File talk:IndoEuropeanTree.svg

Table completely outdated

This table is outdated since decades and obviously the work of a layman. There is today no single professional Indo-Europeanist in the world organizing this family into Satem vs. Centum languages.HJJHolm (talk) 06:18, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I moved this comment from the file page to the talk page. Aerolcommons (talk) 12:36, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Breton

Breton? an extincted language? 250 000 people are still using it in Brittany! ! 84.101.80.70 (talk)

Corrected. Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 10:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

English

Why is English put in such an unusual place? This would be alright if it were a fusion of Saxon, Norse and Norman French, but it isn't; it's the modern descendent of the first which has been influenced by the others. Spanish was influenced by Basque but you wouldn't draw an arrow between the two. 137.205.74.230 (talk) 14:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I guess since English is one of the most commonly used languages in the world, extra detail was added by User:LSD towards its evolution. Also, since this is a tree of Indo-European languages, it would be difficult to draw a link from Basque to Spanish, since Basque is a language isolate. In similar style, I have drawn links to Hindi and Urdu from Sanskrit and Persian respectively. Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 02:36, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Well the map makes it look like English is a fusion of many languages, it should be changed. Wikipedia seems to be spreading more misinformation than information these days! Sigurd Dragon Slayer (talk) 20:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

While I think this chart superior to any other, I still believe that English/Fresian/Dutch split off separately and earlier than Western/Eastern Germanic. I dont believe English is descended from Saxon, but was already in Britain alongside Celtic long before even the Romans arrived, and is closely related to the Dutch/Fresian/Flems just across the channel. Saxon was simply an interim language in Britain much like latin and french were interim languages in Britain. The proof of this can be seen in the Anglo Saxon chronicles where pre-Norman chronicles were written in old Saxon, but once the Normans arrived the English writers had freedom to write the chronicles in their own language, English..hence the diametric and radical change from foreign Saxon to English at that time. Saxon is simply a foreign language with little relation to modern English or old English.--92.3.253.238 (talk) 20:34, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

That cannot be shown though as it is too much of a fringe theory not supported by (m)any actual linguists. It is Old English not "old Saxon" (though some call it Anglo-Saxon, this is less correct and now far less common in academic circles). Old Saxon is, of course, what we sometimes call Old Low German. Though West Saxon was a dialect of Old English. English is closely related to Frisian, however it is closer to Low German than it is to Dutch, but closer to Dutch than High German. If it separated before the split into North, West and East Germanic (which is more or less impossible. A better explanation than I could give can be viewed here: http://www.grsampson.net/QOppenheimer.html) then it would not be as close to Frisian (it is of course still an Anglo-Frisian language) as it is. Your statement "Saxon is simply a foreign language with little relation to modern English or old English." is also untrue as they would still be related as Germanic languages ('Old English' (your "old Saxon") was certainly related to Dutch, Frisian, Low German, High German and the North Germanic languages) and again it is 'Old English'. Lastly, after the Norman invasion they didn't suddenly switch to a vastly different language. In fact English was barely written down during the earlier part of the High Middle Ages (most of the writing being in Medieval Latin, the language of the Church (mostly the only source of literacy), with language of court being [[Norman French], the languages of the conquering class); what we have written down in the Chronicles is the same as that from the later pre-Norman era other than the last parts of the Peterborough Chronicle which features sections (from the mid-1100s onwards) that are much of the time considered to be written in Early Middle English (though some consider them to still be Late Old English, where we find new vocabulary some slight simplifications in the syntax. Although it can be debated how much the language had changed in that era (as like in many cases now, they may have written in a more formal language during the later pre-Norman era) there is nothing to suggest that Old English and Middle English are not forms of the same language. In fact Early Middle English features far too many features of Old English to just be related to it as a sister language, as say, Old Low German was, rather than being a newer form of the same language. Sigurd Dragon Slayer (talk) 23:17, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

"Extant Literature"

