List of Indo-European languages explained

This is a list of languages in the Indo-European language family. It contains a large number of individual languages, together spoken by roughly half the world's population.

Numbers of languages and language groups

The Indo-European languages include some 449 (SIL estimate, 2018 edition[1]) languages spoken by about 3.5 billion people or more (roughly half of the world population). Most of the major languages belonging to language branches and groups in Europe, and western and southern Asia, belong to the Indo-European language family. This is thus the biggest language family in the world by number of mother tongue speakers (but not by number of languages: by this measure it is only the 3rd or 5th biggest). Eight of the top ten biggest languages, by number of native speakers, are Indo-European. One of these languages, English, is the de facto world lingua franca, with an estimate of over one billion second language speakers.Indo-European language family has 10 known branches or subfamilies, of which eight are living and two are extinct. Most of the subfamilies or linguistic branches in this list contain many subgroups and individual languages. The relationships between these branches (how they are related to one another and branched from the ancestral proto-language) are a matter of further research and not yet fully known. There are some individual Indo-European languages that are unclassified within the language family; they are not yet classified in a branch and could constitute a separate branch.The 449 Indo-European languages identified in the SIL estimate, 2018 edition,[1] are mostly living languages. If all the known extinct Indo-European languages are added, they number more than 800 or close to one thousand. This list includes all known Indo-European languages, living and extinct.

Definition of language

The distinction between a language and a dialect is not clear-cut and simple: in many areas there is a dialect continuum, with transitional dialects and languages. Further, there is no agreed standard criterion for what amount of differences in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and prosody are required to constitute a separate language, as opposed to a mere dialect. Mutual intelligibility can be considered, but there are closely related languages that are also mutual intelligible to some degree, even if it is an asymmetric intelligibility. Or there may be cases where between three dialects, A, B, and C, A and B are mutually intelligible, B and C are mutually intelligible, but A and C are not. In such circumstances grouping the three dielects becomes impossible. Because of this, in this list, several dialect groups and some individual dialects of languages are shown (in italics), especially if a language is or was spoken by a large number of people and over a large land area, but also if it has or had divergent dialects.

Summary of historical development

The ancestral population and language, Proto-Indo-Europeans that spoke Proto-Indo-European, are estimated to have lived about 4500 BCE (6500 BP). At some point in time, starting about 4000 BCE (6000 BP), this population expanded through migration and cultural influence. This started a complex process of population blend or population replacement, acculturation and language change of peoples in many regions of western and southern Eurasia.[2] This process gave origin to many languages and branches of this language family.By around 1000 BCE, there were many millions of Indo-European speakers, and they lived in a vast geographical area which covered most of western and southern Eurasia (including western Central Asia).In the following two millennia the number of speakers of Indo-European languages increased even further.Indo-European languages continued to be spoken in large land areas, although most of western Central Asia and Asia Minor were lost to other language families (mainly Turkic) due to Turkic expansion, conquests and settlement (after the middle of the first millennium AD and the beginning and middle of the second millennium AD respectively) and also to Mongol invasions and conquests (which changed Central Asia ethnolinguistic composition). Another land area lost to non-Indo-European languages was today's Hungary, due to Magyar/Hungarian (Uralic language speakers) conquest and settlement.However, from about AD 1500 onwards, Indo-European languages expanded their territories to North Asia (Siberia), through Russian expansion, and North America, South America, Australia and New Zealand as the result of the age of European discoveries and European conquests through the expansions of the Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and the Dutch. (These peoples had the biggest continental or maritime empires in the world and their countries were major powers.)The contact between different peoples and languages, especially as a result of European colonization, also gave origin to the many pidgins, creoles and mixed languages that are mainly based in Indo-European languages (many of which are spoken in island groups and coastal regions).

Proto-Indo-European

Dating the split-offs of the main branches

Although all Indo-European languages descend from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-European, the kinship between the subfamilies or branches (large groups of more closely related languages within the language family), that descend from other more recent proto-languages, is not the same because there are subfamilies that are closer or further, and they did not split-off at the same time, the affinity or kinship of Indo-European subfamilies or branches between themselves is still an unresolved and controversial issue and being investigated.However, there is some consensus that Anatolian was the first group of Indo-European (branch) to split-off from all the others and Tocharian was the second in which that happened.[3] Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology, Donald Ringe and Tandy Warnow propose the following tree of Indo-European branches:[4]

David W. Anthony, following the methodology of Donald Ringe and Tandy Warnow, proposes the following sequence:[4]

The list below follows Donald Ringe, Tandy Warnow and Ann Taylor classification tree for Indo-European branches.[5] quoted in Anthony, David W. (2007), The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press.

Anatolian languages (all extinct)

Tocharian languages (Agni-Kuči languages) (all extinct)

Albanian language

See also: Albanoid.

