Indo-European Language Family: Branches and History

Posted on Feb 1, 2025 in History

Indo-European Languages: Indo-Iranian

Most Indo-Iranian languages are found in North India, Pakistan, etc. They are derived from Sanskrit (the classical language of Hinduism dating from 1000 BC). Sanskrit evolved into Pali (the language of Buddhism), Ardhamagadhi (the language of Jainism), and the ancestors of modern North Indian languages.

Modern North Indian languages, Hindi and Urdu, are very similar but differ in their script. Hindi speakers are generally Hindus, while Urdu is spoken by Muslims. Romany is the language of the Romani people, often called Gypsies. The Romani people migrated to Europe from India.

Indo-European Languages: Balto-Slavic

Slavic Languages

Slavic languages are confined to Eastern Europe. They are categorized as South (Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian), East (Russian), and West (Polish, Czecho-Slovak). Catholic populations use the Latin alphabet, while Orthodox populations use the Cyrillic alphabet, which is derived from Greek. Some languages are very similar except for the script used (Croatian and Serbian are the same language). These languages often feature consonant clusters and a large number of cases for nouns (up to seven).

Baltic Languages

Lithuanian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages. Its study is important in determining the origins and evolution of the family. Both Lithuanian and Latvian use the Latin script and have tones.

Indo-European Languages: Italic/Romance

Romance languages are all derived from Latin. The Latin alphabet (derived from the Greek alphabet) is used by many languages worldwide. Italian and Portuguese are the closest to Latin. French has diverged the most from Latin in pronunciation. Romanian has picked up Slavic influences. Spanish has been influenced by Arabic. Romansh is a minority language in Switzerland. Provencal and Catalan are closely related languages spoken in the south of France and the northeast of Spain.

Extinct languages include Dalmatian, Oscan, Faliscan, Sabine, and Umbrian. Latin had three genders, at least six cases for nouns, and a Subject-Object-Verb sentence structure.

Indo-European Languages: Celtic

Celtic languages originated in Central Europe and once dominated Western Europe (around 400 BC). Over 2000 years ago, Celtic speakers migrated to the British Isles. When the Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons arrived, the Celtic speakers were pushed westward. One group of Celts moved back to France, and their language became Breton.

Other Celtic languages have become extinct, including Cornish (Cornwall in England), Gaulish (France), Cumbrian (Wales), Manx (Isle of Man), Pictish (Scotland), and Galatian (Anatolia). In Welsh, the word order is Verb-Subject-Object.

Indo-European Languages: Germanic

Proto-Germanic is the ancestor of all Germanic languages. Early Christian missionaries influenced Celtic and Germanic languages to adopt the Latin alphabet. The branches of Germanic are:

  • North: Danish, Norwegian
  • East: Gothic, Vandalic
  • West: English, Frisian, Dutch, German

Icelandic is the least changed of the Germanic languages. Flemish and Afrikaans are varieties of Dutch, while Yiddish is a variety of German. German has a system of four cases and three genders for nouns. English has lost both gender and case distinctions.

Major Changes from Indo-European to Germanic

Germanic languages are distinguished by the following features:

  1. Germanic has a wide word stock with no cognates in other Indo-European languages, such as broad, drive, hold, found, and meat.
  2. Indo-European tense and aspect in verbs were lost except for the present and past. There are no future tenses in Germanic languages.
  3. All Germanic languages developed a past tense with a dental suffix (-t or -d). All Germanic verbs are divided into two classes based on the presence or absence of this dental suffix. Jacob Grimm called them regular and irregular verbs. Historically, verbs like buy and drink are considered weak but exhibit vowel gradation.
  4. All Germanic languages have two types of declensions for adjectives: the weak declension (determiner + adjective + noun) and the strong declension (Ø + adjective + noun).
  5. The free accentual system shifted to a tendency to stress the first syllable (except with prefixes).
  6. Indo-European vowels changed in Germanic: IE o became Germanic a (Latin octo became Gothic ahtau), and IE ã became Germanic õ (Latin mãter became Old English mõdor).
  7. The First Sound Shift (Grimm’s Law).

Grimm’s Law

  1. Indo-European: bh became b (bhrater/brother), dh became d (dhwer/door), and gh became g (ghosti/guest).
  2. When not preceded by s: p became f (pisk/fish), t became th (treyes/three), and k became h (kerd/heart).
  3. Indo-European: b became p, d became t, and g became k.

Verner’s Law

Grimm’s Law had many exceptions. Karl Verner explained that f became b, th became d, h became g, and s became z, except when the sound was the first sound in a word, was next to a voiceless sound, or had the Indo-European stress on the preceding syllable.