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Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a large language family native to western and southern Eurasia. It
comprises most of the languages of Europe together with those of the northern Indian subcontinent and the
Indo-European
Iranian Plateau. A few of these languages, such as English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, have expanded Geographic Pre-colonial era: Eurasia
through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across all continents. The Indo-European distribution Today: Worldwide
family is divided into several branches or sub-families, the largest of which are the Indo-Iranian, Germanic, c. 3.2 billion native speakers
Romance, and Balto-Slavic groups. The most populous individual languages within them are Spanish, English,
Linguistic One of the world's primary
Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu), Portuguese, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, and Russian, each with over 100 million
speakers. German, French, Italian, and Persian have more than 50 million each. In total, 46% of the world's classification language families
population (3.2 billion) speaks an Indo-European language as a first language, by far the highest of any Proto- Proto-Indo-European
language family. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by language
Ethnologue, with over two thirds (313) of them belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch.[2]
Subdivisions Albanian
All Indo-European languages have descended from a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo- Armenian
European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Its precise geographical location, the Indo-European Balto-Slavic (Baltic and Slavic
urheimat, is unknown and has been the object of many competing hypotheses; the most widely accepted is the
languages)
Kurgan hypothesis, which posits the urheimat to be the Pontic–Caspian steppe, associated with the Yamnaya
culture around 3000 BC. By the time the first written records appeared, Indo-European had already evolved Celtic
into numerous languages spoken across much of Europe and south-west Asia. Written evidence of Indo- Germanic
European appeared during the Bronze Age in the form of Mycenaean Greek and the Anatolian languages,
Hellenic
Hittite and Luwian. The oldest records are isolated Hittite words and names – interspersed in texts that are
otherwise in the unrelated Old Assyrian language, a Semitic language – found in the texts of the Assyrian Indo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan, Iranian,
colony of Kültepe in eastern Anatolia in the 20th century BC.[3] Although no older written records of the and Nuristani)
original Proto-Indo-Europeans remain, some aspects of their culture and religion can be reconstructed from Italic (including Romance
later evidence in the daughter cultures.[4] The Indo-European family is significant to the field of historical languages)
linguistics as it possesses the second-longest recorded history of any known family, after the Afroasiatic family
in the form of the Egyptian language and the Semitic languages. The analysis of the family relationships Anatolian †
between the Indo-European languages and the reconstruction of their common source was central to the Illyrian †(?)
development of the methodology of historical linguistics as an academic discipline in the 19th century. Daco-Thracian †(?)
The Indo-European family is not known to be linked to any other language family through any more distant Tocharian †
genetic relationship, although several disputed proposals to that effect have been made. Phrygian †

During the nineteenth century, the linguistic concept of Indo-European languages was frequently used ISO 639-2 / 5 ine

interchangeably with the racial concepts of Aryan and the Biblical concept of Japhetite.[5] Glottolog indo1319 (http://glottolog.org/
resource/languoid/id/indo1319)[1]

Contents
History of Indo-European linguistics
Classification
Tree versus wave model
Proposed subgroupings
Satem and centum languages
Suggested macrofamilies
Evolution
Proto-Indo-European
Diversification
Important languages for reconstruction
Sound changes
Comparison of conjugations Present-day distribution of Indo-European
Comparison of cognates languages in Eurasia:
Albanian
Present distribution
Armenian
See also Balto-Slavic (Baltic)
Notes Balto-Slavic (Slavic)
References Celtic
Citations Germanic
Sources Greek
Further reading Indo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and
Nuristani)
External links
Romance
Databases
Non-Indo-European languages
Lexica
Dotted/striped areas indicate where
multilingualism is common

History of Indo-European linguistics Notes Italicized branches mean only


one extant language of the
branch remains
In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo- † indicates this branch of the
Aryan, Iranian, and European languages. In 1583, English Jesuit missionary and Konkani scholar Thomas language family is extinct
Stephens wrote a letter from Goa to his brother (not published until the 20th century)[6] in which he noted
similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin.

Another account was made by Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, who travelled to the Indian subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted
some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included devaḥ/dio "God", sarpaḥ/serpe "serpent", sapta/sette "seven", aṣṭa/otto "eight", and
nava/nove "nine").[6] However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.[6]

In 1647, Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted the similarity among certain Asian and European languages and theorized that they
were derived from a primitive common language which he called Scythian.[7] He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and
German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further
research.

Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities
between words in German and in Persian. Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made
a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them.
Meanwhile, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Slavic, Baltic ("Kurlandic"), Iranian ("Medic"),
Finnish, Chinese, "Hottentot" (Khoekhoe), and others, noting that related languages (including Latin, Greek, German and
Russian) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors.[8]

The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on the striking similarities among three of the oldest
languages known in his time: Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, to which he tentatively added Gothic, Celtic, and Persian,[9] though his
classification contained some inaccuracies and omissions.[10] In one of the most famous quotations in linguistics, Jones made
the following prescient statement in a lecture to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786, conjecturing the existence of an earlier
ancestor language, which he called "a common source" but did not name:
Franz Bopp, pioneer in the
field of comparative
The Sanscrit [sic] language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more linguistic studies.
copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both
in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong
indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common
source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.[note 1]

— Sir William Jones, Third Anniversary Discourse delivered 2 February 1786, ELIOHS[11]

Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the geographical extremes of the language family: from Western Europe to North
India.[12][13] A synonym is Indo-Germanic (Idg. or IdG.), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in
French (indo-germanique) in 1810 in the work of Conrad Malte-Brun; in most languages this term is now dated or less common than Indo-European,
although in German indogermanisch remains the standard scientific term. A number of other synonymous terms have also been used.

Franz Bopp wrote in 1816 On the conjugational system of the Sanskrit language compared with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic[14] and between
1833 and 1852 he wrote Comparative Grammar. This marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline. The classical phase of Indo-
European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleicher's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann's Grundriss, published in the
1880s. Brugmann's neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure's development of the laryngeal theory may be considered the
beginning of "modern" Indo-European studies. The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as Calvert Watkins,
Jochem Schindler, and Helmut Rix) developed a better understanding of morphology and of ablaut in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophony in Indo-
European, who in 1927 pointed out the existence of the Hittite consonant ḫ.[15] Kuryłowicz's discovery supported Ferdinand de Saussure's 1879 proposal of
the existence of coefficients sonantiques, elements de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-European languages. This led
to the so-called laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics and a confirmation of de Saussure's theory.

