It is a little over a hundred years (1837) since K. Zeuss first considered the possibility of a closer linguistic relationship between Germanic and Slavic. He gave the name ‘Slovenic’ to the language of the Slavs (or of the Wends, who according to him were ‘one people with the Slavs'), and maintained that the linguistic relationship which existed between that language and Germanic was no less close than that between Greek and Latin: ‘Not only have the two languages certain roots in common which are not found elsewhere; they also evince similarities in root adaptation, especially in flexion, as with none other.' From these facts he then draws the inference that ‘in the dim era into which not a ray of history penetrates’ the respective peoples, the bearers of the languages, 'regardless of whether their particular relationships of contiguity have been continued or not, have been in closer association with one another than others in whose case a more divergent tendency is noted in the unfolding of the foundation common to them.’ He likewise was of the opinion that 'at the other end . . . Slavic together with its Aistic or Baltic sister tongue’ is closely related to Indic.