Comment by asveikau | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asveikau | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Actually it's common Balto-Slavic branch. I'm not kidding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balto-Slavic_languages

I am American, and my father's parents were from Lithuania.

I noticed recently, within the last few years, that several English Wikipedia articles were edited by someone with a Slavic background to promote the idea that Baltic languages are more related to Slavic ones than I have heard anyone claim before. I would imagine this is a controversial claim in the Baltic states.

At any rate Baltic languages are famously more conservative than Slavic ones. They are of course related as all indo-european languages are. The only question is how far back in history you have to go for that to be a relevant matter. I do not think they are close enough that it is relevant.

This hasn't been controversial in Latvia at all, at least in 90-00's (not that scientific theories should be judged by how controversial they are among laymen). The theory that I heard in several Latvian schools, is that lithuanians and latvians had a common language with slavs and they got separated somewhere in bronze age. Lithuanian language supposedly is the most archaic language alive (that is closest to proto-indo-european language by some measures). As far as I undestand there is consensus between linguists working in the field, that Baltic and Slavic languages are very close, the only questionable part is whether there was proto-balto-slavic language or whether these languages acquired similarities over time (also, some suggest that slavic languages separated from existing proto-baltic language).

Given tendency for revisionism and troubled past between Baltic states and Russia, one could see how it seems so alien to some people.

Btw, here is article on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Balto-Slavic_language (also https://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltu-sl%C4%81vu_pirmvalodas_h... which is much shorter, but has different references), and it seems that theory itself actually has been proposed by western linguists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com