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Genetic evidence points towards the Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian hypotheses (phys.org)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/post/1499265

What a Christmas present!

Italo-Celtic is a hypothetical branch of the Indo-European languages. If that branch is real, it means that the Italic and Celtic languages are closer to each other than to other Indo-European languages.

This hypothesis has been raised multiple times in the past, due to a few shared morphological features between Italic and Celtic languages; for example, the *-ism̥mo- superlative. But that's on its own weak evidence, so this genomic data makes wonders to reinforce this hypothesis.

And also to bury the competing (IMO rather silly) Italo-Germanic one.

Graeco-Armenian is similar to the above, but between the Hellenic languages and Armenian. There were lots of competing hypotheses "tying" both branches to other "random" Indo-European branches; for example I've seen Indo-Greek, Italo-Greek, Armeno-Germanic, Armeno-Albanian...

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

You're welcome. It was pissing me off, too - I love the discovery that they made, but when I read "Indo-European linguistic origins" I immediately thought about something earlier, like tying the family to other languages.