1524: Sprachbund Feb 14, 2019

It was discussed in the post from yesterday how languages on the west coast of North America are extraordinarily diverse, but just because the languages do not have one clear linguistic ancestor does not mean that they have no relation whatsoever. No matter what, languages in proximity to one another will share some similarities, even if it is just in some vocabulary or basic sound-structures but not enough to warrant the title 'language family'. These are sometimes called a 'Sprachbund' or 'linguistic area', and they help to explain what could be misleading similarities.

See more about that here: https://youtu.be/oqmZCCXL_Hg

Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Find yesterday's post here.