Classification
The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include ten major branches, listed below in alphabetical order:

Albanian, attested from the 13th century AD;[16] Proto-Albanian evolved from an ancient Paleo-Balkan language, traditionally thought to be Illyrian;[17]
however, the evidence supporting this is insufficient.[18]
Anatolian, extinct by Late Antiquity, spoken in Anatolia, attested in isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th
and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC.[19][20]
Armenian, attested from the early 5th century AD.
Balto-Slavic, believed by most Indo-Europeanists[21] to form a phylogenetic unit, while a minority ascribes similarities to prolonged language-contact.
Slavic (from Proto-Slavic), attested from the 9th century AD (possibly earlier), earliest texts in Old Church Slavonic. Slavic languages include
Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Silesian, Kashubian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian), Sorbian,
Slovenian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn.
Baltic, attested from the 14th century AD; for languages first attested that recently, they retain unusually many archaic features attributed to Proto-
Indo-European (PIE). Living examples are Lithuanian and Latvian.
Celtic (from Proto-Celtic), attested since the 6th century BC; Lepontic inscriptions date as early as the 6th century BC; Celtiberian from the 2nd century
BC; Primitive Irish Ogham inscriptions from the 4th or 5th century AD, earliest inscriptions in Old Welsh from the 7th century AD. Modern Celtic
languages include Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Manx.
Germanic (from Proto-Germanic), earliest attestations in runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century AD, earliest coherent texts in Gothic, 4th century
AD. Old English manuscript tradition from about the 8th century AD. Includes English, Frisian, German, Dutch, Scots, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian,
Afrikaans, Yiddish, Low German, Icelandic and Faroese.
Hellenic and Greek (from Proto-Greek, see also History of Greek); fragmentary records in Mycenaean Greek from between 1450 and 1350 BC have
been found.[22] Homeric texts date to the 8th century BC.
Indo-Iranian, attested circa 1400 BC, descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian (dated to the late 3rd millennium BC).
Indo-Aryan (including Dardic), attested from around 1400 BC in Hittite texts from Anatolia, showing traces of Indo-Aryan words.[23][24] Epigraphically
from the 3rd century BC in the form of Prakrit (Edicts of Ashoka). The Rigveda is assumed to preserve intact records via oral tradition dating from
about the mid-second millennium BC in the form of Vedic Sanskrit. Includes a wide range of modern languages from Northern India, Southern
Pakistan and Bangladesh including Hindustani, Bengali, Odia, Assamese, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Marathi, Sindhi and Nepali as well as Sinhala
of Sri Lanka and Dhivehi of the Maldives and Minicoy.
Iranian or Iranic, attested from roughly 1000 BC in the form of Avestan. Epigraphically from 520 BC in the form of Old Persian (Behistun inscription).
Includes Persian, Ossetian, Pashto and Kurdish.
Nuristani (includes Kamkata-vari, Vasi-vari, Askunu, Waigali, Tregami, and Zemiaki).
Italic (from Proto-Italic), attested from the 7th century BC. Includes the ancient Osco-Umbrian languages, Faliscan, as well as Latin and its descendants,
the Romance languages, such as Italian, Venetian, Galician, Sardinian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Spanish, French, Romansh, Occitan, Portuguese,
Romanian, and Catalan/Valencian.
Tocharian, with proposed links to the Afanasevo culture of Southern Siberia.[25] Extant in two dialects (Turfanian and Kuchean, or Tocharian A and B),
attested from roughly the 6th to the 9th century AD. Marginalized by the Old Turkic Uyghur Khaganate and probably extinct by the 10th century.

In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages and language-groups have existed or are proposed to have
existed:

Ancient Belgian: hypothetical language associated with the proposed Nordwestblock cultural area. Speculated to be connected to Italic or Venetic, and to
have certain phonological features in common with Lusitanian.
Cimmerian: possibly Iranic, Thracian, or Celtic
Dacian: possibly very close to Thracian
Elymian: Poorly-attested language spoken by the Elymians, one of the three indigenous (i.e. pre-Greek and pre-Punic) tribes of Sicily. Indo-European
affiliation uncertain, but relationships to Italic or Anatolian have been proposed.
Illyrian: possibly related to Albanian, Messapian, or both
Liburnian: doubtful affiliation, features shared with Venetic, Illyrian, and Indo-Hittite, significant transition of the Pre-Indo-European elements
Ligurian: possibly close to or part of Celtic.[26]
Lusitanian: possibly related to (or part of) Celtic, Ligurian, or Italic
Ancient Macedonian: proposed relationship to Greek.
Messapian: not conclusively deciphered
Paionian: extinct language once spoken north of Macedon
Phrygian: language of the ancient Phrygians
Sicel: an ancient language spoken by the Sicels (Greek Sikeloi, Latin Siculi), one of the three indigenous (i.e. pre-Greek and pre-Punic) tribes of Sicily.
Proposed relationship to Latin or proto-Illyrian (Pre-Indo-European) at an earlier stage.[27]
Sorothaptic: proposed, pre-Celtic, Iberian language
Thracian: possibly including Dacian
Venetic: shares several similarities with Latin and the Italic languages, but also has some affinities with other IE languages, especially Germanic and
Celtic.[28][29]

Membership of languages in the Indo-European language family is determined by genealogical


relationships, meaning that all members are presumed descendants of a common ancestor,
Proto-Indo-European. Membership in the various branches, groups and subgroups of Indo-
European is also genealogical, but here the defining factors are shared innovations among
various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European
groups. For example, what makes the Germanic languages a branch of Indo-European is that
much of their structure and phonology can be stated in rules that apply to all of them. Many of
their common features are presumed innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, the source
of all the Germanic languages.

In the 21st century, several attempts have been made to model the phylogeny of Indo-European
languages using Bayesian methodologies similar to those applied to problems in biological
phylogeny.[31][32][30] Although there are differences in absolute timing between the various
analyses, there is much commonality between them, including the result that the first known
language groups to diverge were the Anatolian and Tocharian language families, in that order.

