# Are Nostratic languages dead?



## Interfector

These language families are usuallly accepted as Nostratic languages:


Afroasiatic
Kartvelian
Indo-European
Uralic
Dravidian
Altaic
Eskimo-Aleut
I dont understand, how this hypothesis could gain acceptance, when some language families belong to one race and some to another. Indo-european, Afroasiatic and Kartvelian languages could be classified as "Europoid", because vast majority of people speaking these languages are morpohlogically similar. Similarly, Uralic, Altaic and Eskimo-Aleut could be classified as "Mongoloid". This is something, that can't be explained by mere mixing and accepting languages of other language family.
The reason for this is, that linguists put origins of Nostratic languages to 18 000 - 8 000 BC. 
The problem is, that ethnic composition doesnt change that fast. For example, some Malagasy people are of mongoloid (austronesian) descent. On the other side of the planet, north american indians bear strong morphological resemblance to Malagasy! (Compare here and here.)(or Maori here) They are divided by at least 20 000 years, but possibly also 40 000 years of independent development. 
In light of this, how can anyone classify Mongols (Altaic languages) and French (Indo-european languages) into the same language group? I am aware that taking-over of languages has taken place, fine example of this are Hungarians. But I consider taking over on such massive scale as imposible.


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## Frank06

Interfector said:


> I dont understand, how this hypothesis could gain acceptance, when some language families belong to one race and some to another.


Nostratic is a language theory, not a race theory, whatever  "race" is supposed to mean (less than nothing?).
There are many objections against Nostratic and it's far from generally accepted. But none of the objections have to do with "race".

Even if we'd accept Nostratic, then the question "Are Nostratic languages dead" doesn't make an awful lot of sense. It would be the same, m.m. to wonder in how far the Indo-European languages are dead.

The problem with notions as 'race' is that it hardly has any meaning, it's not a productive term. 
Besides, why would one make an objection against Nostratic from a race point of view, and skip all those objections when talking about Indo-European (or any other language family).

Frank


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## Interfector

Frank06 said:


> Nostratic is a language theory, not a race theory, whatever  "race" is supposed to mean.
> There are many objections against Nostratic and it's far from generally accepted. But none of the objections have to do with "race".
> 
> Frank



It doesn't matter how you call it, call it "ethnic grouping", if you dont like the word "race".


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## sokol

Well, objections against Nostratic theory (which hasn't been accepted in mainstream linguistics yet - and probably never will be) aren't even "ethnical", or whatever you call it.

So I don't see the need to try and disqualify this theory by genetic evidence. Also, on a side-note, I would like to remark that genetic evidence could be misleading, even genetically diverse groups can share a language.

But this really is not the point here, as the point is rather that Nostratic languages never really were "alive"; they were and are a hypothesis only, and a far-fetched one, according to many linguists.


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## berndf

Interfector said:


> It doesn't matter how you call it, call it "ethnic grouping", if you dont like the word "race".


I think these considerations are usually ignored because it is a quite generally accepted premise that languages and cultures often disseminate independently of populations.


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## Interfector

berndf said:


> I think these considerations are usually ignored because it is a quite generally accepted premise that languages and cultures often disseminate independently of populations.


The fact is, that language is very dependent on populations. It can happen that some ethnic group accepts language of another ethnic group, but that happens only in case when that ethnic group subjugates the other, often intermingling with it. Moreover, it is not very common, and also the more distant the two language groups are, the more difficult it is. For example people in north Africa borrowed Arabic as their language, but that was only made possible by affinity of Berber and Arabic. 
We are now talking about two major groupings of people, which more or less mutually interbred and borrowed languages, but i say that it is impossible for them to come from one common source.


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## miguel89

Interfector said:


> Moreover, it is not very common, and also the more distant the two language groups are, the more difficult it is.


The possibilities are endless over a long span of time.


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## berndf

Interfector said:


> Moreover, it is not very common


More and more scholars today argue the exact opposite. Consider some of the major changes of languages in  Europe where we used to think they were caused by exchanges of entire populations or at least large parts of the population, like the expansion of Celtic languages from the alpine region to Western Europe, including the British Isles or later the expansion of Germanic from Scandinavia to what is today Germany, the Netherlands and Britain or the expansion of Slavic languages throughout Eastern and parts of Central and South-Eastern Europe. For none of these do we seem to find archeological or genetic evidence for large scale exchanges of populations.