Classical Latin is the Latin of Cicero, Caesar, and Livy, of which we have a wealth of literature. Why is it not in blue? Furthermore, I have personally read curses written in Oscan and Umbrian, so those should be in blue as well. While we don't have extensive literature as we do in Latin or Ancient Greek, there are several complete inscriptions surviving. Where are we drawing the line as far as what constitutes "extant literature"? Simpsone4 (talk) 19:55, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we have surviving literature in hundreds of languages. Pretty much every dead language listed survives in some form or another! After all, if we didn't have some record of it, we wouldn't know it exists! Which pretty much makes this category pointless... LSD (talk) 04:15, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

True.., I should have thought so before making the changes. Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 22:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Ordering

Please maintain the stated order of the tree. Languages to the left are Centum, those to the right are Satem. As it stands, you've moved Tocharian to the Satem side where it doesn't belong. Additionaly, you've broken the earlist-to-latest hierarchy. LSD (talk) 04:15, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. I forgot to update the SVG file on my hard disk (with the corrected one you had made), before modifying it. Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 22:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Catalan?

Hi, I'm a little confused about the romance languages. I'm not an expert, but I've been to Barcelona, and the folks there call Spanish "Castellana". They also speak (and use, on signs, publications, etc.), Catalan, which is NOT the same language. However, even to my relatively untutored perception it surely has to be a romance (or at least italic -- don't go after me on the details here, I'm just trying to raise the question) language. I speak much better French than Spanish and I can read Catalan better than I can read Spanish. But I don't see Catalan here at all, much less as a live language -- unless you meant it when you put "castillian"? --BTBridge (talk) 21:03, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

You're absolutely right!LSD (talk) 08:11, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Catalan is on the diagram. It is classified under Gallic, with French. --86.138.30.7 (talk) 04:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

It is now. ;) LSD (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

We should remove the "influence" branches/lines

I shall use English as the main focus as I am a speaker of that language, and it was the first I noticed, and the language I know most about.

We all know that English has a lot of borrowings however all good linguists and etymologists would tell you that English is not a hybrid language. If it is placed as so (with branches coming off of French and Old Norse) because of the borrowings from those languages then why not do the same for say German with an branch from Latin or Latin itself with an branch from Greek? Because that would be ridiculous. 80% of the most commonly used words in English are from Old English, it's syntax is derived (and simplified) from Old English and it is one of the heirs to that language. Loanwords do not change what the language is descended from, only a complete fusion of syntax...etc..could change it.

Also who decides which loanwords to show? Why not direct Latin words? Why not Greek? And what about the dialects of English (such as Northumbrian) that do not contain many French or Norse loans (Northumbrian vocabulary does contain a few Norse words such as "hyem" and a very few French loans but like Scots, most of it's words are Old English in origin)? Do we thus, have to separate all the dialects now to show that French and Norse loans are not uniformly distributed throughout the language?

In other words there is no reason to make English, Hindi and Urdu look any different from the other languages. We should either change them back to being more uniformed or change all the languages and show it's loanwords (something that is ridiculous in my opinion).

As I hinted at earlier, most of languages on the tree borrow from other ones. Who chooses which one's have more important loans than others, and who have been more influenced by another language. In Europe we could easily put branches from Latin on all the Celtic, Germanic, many Slavic and some other groups as they have borrowed many words from Latin as well as their current alphabet.

At the moment the language tree is overly complicated (due to said branches), seems to be suggesting fringe theories of linguistics (again the branches) and thus is a very un-encyclopædic image. Sigurd Dragon Slayer (talk) 20:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I removed the Influence links leading to Enlgish, but not for Hindi/Urdu. Arjun G. Menon (talk · mail) 02:47, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I think you make a reasonable case for english (although the sheer number of loan words in english makes it notable), but not for the others. Hindi and Urdu's borrowing from Sanskrit and Persian is pretty much all that distinguishes them from one another, and is a fundamental part of their identity. As for Greek, Koine Greek truly is a synthesis of Attic and Ionic Greek syntax. LSD (talk) 10:14, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Not to sound disapproving, because this is a great chart. Just a few questions and suggestions:

“Ukrainian” is misspelled. Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic are missing.

Is there a reason the central line carries on off the bottom of the chart? When I scroll around the zoomed-in image in my browser window, it looks like something is missing.

