this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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For the people who don’t get it: To the Greeks (who primarily spoke Greek and Latin,) Germanic and proto European languages (like old English) sounded funny. The Greeks joked that it sounded like “barbar barbar” which is basically the Greek version of “blah blah blah blah”. So the people who spoke those foreign languages got referred to as barbarians.
It was basically used as a pejorative. It was a way for Greeks to discriminate against non-Greeks.
What’s proto European?
It’s technically Proto-Indo-European. PIE is the base language that later developed into most of the European languages. It’s a simple language that evolved into the various European languages as people spread out and groups became more isolated. Basically, as they became more isolated they formed their own unique dialects, which then became distinct languages.
PIE is believed to be the root language for Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Hindi, Urdu, and a handful of others.
Greek is also Indo-European though.