How to divide Slavs from Balts, and vice-versa before 6th century?

Many formerly Baltic teritories became

According to Baltic hydronyms described by Toporov and Ivanov? Those toponyms are still "horse in vacuum", nothing more. Why not include Slavs in those archaic hydronyms?

For example, you have "Jelgava" city in Latvia. Also, you have river "Jihlava" in Czechia. So, if Toporov (for example) didn't know that Slavs lived there (In Czechia), how would he classified river "Jihlava"??? I guess it would be today classified as "Baltic hydronym" as all in Eastern Europe which ends in "-ava", "-eva"... etc... The question is why? Why not drag Slavs into this hydronyms?

For example, see this text:

"Fully sharing the opinion of Rassadin about Prague culture as the first archeological manifestation of the Slavic ethnos itself, as well as about its Kiev origins, it is necessary to consider the preceding Venetian ethnos of the carriers of the Late Zarubine and Kiev cultures as Slavic, and not Balto-Slavic. The ethnogenesis of the Western Balts, a well-documented chain of archaeological cultures (the Mazury-Warmian group of the Lusatia culture — the culture of the Western Baltic kurgans — the rich culture and the related groups of soil burials — the commonness of the caged ceramics), did not have a relationship. Moreover, the formation of the Eastern Balts (Lithuanians and Latvians) can be explained by the impulse from the cultures of perched ceramics. [17] Thus, all cultures that have continuity with cultures of historical Balts of the XIII century. (Kurshey, Zemgals, Latgals, Zhemayts, Lithuania, Yatvyagov, etc.), are derived directly from the culture of the Western Baltic kurgans that originated in the 1st millennium BC. under the influence of common fields of burial urns. Those cultures that are not derived from it, there is no reason to consider the Baltic cultures - contrary to the concept of the “Dnieper Balts”, which is still widespread among archaeologists. The only basis for it is the similarity of hydronymy at the site of these cultures with the Baltic one, but an alternative explanation has already been proposed for it above. hitherto widespread among archaeologists. The only basis for it is the similarity of hydronymy at the site of these cultures with the Baltic one, but an alternative explanation has already been proposed for it above.


If the undifferentiated Balto-Slavic unity ever existed (with which not all linguists agree), then the Lusatian culture seems to be the best match for it, and the beginning of its disintegration corresponds to the isolation of the Pomorian and Mazury-Warmian groups of this culture.In this case, the ethnonym "Veneta" at an early stage of its existence could relate to ancestors not only of the Slavs, but also of the Balts. "

 
Goths were Eastern Germanic that's Baltid
 
So what? Goths were Goths. They were Germanic (mainly).
So they had integrated with Slavs to make them East Germanic please watch the video the original Germans were North like Saxons Vikings etc
 
So it mentions the Sorbs as well :D
 
λουκας (Kloukas), Λόβελος (Lobelos), Κοσέντζης (Kosentzis) sound so blatantly Greek that I'm wondering if I'm not missing something glaringly obvious
 
It really depends what texts are compared. The problem there is that we don't know what language was spoken in Indus Valley and which words of that extinct language were similar to IE. Also, IE language that went to India had already influences from others, like Uralic(some of those are calculated as far back as 8000 years), so 97% pure IE vocabulary in Rig-Vedic is rather impossible already.

That hype about Sanskrit and Rig-Vedic script started in 18th century. The numbers I have about first hymns in Rigvedic - Out of 62 word roots in total, most - 52 were similar to words in Latvian. Lithuanians could compare 38 word roots, English, Greek, Latin and German - 8-12 woord roots. I don't have data about Slavic languages, but most probably - less than in Lithuanian even if most Slavic roots that are found in Sanskrit can also be found in Baltic languages.


Identifiable compared to what? If people are excited that they think, that Slavic is recorded in Sanskrit, then - Uralic people have some Baltic words from even older than 3500 year old contacts between them and Baltic has been in heartland of IE languages more than others, so 3500 is not really that final age.

However, let's concentrate on topic about Slavic existence before 600AD and that does not even go so far back in history from that point.




According to Matasovic

Thirdly, the number of words that may be of substratum origin, and that are preserved only in Balto-Slavic, is very limited (perhaps as fewas 14, but probably not more than 20). It is significantly smaller than the number of words of substratum origin that can be attributed to Proto-Celtic,or to Insular Celtic (see EDPC), and it is also much smaller than the number of substratum words in Greek, for example.18 This is probably due to the fact that, during the Balto-Slavic period, speakers of that proto-language were surrounded by speakers of other, more peripheral Indo--European dialects (especially Germanic and Celtic) that were exposed to more intensive contacts with speakers of non-IE languages. Consequently,during the period when Balto-Slavic separated from the other NW European dialects as an individual idiom, borrowing from non-IE substrata was minimal.
 
I'm studying linguistic about the same as proper linguists would do, even if that is not my main speciality and have to do some extensive research into this topic, as my main thesis is related of pattern searching in linguistics for AI, however modern linguists would not agree neither with you, nor OP.


Language in time and space. On the problem of the Slavic Glottogenesis (2004) pp93-96 by V. V. Martynov. His main research interests were Slavic languages, comparative linguistics, formalisation of semantics.