What do italics, all-caps, and bold indicate?

Are the white and cream-coloured boxes category labels, language groups, or proto-languages? If they are categories, then they probably shouldn't be represented by boxes like languages—maybe they should be large boxes outlining the members of the group. If they are language families, then perhaps they should be named like Slavic languages. If they are individual languages, then they should have their proper names, preferably corresponding to Wikipedia article titles (e.g. Proto-Slavic, not Slavic, Old East Slavic, not East).

What is the difference between white and cream? The latter is a bit hard to distinguish in my browser—maybe it should be made a bit deeper yellow for clarity.

The living/dead language status is conveyed only through colour, which may make this information inaccessible to a significant proportion of readers (red-green colour blindness is by far the most common type). Perhaps dead languages should have a dagger † added by their names, or have a different box shape (rounded corners like a tombstone?).

What is the nature of the tightly-joined stacks, without joining lines? Does their order indicate parent-child relationship, or chronology? If not, then perhaps they should be in alphabetical order, possibly with extinct languages listed before surviving ones. Why do some have a white box with a language in bold all-caps at the top?

Is there significance to the location and length of branches from the main stem? Why is Indo-Iranian pulled down so far below Anatolian and Hellenic? Why is the small Armenian branch pulled further to the right than the Balto-Slavic branch?—if there is no significance, then each branch family should be pulled out consistently, either as close to the top as possible or evenly spaced vertically, and either tucked as close to the trunk as possible, or all centred on one vertical line. The chart can be made more compact by moving the whole right-hand side up. A consistent grid arrangement would provide a framework for positioning the boxes, and make it all look neat.

Some of the relationships expressed by the lines are a bit ambiguous. E.g., Dutch and Afrikaans are connected by their sides, so are they related sister languages, or is latter a descendant because it's lower? But East Iranian and Scythian are clearly side-by-side sisters, right? Why do Armenian and Albanian have arrowheads entering side instead of the top? Descendent languages should always have their incoming line enter the top of the box.

Is Austro-Bavarian German offset to the left from its ancestor German because it is also related to Flemish? Lines shouldn't jog sideways for no reason. —Michael Z. 2008-11-07 17:30 z

To answer one of your questions, I infer that any box in italics should be read as if incorporating the parent box (not in italics), not as a standalone term. Insular, for example, should be read as "Insular Celtic"; Italo-Western is "Italo-Western Romance", etc. DanTrent (留言) 10:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Sino-Tibetan

I've made a new tree for Sino-Tibetan. Any comments would be appreciated! LSD (talk) 16:14, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Latest Revisions

• Expanded Italic and Germanic
• Completely redid Indo-Aryan
• Correct the placement of Tocharian
• Reorganized almost everything; finally balanced the right/left

LSD (talk) 10:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Knaanic (a Slavic language) is extinct. Please correct. 81.83.2.11 (talk) 15:59, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Done.

"Galation" (In the Celtic group) is surely a typo - "Galatian" is the name at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages

Also Done.

LSD (talk) 10:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

My latest revision reclassifies Knaanic as extinct. Aerol (talk) 19:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

?

Are there two languages called catalan? PS: you are missing many old and/or small languages —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.116.219.82 (talk) 15:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• 1. No, there's only one Catalan; fixed!
• 2. No kidding! There are more than 450 Indo-European languages still spoken today; add up all the dead languages, including the ones we have no records of and you're talking thousands and thousands of languages. But obviously a chart with thousands of entries (or even 450 for that matter) would be counterproductive. I've tried to include the more populous and/or historically "important" (a subjective term obviously) of IE langagues, but I have no doubt I've overlooked some. Any suggested additions are more than welcome; and, obviously, feel free to update the tree yourself (although please do maintain the ordering and organizational structure).