Italic languages

Celtic languages

Hellenic languages

Armenian language

Germanic languages

Balto-Slavic languages

Baltic languages

Slavic languages

Indo-Iranian languages

Iranian languages

Indo-Aryan languages

Unclassified Indo-European languages (all extinct)

Indo-European languages whose relationship to other languages in the family is unclear

Possible Indo-European languages (all extinct)

Unclassified languages that may have been Indo-European or members of other language families (?)

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Ethnologue report for Indo-European. Ethnologue.com. 2012-12-07. 2012-01-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20120106052358/http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=2-16. live.
  2. 10.1038/nature14507. 26062507. Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia. Nature. 522. 7555. 167–172. 2015. Allentoft. Morten E.. Sikora. Martin. Sjögren. Karl-Göran. Rasmussen. Simon. Rasmussen. Morten. Stenderup. Jesper. Damgaard. Peter B.. Schroeder. Hannes. Ahlström. Torbjörn. Vinner. Lasse. Malaspinas. Anna-Sapfo. Margaryan. Ashot. Higham. Tom. Chivall. David. Lynnerup. Niels. Harvig. Lise. Baron. Justyna. Casa. Philippe Della. Dąbrowski. Paweł. Duffy. Paul R.. Ebel. Alexander V.. Epimakhov. Andrey. Frei. Karin. Furmanek. Mirosław. Gralak. Tomasz. Gromov. Andrey. Gronkiewicz. Stanisław. Grupe. Gisela. Hajdu. Tamás. Jarysz. Radosław. 2015Natur.522..167A. 4399103. 29. 2018-11-04. 2019-03-29. https://web.archive.org/web/20190329150521/http://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/population-genomics-of-bronze-age-eurasia(11286d58-42ae-4397-bc7a-3bb8b71c6c52).html. live.
  3. KAPOVIĆ, Mate. (ed.) (2017). The Indo-European Languages.
  4. Anthony, David W. (2007), The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press
  5. Ringe, Don; Warnow, Tandy.; Taylor, Ann. (2002). 'Indo-European and Computational Cladistics', Transactions of the Philological Society, n.º 100/1, 59-129.
  6. Web site: New Indo-European Language Discovered . 2023-09-26 . 2023-09-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230926200114/https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-events/news/detail/news/new-indo-european-language-discovered/ . live .
  7. Web site: Kalasmaic, a New IE Language . 2023-09-26 . 2023-09-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230926115905/https://languagehat.com/kalasmaic-a-new-ie-language/ . live .
  8. Web site: A new Indo-European Language discovered in the Hittite capital Hattusa . 2023-09-26 . 2023-09-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230926160006/https://arkeonews.net/a-new-indo-european-language-discovered-in-the-hittite-capital-hattusa/ . live .
  9. Web site: New Indo-European Language Discovered in Ancient City of Hattusa . 2023-09-26 . 2023-09-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230926035253/https://greekreporter.com/2023/09/23/new-indo-european-language-ancient-hatussa/ . live .
  10. Krause, Todd B.; Slocum, Jonathan. "Tocharian Online: Series Introduction". University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 17 April 2020.
  11. Beckwith, Christopher I. (2009), Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Asia from the Bronze Age to the Present, Princeton University Press, .
  12. Voynikov, Zhivko. (?). Some ancient Chinese names in East Turkestan and Central Asia and the Tocharian question.
  13. Web site: Niya Tocharian: language contact and prehistory on the Silk Road . cordis.europa.eu . 2023-01-05 . 2023-01-27 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230127191019/https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/626656 . live .
  14. Pellegrini G., Carta dei dialetti d'Italia, CNR – Pacini ed., Pisa, 1977
  15. Vignuzzi 1997: 312, 317; Loporcaro & Panciani 2016: 229, 233
  16. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. (2005). Historia de la Lengua Española (2 Vols.). Madrid: Fundación Ramón Menendez Pidal.
  17. Marcos Marín, Francisco. (1998). "Romance andalusí y mozárabe: dos términos no sinónimos", Estudios de Lingüística y Filología Españolas. Homenaje a Germán Colón. Madrid: Gredos, 335–341. https://www.academia.edu/5101871/Romance_andalusi_y_mozarabe_dos_terminos_no_sinonimos_
  18. Web site: Ancient Macedonian. https://archive.today/20131122022719/http://multitree.org/codes/xmk. dead. November 22, 2013. MultiTree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships. 28 March 2016.
  19. Web site: Gothic language | Origins, History & Vocabulary | Britannica. www.britannica.com. 25 September 2023. 18 August 2023. 21 December 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181221004425/https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gothic-language. live.
  20. Web site: East Germanic languages | History, Characteristics & Dialects | Britannica. www.britannica.com. 2023-08-18. 2023-08-18. https://web.archive.org/web/20230818123044/https://www.britannica.com/topic/East-Germanic-languages. live.
  21. Harm, Volker, "Elbgermanisch", "Weser-Rhein-Germanisch" und die Grundlagen des Althochdeutschen, in Nielsen; Stiles (eds.), Unity and Diversity in West Germanic and the Emergence of English, German, Frisian and Dutch, North-Western European Language Evolution, vol. 66, pp. 79–99
