The Balkan Sprachbund: A Linguistic Melting Pot
What happens when unrelated languages live side-by-side for centuries? In the Balkans, languages as different as Albanian, Greek, and Romanian started borrowing each other’s grammar, creating a unique “Sprachbund”—a linguistic area where neighbors sound more alike than distant relatives. This linguistic melting pot reveals a fascinating story of how human contact can reshape the very structure of language.