LSD (talk) 18:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Dacian and Thracian

Why aren't Dacian and Thracian mentioned on the chart? They are extinct Indo-European Languages. Scooter20 (talk) 13:30, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

True, but that's about all that's certain. The classifcation (or even existance!) of a daco-thracian branch is highly controversial. Clearly they're closely related satem languages, but as to where they fit on the tree... well, they could be Albanian, or Illyrian, or even Anatolian. It's even been suggested that they're Italic! So I honestly don't know where I'd add them -- the same goes for Illyrian or any of the non-Italic italian languages. LSD (talk)

Still, they should be listed there, along with other important Paleo-Balkan languages. The mainstream classification should be used and I would put a star(*) next to them, to say it is controversial. Besides, the origins of other languages listed here is controversial as well..--Codrin.B (talk) 18:19, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Church Greek

I suggest to add Church Greek (variety of Koine Greek) in green. As Church Slavonic, Church latin, pali, etc. Liturgical languages. Crazymadlover

Manx

Manx is labeled as extinct yet there are ~1500 speakers, several of them children who speak it natively. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_language —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.245.233 (talk) 01:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that should be corrected. Cornish should also be made green, since its revival it now has ~2000 speakers. Elvisrules (talk) 02:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The issue of revived languages is a tricky one. UNESCO says they're both extinct, Ethnologue says that Manx is extinct, but Cornish isn't, SIL says neither one is extinct. But since no one denies that both languages did die at some point, that fact should be reflected in the chart. So I think the simplest choice is to acknowledge the original extinction and show the revived languages as descendents. LSD (talk) 07:57, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Done.LSD (talk) 08:33, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Manx has never been an 'extinct' language and subsequently there has never been any reason to 'revive' it. Shamraig (talk)

Again, UNESCO and Ethnologue would disagree with you. The last native speaker died more than 30 years ago. The language has been revived (their word) in recent years, but the lineage of the original linguistic community ended in 1974. LSD (talk) 20:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

LSD, you say "no one denies that both languages did die" - but that patently isn't the case. The question, I suppose is what makes a language "alive" ? Your chart (wonderful! by the way) shows church latin as "alive" but there are no native speakers, and no church latin monoglots (a subtle distinction). On the other hand there is a well-attested story of a lady called Dolly Pentreath who was not only a native Cornish monoglot, but who swore in Cornish at an English linguist who was claiming that Cornish was extinct. The wider story, which isn't well described on Wikipedia, is that this woman lived in a village where Cornish was spoken universally as a first language. According to a number of books I've seen on the subject, Cornish has grown in strength since that time. Although there are three separate schools as to the spelling of words (two recommend modernisation, one clings to the traditional English-Cornish spellings) the language itself was never extinct, and I believe that not only are there people who speak Cornish as a second language, there are many for whom it is their joint first language, and a handful for whom it is their first or only language. So the abiding question is: who says Cornish was ever extinct, and (following Wikipedia rules) is there a reference to support that assertion? With all best wishes! Neuralwarp (talk) 11:51, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

SVG

It might be a good idea to save this as another format (PNG?) as users of Internet Explorer can't view it properly. Mongoletsi (talk) 02:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that converting it to PNG (or any other bitmap format) would make it much harder to edit. I suppose we could have both an svg version and a bitmapped version, but that risks enormous complication. ...of course the easiest thing would be if microsoft would just support svg already... LSD (talk) 23:32, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

There's an even better solution! Use Mozilla Firefox because it's free and much better than Internet Explorer.

Scooter20 (talk) 22:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem therein though is that many, many users will be in an office or academic setting (for example) and not have the choice. FF doesn't allow you to zoom in/out of an SVG. I understand the rationale, however SVG usage on Wiki is a personal bugbear of mine, so to some extent just ignore my whining!Mongoletsi (talk) 16:42, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Errors in Vedic & Pali

Vedic sanskrit is to be marked green since it is still in use as a liturgical language among Brahmins, its not exactly "extinct".

Pali is a Magadhi Prakrit, it should be classified under Prakrit --> Magadhi and not under Vedic Sanskrit since it is not a direct offshoot of Vedic. 77.64.42.152 (talk) 13:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Colours

Red seems to be used for extinct languages and green for existing languages. Greenlandic is red but the language is not extinct. It is the native language of the Greenlandic people. --Stefán Örvarr Sigmundsson (talk) 16:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe you are refering to the Eskimo-Aleut Greenlandic language, which is indeed very much alive. The north Germanic Greenlandic language (Greenlandic Norse), however, has been extinct for several hundred years. LSD (talk) 17:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

old portuguese?

