The ''Atlas Linguarum Europae'' (literally ''Atlas of the Languages of Europe'', ALE in acronym) is a linguistic atlas project launched in 1970 with the help of

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

, and published from 1975 to 2007. The ALE used its own phonetic transcription system, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet with some modifications. It covers six language families present on the European continent:

Altaic Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are c ...

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...

Caucasian Caucasian may refer to: Anthropology *Anything from the Caucasus region ** ** ** ''Caucasian Exarchate'' (1917–1920), an ecclesiastical exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Caucasus region * * * Languages * Northwest Caucasian l ...

, Semitic and

Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...

; these families are divided into 22 linguistic groups comprising 90 languages and dialects. The data were collected in 2631 localities. The members of the ALE project are organized into 47 national committees and 4 committees for minority languages.

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,linguistic atlas A linguistic map is a thematic map showing the geographic distribution of the speakers of a language, or isoglosses of a dialect continuum of the same language, or language family. A collection of such maps is a linguistic atlas. The earliest s ...

for Europe in the late 1930s, but

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

disrupted this plan. The idea was revived by

Mario Alinei Mario Alinei (10 August 1926 – 9 August 2018) was an Italian linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to 1987. He was founder and editor of ''Quaderni di semantica'', a journal of theoretical and ap ...

at the Second International Congress of Dialectologists in 1965, and Alinei was still President of the ALE as late as 1997. Wolfgang Viereck took over as president between 1999 and 2005, and was then followed by Nicolae Saramandu. Alinei developed a theory that much of language is based on "magico-religious motivations", which he believed pre-dated the spread of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

and

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

to Europe. Viereck later wrote on the influence of religion on language. It was the first computerised linguistic atlas. In

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, the 66 sites had all been part of the earlier

Survey of English Dialects The Survey of English Dialects was undertaken between 1950 and 1961 under the direction of Professor Harold Orton of the English department of the University of Leeds. It aimed to collect the full range of speech in England and Wales before loca ...

. Viereck noted that the 1970s fieldwork of the ALE demonstrated widespread lexical erosion in English dialects since the SED (e.g. the word "icicle" had become universal in England and displaced other dialect words). Work in

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

and

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

covered both

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

and Germanic dialects. The Germanic dialects of Scotland were classified as Scots, whereas those of Ireland and Wales were classified as English. Work in the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

only investigated Romance dialects.

Publications

* Atlas Linguarum Europae: Introduction, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975. * Atlas Linguarum Europae: First Questionnaire, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976. * Atlas Linguarum Europae: Second Questionnaire, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1979. * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: first fascicle, maps and comments, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1983. * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: second fascicle, maps and commentaries, Assen / Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1986. * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: third fascicle, maps and comments, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988. * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: fourth fascicle, maps and comments. Assen / Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1990. * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: fifth fascicle, maps and commentaries, Roma: Poligrafico, 1997. * Atlas Linguarum Europae New Perspectives in Geolinguistics, Roma: Poligrafico, 1997. * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: sixth fascicle, maps and commentaries, Roma: Poligrafico, 2002. * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: seventh fascicle, maps and commentaries, Roma: Poligrafico, 2007. * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: eighth fascicle, comments, Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 2014 * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: eighth fascicle, European linguistic maps, Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 2014 * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: ninth fascicle, comments, Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 2015 * Atlas Linguarum Europae, volume I: ninth fascicle, European linguistic maps, Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 2015

Publications

References

Bibliography

External links