The most widely studied language family in the world is the Indo-European. There are a number of reasons for this:
- Many of the most important languages of the world are Indo-European. These languages are official or co-official in many countries and are important in academic, technical and world organisations.
Examples: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian.
Indeed, more than half the world's population speak one or more of these languages either as a mother tongue or as a business language.
- Languages that are essential in multinational contexts or with large numbers of speakers.
Examples: Portuguese, Hindi, German, Bengali.
- Some of the great classical languages of religion, culture and philosophy were Indo-European.
Examples: Latin, Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali.
- Languages that are scattered around the world as their speakers are part of diasporas.
Examples: Greek, Yiddish, Polish, Armenian, Romany, Kurdish, Italian, Punjabi, Gujarati.
The Indo-European languages stretch from the Americas through Europe to North India.
The Indo-European Family is thought to have originated in the forests north of the Black Sea (in what is now Ukraine) during the Neoloithic period (about 7000BC). These people bagan to migrate between 3500BC and 2500BC, spreading west to Europe, south to the Mediterranian, north to Scandinavia, and east to India.
The Indo-European Family is divided into twelve branches, ten of which contain existing languages. I will describe each of these branches separately.
The Celtic Branch
This is now the smallest branch. The languages originated in Central Europe and once dominated Western Europe (around 400BC). The people migrated across to the British Isles over 2000 years ago. Later, when the Germanic speaking Anglo Saxons arrived, the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales (Welsh), Ireland (Irish Gaelic) and Scotland (Scottish Gaelic).One group of Celts moved back to France. Their language became Breton spoken in the Brittany region of France. Breton is closer to Welsh than to French.
Other Celtic languages have became extinct. These include Cornish (Cornwall in England - now being revived), Gaulish (France), Cumbrian (Cumbria), Manx (Isle of Man - another language being revived), Pictish (Scotland) and Galatian (spoken in Anatolia by the Galatians mentioned in the Christian New Testament).
Welsh has the word order Verb-Subject-Object in a sentence. Irish has the third oldest literature in Europe (after Greek and Latin).
The Germanic Branch
These languages originate from Old Norse and Saxon. Due to the influence of early Christian missionaries, the vast majority of the Celtic and Germanic languages use the Latin Alphabet.They include English, the second most spoken language in the world, the most widespread, the language of technology, and the language with the largest vocabulary. A useful language to have as your mother tongue.
Dutch and German are the closest major languages related to English. An even closer relative is Frisian.
Flemish and Afrikaans are varieties of Dutch while Yiddish is a variety of German. Yiddish is written using the Hebrew script.
Three of the four (mainland) Scandinavian languages belong to this branch: (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish). Swedish has tones, unusual in European languages. The fourth Scandinavian language, Finnish, belongs to a different family.
Icelandic is the least changed of the Germanic Languages - being close to Old Norse. Another old language is Faroese.
Gothic (Central Europe), Frankish (France), Lombardo (Danube region), Visigoth (Iberian Peninsula) and Vandal (North Africa) are extinct languages from this branch.
German has a system of four cases and three genders for its nouns. Case is the property where a noun takes a different ending depending on its role in a sentence. An example in English would be the forms: lady, lady's, ladies and ladies'. The genders are masculine, feminine and neuter. German has three dialects spoken in northern Germany, southern Germany and Austria, and a very different form spoken in Switzerland.
English has lost gender and case. Only a few words form their plurals like German (ox, oxen and child, children). Most now add an s, having been influenced by Norman French.
The Latin Branch
Also called the Italic or Romance Languages.These languages are all derived from Latin. Latin is one of the most important classical languages. Its alphabet (derived from the Greek alphabet) is used by many languages of the world. Latin was long used by the scientific establishment and the Catholic Church as their means of communication.
Italian and Portuguese are the closest modern major languages to Latin. Spanish has been influenced by Arabic and Basque. French has moved farthest from Latin in pronunciation, only its spelling gives a clue to its origins. French has many Germanic and Celtic influences. Romanian has picked up Slavic influences because it is a Latin Language surrounded by a sea of Slavic speakers. Portuguese and Spanish have been separate for over 1000 years. The most widely spoken of these languages is Spanish. Apart from Spain, it is spoken in most of Latin America (apart from Portuguese speaking Brazil, and a few small countries like Belize and Guyana).
Romansh is a minority language in Switzerland. Ladino was the language spoken by Spain's Jewish population when they were expelled in 1492. Most of them now live in Turkey and Israel. Provincial and Catalan are closely related languages spoken in the south of France and the north-east of Spain, respectively.
Note that Basque (spoken in parts of Spain and France) is not an Indo-European language - in fact it is totally unrelated to any other language of the world.