Tree versus wave model

The "tree model" is considered an appropriate representation of the genealogical history of a


language family if communities do not remain in contact after their languages have started to
diverge. In this case, subgroups defined by shared innovations form a nested pattern. The tree
model is not appropriate in cases where languages remain in contact as they diversify; in such Indo-European family tree in order of first attestation
cases subgroups may overlap, and the "wave model" is a more accurate representation.[33] Most
approaches to Indo-European subgrouping to date have assumed that the tree model is by-and-
large valid for Indo-European;[34] however, there is also a long tradition of wave-model approaches.[35][36][37]

In addition to genealogical changes, many of the early changes in Indo-European languages can be attributed to language contact. It has been asserted, for
example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be areal features. More certainly, very
similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation
(and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, because English and continental West Germanic were not a linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are
many similar innovations in Germanic and Balto-Slavic that are far more likely areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the
uniform development of a high vowel (*u in the case of Germanic, *i/u in the case of Baltic and Slavic) before the PIE syllabic resonants *ṛ, *ḷ, *ṃ, *ṇ, unique
to these two groups among IE languages, which is in agreement with the wave model. The Balkan sprachbund even features areal convergence among
members of very different branches.
An extension to the Ringe-Warnow model of language evolution, suggests that early IE had
featured limited contact between distinct lineages, with only the Germanic subfamily exhibiting
a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its
evolution. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic is cited to have been
radically non-treelike.[38]

Proposed subgroupings

Specialists have postulated the existence of higher-order subgroups such as Italo-Celtic,


Graeco-Armenian, Graeco-Aryan or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, and Balto-Slavo-Germanic.
However, unlike the ten traditional branches, these are all controversial to a greater or lesser
degree.[39]
Indo-European language family tree based on "Ancestry-
The Italo-Celtic subgroup was at one point uncontroversial, considered by Antoine Meillet to be
constrained phylogenetic analysis of Indo-European languages" by
even better established than Balto-Slavic.[40] The main lines of evidence included the genitive
Chang et al [30]
suffix -ī; the superlative suffix -m̥mo; the change of /p/ to /kʷ/ before another /kʷ/ in the same
word (as in penkʷe > *kʷenkʷe > Latin quīnque, Old Irish cóic); and the subjunctive morpheme
-ā-.[41] This evidence was prominently challenged by Calvert Watkins;[42] while Michael Weiss
has argued for the subgroup.[43]

Evidence for a relationship between Greek and Armenian includes the regular change of the second laryngeal to a at the beginnings of words, as well as terms
for "woman" and "sheep".[44] Greek and Indo-Iranian share innovations mainly in verbal morphology and patterns of nominal derivation.[45] Relations have
also been proposed between Phrygian and Greek,[46] and between Thracian and Armenian.[47][48] Some fundamental shared features, like the aorist (a verb
form denoting action without reference to duration or completion) having the perfect active particle -s fixed to the stem, link this group closer to Anatolian
languages[49] and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to
later contacts.[50]

The Indo-Hittite hypothesis proposes that the Indo-European language family consists of two main branches: one represented by the Anatolian languages
and another branch encompassing all other Indo-European languages. Features that separate Anatolian from all other branches of Indo-European (such as
the gender or the verb system) have been interpreted alternately as archaic debris or as innovations due to prolonged isolation. Points proffered in favour of
the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the (non-universal) Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia[51] and the preservation of laryngeals.[52] However,
in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence. According to another view, the Anatolian subgroup left the
Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as Indo-Iranian and later than the Greek or Armenian divisions. A third
view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in non-satem languages in general—
including Anatolian—might be due to their peripheral location in the Indo-European language-area and to early separation, rather than indicating a special
ancestral relationship.[53] Hans J. Holm, based on lexical calculations, arrives at a picture roughly replicating the general scholarly opinion and refuting the
Indo-Hittite hypothesis.[54]

Satem and centum languages

The division of the Indo-European languages into satem and centum groups was put forward by Peter
von Bradke in 1890, although Karl Brugmann did propose a similar type of division in 1886. In the
satem languages, which include the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian branches, as well as (in most
respects) Albanian and Armenian, the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European palatovelars remained
distinct and were fricativized, while the labiovelars merged with the 'plain velars'. In the centum
languages, the palatovelars merged with the plain velars, while the labiovelars remained distinct. The
results of these alternative developments are exemplified by the words for "hundred" in Avestan
(satem) and Latin (centum)—the initial palatovelar developed into a fricative [s] in the former, but
became an ordinary velar [k] in the latter.

Rather than being a genealogical separation, the centum–satem division is commonly seen as resulting
from innovative changes that spread across PIE dialect-branches over a particular geographical area; Some significant isoglosses in Indo-European daughter
the centum–satem isogloss intersects a number of other isoglosses that mark distinctions between languages at around 500 BC.
features in the early IE branches. It may be that the centum branches in fact reflect the original state of Blue: centum languages
affairs in PIE, and only the satem branches shared a set of innovations, which affected all but the Red: satem languages
peripheral areas of the PIE dialect continuum.[55] Kortlandt proposes that the ancestors of Balts and Orange: languages with augment
Slavs took part in satemization before being drawn later into the western Indo-European sphere.[56]
Green: languages with PIE *-tt- > -ss-
Tan: languages with PIE *-tt- > -st-
Suggested macrofamilies Pink: languages with instrumental, dative and ablative
plural endings (and some others) in *-m- rather than *-bh-
Some linguists propose that Indo-European languages form part of one of several hypothetical
macrofamilies. However, these theories remain highly controversial and are not accepted by most
linguists in the field. Some of the smaller proposed macrofamilies include:

Indo-Uralic, joining Indo-European with Uralic


Pontic, postulated by John Colarusso, which joins Indo-European with Northwest Caucasian

Other, greater proposed families including Indo-European languages, include:

Eurasiatic, a theory championed by Joseph Greenberg, comprising the Uralic, Altaic and various 'Paleosiberian' families (Ainu, Yukaghir, Nivkh,
Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Eskimo-Aleut) and possibly others
Nostratic, comprising all or some of the Eurasiatic languages as well as the Kartvelian, Dravidian (or wider, Elamo-Dravidian) and Afroasiatic language
families
Objections to such groupings are not based on any theoretical claim about the likely historical existence or non-existence of such macrofamilies; it is entirely
reasonable to suppose that they might have existed. The serious difficulty lies in identifying the details of actual relationships between language families,
because it is very hard to find concrete evidence that transcends chance resemblance, or is not equally likely explained as being due to borrowing (including
Wanderwörter, which can travel very long distances). Because the signal-to-noise ratio in historical linguistics declines over time, at great enough time-
depths it becomes open to reasonable doubt that one can even distinguish between signal and noise.

Evolution

Proto-Indo-European

The proposed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages,
spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became certain enough to establish its
relationship to PIE. Using the method of internal reconstruction, an earlier stage, called Pre-Proto-Indo-European, has
been proposed.

