian differs from most European languages in several ways, partly because it is not a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Hungarian is a member of the Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. https://languagemiscellany.com/2024/01/the-uralic-languages/ This post covers some fascinating features of Hungarian: vowel harmony front and back vowels in deictic words possessive word…… Continue reading Some things I like about Hungarian
Language families: trees or waves?
Two types of model, developed originally in the mid 19th century, are often used to explain how languages develop and diverge: tree models and wave models. Tree models Tree models: treat all languages in a family as descending from a single ultimate ancestral language, via intermediate ancestors. treat each language as a single entity…… Continue reading Language families: trees or waves?
The Uralic Languages
According to Kiefer and Laakso (2014), there is a general consensus that there are 6 main branches of Uralic: Ugric: Hungarian (13 million speakers) and, in Western Siberia, the Ob-Ugric languages Khanty (almost 10,000 speakers) and Mansi (probably less than 10,000 speakers) Finnic: Finnish (5 million speakers); Estonian (1 million). Other Finnic languages have many…… Continue reading The Uralic Languages
From the Steppes or from Anatolia?
A recent paper takes a further look at some old questions: when did Indo-European languages separate from the rest of that language family, and in which order? where did speakers of Proto Indo-European—the ancestral language of the Indo-European language family—live? The paper Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of…… Continue reading From the Steppes or from Anatolia?
Structure of numbers in Indo-European
How are numerals formed in Indo-European languages today, and how were they formed in the ancestral language Proto-Indo-European (PIE)? And do ordering patterns of components within numerals align with other word order patterns in the same languages? Andreea S. Calude and Annemarie Verkerk considered those questions in a paper looking at how 81 present and past…… Continue reading Structure of numbers in Indo-European
Measuring how much languages differ
Is it possible to quantity how one language differs from another language? In 2015, two academic researchers tried to do that by creating what they called a ‘Language Friction Index’ (LFI). They describe the index in their paper Language friction and partner selection in cross-border R&D alliance formation, Amol M Joshi and Nandini Lahiri, Journal…… Continue reading Measuring how much languages differ
What is the perfect and where does it occur?
The World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (WALS) is a useful resource for looking at similarities and differences between languages. I’ve recently looked at WALS to get more information on the verb form known as the perfect. This post is based on Chapter 68 of WALS The Perfect. Meaning of ‘perfect’ in WALS Chapter 68 of…… Continue reading What is the perfect and where does it occur?