In short: conclusion is that whole tree of Proto-Slavic languages are daughter offshot of Proto-Baltic and not some language group of their own.
Actually 1st edition of book was out in 1983, so this is not something new - I think, that the problem of this discussion is that neither OP nor any others here does have any idea what Baltic languages are and how they differ from Slavic. This is not that hard task - it requires only learning one of Baltic languages, to see, that Slavic is rather simplified version of Baltic language - more or less same vocabulary and more simplified rules of more complex Baltic grammar. Even wiki has some notes, that current model of Baltic-Slavic is not correct model, that Slavic should be placed as branch under Baltic - clearly it has not branched off from modern Baltic languages, but some other, who are now extinct, but that is not really an issue - there are many dead Baltic languages to whom we know name, but there were even more Baltic languages who went extinct and no sources have left even their names.
I think that major question to me is where proto-Baltic was spoken,because almost certainly it wasn't where it is in present day.
Because there is many isoglosses shared only between Baltic and South-Slavic,which suggest close interaction between this two dialects.

I have read for example about Dnieper Balts
The Dniepr Balts were studied by the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, Lithuanian linguist Kazimieras Būga, and by Russian scientists Vladimir Toporov, O.Trubachev, who analysed hydronyms at the higher Dnieper basin. They have found nearly 800 hydronyms of possibly Baltic origin.
 
I think that major question to me is where proto-Baltic was spoken,because almost certainly it wasn't where it is in present day.
Because there is many isoglosses shared only between Baltic and South-Slavic,which suggest close interaction between this two dialects.

I have read for example about Dnieper Balts

The Dniepr Balts were studied by the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, Lithuanian linguist Kazimieras Būga, and by Russian scientists Vladimir Toporov, O.Trubachev, who analysed hydronyms at the higher Dnieper basin. They have found nearly 800 hydronyms of possibly Baltic origin.

That's interesting.

Lithuanian linguist Kazimieras Būga

How would he explain a meaning/origin of his surname? We have Bouga in the list:

According to the legend preserved in the work, they [Croats] were led by five brothers Κλουκας (Kloukas), Λόβελος (Lobelos), Κοσέντζης (Kosentzis), Μουχλώ (Mouchlo), Χρωβάτος (Chrobatos), and two sisters Τουγά (Touga) and Βουγά (Bouga),...

Is it just a coincidence?
 
Almost all of them are on "-as" "-is". Lithuanian language preserved word-final syllables just like Greek. But those names are obviously more like Greek.
In what way are the names "more like Greek" except that they were written in Greek?
 
I think that major question to me is where proto-Baltic was spoken,because almost certainly it wasn't where it is in present day.
Because there is many isoglosses shared only between Baltic and South-Slavic,which suggest close interaction between this two dialects.
I have read for example about Dnieper Balts
Proto-Baltic wasn't spoken anywhere, because such language never existed. There are Baltic languages and they are those languages who originate from Proto-Balto-Slavic stage but didn't become Slavic. Nomenclature in classification of languages is totally irrelevant.
 
Proto-Baltic wasn't spoken anywhere, because such language never existed. There are Baltic languages and they are those languages who originate from Proto-Balto-Slavic stage but didn't become Slavic. Nomenclature in classification of languages is totally irrelevant.
If you don't understand the question let me simplified it to you.Where the language that become known as Baltic was spoken?
Because there is isoglosses shared only between Baltic and South-Slavic,which suggest the two dialects had contacts among them.
 
If you don't understand the question let me simplified it to you.Where the language that become known as Baltic was spoken?
Because there is isoglosses shared only between Baltic and South-Slavic,which suggest the two dialects had contacts among them.

Baltic languages can be described as Baltic perhaps about 1500 year BC, when actually probably predcessor of proto-Slavic separated from Balto-Slavic continuum. The rest of 2 dialects automatically became proto-Baltic (which means that unified Proto-Baltic stage is not justified to reconstruct, because it includes development of Slavic languages).
 
Baltic languages can be described as Baltic perhaps about 1500 year BC, when actually probably predcessor of proto-Slavic separated from Balto-Slavic continuum. The rest of 2 dialects automatically became proto-Baltic (which means that unified Proto-Baltic stage is not justified to reconstruct, because it includes development of Slavic languages).
trubachev_praslav_chlenenie.png


This is a scheme of Berstein and Trubachev between the connection of Balto-Slavic languages,you can see South-Slavic resp for Slovenian,Serb-Croat,Bulgarian and Macedonian more closer to Baltic.While Baltic neighbors like Polish,other west Slavs much further,east Slavic dialects still bit further than South-Slavic are.
 
It's going to be hard imo.
And the reason for that are the Hunter Gatherers from Ukraine and Latvia.
We already know from examples in Western Europe that those were predominantly blue-eyed and dark skinned. They passed those traits to farmers who contributed the light skin into the mix.
Now the ones in Latvia have light skin and blue eyes. And Balts have one of the highest incidence of light eyes today.
Now with Ukrainians it gets trickier. They are also at least as fair eyed as Western Euros, but the Hunter Gatherers from Ukraine are basically all brown-eyed and with light skin.
I'll leave it to you to tell me where Slavs were hanging around, but my guess is somewhere where there was a noticeable presence of blue eyes. In the vicinity of Ukraine, that's either Globular Amphora Culture in Poland (which got the blues from their local hunter gatherers) or in the Baltics.
 
I think this talk about Balto-Slavic unity is very, very controversal, bordering on pseudoscience. I mean, if all areas preceding to Slavic cultures are full of clearly Baltic hydronyms, with Baltic characteristical suffixes (Milograd culture, Dnieper-Dvin, Upper Oka, Yukhnovska, etc....)... It actually means that Baltic type of speech was formed very before proper proto-Slavic existed. Then, about what "Balto-Slavic unity" are we talking about?
 

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