Linguistics

1195 readers

1 users here now

Welcome to the community about the science of human Language!

Everyone is welcome here: from laypeople to professionals, Historical linguists to discourse analysts, structuralists to generativists.

Rules:

Instance rules apply.
Be reasonable, constructive, and conductive to discussion.
Stay on-topic, specially for more divisive subjects. And avoid unnecessary mentioning topics and individuals prone to derail the discussion.
Post sources when reasonable to do so. And when sharing links to paywalled content, provide either a short summary of the content or a freely accessible archive link.
Avoid crack theories and pseudoscientific claims.
Have fun!

Related communities:

Resources:

Grammar Watch - contains descriptions of the grammars of multiple languages, from the whole world.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

lvxferre@mander.xyz

fossilesque@mander.xyz

Linguistic evidence suggests that the Xiōng-Nú and the Huns spoke the same Paleo-Siberian language (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by lvxferre@mander.xyz to c/linguistics@mander.xyz

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Additional links with press coverage: ArcheologyMag, Oxford.

For context:

The Huns were nomadic people from Central Eurasia; known for displacing a bunch of Iranian (e.g. Alans) and and Germanic (e.g. Goths, Suebians etc.) speakers, that ultimately invaded the Roman Empire. They reached the Volga around 370 CE, and one of their leaders (Attila) is specially famous. Often believed to be a Turkic people, but if the study is correct they're from a completely different language family instead.

The Xiōng-Nú are mentioned by Chinese sources as one of the "Five Barbarians" (i.e. non-Han people). They would've lived in Central Eurasia between 300 BCE and 100 CE or so, and eventually became Han tributaries.

The Paleo-Siberian language in question would be an older form of Arin, a Yeniseian language. Yup, that same family believed by some to have relatives in the Americas.

top 3 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] MalikMuaddibSoong@startrek.website 2 points 6 days ago

A lot of “we brought the receipts” energy in that paper 👌

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Does the Philological Society require papers to include abstracts in Greek and Latin, or is that just the authors flexing?

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Just the authors flexing; some papers only have English abstracts, or English + another language, like this.