Galician is a Portuguese dialect with Celtic influences spoken in the north west of Spain. Finally, Moldavian is a dialect of Romanian spoken in the Moldova. Under the Soviets the Moldavians had to use the Cyrillic alphabet. Now they have returned to the Latin alphabet.
Apart from Latin, other extinct languages include Dalmatian, Oscan, Faliscan, Sabine and Umbrian.
Latin had three genders and at least six cases for its nouns and a Subject-Object-Verb sentence structure. Most modern Romance languages have only two genders, no cases and a Subject-Verb-Object structure.
The Slavic Branch
These languages are confined to Eastern Europe.In general, the Catholic peoples use the Latin alphabet while the Orthodox use the Cyrillic alphabet which is derived from the Greek. Indeed some of the languages are very similar differing only in the script used (Croatian and Serbian are virtually the same language).
One of the oldest of these languages is Bulgarian. The most important is Russian. Others include Polish, Kashubian (spoken in parts of Poland), Sorbian (spoken in parts of eastern Germany), Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Macedonian, Bosnian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian.
The Slavic languages are famed for their consonant clusters and large number of cases for nouns (up to seven). Many of the languages have three numbers for verbs: singular, dual and plural. Macedonian has three definite articles indicating distance; all are suffixes: VOL (ox), VOLOT (the ox), VOLOV (the ox here), VOLON (the ox there).
The Baltic Branch
Three Baltic states but only two Baltic Languages (Estonian is related to Finnish).Lithuanian is one of the oldest of the Indo-European languages. Its study is important in determining the origins and evolution of the family. Lithuanian and Latvian both use the Latin script and have tones. Lithuanian has three numbers: singular, dual and plural.
Prussian is an extinct language from this branch
The Hellenic Branch
The only extant language in this branch is Modern Greek.Greek is one of the oldest Indo-European languages. Mycenaean dates from 1300BC. The Ancient Greek of Homer was written from around 700BC. The major forms were Doric (Sparta), Ionic (Cos), Aeolic (Lesbos), and Attic (Athens). The latter is Classical Greek.
The New Testament of the Christian Bible was written in a form of 1st Century AD Greek called Koine. This developed into the Greek of the Byzantine Empire. Modern Greek has developed from this.
Greek has three genders and four cases for nouns but no form of the verb infinitive. The language has its own script, derived from Phoenician with the addition of symbols for vowels. It is one of the oldest alphabets in the world and has led to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. The Greek Alphabet is still used in science and mathematics.
Until the 1970s Greek was a Diglossic language. This means that there were two forms: Katharevoussa used in official documents and news broadcasts and Demotic used in common speech.
The Greek spoken in Cyprus includes many Turkish, Arabic and Venetian words and has a different pronounciation to the official Greek of Greece.
The Illyric Branch
Another single language branch. Only Albanian (called Shqip by its speakers) belongs to this branch. It has been written in the Latin script since 1909; this replaced a number of writing systems including Greek and Arabic scripts. Albanian has many avoidance words. Instead of saying wolf, the phrase may God close its mouth is used. The definate article is shown by a suffix: BUK (bread) BUKA (the bread). Many noun plurals are irregular.There are two dialects that have been diverging for 1000 years. They are mostly mutually intelligible. Geg is spoken in the north of Albania and Kosovo (Kosova). Tosk is spoken in southern Albania and north west Greece.
The ancient Illyric and Mesapian languages, spoken in parts of Italy, are considered by some to be an extinct member of this branch.
The Anatolian Branch
This branch includes the language of the Hittite civilisation which once ruled central Anatolia, fought the Ancient Egyptians and was mentioned in the Christain Bible's Old Testament. Other languages were Lydian (spoken by a people who ruled the south coast of Anatolia), Lycian (spoken by a Hellenic culture along the western coastal regions), Luwian (spoken in ancient Troy) and Palaic.All languages in this branch are extinct.
Hittite is the earliest Indo-European language known in Europe. It has two noun genders, animate and inanimate. It has post-positions.
The Thracian Branch
This branch is represented by a single modern language, Armenian. It has its own script.Armenian is spoken in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh (an enclave in Azerbaijan). The language is rich in consonants and has borrowed much of its vocabulary from Farsi (Iranian). Nouns have 7 cases and the past tense of verbs take an E prefix like Greek.
Armenian
Three extinct languages from this branch are Dacian (or Daco-Mysian - spoken in the ancient Balkan region of Dacia), Thracian and Phrygian (spoken in ancient Troy).
The Iranian Branch
These languages are descended from Ancient Persian, the literary language of the Persian Empire and one of the great classical languages.The main language of this branch is Farsi (also called Iranian, Dari and Persian), the main language of Iran and much of Afghanistan. Kurdish is a close relation. Kurdish is spoken in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq by the Kurds. It is the second largest of the Iranian languages after Farsi. In Turkey it was banned until recently.