There is a big mistake here,the language was Galician,or old Galician (or galician-portuguese,even though this is not entirely right),from where modern portuguese and galician are derived from. Portugal was born out of a piece of Galicia,they spoke the same language as them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.38.148.253 (talk) 10:26, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed.LSD (talk) 17:48, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Armenian and Albanian

Although the exact relationship to Greek isn't known, Albanian is a Balkan language (a descendent of Illyrian, Dacian, or some other language now forgotten) and Armenian likely derives from one (Phrygian); they should probably be closer to Greek on the tree. Also, as far as I'm aware Corsican is an offshoot of the central Italian dialect continuum (particularly similar to Tuscan) and doesn't connect with Sardinian at all. 151.204.244.144 (talk) 06:54, 30 August 2009 (UTC) (User:Haikupoet, but I forgot to log in)

My latest modifications of the Romance branch address your point regarding Corsican. Aerol (talk) 20:15, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Re: Aerolcommons' revisions

While I appreciate your contributions, I think there's an aesthetic and functional structure that should remain consistent; ie branching lines / category labels / vertical relations / geographic alignment / etc...

I'm sure there's a way you can integrate your proposed modifications into that underlying structure. Although I do question a few of your changes, I'm sure we can work that out easily! The main point should be to keep the chart itself as accurate, practical, and useful as possible! :)

LSD (talk) 18:08, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'geographic alignment'. Could you expand on that? Aerolcommons (talk) 00:28, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Uralic languages tree

I've uploaded a phylogenetic tree of Uralic languages at Commons. Comments are appreciated. Aerolcommons (talk) 22:10, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Revisions

I've uploaded two new versions of the tree. The changes are as follows:

- The 16:28, 10 July 2010 version is basically the 22:13, 20 June 2010 version with a couple changes: I've rearranged the descendants of Old Spanish so that they're arranged alphabetically, and I've done some spatial rearrangement to the Romance branch in order to restore 100% vertical alignment to the tree.

- I hope this revision, more aesthetically consistent, will be met with approval. However, if someone deems it unsuitable and wants to revert it, I ask that you revert it to the other version I uploaded instead of any earlier one: the 16:22, 10 July 2010 version, which is based on the 22:31, 10 January 2010 version with the following list of changes added, which I think we all can agree on:

• Reclassified Knaanic as extinct.
• Reclassified Serbo-Croatian as living. This is undisputable if we consider Serbo-Croatian a cluster of dialects (Čakavian, Štokavian, Kajkavian and Torlakian) instead of considering it a standard language no longer in use (standard Serbo-Croatian as used in the former Yugoslavia).
• Moved Macedonian to classify it as purely Eastern South Slavic. This is to take into account MacedonianBoy's modification, which had remained uncontested for some time.
• Purely aesthetic changes to Albanian, West Germanic and West Iberian branches.
• Renamed Gutnish to Old Gutnish to avoid confusion with Modern Gutnish.
• Removed Lombardic/Langobardic (Longobardic in the original version) from East Germanic. Added Crimean Gothic.
• Corrected Tocharian branch by renaming 'Kurchean' to its proper name 'Kuchean'.
• Removed Provençal from Gallo-Rhaetian since it was a duplicate of Occitan, which was already mentioned under the Occitan branch.
• Renamed 'Cumbrian' (Brythonic branch) to its proper name 'Cumbric'. Cumbrian is the variety of the English language currently spoken in the historical area Cumbric was spoken in.

Please, if you intend on going back to the 10 January 2010 organizational structure, revert the tree back to this 16:22, 10 July 2010 version, and we can work from there on further changes. Some of the changes we should debate, in this scenario, would include the Romance branch and the West Germanic branch. In the case of the Romance branch, we should discuss the position of Catalan and Occitan. If we take the East/West Iberian position, then Catalan should be placed under East Iberian (under Iberian) and Occitan under Gallic. Otherwise, Occitano-Romance would include both languages and be included under Gallic (this is the criteria I chose in my prior revision). The 10 January 2010 version of this is eclectic and seems to me inconsistent.

