Linguistic reconstruction in the context of "Common Romanian"

Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th century AD. As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; scholars have reconstructed the language by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages and by taking into account other Indo-European languages.

Rapid development of Slavic speech occurred during the Proto-Slavic period, coinciding with the massive expansion of the Slavic-speaking area. Dialectal differentiation occurred early on during this period, but overall linguistic unity and mutual intelligibility continued for several centuries, into the 10th century or later. During this period, many sound changes diffused across the entire area, often uniformly. This makes it inconvenient to maintain the traditional definition of a proto-language as the latest reconstructable common ancestor of a language group, with no dialectal differentiation. (This would necessitate treating all pan-Slavic changes after the 6th century or so as part of the separate histories of the various daughter languages.) Instead, Slavicists typically handle the entire period of dialectally differentiated linguistic unity as Common Slavic.

The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a postulated prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.

Knowledge of them comes chiefly from that linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics. The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during the Late Neolithic period (6400 to 3500 BC). Mainstream scholars place them in the Pontic–Caspian steppe across Eurasia (this steppe extends from northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania, through Moldova, and southern and eastern Ukraine, through the Northern Caucasus of southern Russia, and into the Lower Volga region of western Kazakhstan, adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to the east, both forming part of the larger Eurasian Steppe). Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the Middle Neolithic period (5500 to 4500 BC) or even the Early Neolithic period (7500 to 5500 BC) and suggest alternative origin hypotheses.

The Britons (*Pritanī, Latin: Britanni, Welsh: Brythoniaid), also known as Celtic Britons or ancient Britons, were the Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons (among others). They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.

The earliest written evidence for the Britons is from Greco-Roman writers and dates to the Iron Age. Ancient Britain was made up of many tribes and kingdoms, associated with various hillforts. The Britons followed an ancient Celtic religion overseen by druids. Some of the southern tribes had strong links with mainland Europe, especially Gaul and Belgica, and minted their own coins. The Roman Empire conquered most of Britain in the 1st century AD, creating the province of Britannia. The Romans invaded northern Britain, but the Britonnic tribes such as the Caledonians and Picts in the north remained unconquered, and Hadrian's Wall which bisects modern Northumbria and Cumbria became the edge of the empire. A Romano-British culture emerged, mainly in the southeast, and British Latin coexisted with Brittonic. It is unclear what relationship the Britons had with the Picts, who lived outside of the empire in northern Britain; however, most scholars today accept the fact that the Pictish language was closely related to Common Brittonic.

Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the reconstructed ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method. Proto-Celtic is generally thought to have been spoken between 1300 and 800 BC, after which it began to split into different languages. Proto-Celtic is often associated with the Urnfield culture and particularly with the Hallstatt culture. Celtic languages share common features with Italic languages that are not found in other branches of Indo-European, suggesting the possibility of an earlier Italo-Celtic linguistic unity.

Proto-Celtic is currently being reconstructed through the comparative method by relying on later Celtic languages. Though Continental Celtic presents much substantiation for Proto-Celtic phonology, and some for its morphology, recorded material is too scanty to allow a secure reconstruction of syntax, though some complete sentences are recorded in the Continental Gaulish and Celtiberian. So, the main sources for reconstruction come from Insular Celtic languages with the oldest literature found in Old Irish and Middle Welsh, dating back to authors flourishing in the 6th century AD.

Proto-Armenian is the earlier, unattested stage of the Armenian language which has been reconstructed by linguists. As Armenian is the only known language of its branch of the Indo-European languages, the comparative method cannot be used to reconstruct its earlier stages. Instead, a combination of internal and external reconstruction, by reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European and other branches, has allowed linguists to piece together the earlier history of Armenian.

In linguistics, attested languages are languages (living or dead) that have been documented and for which the evidence ("attestation") has survived to the present day. Evidence may be recordings, transcriptions, literature or inscriptions. In contrast, unattested languages may be names of purported languages for which no direct evidence exists, languages for which all evidence has been lost, or hypothetical proto-languages proposed in linguistic reconstruction.

Within an attested language, particular word forms directly known to have been used (because they appear in the literature, inscriptions or documented speech) are called attested forms. They contrast with unattested forms, which are reconstructions hypothesised to have been used based on indirect evidence (such as etymological patterns). In linguistic texts, unattested forms are commonly marked with a preceding asterisk (*).

As used for Egyptology, transliteration of Ancient Egyptian is the process of converting (or mapping) texts written as Egyptian language symbols to alphabetic symbols representing uniliteral hieroglyphs or their hieratic and demotic counterparts. This process facilitates the publication of texts where the inclusion of photographs or drawings of an actual Egyptian document is impractical.

Transliteration is not the same as transcription. Transliteration is the representation of written symbols in a consistent way in a different writing system, while transcription indicates the pronunciation of a text. For the case of Ancient Egyptian, precise details of the phonology are not known completely. Transcription systems for Ancient Egyptian do exist, but they rely on linguistic reconstruction (depending on evidence from the Coptic language and other details) and are thus theoretical in nature. Egyptologists rely on transliteration in scientific publications. Egyptologists also call the process of converting hieratic texts to hieroglyphic text as "transcription."

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European has been discovered; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result.

PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages.

Proto-Turkic is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Turkic languages that was spoken by the Proto-Turks before their divergence into the various Turkic peoples. Proto-Turkic separated into Oghur (western) and Common Turkic (eastern) branches. Candidates for the Proto-Turkic homeland range from western Central Asia to Manchuria, with most scholars agreeing that their migrations started from the eastern part of the Central Asian steppe, while one author has postulated that Proto-Turkic originated 2,500 years ago in East Asia.

The oldest records of a Turkic language, the Old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions of the 7th century Göktürk khaganate, already show characteristics of Eastern Common Turkic. For a long time, the reconstruction of Proto-Turkic relied on comparisons of Old Turkic with early sources of the Western Common Turkic branches, such as Oghuz and Kypchak, as well as the Western Oghur proper (Bulgar, Chuvash, Khazar). Because early attestation of these non-easternmost languages is much sparser, reconstruction of Proto-Turkic still rests fundamentally on the easternmost Old Turkic of the Göktürks, however it now also includes a more comprehensive analysis of all written and spoken forms of the language.