Baltic is a branch of the Indo-European language family closely related to Slavic within the wider Balto-Slavic grouping. Its only two surviving members are Lithuanian and Latvian, spoken by a combined total of roughly four million people in Lithuania and Latvia, while other Baltic languages, including Old Prussian, are extinct.
Facts
Disputed
Proto-Language StatusDebated: commonly held to descend from a reconstructed Proto-Baltic stage that split into East and West Baltic branches, though some recent scholarship argues Proto-Balto-Slavic split directly into three groups with no unified Proto-Baltic stage 1 Sources disagree on whether a unified Proto-Baltic stage existed before splitting into East and West Baltic, or whether Proto-Balto-Slavic split directly into three groups instead. RegionAreas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Europe 1 Speaker CountSource states a range of about 6.5 to 7.0 million; the midpoint is stored as the single value. Browse and compare
Classification Confidence Reconstructed Ancestor Connections
Descends From
Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian and their extinct relatives) is one of the two branches of Balto-Slavic alongside Slavic.
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Source Wikipedia: Baltic languagesLead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia articletier 2Quote, Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia article
The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively or as a second language by a population of about 6.5–7.0 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Europe.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Baltic languages
WikipediaLead section, paragraph 1: geographic distribution sentence
The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively or as a second language by a population of about 6.5-7.0 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Europe.
Lead section, paragraph 1: population figure sentence
The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively or as a second language by a population of about 6.5-7.0 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Europe.
Classification section: Proto-Baltic unity debate sentence
However, more recent scholarship has suggested that there was no unified Proto-Baltic stage, but that Proto-Balto-Slavic split directly into three groups: Slavic, East Baltic and West Baltic.
Infobox: protoname
Proto-Baltic
Lead paragraph
The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively or as a second language by a population of about 6.5-7.0 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Europe.
View the Source Wikidata: Baltic
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