In the case of West Germanic, we should discuss the position of Low German, Frisian and Old English. Again, there are two main positions in the literature. The first accepts West Germanic as a viable phylogenetic unit and splits it into Low Franconian, High German, Anglo-Frisian and Low German. The second does not accept proto-West-Germanic as a viable protolanguage and splits proto-Germanic into five groups: East Germanic, North Germanic (Old Norse), North Sea Germanic (Ingvaeonic), Weser-Rhine (Istvaeonic) and Elbe (Irminonic). I chose the first theory in my prior revision because it was more consistent with the original ordering. The 10 January 2010 organization seems to me eclectic and inconsistent. Aerolcommons (talk) 17:43, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

So-called "Serbo-Croatian" is non-existent language. The double name existed solely as politically imposed solution, since Yugounitarist policy propagated "Croatian=Serbian". Serbo-Croatian is Yugounitarists' "politically correct" name for Serbian language. And Croatian language is not Serbian language.
In former socialist Yugoslavia, "Serbo-Croatian" was official in Serbia (srpskohrvatski), while in Croatia it was Croatian; by political decision, the name of official language in Croatia from 1974-1990 was changed to "Croatian or Serbian" (hrvatski ili srpski).
This "cluster of dialects" is just a heterogenous bunch. It's like slicing goat and sheep, and then to put the pieces of the goat and sheep in one bunch and then to say "The goat-sheep is living, since it's a cluster of meatpieces."
Čakavian and Kajkavian is spoken solely by Croats, Torlakian solely by Serbs. Štokavian isn't homogenous at all. Croats and Serbs don't share it's subdialects. The sole subdialect of Štokavian that Croats and Serbs both have is East Herzegovinian subdialect.
"Serbo-Croatian" (=Serbian) has never been the official language in Croatia.
Royalist Yugoslavia's official language was named as "Serbocroatoslovenian" (another Frankenstein construction). Are we going to put Slovenian into this group and argument that with "it's a cluster of dialects"? Are we going to put Macedonian language into Serbian language (and into the group "Serbocroatoslovenian"), since the official policy of Serbia (and Kingdom of Yugoslavia) declared Macedonians as "southern Serbs"? Of course not. Kubura (talk) 04:39, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Greenlandic

In what universe is Greenlandic a Germanic language? ;) --90.227.67.113 23:10, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

If they are referring to the language closely related to Old Norse, then it should say so. --90.227.67.113 23:15, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Greenlandic is a Eskimo language. So far as we know so Old Norse spoke Old Norse in Greenland. ---Haabet 12:40, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Dutch & Flemish

This table lists Dutch and Flemish as two seperate languages. That is incorrect. It is the same language and it is named "Dutch"; the term Flemish is sometimes used to describe the different dialects, regiolects and natiolects of Dutch spoken in Belgium (like "American English"). Limburgish, that is listed as a seperate branch, is a Dutch dialect. Plaats (talk) 14:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Czech-Slovak

OK, where did you get this language?? I do not mean to insult any Slovaks, but this is not a language... There is only old-Czech, no such nonsense as Czech-Slovak.

Yes, it is nonsense. Slovak comes (probably) from old-Czech. --Kusurija (留言) 07:31, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Campidanese and Logudorse are not centered properly

Hello, I enjoy this chart very much, but it kind of bothers me that Campidanese and Logudorse are shifted quite far to the right, and don't properly fit in there boxes, they should be properly centered in there square, I would do it myself, if I had an SVG capable program but I don't, can someone fix this please? - Abrahamic Faiths (talk) 01:14, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Transparent background can destroy readability

This file needs an opaque white background. Currently, the black lines are completely invisible when viewed in English Wikipedia’s lightbox, which has a black background. To see, click on the image in w:en: Proto-Indo-European language. —Michael Z. 2014-01-28 02:48 z

Spelling

Belorussian should be spelled Belarusian. —Michael Z. 2014-01-28 03:04 z

Haitian Creole

Shouldn't Haitian Creole be linked to French? I didn't see it on the diagram. Are creoles excluded? 63.85.32.4 18:33, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Creoles tend to be left out of language trees, which I'm definitely against, but until the linguistics community revises their stance on it they'll be absent from the Wikipedia tree because we're not a primary source. It's slowly changing though that more linguists are finally including creoles into family trees though. The Linguist LL (留言) 17:58, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Russian

There should be link between Russian and Old Church Slavonic, as modern Russian was based on OCS.

