URHEIMAT

'Urheimat' (German: ''ur-'' original, ancient; ''Heimat'' home, homeland) is a linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language. Since many peoples tend to wander and spread, there is no absolute Urheimat, e.g. there is an Indo-European Urheimat different from the Germanic or Romance Urheimat. If the proto-language was spoken in historical times, the location of the Urheimat is typically undisputed, such as the Roman Empire in the case of the Romance languages. If the proto-language is unattested, however, its existence, and by consequence the existence and exact location of its Urheimat, may always be of a hypothetical nature.

Contents

Indo-European homeland

Afro-Asiatic homeland

References

See also

External links

Indo-European homeland

After this manner, scholars have tried to identify the homeland of the Indo-European languages, to which the term Urheimat is most frequently applied. Possibly relevant geographical indicators are common words for 'beech' and 'salmon' (while there is no common word for 'lion', for example—the fact so many European words for "lion" look alike is due to more recent borrowings). Many hypotheses for an Urheimat have been proposed, and said: “One does not ask ‘where is the Indo-European homeland?’ but rather ‘where do they put it now?’ ”
states that current discussion of the Indo-European homeland problem is largely confined to four basic models, with variations; these are, in chronological order:
;Baltic-Pontic(-Caspian):Mesolithic
;Anatolia:Early Neolithic, ''c.'' 7000–6000 BC
;Central Europe-Balkans:Early Neolithic ''c.'' 5000 BC
;Pontic-Caspian:Eneolithic ''c.'' 4500–3500 BC
Other, less widely accepted models include the Armenian hypothesis, the Paleolithic Continuity Theory, and the Out of India theory.

Afro-Asiatic homeland

Main articles: Proto-Afro-Asiatic

The more limited area part of the Afro-Asiatic Sprachraum has limited the potential areas where the that family's Urheimat could be. Generally speaking, two proposals have been developed: that Afro-Asiatic arose in the Semitic Urheimat (the Middle East/Southwest Asia), in northeast Africa (generally, either between Darfur and Tibesti or in Ethiopia and the other countries of the Horn of Africa). The African hypothesis is considered to be rather more likely at the present time.

References

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See also

★ Sprachraum

★ Nationalism and ancient history

External links

★ Linguistics and Ideology in the Study of Language by E. F. K. Koerner, University of Ottawa On linguistics and the search for the original Indo-European homeland