  22. C. A. M. Noble: Modern German Dialects. Peter Lang, New York / Berne / Frankfort on the Main, p. 131
  23. Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal: De Geïntegreerde Taal-Bank:
    Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, entry VlamingI ;
    cp.: Oudnederlands Woordenboek, entry flāmink : "Morfologie: afleiding, basiswoord : flāma ‘overstroomd gebied’; suffix: ink ‘vormt afstammingsnamen’"; Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, entry Vlaendren : "Etymologie: Dat.pl. van flandr- 'overstroomd gebied' met het suffix -dr-.".
    Cognate to Middle English flēm 'current of a stream': Middle English Compendium → Middle English Dictionary : flēm n.(2)
  24. Oxford English Dictionary, "Holland, n. 1," etymology.
  25. Hendricks, Frank . "The nature and context of Kaaps: a contemporary, past and future perspective".https://multimargins.ac.za/index.php/mm/article/view/38 Multilingual Margins: A Journal of Multilingualism from the Periphery. 3 (2): 6–39. doi:10.14426/mm.v3i2.38. ISSN 2221-4216. S2CID 197552885.
  26. "The medieval 'New England': A forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast" https://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/05/medieval-new-england-black-sea.html
  27. Web site: "Unknown Kushan Script" Partially Deciphered - Archaeology Magazine . 2023-09-26 . 2023-09-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230926160005/https://www.archaeology.org/news/11600-230719-unknown-kushan-script . live .
  28. Web site: Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica . 2023-10-05 . 2020-11-12 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201112021945/https://iranicaonline.org/articles/chorasmia-iii . live .
  29. "The Avestan texts contain no historical allusions and can therefore not be dated exactly, but Old Avestan is a language closely akin to the oldest Indic language, used in the oldest parts of the Rigveda, and should therefore probably be dated to about the same time. This date is also somewhat debated, though within a relatively small time span, and it seems probable that the oldest Vedic poems were composed over several centuries around the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. (see, e.g., Witzel, 1995)", quoted in https://iranicaonline.org/articles/iran-vi1-earliest-evidence
  30. "Young Avestan is grammatically close to Old Persian, which ceased being spoken in the 5th-4th centuries B.C.E. These two languages were therefore probably spoken throughout the first half of the first millennium B.C.E. (see, e.g., Skjærvø, 2003-04, with further references)." in https://iranicaonline.org/articles/iran-vi1-earliest-evidence
  31. The Young Avesta contains a few geographical names, all belonging to roughly the area between Chorasmia and the Helmand, that is, the modern Central Asian republics and Afghanistan (see, e.g., Skjærvø, 1995; Witzel, 2000). We are therefore entitled to conclude that Young Avestan reflects the language spoken primarily by tribes from that area. The dialect position of the language also indicates that the language of the Avesta must have belonged to, or at least have been transmitted by, tribes from northeastern Iran (the change of proto-Iranian *-āḭā/ă- > *-ayā/ă- and *ǰīwa- > *ǰuwa- “live,” for instance, is typical of Sogdian, Khotanese, Pashto, etc. in https://iranicaonline.org/articles/iran-vi1-earliest-evidence).
  32. It was long thought that Avestan represented "Old Bactrian", but this notion had "rightly fallen into discredit by the end of the 19th century", in Gershevitch, Ilya (1983), "Bactrian Literature", in Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, pp. 1250–1258, ISBN 0-511-46773-7.
  33. Antje Wendtland (2009), The position of the Pamir languages within East Iranian, Orientalia Suecana LVIII "The Pamir languages are a group of East Iranian languages which are linguistically quite diverse and cannot be traced back to a common ancestor. The term Pamir languages is based on their geographical position rather than on their genetic closeness. Exclusive features by which the Pamir languages can be distinguished from all other East Iranian languages cannot be found either."
  34. See also: Ancient Kamboja, People & the Country, 1981, p 278, These Kamboj People, 1979, pp 119–20, K. S. Dardi etc.
  35. Sir Thomas H. Holdich, in his classic book, (The Gates of India, p 102-03), writes that the Aspasians (Aspasioi) represent the modern Kafirs. But the modern Kafirs, especially the Siah-Posh Kafirs (Kamoz/Camoje, Kamtoz) etc are considered to be modern representatives of the ancient Kambojas.
  36. The Dialectical Position of the Niya Prakrit. 608051. Burrow. T.. Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London. 1936. 8. 2/3. 419–435. 10.1017/S0041977X00141060. 170991822. 2021-04-25. 2023-07-19. https://web.archive.org/web/20230719144520/https://www.jstor.org/stable/608051. live.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "List of Indo-European languages".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2025, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.