Armenian

If all the languages in a subbranch are mentioned, then the branch for Armenian should include the following: Classical Armenian (red) --> Middle Armenian (red) --> Eastern Armenian (green)

--> Western Armenian (green)

(with Eastern and Western Armenian both as subbranches of Middle Armenian). Chaojoker (留言) 12:44, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Problems

1. Low German is very close to Dutch. They have one dialect which is the same dialect. 2. Gutnish is a living spoken "language" who write in Swedish, as a dialect. But is completely incomprehensible to all other Swedes, but not for Danes. 3. Norwegian are two different written languages. Norwegian (Bokmål) and Norwegian (Nynorsk). Bokmål and Danish have different spellings, but they otherwise very similar. Norwegian (Nynorsk) is a West Norse language, opposite Bokmål which is an East Norse language. 4. Elfdalian is a West Norse language as a isolated language island in East Norse languages. 5. "Old West Norse" and "Old East Norse" had never existed as independent languages. West Norse languages and East Norse languages are two groups of living languages. The West Norse languages are closer to the original 'Old Norse' language. 'Old Norse' was one language. Norse are several languages. ---Haabet 15:07, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Fingallian

I find it odd that the extinct Yola is included but the very similar (also extinct) Fingallian isn't. Is this a simple oversight or was it done for some intentional reason? CodeBlock (留言) 20:25, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Fingallian & Wymysorys

Fingallian deserves a spot with English, Yola, & Scots. Wymysorys also deserves to be included with the West-germanic languages.

The Linguist LL (留言) 22:30, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Kurdish

Kurdish and Balochi are not Parthian. -- Guherto (留言) 11:17, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Maharashtri Prakrit (and other Indo-Aryan issues)

Insular Indic languages does not derive from Maharashtri Prakrit; they derive from Elu Prakrit. See w:Indo-Aryan Languages#Southern Zone for details. Manishearth (留言) 08:15, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, also, Marathi does not derive from Konkani, they are siblings. Manishearth (留言) 08:17, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, Western Indic/Pahari do not derive from Central Zone languages, they're separate families coming from separate prakrits. Furthermore, it's incorrect to label Hindustani as a family; it's a language with multiple registers. The whole organization of the Indo-Aryan languages seems to be a mess, with Prakrits not consistently represented, incorrect parents for many of the subfamilies, and incorrect _names_ for the subfamilies. Manishearth (留言) 08:21, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I made a bunch of fixes [1]. Manishearth (留言) 07:44, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Error in the Danish translation

One of the entries in the Danish translation must be a copy-paste error. Under "Germanic" [Germansk] -> Eastern [Østlig] -> the first entry is "oïl" which doesn't make sense. Going by the English version as a guide, that word should have been "burgundisk" 80.62.29.143 07:02, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

South Slavic

The current linguistic consensus on the classification of South Slavic languages (see w:South_Slavic_languages#Classification) is that the western group is a dialect continuum of four dialect groups (from west to east, Slovene, Kajkavian, Chakavian, and Shtokavian). The Serbo-Croatian language is a single language with four literary standards (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and the partially-codified Montenegrin), all of which derive from the w:Eastern Herzegovinian dialect of Shtokavian.

In addition, w:Torlakian is a transitional dialect group between West and East South Slavic that has as many as ~1.5 million speakers, and so should be included as well.

A more accurate South Slavic tree would look something like this (forgive my poor SVG rendering):

BadgerPriest (留言) 20:31, 16 February 2023 (UTC)