Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #dialects

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Around 3000 BCE in eastern #Europe, a Proto-Balto-Slavic #language started to diverge from #ProtoIndoEuropean.

The #Slavic branch of the #IndoEuropean #languages began about 2,000 years later when Proto-Slavic deviated from Proto-Balto-Slavic.

[Image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balt…] Source: The Indo-European L...
As the #Slavic-speaking area expanded during the first millennium CE (striped area on map), Proto-Slavic transitioned to Common Slavic. The #language underwent minor changes that occurred mostly uniformly across eastern #Europe, thereby maintaining mutual intelligibility. A map of eastern Europe sho...
Around the year 1000 CE #CommonSlavic began to split into the South, West, and East branches to which all modern #Slavic #languages belong.

Roughly 315m people speak a Slavic #language, mostly in Eastern #Europe (including the #Balkan peninsula), #CentralAsia, and #Siberia. A map of Europe highlightin...
Read 359 tweets
In the early part of the first millennium CE, the #IndoEuropean language known as Proto-#Germanic diverged into an East branch (which included #Gothic) and a Northwest branch.

Northwest then split into West and North branches when Proto-#Norse developed in #Scandinavia. Image
Until the 8th century, #Germanic #languages, including Proto-#Norse, were written in Elder Futhark, the earliest #runic #alphabet.

The name #Futhark comes from the initial phonemes in the names of the first six #runes:
ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚨ ᚱ ᚲ
F U Þ A R K

By the beginning of the #Viking Age around 800 CE, Proto-#Norse had evolved into Old Norse, and #Scandinavia's writing system transitioned from the 24 #runes of Elder #Futhark to Younger Futhark's 16 runes.

The #Swedish #Sparlösa #Runestone from ~800 CE features both #alphabets. Image
Read 92 tweets
~2K indigenous Comox (aka K'ómoks) people live near the Strait of Georgia in #BritishColumbia, 🇨🇦#Canada.

Only a few dozen are native speakers of Comox (aka Saɬuɬtxʷ or ʔayʔaǰuθəm), which belongs to the Coast #Salish branch of the #Salishan family of #languages. Image
~1.5K #Quinault people live in western #Washington, 🇺🇸#USA. The Quinault (Kʷínaył) #language belongs to the Coast #Salish branch of the #Salishan family of #languages. It has no known native speakers left, as the population has shifted to #English. Image
#Halkomelem is an #indigenous #language with 100 to 300 speakers in #BritishColumbia, 🇨🇦#Canada and #Washington, 🇺🇸#US. It belongs to the Coast #Salish branch of the #Salishan family of #languages.

The #Cowichan are one of several peoples who originally spoke Halkomelem: Image
Read 8 tweets

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