Europe is of course not representative for the entire world but previously held beliefs that languages mainly disseminate with populations has taken a severe blow and should not be taken as a matter of course as you do.

Apart from all this, I agree with Sokol that the Nostratic theory is highly speculative and, to say it politely, it has never been linguistic main stream.


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## ilocas2

berndf said:


> the expansion of Slavic languages throughout Eastern and parts of Central and South-Eastern Europe. For none of these do we seem to find archeological or genetic evidence for large scale exchanges of populations.



It's archeologically proved, that in the 6th century in the area of today Czech republic, almost complete exchange of population happened, when Slavs arrived in the manner of military invasion and the previous population went away. Czechs began to mix genetically with Germans in the 13th century, when German colonization of border regions started.

Sorry for off-topic

To the topic of this thread, I mostly disagree with Interfector


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## berndf

Archeologically evidenced is an exchange of Leitkultur as a result of migration of militant tribes ruling the area. I don't think a quasi-complete exchange of population can be inferred from existing evidence.


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## koniecswiata

It is very hard to prove that a population has been completely or largely replaced.  It's true that in some parts of Europe, such as the Czech region, there was a drop in population density around the 5th and 6th centuries.
However, real population replacement does not seem to happen as much as something like acculturation or absorbtion.  True, there have been massive decimations and things like that, but even in those cases, a previous population was generally not completely wiped out.
Examples of people of one language (or other ethnicity) changing languages or "ethnicity" in more or less historical times:
Gauls to Romance speakers
Iberians to Romance speakers
Southern Italian Greek speakers to Romance speakers
Prussian speakers to German speakers
Polabian speakers to German speakers
Slavic speakers to Hungarian
Amerindian peoples of Central and South America to Spanish
African peoples to English, French, Spanish, Portuguese (result of slavery, but still)
Irish and Scots Gaelic speakers to English
And more and more...
So various people with differing phenotypes (let's say races) today are IndoEuropean speakers without really being the decendants of ancient Indo Europeans.


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## ilocas2

berndf said:


> Archeologically evidenced is an exchange of Leitkultur as a result of migration of militant tribes ruling the area. I don't think a quasi-complete exchange of population can be inferred from existing evidence.



In fact, I have read it in one book, where it was explained. And when I have written "almost" I meant 80,90 % or so, not 99,9 %. It could happened this way or not, nobody knows the truth today, so one can believe what he want to. Anyway, it doesn't matter.


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## Interfector

koniecswiata said:


> It is very hard to prove that a population has been completely or largely replaced.  It's true that in some parts of Europe, such as the Czech region, there was a drop in population density around the 5th and 6th centuries.
> However, real population replacement does not seem to happen as much as something like acculturation or absorbtion.  True, there have been massive decimations and things like that, but even in those cases, a previous population was generally not completely wiped out.
> Examples of people of one language (or other ethnicity) changing languages or "ethnicity" in more or less historical times:
> Gauls to Romance speakers
> Iberians to Romance speakers
> Southern Italian Greek speakers to Romance speakers
> Prussian speakers to German speakers
> Polabian speakers to German speakers
> Slavic speakers to Hungarian
> Amerindian peoples of Central and South America to Spanish
> African peoples to English, French, Spanish, Portuguese (result of slavery, but still)
> Irish and Scots Gaelic speakers to English
> And more and more...
> So various people with differing phenotypes (let's say races) today are IndoEuropean speakers without really being the decendants of ancient Indo Europeans.



Most of the language changes you listed here happened entirely within the framework of Indo-European languages, and even then it didnt go without significant population exchanges and mixing. Contemporary discourse says that during the Migration Period tribes were largely expelled and replaced by others, but nobody rules out ethnic mixing, it is just disputed to what degree it happened. 
As to the Amerindian peoples, they never fully accepted Spanish, they still speak Nahuatl or Maya, their native languages. Mestizos are product of ethnic mixing and as such they embraced Spanish. But it would be extremely hard without mixing. 
African-Americans are different, their language is product of slavery. Ethnic mixing occured anyway, they have about 20% of European admixture now.

