Indo-European Language Family

 

Indo-European Family of Languages

 


Various languages in the world originated as a result of divergent development from a parent language. Such languages which have connections with each other are called a family of language. One such mother language is Indo-European, earlier termed Aryan and Indo-Germanic. The parent language is believed to have been spoken during a time period of 3000-2000 BC in the area of South-Western Russia. We have no written record of the common Indo-European language. Its descendent languages show various degrees of similarity to one another, the similarity bearing a more or less direct relationship to their geographical distribution.

Indo-European migrations


There are eight branches in the Indo-European language family. They are divided into the Satem and Centum groups.

The Satem group consists of

  • 1.      Indo-Iranian
  • 2.      Albanian
  • 3.      Armenia
  • 4.      Balto-Slavic

The Centum group consists of

  • 1.      Hellenic
  • 2.      Celtic
  • 3.      Italic
  • 4.      Germanic

 

1.      Indo-Iranian: This branch can be further divided into Indian and Iranian languages.

a.       Indian

§  The oldest available scripts of the Indian language are the Vedas, Aranyakas, Brahmans and the Upanishads written in Vedic Sanskrit.

§  The use of Sanskrit was extended later to various writings outside the sphere of religion, under the influence of grammarians like Panini. The medium used was Classical Sanskrit, which was used to write Ramayana and Mahabharata.

§  Alongside Sanskrit, there also existed a large number of local dialects in colloquial use, known as Prakrits. The modern languages descended from Sanskrit and Prakrit are spoken in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

§  The most important of them are Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi.

b.      Iranian

§  Northwest of India and covering the great plateau of Iran is the important group of languages called Iranian.

§  The important languages are Persian, Afghan and Baluchi spoken in the eastern regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan and Kurdish in Kurdistan.

 

 

2.      Albanian

§  Northwest of Greece on the eastern coast of the Adriatic is the small branch named Albanian.

§  Possibly, the modern remnant of Illyrian, we have records of it from the 7th century A.D.

 

3.      Armenian

§  Armenian is found in a small area south of the Caucasus Mountains and the eastern end of the Black Sea.

§  Armenian is known to us from about the 5th century A.D through a translation of the Bible in the language.

 

4.      Balto-Slavic

§  The Balto-Slavic branch covers a vast area in the eastern part of Europe. It falls into two groups-Baltic and Slavic.

§  Baltic languages- Prussian, Lithuanian and Lettish.

§  Slavic languages have three divisions- East Slavic, West Slavic and South Slavic.

§  East Slavic- Great, White and Little Russian.

§  West Slavic-  Polish, Czech, Sorbian

§  South Slavic- Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene

 

5.      Hellenic

§  Hellenic languages constitute the languages spoken in and around the Greek region.

§  Dialects of Greek are members of this branch. They are Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadian-Cyprian, Doric and North-west Greek. Of these, Attic, a sub-dialect of Ionic, the dialect of the city of Athens, is by far the most studied. Its importance is due to the dominant political and commercial position of Athens from the 5th century and the civilization that grew up there.

 

 

 

 

6.      Celtic

§  Celtic group of languages was at one time, one of the most extensive groups in the Indo-European family. Today, Celtic languages are found only in the far corners of France and the British Isles.

§  The main languages are Welsh, Gallic (spoken in Gaul, conquered by Caesar and replaced by Latin), Irish Gaelic, Scotttish Gaelic and Manx.

§  The remnants of this family of languages are are losing ground everywhere. These are spoken only by minorities in France and the British Isles.

 

7.      Italic

§  The Italic branch has its centre in Italy, and to most people, Italy in ancient times suggests Rome and the languages of Rome.

§  The main languages in the branch were Latin, Umbrian and Oscan. The other languages were gradually driven out as Rome became politically dominant throughout Italy.

§  The various languages that represent the survival of Latin in the different part of the Roman Empire are known as the Romance languages. The most extensive of the Romance languages are French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Provencal and Catalan.

 

8.      Germanic

§  The common form that the languages of the Germanic branch had before they became differentiated is known as Germanic or Proto-Germanic.

§  The languages descended from it falls into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic.

§  East Germanic: The principal language is Gothic. Our knowledge of Gothic is wholly due to a translation of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament made by Bishop Ulfilas in the 4th century.

§  North Germanic is found in Scandinavia, Denmark, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. They fall into two groups: the East Norse, including Swedish and Danish and the West Norse including Norwegian and Icelandic.

§  West Germanic is of chief interest to us as the group to which English belongs. It is divided into High German, Low German and Anglo Frisian. Modern German descended from High German and Dutch from the Low German. Anglo Frisian evolved into Anglo Saxon, which further changed into Middle English, from which we have the Modern English language.

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