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Proto-language
 
 
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A proto-language is the common ancestor of the language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
s that form a language family
Language family

A language family is a group of languages related Genetic from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with Alpha taxonomy, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics....
. Occasionally, the German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 term Ursprache (from Ur- "primordial" and Sprache "language") is used instead.

Often the proto-language is not known directly. In such cases, it may be reconstructed
Linguistic reconstruction

Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction....
 by comparing different members of the language family through the comparative method
Comparative method

In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages. It requires the use of two or more languages. It is opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which studies the internal development of a single language over time....
. The level of completeness of the reconstruction achieved varies, depending on how complete the evidence is from the descendant languages and on the quality of the effort of the linguists working on it.






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A proto-language is the common ancestor of the language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
s that form a language family
Language family

A language family is a group of languages related Genetic from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with Alpha taxonomy, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics....
. Occasionally, the German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 term Ursprache (from Ur- "primordial" and Sprache "language") is used instead.

Often the proto-language is not known directly. In such cases, it may be reconstructed
Linguistic reconstruction

Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction....
 by comparing different members of the language family through the comparative method
Comparative method

In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages. It requires the use of two or more languages. It is opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which studies the internal development of a single language over time....
. The level of completeness of the reconstruction achieved varies, depending on how complete the evidence is from the descendant languages and on the quality of the effort of the linguists working on it. Some of the many unattested proto-languages for which reconstructions have been devised are Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, linguistic reconstruction common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans....
, Proto-Uralic
Proto-Uralic language

Proto-Uralic is the hypothetical language ancestral to the Uralic languages language family, which includes Finno-Ugric languages and Samoyedic languages....
, and Proto-Dravidian
Proto-Dravidian

Proto-Dravidian is the proto-language of the Dravidian languages....
.

In other cases, the proto-language is attested in surviving texts. For example, Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 is the proto-language of the Romance
Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages comprising all the languages that descend from Latin language, the language of ancient Rome....
 language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. Likewise, Old Norse
Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic languages that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages
North Germanic languages

The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages....
, is attested, albeit in fragmentary form, in ancient runic inscriptions
Runic alphabet

The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using Letter known as runes to write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter....
. Although there are no very early Indo-Aryan
Indo-Aryan languages

The Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages family.SIL International in a 2005 estimate counted a total of 209 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani language , Bangla language , Punjabi language , Marathi , Gujarati language , Nepali language , Oriya language , Sindhi language , Sinhal...
 inscriptions, the Indo-Aryan languages of modern India all go back to Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit is an Old Indic language. It is the language of the Vedas, the oldest shruti texts of Hinduism, compiled over the period of the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BC....
 or dialects very closely related to it, which has been preserved in texts accurately handed down by parallel oral and written traditions for many centuries.

The first person to offer systematic reconstructions of an unattested proto-language was August Schleicher for Proto-Indo-European in 1861 (Lehmann 1993:26).

See also

  • Comparative method
    Comparative method

    In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages. It requires the use of two or more languages. It is opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which studies the internal development of a single language over time....
  • Historical linguistics
    Historical linguistics

    Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
  • Proto-Human language