Knowing this, you must accept that language change cant exist without population change. And I ask again, how can the Nostratic hypothesis explain 2 entirely different populations, separated by long-term separate development much longer than the alleged time of development of Nostratic languages? If they really come from one common source, they should exhibit at least partially similar features. But alas! The Altaic group is morphologically much more similar to American Indians or to Maori somewhere downunder! What explantation do you have for this?


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## Frank06

Not really a reply, but since I am not going to play the devil's advocate...
I fully agree with Bernd and Sokol on the issue of Nostratic, though I would have put it less politely:





> Apart from all this, I agree with Sokol that the Nostratic theory is highly speculative and, to say it politely, it has never been linguistic main stream.


I even think that the ethnicity/race issue, if it would be an issue at all, would be one of the smallest problems with the Nostratic theory.

As far as I remember, I haven't seen a lot of proponents in EHL. But if you're interested, I could pm you the e-address of a Yahoo based group which deals exclusively with Nostratic.

Frank


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## Interfector

How sad, I thought that someone here will be competent enough to contribute with constructive criticism of this theory. Nevermind.


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## koniecswiata

Whether or not people changed from one IE or Nostratic Language to another is irrelevant.  When a people goes through the process of language switching or change, they aren't really conscious of whether it is another (distantly) related language or not.  They don't switch to another language because of relatedness but rather for cultural reasons (imposition, prestige, etc...). 
In the Americas, many pure-blooded Indians have switched to Spanish.  The number of people who consider themselves to be Amerindian and the numbers of speakers of Indian languages is different.  In Chile, for example, a large number of Mapuches are not speakers of Mapudungun anymore.  Yet, they still retain their identity as Mapuche people--even without the language.  I suppose that is similar to the Irish--another case of the people largely losing their language, adopting another, yet still maintaining their separate identity.  
And, the mixing usually occurs also.  I absolutely agree with that.  The Nostratic idea is a virtually unprovable hypothesis anyways.


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## Ben Jamin

Interfector said:


> It doesn't matter how you call it, call it "ethnic grouping", if you dont like the word "race".


How will you explain that the Jamaicans speak English even if they are of a different race from the English? Call it race, ethnicity, genetics, what you want, it does not stop the language from spreading to other groups of people. Do you really believe that the genes define the language we speak?


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## Alxmrphi

Ben Jamin said:


> How will you explain that the Jamaicans speak English even if they are of a different race from the English? Call it race, ethnicity, genetics, what you want, it does not stop the language from spreading to other groups of people. Do you really believe that the genes define the language we speak?



Exactly.

Consider what happened in Normandy.
The Vikings that were pure-blooded Scandinavians moved down to gain territory in the north of France, and, as some estimates say, within 2-3 generations they were all French speaking. They couldn't converse in the old languages of their grandfathers, having to send children away at some point to learn because all they could speak was French.

That is, yet another, clear example of genetics haven't absolutely nothing to do with language. Though there is a correlation with population move (which does deal with language change as a consequence of population shift with interbreeding, which does link genetics to language). To suggest it has to be because of genes is ridiculous.


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## Ben Jamin

Interfector said:


> The fact is, that language is very dependent on populations.


What do you mean?



Interfector said:


> It can happen that some ethnic group accepts language of another ethnic group, but that happens only in case when that ethnic group subjugates the other, often intermingling with it. Moreover, it is not very common, and also the more distant the two language groups are, the more difficult it is.


There are plenty of examples that belie this statement. Changing a language can happen in many other ways. Especially in peoples in the  preagricultural stage.



Interfector said:


> For example people in north Africa borrowed Arabic as their language, but that was only made possible by affinity of Berber and Arabic.


 
Where do you have it from?



Interfector said:


> We are now talking about two major groupings of people, which more or less mutually interbred and borrowed languages, but i say that it is impossible for them to come from one common source.


The arguments for the Nostratic family are not stronger than the arguments against it. The evidence is too scarce and interpreted too freely. But we are speaking about linguistic evidence. You try to apply racial evidence, which is irrelevant. The Nostratic hypothesis will truly never be proved or disproved.

If you want to discuss the hypothesis further, please stick to linguistics, and leave racial arguments to the side.


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