PIE was an inflected language, in which the grammatical relationships between words were signaled through inflectional
morphemes (usually endings). The roots of PIE are basic morphemes carrying a lexical meaning. By addition of suffixes,
Scheme of Indo-European
they form stems, and by addition of endings, these form grammatically inflected words (nouns or verbs). The reconstructed
migrations from ca. 4000 to 1000
Indo-European verb system is complex and, like the noun, exhibits a system of ablaut. BC according to the Kurgan
hypothesis.

Diversification

Possible expansion of Indo-European languages according to the Kurgan hypothesis

IE languages c. 3500 BC IE languages c. 2500 BC IE languages c. 1500 BC IE languages c. 500 AD

The diversification of the parent language into the attested branches of daughter languages is historically unattested. The timeline of the evolution of the
various daughter languages, on the other hand, is mostly undisputed, quite regardless of the question of Indo-European origins.

Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology, Don Ringe and Tandy Warnow propose the following evolutionary tree of Indo-European
branches:[57]

Pre-Anatolian (before 3500 BC)


Pre-Tocharian
Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (before 2500 BC)
Pre-Armenian and Pre-Greek (after 2500 BC)
Proto-Indo-Iranian (2000 BC)
Pre-Germanic and Pre-Balto-Slavic;[57] proto-Germanic c. 500 BC[58]

David Anthony proposes the following sequence:[59]

Pre-Anatolian (4200 BC)


Pre-Tocharian (3700 BC)
Pre-Germanic (3300 BC)
Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (3000 BC)
Pre-Armenian (2800 BC)
Pre-Balto-Slavic (2800 BC)
Pre-Greek (2500 BC)
Proto-Indo-Iranian (2200 BC); split between Iranian and Old Indic 1800 BC

From 1500 BC the following sequence may be given:

1500–1000 BC: The Nordic Bronze Age develops pre-Proto-Germanic, and the (pre)-Proto-Celtic Urnfield and Hallstatt cultures emerge in Central
Europe, introducing the Iron Age. Migration of the Proto-Italic speakers into the Italian peninsula (Bagnolo stele). Redaction of the Rigveda and rise of the
Vedic civilization in the Punjab. The Mycenaean civilization gives way to the Greek Dark Ages. Hittite goes extinct.
1000–500 BC: The Celtic languages spread over Central and Western Europe. Baltic languages are spoken in a huge area from present-day Poland to
the Ural Mountains.[60] Proto Germanic. Homer and the beginning of Classical Antiquity. The Vedic Civilization gives way to the Mahajanapadas.
Siddhartha Gautama preaches Buddhism. Zoroaster composes the Gathas, rise of the Achaemenid Empire, replacing the Elamites and Babylonia.
Separation of Proto-Italic into Osco-Umbrian and Latin-Faliscan. Genesis of the Greek and Old Italic alphabets. A variety of Paleo-Balkan languages are
spoken in Southern Europe.
500 BC – 1 BC/AD: Classical Antiquity: spread of Greek and Latin throughout the Mediterranean and, during the Hellenistic period (Indo-Greeks), to
Central Asia and the Hindukush. Kushan Empire, Mauryan Empire. Proto-Germanic.
1 BC – AD 500: Late Antiquity, Gupta period; attestation of Armenian. Proto-Slavic. The Roman Empire and then the Migration period marginalize the
Celtic languages to the British Isles. Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian language, becomes the lingua franca of the Silk Road in Central Asia leading to China,
due to the proliferation of Sogdian merchants there. The last of the Anatolian languages are extinct.
500–1000: Early Middle Ages. The Viking Age forms an Old Norse koine spanning Scandinavia, the British Isles and Iceland. The Islamic conquest and
the Turkic expansion results in the Arabization and Turkification of significant areas where Indo-European languages were spoken. Tocharian is extinct in
the course of the Turkic expansion while Northeastern Iranian (Scytho-Sarmatian) is reduced to small refugia. Slavic languages spread over wide areas
in central, eastern and southeastern Europe, largely replacing Romance in the Balkans (with the exception of Romanian) and whatever was left of the
paleo-Balkan languages with the exception of Albanian.
1000–1500: Late Middle Ages: Attestation of Albanian and Baltic.
1500–2000: Early Modern period to present: Colonialism results in the spread of Indo-European languages to every continent, most notably Romance
(North, Central and South America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, West Asia), West Germanic (English in North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia
and Australia; to a lesser extent Dutch and German), and Russian to Central Asia and North Asia.

Important languages for reconstruction

In reconstructing the history of the Indo-European languages and the form of the Proto-Indo-European language, some languages have been of particular
importance. These generally include the ancient Indo-European languages that are both well-attested and documented at an early date, although some
languages from later periods are important if they are particularly linguistically conservative (most notably, Lithuanian). Early poetry is of special
significance because of the rigid poetic meter normally employed, which makes it possible to reconstruct a number of features (e.g. vowel length) that were
either unwritten or corrupted in the process of transmission down to the earliest extant written manuscripts.

Most noticeable of all:[61]

Vedic Sanskrit (c. 1500–500 BC). This language is unique in that its source documents were all composed orally, and were passed down through oral
tradition (shakha schools) for c. 2,000 years before ever being written down. The oldest documents are all in poetic form; oldest and most important of all
is the Rigveda (c. 1500 BC).
Ancient Greek (c. 750–400 BC). Mycenaean Greek (c. 1450 BC) is the oldest recorded form, but its value is lessened by the limited material, restricted
subject matter, and highly ambiguous writing system. More important is Ancient Greek, documented extensively beginning with the two Homeric poems
(the Iliad and the Odyssey, c. 750 BC).
Hittite (c. 1700–1200 BC). This is the earliest-recorded of all Indo-European languages, and highly divergent from the others due to the early separation
of the Anatolian languages from the remainder. It possesses some highly archaic features found only fragmentarily, if at all, in other languages. At the
same time, however, it appears to have undergone many early phonological and grammatical changes which, combined with the ambiguities of its writing
system, hinder its usefulness somewhat.

Other primary sources:

Latin, attested in a huge amount of poetic and prose material in the Classical period (c. 200 BC – 100 AD) and limited older material from as early as c.
600 BC.
Gothic (the most archaic well-documented Germanic language, c. 350 AD), along with the combined witness of the other old Germanic languages: most
importantly, Old English (c. 800–1000 AD), Old High German (c. 750–1000 AD) and Old Norse (c. 1100–1300 AD, with limited earlier sources dating all
the way back to c. 200 AD).
Old Avestan (c. 1700–1200 BC) and Younger Avestan (c. 900 BC). Documentation is sparse, but nonetheless quite important due to its highly archaic
nature.
Modern Lithuanian, with limited records in Old Lithuanian (c. 1500–1700 AD).
Old Church Slavonic (c. 900–1000 AD).

