This is probably the best known of the language families.
It is thought that a "Proto-Indo-European" language was spoken up until about 3000 BCE across Europe and parts of Southeast Asia, when local languages started to evolve from it creating the modern Indo-European family.
Much of the genetic theory of language derives from studies of the Indo-European family which began in the 16th century but culminated in 19th century when comparisons were made between European languages and Sanscrit.
In 1786 William Jones (1746-94) issued the following address to a meeting of the Bengal Asiatic Society: "The Sanscrit language, whatever its antiquity, is of a wonderful struture; more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them affinity, both of the roots of verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no phililoger could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exits."
Quote Source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language - David Crystal Cambridge University Press
[Articles/_private/langnavbar.htm]Germanic
The Germanic family of languages evolved as a result of migrations of North-European tribes at about 1000 BCE.
- North Germanic: Icelandic , Swedish/Norwegian , Danish
- East Germanic: Gothic (extinct)
- West Germanic: English , Dutch , German , Yiddish , Afrikaans
Italic
This language family derives from dialects of Latin, which slowly evolved into individual languages. This family is also referred to as the Romance family.
- Osco-Umbrian: Oscan, Umbrian (extinct languages of Italy)
- Latin and its descendents (Italian , Spanish , Portuguese , Catalan , Occitan, Romanian , French
Celtic
The Celts were the first Indo-European group to move across Europe in a series of waves. They reached as far as the Black Sea and Eurasia (to the East), Southwest Spain and central Italy (to the South), and to the whole of Britain (to the Northeast).
Hellenic
This family has a single member which exists is a variety of dialects (spoken in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, the United States, and elsewhere).
- Greek (ancient and modern)
Balto-Slavic
More than 300 million people speak languages from the Balto-Slavic family (more than half of them, Russian). The link between the Baltic and Slavic sub-families is controversial with the similarity between these languages either explained in terms of a common root or (more acceptably) as a convergence of languages with different origins.
- Slavic: Russian , Bulgarian, Polish , Czech , Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, Slovene, etc...
- Baltic: Lithuanian , Latvian
Indo-Iranian
There are over 500 Indic languages spoken by about 500 million people in the Indian subcontinent. The Iranian languages are spoken in an area centered on modern Afghanistan and Iran.
- Indic: Sanskrit and its modern descendents, Hindi-Urdu , Romani (the language of the gypsies), Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Sinhalese (Sri Lanka), Punjabi etc...
- Iranian: Farsi (Persian, ancient and modern), Tadzhik, Pashto (Afghanistan), Kurdish, Baluchi, etc...
Albanian
This single-language family is spoken in Albania, parts of Former Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy. The language has two distinct dialects and a number of sub-dialects.
Armenian
Armenian has many dialects and a large number of borrowings from other languages. It is spoken in Armenia, Turkey, parts of the Middle East, Europe and the United States.
Tokharian
- (an extinct language of NW China)
Hittite
- (an extinct language of Turkey)