Carpathian historical development

Carpathian is descended from Proto-Indo-European. This language in turn is the parent language of the vast majority of European languages (including English, German, Spanish, French, etc). Proto-Carpathian gradually evolved into various modern Carpathian dialects during the first millennium CE, concurrent with the Slavic, Avar and Hungarian contact. There is no scholarly consensus concerning either the number of stages involved in the development of the language and their periodisation, but for convenience, three stages are usually defined as follows:

• Proto-Carpathian (3500 BCE — 1000 BCE) — a long period of gradual development from Proto-Indo-European. No dialectal distinctions can be reconstructed from this period. Loanwords from an unknown, likely pre-Indo-European substratum entered the language.
• Common Carpathian (1000 BCE — 500 CE) — the stage with the earliest identifiable dialectal distinctions and borrowings from other languages. At this stage Paleo-Balkan influence is prominent.
• Late Carpathian (500 BCE — present) — gradual development of individual Carpathian dialects. The influence of the Slavic languages is prominent at this stage.

Split from Late Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Carpathian exhibits the satem development wherein Proto-Indo-European (PIE) palatovelar consonants became affricates or fricatives, conventionally indicated as *ś and *ź.

• *ḱ → *ś
• *ǵ, *ǵʰ → *ź

These later became retroflex fricatives *š and *ž in the Western dialects, but dental fricatives *s and *z in the Eastern dialects, which is the feature that defines each group (and became the main difference for the subsequent Western and Eastern standard languages).