Pashto (also called Pushtu or Pakhto) is spoken in Afghanistan and parts of north west Pakistan. Baluchi is spoken in the desert regions between Iran, Afganistan and Pakistan. These languages are written in the Nastaliq script, a derivative of Arabic writing. It is interesting that you cannot tell which family a language belongs to by the way it is written.
Ossetian is found in the Caucasus mountains, north of Georgia. Tadzhik is a close relative of Farsi, written in Cyrillic and spoken in Tadzhikistan (of the former USSR) as well as northern Afghanistan.
Avestan is the extinct language of the Zoroastrian religion. Scythian is an extinct language of a warrior people who once lived north of the Black Sea.
The Indic Branch
This branch has the most languages. Most are found in North India. They are derived from Sanskrit (the classical language of Hinduism dating from 1000BC). This gave rise to Pali (the language of Buddhism), Ardhamagadhi (the language of Jainism) and the ancestors of the modern North Indian languages.Of the modern North Indian languages, Hindi and Urdu are very similar but differ in the script. The Hindi speakers are Hindus and use the Sanskrit writing system called Devanagari (writing of the Gods). Urdu is spoken by the Muslims so uses the Arabic Nastaliq script. These two languages are found in north and central India and Pakistan. Nepali is closely related to Hindi.
Hindi
In India most of the states have their own language. These languages either use Devanagari script or a derivation (if the people are Hindus) or the Arabic Nastaliq script (if the people are Muslims).Bengali (West Bengal as well as Bangladesh), Bhili (Central India), Oriya (in Orissa), Marathi (in Maharashtra), Assamese (in Assam), Punjabi and Lahnda (from the Punjab), Maithili and Maghadi (from Bihar), Kashmiri (Kashmir - written mainly in Nastaliq), Sindhi (the Pakistan province of Sindh - also written in Nastaliq), Gujarati (Gujarat in western India), Konkani (in Goa, an ex Portuguese colony, uses the Latin script), Sinhalese (Sri Lanka - uses its own script derived from Pali), Maldivian (Maldives - with its own script based on Arabic).
Bengali
Punjabi
Oriya
Sinhalese
The most surprising language in this branch is Romany, the language of the Roma (also known as Gypsies - this is a derogatory term which should not be used). The Roma migrated to Europe from India.Sanskrit had three genders as has Marathi; most modern Indic languages have two genders; Bengali has none.
The fascinating point about India is that the south Indian languages (like Tamil) are not Indo-European. In other words, Hindi is related to English, Greek and French but is totally unrelated to Tamil. North Indians visiting Madras (in the south) are as baffled by Tamil as a foreigner would be.
The Tokharian Branch
Turfanian and Kuchean are recently identified extinct languages once spoken in north west China. Very little is known about this branch as only a few manuscripts dating from 600 AD are in existence. The languages disappeared around the 8th century AD. The closest relatives of these languages are from the Celtic, Anatolian and Latin branches.
| Celtic Branch |
|---|
| Welsh : Irish Gaelic : Scottish Gaelic : Breton Cornish : Gaulish : Cumbrian : Manx : Galatian |
| Germanic Branch |
| English : Dutch : Flemish : Frisian : Afrikaans German : Yiddish : Danish : Swedish : Norwegian Faroes : Icelandic Anglo Saxon : Old Norse : Frankish : Gothic Lombardo : Visigoth : Vandal |
| Romance (Latin) Branch |
| Italian : Sardinian : French : Provencal : Catalonian Spanish : Ladino : Galician : Portuguese : Romansh Romanian : Moldavian Latin : Oscan : Umbrian : Faliscan : Sabine : Dalmatian |
| Slavic Branch |
| Russian : Belorussian : Ukrainian : Polish : Sorbian Czech : Slovak : Slovene : Croatian : Serbian Kashubian : Bulgarian : Macedonian : Bosnian Old Church Slavic |
| Baltic Branch |
| Lithuanian : Latvian Prussian |
| Hellenic Branch |
| Modern Greek Mycenaean : Koine : Byzantine Greek Classical Greek (Attic : Doric, Ionic, Aeolic) |
| Illyric Branch |
| Albanian Illyric : Mesapian |
| Anatolian Branch |
| Hittite : Lydian : Lycian: Luwian : Palaic |
| Thracian Branch |
| Armenian Dacian : Thracian : Phrygian |
| Iranian Branch |
| Farsi : Kurdish : Pashto : Baluchi : Ossetian : Tadzhik Persian : Avestan : Scythian |
| Indic Branch |
| Hindi : Urdu : Nepali : Bengali : Assamese : Oriya Kashmiri : Punjabi : Sindhi : Marathi : Gujarati Bhili : Lahnda : Maithili : Magahi Konkani : Sinhalese : Maldivian : Romany Sanskrit : Pali : Ardhamagadhi |
| Tokharian Branch |
| Turfanian : Kuchean |
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