Indo-European languages
The
Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major
language families of
Europe and western
Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. Contemporary languages in this superfamily include
Bengali,
English,
French,
German,
Gujarati,
Hindi,
Italian,
Persian,
Portuguese,
Russian and
Spanish.
History
Countries in which Indo-European languages are currently predominant
The possibility of
common origin for these disparate tongues was first proposed by
Sir William Jones, who noticed similarities between four of the oldest languages known in his time,
Latin,
Greek, Sanskrit, and
Persian. Systematic comparison of these and other old languages conducted by
Franz Bopp supported this theory. In the
19th century, scholars used to call the group "Indo-Germanic languages" or sometimes "
Aryan". However when it became apparent that the connection is relevant to most of Europe's languages, the name was expanded to
Indo-European. An example of this was the strong similarity discovered between Sanskrit and older spoken
dialects of
Lithuanian.
The common ancestral (reconstructed) language is called
Proto-Indo-European (PIE). There is disagreement as to the original
geographic location (the so-called "
Urheimat" or "original homeland"), where it originated from, with
Armenia, the area to the north or west of the
Black Sea, or
Anatolia itself prime examples of proposed candidates.
Subgroups
The various subgroups of the
Indo-European family include (cf.
Satem and
Centum languages):
- Anatolian languages — earliest attested branch, from the 18th century BC; extinct, most notable was the language of the Hittites.
- Indo-Iranian languages — including Sanskrit, attested from the 2nd millennium BC, Avestan and Persian.
- Greek language — fragmentary records in Mycenaean from the 14th century BC; well attested from ca. the 7th century BC.
- Italic languages — including Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages, attested from the 1st millennium BC.
- Celtic languages — Gaulish inscriptions date as early as the 6th century BC; Old Irish texts from the 6th century AD.
- Germanic languages (including English) — earliest testimonies in runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century, earliest coherent texts in Gothic, 4th century.
- Armenian language — attested from the 5th century.
- Tocharian languages — extinct tongues of the Tocharians, extant in two dialects, attested from roughly the 6th century.
- Balto-Slavic languages — including Baltic languages and Slavic languages, attested from the 6th century, earliest texts in Old Church Slavonic, 9th century.
- Albanian language — attested from the 16th century, sometimes placed with several extinct languages in the Illyrian languages subgroup.
- Phrygian language — extinct language of ancient Phrygia, fragmentary.
- Thracian language — extinct, fragmentary.
- Dacian language — extinct, fragmentary.
Non-IE European languages
Most spoken European languages belong to the Indo-European superfamily. There are, however, language families which do not. The
Uralic language family, which includes
Hungarian,
Estonian,
Finnish and the languages of the Sami, is an example. The Caucasian language family is another. The
Basque language is unusual in that it does not appear to be related to any known living languages.
The
Maltese language and
Turkish are two examples of languages spoken in Europe which have definite non-European origins. Turkish is a
Turkic language, and Maltese is largely derived from
Arabic.
Superfamily
Some linguists propose that Indo-European languages are part of a hypothetical
Nostratic language superfamily, and attempt to relate Indo-European to other language families, such as Caucasian languages,
Altaic languages,
Uralic languages,
Dravidian languages,
Afro-Asiatic languages. This theory is controversial, as is the similar Eurasiatic theory of
Joseph H. Greenberg.
See also
External links
Category:Language families
af:Indo-Europees
ca:Indoeuropeu
da:Indoeuropćiske sprog
de:Indoeuropäische Sprachen
es:Lenguas Indoeuropeas
eo:Hindeuxropa lingvaro
et:Indoeuroopa keeled
fr:Langues indo-européennes
hr:Indoeuropska jezična porodica
hu:Indoeurópai nyelvcsalád
nds:Indoeuropääsche Spraken
nl:Indo-Europese talen
ja:インド・ヨーロッパ語族
la:Linguae Indoeuropaeae
jbo:xinjoiropno bangu
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ro:Limbile indo-europene
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