Borean languages

Borean is a proposed language family that would include most of the languages of Eurasia and northern Africa and some or all of the languages of the Americas.

The family was suggested by Sergei Starostin.

It is named after the northern hemisphere (Boreal). Nikita Krugly takes credit for suggesting the name in 2000.

Borean is a smaller proposal than Proto-World but larger than Eurasiatic or Nostratic. Most notably, Borean would include Dené-Caucasian (and therefore Chinese) and Austric, which is thought by some to encompass the other languages of South China and Southeast Asia, neither of which has been included in any of the Nostratic or Eurasiatic proposals.

The research on this hypothesis is in its very early stages. Even its component families have not been established to the satisfaction of most historical linguists, who consequently remain highly skeptical or simply withhold judgment.

Georgiy Starostin expresses the reservation that the name "Borean" would imply a prejudgment that the Eurasian macrofamilies Nostratic, Dené-Caucasian, Afroasiatic and Austric are more closely related to each other than to the African families Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo. [http://starling.rinet.ru/forum3/viewtopic.php?t=18&sid=d2236ce6ce2ce071fb5d150539d92363]

ee also

*Monogenesis (linguistics)
*Paleolinguistics

External links

* [http://starling.rinet.ru/images/globet.pngBorean tree diagram]
* [http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/bdescr.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=dataeuraglobet Description of database of suggested Borean etymologies]
* [http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=dataeuraglobet&first=1 Database of long-range etymologies]
* [http://greenberg-conference.stanford.edu/Fleming_Abstract.htm Afrasian and Its Closest Relatives: the Borean Hypothesis]