Home > 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 Hindi/ Urdu, English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, French and German (each spoken by more than one hundred million native speakers).
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, GreekThe Greek language ( /Elini'k{/) is an Indo-European language which has existed from around the 14th century BC in the Cretan inscriptions called Linear B. Mycenaean Greek of this period is distinguished from later Classical or Ancient Greek of the 8th ce, Sanskrit, and PersianPersian , also known as Farsi (local name), Parsi Tajiki or Dari is a language spoken in Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. It has official-language status in the first three countries. There are over 75 million native speakers. It belongs to t. Systematic comparison of these and other old languages conducted by Franz BoppFranz Bopp ( September 14, 1791 October 23, 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages. He was born at Mainz, but in consequence of the political troubles of that time, his parents removed to Aschaffenburg, supported this theory. In the 19th centuryAlternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical ( 18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801- 1900. Events The Little Ice Age ended, scholars used to call the group "Indo-Germanic languages" or sometimes " AryanThe Aryan invasion theory is a historical theory first put forth by the German Indologist Friedrich Max Muller and others in the mid nineteenth century in order to provide a historical explanation for the existence of Indo-European languages in India.". However when it became apparent that the connection is relevant to most of Europe's languages, the name was expanded to Indo-EuropeanIndo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. By extension, it became a collective name for cultures and religions associated with these languages. Hypothetically, these cultures arose from the expansion of. An example of this was the strong similarity discovered between Sanskrit and older spoken dialectA dialect is a variant, or variety, of a language spoken in a certain geographical area. The number of speakers, and the area itself, can be of arbitrary size. It follows that a dialect for a larger area can contain plenty of (sub-) dialects, which in turs 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.
The various subgroups of the Indo-European family include (cf. Satem and Centum languages):
- earliest attested branch, from the 18th century BC; extinct, most notable was the language of the Hittites.
- including Sanskrit, attested from the 2nd millennium BC
- fragmentary records in Mycenaean from the 14th century BC; well attested from ca. the 7th century BC.
- including Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages, attested from the 1st millennium BC.
- Gaulish inscriptions date as early as the 6th century BC; Old Irish texts from the 6th century AD.
- (including English), earliest testimonies in runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century, earliest coherent texts in Gothic, 4th century.
- attested from the 5th century.
- extinct tongues of the Tocharians, extant in two dialects, attested from roughly the 6th century.
- earliest testimonies are in Old Church Slavonic ( 9th century).
- attested from the 16th century, sometimes placed with several extinct languages in the Illyrian languages subgroup.
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.
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.