Other secondary sources, of lesser value due to poor attestation:

Luwian, Lycian, Lydian and other Anatolian languages (c. 1400–400 BC).
Oscan, Umbrian and other Old Italic languages (c. 600–200 BC).
Old Persian (c. 500 BC).
Old Prussian (c. 1350–1600 AD); even more archaic than Lithuanian.

Other secondary sources, of lesser value due to extensive phonological changes and relatively limited attestation:[62]

Old Irish (c. 700–850 AD).


Tocharian (c. 500–800 AD), underwent large phonetic shifts and mergers in the proto-language, and has an almost entirely reworked declension system.
Classical Armenian (c. 400–1000 AD).
Albanian (c. 1450–current time).

Sound changes

As the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language broke up, its sound system diverged as well, changing according to various sound laws evidenced in the daughter
languages.

PIE is normally reconstructed with a complex system of 15 stop consonants, including an unusual three-way phonation (voicing) distinction between
voiceless, voiced and "voiced aspirated" (i.e. breathy voiced) stops, and a three-way distinction among velar consonants (k-type sounds) between "palatal" ḱ
ǵ ǵh, "plain velar" k g gh and labiovelar kʷ gʷ gʷh. (The correctness of the terms palatal and plain velar is disputed; see Proto-Indo-European phonology.)
All daughter languages have reduced the number of distinctions among these sounds, often in divergent ways.

As an example, in English, one of the Germanic languages, the following are some of the major changes that happened:

1. As in other centum languages, the "plain velar" and "palatal" stops merged, reducing the number of stops from 15 to 12.
2. As in the other Germanic languages, the Germanic sound shift changed the realization of all stop consonants, with each consonant shifting to a different
one:
bʰ → b → p → f
dʰ → d → t → θ
gʰ → g → k → x (Later initial x →h)
gʷʰ → gʷ → kʷ → xʷ (Later initial xʷ →hʷ)

Each original consonant shifted one position to the right. For example, original dʰ became d, while original d became t and original t became θ (written th
in English). This is the original source of the English sounds written f, th, h and wh. Examples, comparing English with Latin, where the sounds largely
remain unshifted:

For PIE p: piscis vs. fish; pēs, pēdis vs. foot; pluvium "rain" vs. flow; pater vs. father
For PIE t: trēs vs. three; māter vs. mother
For PIE d: decem vs. ten; pēdis vs. foot; quid vs. what
For PIE k: centum vs. hund(red); capere "to take" vs. have
For PIE kʷ: quid vs. what; quandō vs. when

3. Various further changes affected consonants in the middle or end of a word:


The voiced stops resulting from the sound shift were softened to voiced fricatives (or perhaps the sound shift directly generated fricatives in these
positions).
Verner's law also turned some of the voiceless fricatives resulting from the sound shift into voiced fricatives or stops. This is why the t in Latin centum
ends up as d in hund(red) rather than the expected th.
Most remaining h sounds disappeared, while remaining f and th became voiced. For example, Latin decem ends up as ten with no h in the middle
(but note taíhun "ten" in Gothic, an archaic Germanic language). Similarly, the words seven and have have a voiced v (compare Latin septem,
capere), while father and mother have a voiced th, although not spelled differently (compare Latin pater, māter).

None of the daughter-language families (except possibly Anatolian, particularly Luvian) reflect the plain velar stops differently from the other two series, and
there is even a certain amount of dispute whether this series existed at all in PIE. The major distinction between centum and satem languages corresponds to
the outcome of the PIE plain velars:

The "central" satem languages (Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Albanian, and Armenian) reflect both "plain velar" and labiovelar stops as plain velars, often
with secondary palatalization before a front vowel (e i ē ī). The "palatal" stops are palatalized and often appear as sibilants (usually but not always distinct
from the secondarily palatalized stops).
The "peripheral" centum languages (Germanic, Italic, Celtic, Greek, Anatolian and Tocharian) reflect both "palatal" and "plain velar" stops as plain velars,
while the labiovelars continue unchanged, often with later reduction into plain labial or velar consonants.

The three-way PIE distinction between voiceless, voiced and voiced aspirated stops is considered extremely unusual from the perspective of linguistic
typology—particularly in the existence of voiced aspirated stops without a corresponding series of voiceless aspirated stops. None of the various daughter-
language families continue it unchanged, with numerous "solutions" to the apparently unstable PIE situation:

The Indo-Aryan languages preserve the three series unchanged but have evolved a fourth series of voiceless aspirated consonants.
The Iranian languages probably passed through the same stage, subsequently changing the aspirated stops into fricatives.
Greek converted the voiced aspirates into voiceless aspirates.
Italic probably passed through the same stage, but reflects the voiced aspirates as voiceless fricatives, especially f (or sometimes plain voiced stops in
Latin).
Celtic, Balto-Slavic, Anatolian, and Albanian merge the voiced aspirated into plain voiced stops.
Germanic and Armenian change all three series in a chain shift (e.g. with bh b p becoming b p f (known as Grimm's law in Germanic).

Among the other notable changes affecting consonants are:

The Ruki sound law (s becomes /ʃ/ before r, u, k, i) in the satem languages.
Loss of prevocalic p in Proto-Celtic.
Development of prevocalic s to h in Proto-Greek, with later loss of h between vowels.
Verner's law in Proto-Germanic.
Grassmann's law (dissimilation of aspirates) independently in Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian.

