This historical linguistic discussion deals with the geography of Europe's language families. Major language families discussed include Romance, Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic families, as well as the "outliers" Albanian and Basque.
Maps are used to show the historical distribution of language families across Europe. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire, and the survival of Latin in the Romance languages of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian, are discussed. The survival of Greek in southeastern Europe is discussed.
The fall of the Roman Empire led to the expansion of the Germanic language family, particularly the triumph of Anglo-Saxon (English) in Britian, and the spread of Slavic languages throughout eastern Europe.
Celtic languages once spread across a giant portion of Europe, but were reduced on the continent by the expanse of Rome. Celtic languages exist today in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
A modern map of the nations of Europe today actually reveals the old Roman Empire (as outlined by Romance languages) and the territorities of the Germanic tribes.
For more information on language history, Nicholas Ostler's "Empires of the Word" is a great, information-rich text. A popular work on the fall of Rome and the expansion of the Germanic and Slavic tribes is "How the Barbarian Invasions Shaped the Modern World" by Thomas Craughwell.
MUSIC CREDIT:
Angevin - Thatched Villagers by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license ([ Ссылка ])
Source: [ Ссылка ]
Artist: [ Ссылка ]
Film by Jeffrey Meyer
Satellite images from Microsoft Bing Maps
