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The Balts or Baltic people ((リトアニア語:baltai), (ラトビア語:balti)) are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group who speak the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, which was originally spoken by tribes living in area east of Jutland peninsula in the west and Moscow, Oka and Volga rivers basins in the east. One of the features of Baltic languages is the number of conservative or archaic features retained.〔Bojtár page 18.〕 Among the Baltic peoples are modern Lithuanians, Latvians (including Latgalians) — all Eastern Balts — as well as the Old Prussians, Yotvingians and Galindians — the Western Balts — whose people also survived, but their languages and cultures are now extinct. ==Etymology== Adam of Bremen in the latter part of the 11th century AD was the first writer to use the term Baltic in its modern sense to mean the sea of that name.〔Bojtár page 9.〕 Although he must have been familiar with the ancient name, Balcia,〔Balcia, Abalcia, Abalus, Basilia, Balisia. The linguistic problem with these names is that Balcia cannot become Baltia by known rule.〕 meaning a supposed island in the Baltic Sea,〔 and although he may have been aware of the Baltic words containing the stem balt-, "white",〔(ラトビア語:balti); (リトアニア語:baltai); Latgalian: ''bolti'', lit. ''"white"''.〕 as "swamp", he reports that he followed the local use of balticus from baelt ("belt") because the sea stretches to the east "in modum baltei" ("in the manner of a belt"). This is the first reference to "the Baltic or Barbarian Sea, a day's journey from Hamburg."〔Bojtár cites ''Bremensis'' I,60 and IV,10.〕 The Germanics, however, preferred some form of "East Sea" (in different languages) until after about 1600, when they began to use forms of "Baltic Sea." Around 1840 the German nobles of the Governorate of Livonia devised the term "Balts" to mean themselves, the German upper classes of Livonia, excluding the Latvian and Estonian lower classes. They spoke an exclusive dialect, Baltic German. For all practical purposes that was the Baltic language until 1919.〔Bojtár page 10.〕 Scandinavians begin settling in Western Baltic lands in Lithuania and Latvia. In 1845 Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann proposed a distinct language group for Latvian and Lithuanian to be called Baltic.〔 Book review.〕 It found some credence among linguists but was not generally adopted until the creation of the Baltic states as part of the settlement of World War I in 1919. Gradually the non-Baltic Estonian was excluded from the ''linguistic'' meaning of Baltic, as was Livonian, a now extinct〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article3782596.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2013_06_05 )〕 Finnic language in present-day Latvia, while Old Prussian — long recognized as close to Lithuanian and Latvian — was added. Estonia and Finland (the states of Baltic Finns), however, also became counted among the Baltic states in the geopolitical sense. (Finland was dropped from this definition after World War II, though Estonia remains within the definition.) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Balts」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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