The following table shows the basic outcomes of PIE consonants in some of the most important daughter languages for the purposes of reconstruction. For a
fuller table, see Indo-European sound laws.
Proto-Indo-European consonants and their reflexes in selected Indo-European daughter languages
Examples
PIE Skr. O.C.S. Lith. Greek Latin Old Irish Gothic English
PIE Eng. Skr. Gk. Lat. Lith. et
Ø; f; f;
*p p; phH p *pṓds ~ *ped- foot pád- poús (podós) pēs (pedis) pãdas
chT [x] `-b- [β] -v/f-

þ [θ]; th;
t;
*t t; thH t
-th- [θ]
`-d- [ð]; `-d-; *tréyes three tráyas treĩs trēs trỹs
tT- tT-
*ḱ ś [ɕ] s š [ʃ] h; *ḱm̥tóm hund(red) śatám he-katón centum šimtas
h;
k c [k] -Ø-; *kreuh₂ OE hrēaw
*k `-g- [ɣ] kravíṣ- kréas cruor kraûjas
`-y- "raw meat" raw
k; c [k];
k; cE [tʃ]; -ch- [x]
čE [tʃ]; k p; *kʷid, kʷod what kím tí quid, quod kas, ka
khH qu [kʷ]; ƕ [ʍ]; wh;
*kʷ cE' [ts] tE;
c(O) [k] `-gw/w- `-w-
k(u) *kʷekʷlom wheel cakrá- kúklos kãklas

b [b];
*b b; bhH b p
-[β]-
d [d]; ten,
*d d; dhH d t *déḱm̥(t) dáśa déka decem dẽšim
-[ð]- Goth. taíhun
j [dʒ]; OE cnēo
*ǵ z ž [ʒ] g [ɡ]; c / k; *ǵénu, *ǵnéu- jā́ nu gónu genu
hH [ɦ] g k knee
-[ɣ]- chE'
*g g; *yugóm yoke yugám zugón iugum jùngas
g;
jE [dʒ]; b;
žE [ʒ]; g u [w > v]; quick bíos,
*gʷ ghH; de; q [kʷ] qu *gʷīw- jīvá- vīvus gývas
dzE' gun− [ɡʷ] "alive" bíotos
hH,E [ɦ] g(u) b [b];
-[β]-
bh; ph; b [b]; b;
f-;
*bʰ b -[β]-; *bʰerō bear "carry" bhar- phérō ferō OCS be
b..Ch p..Ch b -v/f-(rl)
-f
f-; d [d];
dh; th; d [d];
*dʰ d d; -[ð]-; d *dʰwer-, dʰur- door dhvā́ raḥ thurā́ forēs dùrys
d..Ch t..Ch -[ð]-
b(r),l,u- -þ

h [ɦ]; g; goose,
*ǵʰ z ž [ʒ] kh; h; g; *ǵʰans- haṁsáḥ khḗn (h)ānser žąsìs
j..Ch -g- [ɣ]; OHG gans
k..Ch h/gR -g [x] -y/w-(rl)
*gʰ

gh; ph; g [ɡ];


g; thE; -[ɣ]- *sneigʷʰ- snow sneha- nípha nivis sniẽga
hE [ɦ]; f-; g;
žE [ʒ]; g kh(u); g/ b-;
g;
*gʷʰ g..Ch; b-;
dzE' p..Ch; -u- [w]; -w-;
jE..Ch ngu [ɡʷ] ngw -w-
tE..Ch; *gʷʰerm- ??warm gharmáḥ thermós formus Latv. gar̂
k(u)..Ch

s h-; *septḿ̥ seven saptá heptá septem septyn


-s;
s; s [s]; s; s;
*s s(T);
-r- -[h]- `-z- `-r- *h₂eusōs
ṣruki- [ʂ] xruki- [x] šruki- [ʃ] -Ø-; east uṣā́ ḥ āṓs aurōra aušra
"dawn"
[¯](R)
m [m];
*m m m *mūs mouse mū́ ṣ- mũs mūs OCS my
-[w̃]-
*-m -m -˛ [˜] -n -m -n -Ø *ḱm̥tóm hund(red) śatám (he)katón centum OPrus sim
n;
*n n n *nokʷt- night nákt- núkt- noct- naktis
-˛ [˜]
*l r (dial. l) l *leuk- light rócate leukós lūx laũkas
*r r *h₁reudʰ- red rudhirá- eruthrós ruber raũdas

z [dz > zd, z] /


i [j];
*i̯ y [j] j [j] h; Ø j y *yugóm yoke yugám zugón iugum jùngas
-Ø-
-Ø-
f;
*u̯ v [ʋ] v v [ʋ] w>h/Ø u [w > v] w *h₂weh₁n̥to- wind vā́ taḥ áenta ventus vėtra
-Ø-
PIE Skr. O.C.S. Lith. Greek Latin Old Irish Gothic English

Notes:

C- At the beginning of a word.


-C- Between vowels.
-C At the end of a word.
`-C- Following an unstressed vowel (Verner's law).
-C-(rl) Between vowels, or between a vowel and r, l (on either side).
CT Before a (PIE) stop (p, t, k).
CT− After a (PIE) obstruent (p, t, k, etc.; s).
C(T) Before or after an obstruent (p, t, k, etc.; s).
CH Before an original laryngeal.
CE Before a (PIE) front vowel (i, e).
CE' Before secondary (post-PIE) front-vowels.
Ce Before e.
C(u) Before or after a (PIE) u (boukólos rule).
C(O) Before or after a (PIE) o, u (boukólos rule).
Cn− After n.
CR Before a sonorant (r, l, m, n).
C(R) Before or after a sonorant (r, l, m, n).
C(r),l,u− Before r, l or after r, u.
Cruki− After r, u, k, i (Ruki sound law).
C..Ch Before an aspirated consonant in the next syllable (Grassmann's law, also known as dissimilation of aspirates).
CE..Ch Before a (PIE) front vowel (i, e) as well as before an aspirated consonant in the next syllable (Grassmann's law, also known as dissimilation of
aspirates).
C(u)..Ch Before or after a (PIE) u as well as before an aspirated consonant in the next syllable (Grassmann's law, also known as dissimilation of
aspirates).

Comparison of conjugations

The following table presents a comparison of conjugations of the thematic present indicative of the verbal root *bʰer- of the English verb to bear and its
reflexes in various early attested IE languages and their modern descendants or relatives, showing that all languages had in the early stage an inflectional
verb system.

