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The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and
dialects.
There are about 445 Indo-European languages.
The Indo-European family includes most major current languages of Europe, and parts
of Western,Central and South Asia.
Using the method of internal reconstruction an earlier stage, called Indo-European,
has been proposed.
This proposed language is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European
languages.
Of the 20 languages with the largest numbers of native speakers, according to Ethnologue (a
catalogue of more than 6700 languages spoken in 228 countries), 11 are Indo-
European: Spanish, English,Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, French, Marathi,
and Urdu, accounting for over 1.7 billion native speakers.
Following centuries of European colonization, many modern countries now have an Indo-
European language as their official language.