This is a list of ancestor languages of modern and ancient languages, detailed for each modern language or its phylogenetic ancestor disappeared. For each language, the list is generally limited to the four or five immediate predecessors.
The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient Italic languages was Latin, the official language of ancient Rome, which conquered the other Italic peoples before the common era. The other Italic languages became extinct in the first centuries AD as their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and shifted to some form of Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries AD, Vulgar Latin diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today, while Literary Latin also survived.
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic; another nine subdivisions are now extinct.
Prakrit is a group of vernacular classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Indo-Aryan languages, excluding earlier inscriptions and Pali.
The Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated east of the Indus river in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal. Moreover, apart from the Indian subcontinent, large immigrant and expatriate Indo-Aryan–speaking communities live in Northwestern Europe, Western Asia, North America, the Caribbean, Southeast Africa, Polynesia and Australia, along with several million speakers of Romani languages primarily concentrated in Southeastern Europe. There are over 200 known Indo-Aryan languages.
This is a timeline of Chinese history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in China and its dynasties. To read about the background to these events, see History of China. See also the list of Chinese monarchs, Chinese emperors family tree, dynasties of China and years in China.
According to the definition by George L. Hart of the University of California, Berkeley, a classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large body of ancient written literature.
Kamarupi Prakrit is the postulated Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) Prakrit language used in ancient Kamarupa. This language has been derived from Gauda-Kamarupi Prakrit and the historical ancestor of the Kamatapuri lects and the modern Assamese language; and can be dated prior to 1250 CE, when the proto-Kamta language, the parent of the Kamatapuri lects, began to develop. Though not substantially proven, the existence of the language that predated the Kamatapuri lects and modern Assamese is widely believed to be descended from it.
The e caudata is a modified form of the letter E that is usually graphically represented in printed text as E with ogonek (ę) but has a distinct history of usage. It was used in Latin from as early as the sixth century to represent the vowel also written ae or æ. In old Gaelic texts from the 13th century, it represented an ea ligature.
Medieval India refers to a long period of post-classical history of the Indian subcontinent between the "ancient period" and "modern period". It is usually regarded as running approximately from the break-up of the Gupta Empire in the 6th century CE to the start of the early modern period in 1526 with the start of the Mughal Empire, although some historians regard it as both starting and finishing later than these points. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the early medieval and late medieval eras.
Shauraseni Prakrit was a Middle Indo-Aryan language and a Dramatic Prakrit. Shauraseni was the chief language used in drama in medieval northern India. Most of the material in this language originates from the 3rd to 10th centuries, and represented a regional language variety with minor modifications to the same linguistic substratum as other Dramatic Prakrit varieties. It may be based on the spoken vernacular around the 2nd century BC in the ancient state of Surasena.
The Pontic–Caspian Steppe is a steppe extending across Eastern Europe to Central Asia, formed by the Caspian and Pontic steppes. It stretches from the northern shores of the Black Sea to the northern area around the Caspian Sea, where it ends at the Ural-Caspian narrowing, which joins it with the Kazakh Steppe in Central Asia, making it a part of the larger Eurasian Steppe. Geopolitically, the Pontic-Caspian Steppe extends from northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania through Moldova and eastern Ukraine, through the North Caucasus of southern Russia, and into the Lower Volga region where it straddles the border of southern Russia and western Kazakhstan. Biogeographically, it is a part of the Palearctic realm, and of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome.
Apabhraṃśa is a term used by vaiyākaraṇāḥ since Patañjali to refer to languages spoken in North India before the rise of the modern languages. In Indology, it is used as an umbrella term for the dialects forming the transition between the late Middle and the early Modern Indo-Aryan languages, spanning the period between the 6th and 13th centuries CE. However, these dialects are conventionally included in the Middle Indo-Aryan period. Apabhraṃśa in Sanskrit literally means "corrupt" or "non-grammatical language", that which deviates from the norm of Sanskrit grammar.
Since the Iron Age in India, the native languages of the Indian subcontinent are divided into various language families, of which the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian are the most widely spoken. There are also many languages belonging to unrelated language families such as Munda and Tibeto-Burman, spoken by smaller groups.
The Middle Indo-Aryan languages are a historical group of languages of the Indo-Aryan family. They are the descendants of Old Indo-Aryan and the predecessors of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Bengali and Punjabi.
Abahaṭṭha, Abahatta or Avahaṭṭha is a stage in the evolution of the Eastern group of the Indo-Aryan languages. The eastern group consists of languages such as Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Maithili, and Odia. Abahatta is considered to follow the Apabhraṃśa stage, i.e. those Apabhraṃśas derived from Magadhi Prakrit.
This is a timeline of Armenian history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in Armenia and its predecessor states. To read about the background to these events, see History of Armenia. See also the list of Armenian kings.
Old Hindi or Khariboli was the earliest stage of the Hindustani language, and so the ancestor of today's Hindi and Urdu. It developed from Shauraseni Prakrit and was spoken by the peoples of the region around Delhi, in roughly the 10th–13th centuries before the Delhi Sultanate.
This is a timeline of Lebanese history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in Lebanon and its predecessor states. To read about the background to these events, see History of Lebanon. See also the list of presidents of Lebanon and list of prime ministers of Lebanon.
This is a list of heads of state, government leaders, and other rulers in any given century.