Proto-Indo-European
(*bʰer- 'to carry, to bear')
I (1st sg.) *bʰéroh₂

You (2nd sg.) *bʰéresi


He/She/It (3rd sg.) *bʰéreti
We (1st dual) *bʰérowos
You (2nd dual) *bʰéreth₁es

They (3rd dual) *bʰéretes


We (1st pl.) *bʰéromos
You (2nd pl.) *bʰérete
They (3rd pl.) *bʰéronti
Indo-Iranian Balto-Slavic
Major subgroup Hellenic Indo- Italic Celtic Armenian Germanic Albanian
Iranian Baltic Slavic
Aryan
Old
Ancient Ancient Vedic Old Old
Avestan Latin Old Irish Classical Armenian Gothic Church
representative Greek Sanskrit Prussian Albanian
Sl.
I (1st sg.) phérō bʰárāmi barā ferō biru; berim berem baíra /bɛra/ *bera berǫ *berja
You (2nd sg.) phéreis bʰárasi barahi fers biri; berir beres baíris *bera bereši *berje
He/She/It (3rd
phérei bʰárati baraiti fert berid berē baíriþ *bera beretъ *berjet
sg.)
We (1st dual) — bʰárāvas barāvahi — — — baíros — berevě —
You (2nd dual) phéreton bʰárathas — — — — baírats — bereta —
They (3rd dual) phéreton bʰáratas baratō — — — — — berete —
We (1st pl.) phéromen bʰárāmas barāmahi ferimus bermai beremk` baíram *beramai beremъ *berjame
You (2nd pl.) phérete bʰáratha baraϑa fertis beirthe berēk` baíriþ *beratei berete *berjeju
They (3rd pl.) phérousi bʰáranti barəṇti ferunt berait beren baírand *bera berǫtъ *berjanti
Modern Modern Armenian (Eastern;
Hindustani Persian Portuguese Irish German Lithuanian Czech Albanian
representative Greek Western)
(mɛm̥) (man)
I (1st sg.) férno (trans)firo beirim berum em; g'perem (ich) {ge}bäre beriu beru (unë) bie
bʰarūm̥ {mi}baram
You (2nd sg.) férnis (tū) bʰarē (tu) {mi}bari (trans)feres beirir berum es; g'peres (du) {ge}bierst beri bereš (ti) bie
He/She/It (3rd (ān) (er)(sie)(es) (ai/ajo)
férni (vah) bʰarē (trans)fere beireann; beiridh berum ē; g'perē beria bere
sg.) {mi}barad {ge}biert bie
We (1st dual) — — — — — — — beriava — —
You (2nd dual) — — — — — — — beriata — —
They (3rd dual) — — — — — — — beria — —
(ham) (mā) beirimid;
We (1st pl.) férnume (trans)ferimos berum enk`; g'perenk` (wir) {ge}bären beriame berem(e) (ne) biem
bʰarēm̥ {mi}barim beiream
(šomā) beireann sibh;
You (2nd pl.) férnete (tum) bʰaro (trans)feris berum ek`; g'perek` (ihr) {ge}bärt beriate berete (ju) bini
{mi}barid beirthaoi
(ve) (ānān) (ata/ato)
They (3rd pl.) férnun (trans)ferem beirid berum en; g'peren (sie) {ge}bären beria berou
bʰarēm̥ {mi}barand bien

While similarities are still visible between the modern descendants and relatives of these ancient languages, the differences have increased over time. Some
IE languages have moved from synthetic verb systems to largely periphrastic systems. In addition, the pronouns of periphrastic forms are in brackets when
they appear. Some of these verbs have undergone a change in meaning as well.

In Modern Irish beir usually only carries the meaning to bear in the sense of bearing a child; its common meanings are to catch, grab.
The Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu) verb bʰarnā, the continuation of the Sanskrit verb, can have a variety of meanings, but the most common is "to fill". The
forms given in the table, although etymologically derived from the present indicative, now have the meaning of future subjunctive.[63] The loss of the
present indicative in Hindustani is roughly compensated by the habitual indicative which is formed periphrastically, using the habitual participle
(etymologically the Sanskrit present participle bʰarant-) and an auxiliary: mè̃ bʰartā hū̃, tū bʰartā hè, vah bʰartā hè, ham bʰarte hè̃, tum bʰarte ho, ve bʰarte
hè̃ (masculine forms).
German is not directly descended from Gothic, but the Gothic forms are a close approximation of what the early West Germanic forms of c. 400 AD
would have looked like. The cognate of Germanic beranan (English bear) survives in German only in the compound gebären, meaning "bear (a child)".
The Latin verb ferre is irregular, and not a good representative of a normal thematic verb. In most Romance Languages such as French, other verbs now
mean "to carry" (e.g. Fr. porter < Lat. portare) and ferre was borrowed and nativized only in compounds such as souffrir "to suffer" (from Latin sub- and
ferre) and conférer "to confer" (from Latin "con-" and "ferre").
In Modern Greek, phero φέρω (modern transliteration fero) "to bear" is still used but only in specific contexts and is most common in such compounds as
αναφέρω, διαφέρω, εισφέρω, εκφέρω, καταφέρω, προφέρω, προαναφέρω, προσφέρω etc. The form that is (very) common today is pherno φέρνω
(modern transliteration ferno) meaning "to bring". Additionally, the perfective form of pherno (used for the subjunctive voice and also for the future tense)
is also phero.
In Modern Russian брать (brat') carries the meaning to take. Бремя (br'em'a) means burden, as something heavy to bear, and derivative
беременность (b'er'em'ennost') means pregnancy.

Comparison of cognates

Present distribution
Today, Indo-European languages are spoken by 3.2 billion native speakers across all inhabited continents,[64] the largest number by far for any recognised
language family. Of the 20 languages with the largest numbers of native speakers according to Ethnologue, 10 are Indo-European: Spanish, English,
Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, French, and Marathi, accounting for over 1.7 billion native speakers.[65] Additionally, hundreds
of millions of persons worldwide study Indo-European languages as secondary or tertiary languages, including in cultures which have completely different
language families and historical backgrounds—there are between 600 million[66] and one billion[67] L2 learners of English alone.

The success of the language family, including the large number of speakers and the vast portions of the Earth that they inhabit, is due to several factors. The
ancient Indo-European migrations and widespread dissemination of Indo-European culture throughout Eurasia, including that of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
themselves, and that of their daughter cultures including the Indo-Aryans, Iranian peoples, Celts, Greeks, Romans, Germanic peoples, and Slavs, led to these
peoples' branches of the language family already taking a dominant foothold in virtually all of Eurasia except for swathes of the Near East, North and East
Asia, replacing many (but not all) of the previously-spoken pre-Indo-
European languages of this extensive area. However Semitic
languages remain dominant in much of the Middle East and North
Africa, and Caucasian languages in much of the Caucasus region.
Similarly in Europe and the Urals the Uralic languages (such as
Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian etc) remain, as does Basque, a pre-
Indo-European isolate.

