The language map below is from just prior to the emergence of Islam ca. 600 CE, which was well after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
The map calls what is often called "Old English", arguably more aptly, "Anglo-Saxon", as it is barely recognizable or understandable to modern English speakers even though it is the most important linguistic ancestor of the modern English language.
5 comments:
My main critique is with "Aramaic". Should read "Syriac" excepting Palaestina, which should be shaded Greek / Christian-Palaestinian-Aramaic.
And Sinai needs Greek enclaves, the monasteries.
"Coptic" is... fair, I guess. The Bohairic dialect was the ancestor to mediaeval Coptic and would have been the dialect of the lower north. Up the Nile, literary Coptic was still Sahidic but the map doesn't extend that far south.
I take it that "Magyar" includes Khanty / Mansi, the closest surviving relatives.
More points:
What on earth is this "Median". If we're using terms like "Magyar" and "Coptic", which I do allow; this should just read "Kurdish", maybe shaded with Middle Persian. (There's talk that Beth-Qardu/Corduene also relates to the Kurds, along Armenia's south; but there's less evidence to associate these people and that language at this time.)
Laconic Doric survives to this day and needs painted in the Peloponnese.
"Median (also Medean or Medic) was the language of the Medes. It is an ancient Iranian language and classified as belonging to the Northwestern Iranian subfamily, which includes many other languages such as Kurdish, Old Azeri, Talysh, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Zaza–Gorani and Baluchi." It flourished from 500 BCE to 500 CE.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_language
Re, Berber: by AD 600 I understand that Tuareg had already split from the most-common Tamazight languages spoken in Morocco / Rif today. Probably the desert Sahara in this part of the map should be given over to Tuareg.
But most of all, Kabylie deserves its own part of Algeria - where it survives today - because it is quite different from other Tamazight. As Zenaga is.
@Darayvus
Not wrong. Berber appears to be attributed to the whole language family since most people wouldn't be aware of finer distinctions.
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