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| | Centum and satem |
 | | This correspondence, mirrored in many other word sets, was identified as an important Indo-European isogloss (a boundary line that can be drawn based upon a particular linguistic feature): Indo-Iranian, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, and Armenian have a sibilant for PIE *k' whereas Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic and Tocharian maintain the k- sound. |
 | | Note that Tocharian, found in far western China, is a centum language as is Hittite (found in Anatolia) so that a strict satem = east, centum = west rule-of-thumb doesn't work. |
 | | As observed above, the centum languages retain the PIE articulation better than the satem group: the velars (/palato-velars) in the centum group did not become sibilants and the labial element was retained. |
| popgen.well.ox.ac.uk /eurasia/htdocs/anderson.html (939 words) |
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