Despite being unaware of their common linguistic origin, diverse


groups of Indo-European speakers continued to culturally dominate
Countries where Indo-European language family is and often replace the indigenous languages of the western two-thirds
majority native of Eurasia. By the beginning of the Common Era, Indo-European
Countries where Indo-European language family is peoples controlled almost the entirety of this area: the Celts western The approximate present-day
official but not majority native and central Europe, the Romans southern Europe, the Germanic distribution of Indo-European
Countries where Indo-European language family is peoples northern Europe, the Slavs eastern Europe, the Iranian languages within the Americas by
peoples most of western and central Asia and parts of eastern country:
not official
Europe, and the Indo-Aryan peoples in the Indian subcontinent, with Romance:
the Tocharians inhabiting the Indo-European frontier in western Spanish
China. By the medieval period, only the Semitic, Dravidian, Caucasian, and Uralic languages, and the language isolate Portuguese–Galician
Basque remained of the (relatively) indigenous languages of Europe and the western half of Asia. French
Germanic:
Despite medieval invasions by Eurasian nomads, a group to which the Proto-Indo-Europeans had once belonged, Indo- English
European expansion reached another peak in the early modern period with the dramatic increase in the population of the Dutch
Indian subcontinent and European expansionism throughout the globe during the Age of Discovery, as well as the
continued replacement and assimilation of surrounding non-Indo-European languages and peoples due to increased state
centralization and nationalism. These trends compounded throughout the modern period due to the general global population growth and the results of
European colonization of the Western Hemisphere and Oceania, leading to an explosion in the number of Indo-European speakers as well as the territories
inhabited by them.

Due to colonization and the modern dominance of Indo-European languages in the fields of politics, global science, technology, education, finance, and
sports, even many modern countries whose populations largely speak non-Indo-European languages have Indo-European languages as official languages,
and the majority of the global population speaks at least one Indo-European language. The overwhelming majority of languages used on the Internet are
Indo-European, with English continuing to lead the group; English in general has in many respects become the lingua franca of global communication.

See also
Grammatical conjugation Indo-Semitic languages Languages of Europe
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (book) Indo-Uralic languages Languages of India
Indo-European copula Eurasiatic languages List of Indo-European languages
Indo-European sound laws Language family Proto-Indo-European root
Indo-European studies Languages of Asia Proto-Indo-European religion

Notes
1. The sentence goes on to say, equally correctly as it turned out: "...here is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic
and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family."

References

Citations
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"Indo-European" (http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/indo1319). b/lomonos/texts/lo0/lo7/lo7-5952.htm): Представимъ долготу времени,
Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of
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4. Mallory, J. P. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and Russian! Oh, great antiquity!]
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Encyclopædia Britannica. 22 (15th ed.). Chicago: Helen Hemingway Benton.
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Schmidt-Thieme, Lars; et al. (eds.). Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications (https://archive.org/details/springer_10.1007-978-3-540-78246-9).
Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl), University of Freiburg, March 7–9, 2007. Heidelberg-Berlin:
Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-540-78239-1.
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Studies. 18 (1–2): 131–40.
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Porzig, Walter (1954). Die Gliederung des indogermanischen Sprachgebiets. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.
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von Bradke, Peter (1890). Über Methode und Ergebnisse der arischen (indogermanischen) Alterthumswissenshaft (in German). Giessen: J. Ricker'che
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Further reading
Beekes, Robert S.P. (1995). Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chakrabarti, Byomkes (1994). A comparative study of Santali and Bengali. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. ISBN 978-81-7074-128-2.
Collinge, N.E. (1985). The Laws of Indo-European (https://archive.org/details/lawsofindoeurope0000coll). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mallory, J.P. (1989). In Search of the Indo-Europeans (https://archive.org/details/insearchofindoeu00jpma). London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-
500-27616-7.
Renfrew, Colin (1987). Archaeology & Language. The Puzzle of the Indo-European Origins. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-02495-2.
Meillet, Antoine. Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique, 1903.
Ramat, Paolo; Ramat, Anna Giacalone (1998). The Indo-European languages. Routledge.
Schleicher, August, A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages (1861/62).
Strazny, Philip; Trask, R.L., eds. (2000). Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (1 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-57958-218-0.
Szemerényi, Oswald (1957). "The problem of Balto-Slav unity". Kratylos. 2: 97–123.
Watkins, Calvert (2000). The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-618-08250-6.
Remys, Edmund, General distinguishing features of various Indo-European languages and their relationship to Lithuanian. Berlin, New York:
Indogermanische Forschungen, Vol. 112, 2007.
P. Chantraine (1968), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (https://archive.org/details/Dictionnaire-Etymologique-Grec), Klincksieck, Paris.
External links

Databases
Dyen, Isidore; Kruskal, Joseph; Black, Paul (1997). "Comparative Indo-European" (http://www.wordgumbo.com/ie/cmp/). wordgumbo. Retrieved
13 December 2009.
"Indo-European" (http://languageserver.uni-graz.at/ls/group?id=4). LLOW Languages of the World. Retrieved 14 December 2009.
"Indo-European Documentation Center" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090903062241/http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie.html).
Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. 2009. Archived from the original (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie.html) on 3
September 2009. Retrieved 14 December 2009.
Lewis, M. Paul, ed. (2009). "Language Family Trees: Indo-European". Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Online version (http://www.ethnologue.com/s
how_family.asp?subid=2-16) (Sixteenth ed.). Dallas, Tex.: SIL International..
"Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien: TITUS" (http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/indexe.htm) (in German). TITUS, University of Frankfurt.
2003. Retrieved 13 December 2009.
"Indo-European Lexical Cognacy Database (IELex)" (http://ielex.mpi.nl). Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.
glottothèque - Ancient Indo-European Grammars online (https://spw.uni-goettingen.de/projects/aig/index.html), an online collection of introductory videos
to Ancient Indo-European languages produced by the University of Göttingen

Lexica
"Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (IEED)" (https://web.archive.org/web/20060207135952/http://www.indoeuropean.nl/). Leiden, Netherlands:
Department of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, Leiden University. Archived from the original (http://www.indoeuropean.nl) on 7 February 2006.
Retrieved 14 December 2009.
"Indo-European Roots Index" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090217023123/http://bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html). The American Heritage Dictionary of
the English Language (Fourth ed.). Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. August 22, 2008 [2000]. Archived from the original (http://www.bartleby.com/61/I
Eroots.html) on February 17, 2009. Retrieved 9 December 2009.
Köbler, Gerhard (2014). Indogermanisches Wörterbuch (http://www.koeblergerhard.de/idgwbhin.html) (in German) (5th ed.). Gerhard Köbler. Retrieved
29 March 2015.
Schalin, Johan (2009). "Lexicon of Early Indo-European Loanwords Preserved in Finnish" (http://www.iki.fi/jschalin/?cat=10). Johan Schalin. Retrieved
9 December 2009.

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