Overview

At first sight, Europe appears as a mosaic of dozens of mutually unintelligible tongues, the outcome of a rich and complex past. Yet as soon as one probes a little deeper into that past, by looking to the broad-scale classification of the languages spoken across the continent, a host of close relationships between them become immediately apparent. These languages rank, moreover, among the most intensively researched and best understood of any part of the globe. That confidence extends also to our knowledge of how they relate to each other, and of non-linguistic processes at work in their historic and prehistoric contexts, likewise understood nowhere better than in Europe. Of these, the best-known case, albeit just one among many across the continent, is the rise and fall of Rome, and with it both the spread of Latin, and then its divergence to give rise to the Romance family of languages. For while the Roman Empire may be long gone, in language much of Europe remains defined by its indelible linguistic footprint: not just the aptly named Romansch and Romanian, but almost all European speech from Sicily to Normandy to Gibraltar. Our copious linguistic data in Europe today make for especially rich sources for either corroborating or revising other disciplines’ perspectives on the continent’s past. They also serve as our best-documented case-studies for broader models by which to chart linguistic prehistory elsewhere in the world too.