Nostratic is a macrofamily, or hypothetical large-scale language family, that includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. In its more restricted, current form, it includes the Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and Kartvelian languages. Often also included are the Afroasiatic languages native to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East, and the Dravidian languages of the Indian Subcontinent (sometimes extended to Elamo-Dravidian, connecting India and the Iranian Plateau).
The hypothetical ancestral language of the Nostratic family is called Proto-Nostratic. Proto-Nostratic would have been spoken between 15,000 and 12,000 BCE, in the Epipaleolithic period, close to the end of the last glacial period.
The Nostratic hypothesis originates with Holger Pedersen in the early 20th century. The name "Nostratic" is due to Pedersen (1903), derived from the Latin nostrates "fellow countrymen". The hypothesis was significantly expanded in the 1960s by Soviet linguists, notably Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky, termed the "Moscovite school" by Bomhard (2008, 2011, and 2014), and it has received renewed attention in English-speaking academia since the 1990s.
The hypothesis is controversial and has varying degrees of acceptance amongst linguists worldwide. In Russia, it is endorsed by a minority of linguists, such as Vladimir Dybo, but is not a generally accepted hypothesis. Allan Bomhard is a supporter, Lyle Campbell a critic. Some linguists take an agnostic view. Eurasiatic, a similar but not identical grouping, was proposed by Joseph Greenberg (2000) and endorsed by Merritt Ruhlen: it is taken as a subfamily of Nostratic by Bomhard (2008).
More on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostrat...
Poem:
KelHä wetei aKun kähla
kaλai palhA-kA na wetä
śa da a-kA eja älä
ja-ko pele tuba wete
Translation:
Language is a ford through the river of time,
It leads us to the dwelling of those gone ahead
But he does not arrive there
Who is afraid of deep water.
