The Balkans

A. A classic example is the Indo-European languages in the Balkans. Romanian is a Romance language. Albanian is a highly distinct branch of its own, as is Greek. Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian are Slavic languages.

B. Yet these languages share several grammatical patterns that were not initially present in most of the languages when they emerged. For example, Romance languages usually place the definite article before the noun (Spanish: el hombre, Italian: il uomo), but Romanian places its definite article after the noun: om-ul.

C. This placement is the result of the development of Romanian in an area where there was once a great deal of bilingualism, partly because of migrations and invasions. Some of the languages placed their definite article after the noun. Bulgarian for “the woman” is žena-ta; Albanian for “the friend” is mik-u. This is why Romanian for “the man” is om-ul.

D. Then, it is odd that Bulgarian has a definite article at all because Slavic languages usually do not (Russian has no words for the or a). Bulgarian inherited this characteristic from such languages as Romanian and Albanian.

E. This is called a Sprachbund—a group of languages that have become increasingly similar to one another over time because of heavy bi- or multilingualism.