The Indo-European Family of Languages

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The Indo-European Family of Languages

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

The Indo-European Family of Languages

 Asterisk indicates a dead language.
The Indo-European Family of Languages
Subfamily Group Subgroup Languages and Principal Dialects
Anatolian     Hieroglypic Hittite , Hittite (Kanesian) , Luwian , Lycian , Lydian , Palaic
Baltic     Latvian (Lettish), Lithuanian , Old Prussian
Celtic Brythonic   Breton, Cornish, Welsh
Continental   Gaulish
Goidelic or Gaelic   Irish (Irish Gaelic), Manx , Scottish Gaelic
Germanic East Germanic   Burgundian , Gothic , Vandalic
North Germanic   Old Norse (see Norse ), Danish , Faeroese, Icelandic , Norwegian , Swedish
West Germanic (see Grimm's law ) High German German , Yiddish
Low German Afrikaans , Dutch , English , Flemish , Frisian , Plattdeutsch (see German language )
Greek     Aeolic , Arcadian , Attic , Byzantine Greek , Cyprian , Doric , Ionic , Koinē , Modern Greek
Indo-Iranian Dardic or Pisacha   Kafiri, Kashmiri, Khowar, Kohistani, Romany (Gypsy), Shina
Indic or Indo-Aryan   Pali , Prakrit , Sanskrit , Vedic
Central Indic Hindi , Hindustani , Urdu
East Indic Assamese, Bengali (Bangla), Bihari, Oriya
Northwest Indic Punjabi, Sindhi
Pahari Central Pahari, Eastern Pahari (Nepali), Western Pahari
South Indic Marathi (including major dialect Konkani), Sinhalese (Singhalese)
West Indic Bhili, Gujarati, Rajasthani (many dialects)
Iranian   Avestan , Old Persian
East Iranian Baluchi, Khwarazmian , Ossetic, Pamir dialects, Pashto (Afghan), Saka (Khotanese) , Sogdian , Yaghnobi
West Iranian Kurdish, Pahlavi (Middle Persian) , Parthian , Persian (Farsi), Tajiki
Italic (Non-Romance)   Faliscan , Latin , Oscan , Umbrian
Romance or Romanic Eastern Romance Italian , Rhaeto-Romanic , Romanian , Sardinian
Western Romance Catalan , French , Ladino, Portuguese , Provençal, Spanish
Slavic or Slavonic East Slavic   Belarusian (White Russian), Russian , Ukrainian
South Slavic   Bulgarian , Church Slavonic , Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian , Slovenian
West Slavic   Czech , Kashubian, Lusatian (Sorbian or Wendish), Polabian , Polish , Slovak
Thraco-Illyrian     Albanian, Illyrian , Thracian
Thraco-Phrygian     Armenian , Grabar (Classical Armenian) , Phrygian
Tokharian (W China)     Tokharian A (Agnean) , Tokharian B (Kuchean)

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Indo-European languages

World Encyclopedia | 2005 | © World Encyclopedia 2005, originally published by Oxford University Press 2005. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Indo-European languages Family of languages spoken throughout all of Europe and sw and s Asia, and used in all the areas of European settlement, such as Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, the USA, and Latin America. It consists of the following subgroups: the Germanic languages, the Celtic languages and the Indo-Iranian (including Persian, Avestan, and the Indic languages – Sanskrit, Pali, and modern Hindi). Other languages and groups in the family are Armenian, Albanian, Greek, the Italic languages (including Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages), the Baltic group (including Latvian and Lithuanian), and the Slavic group (including Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian, Croatian, and others). About half the world's population speaks an Indo-European language.

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Indo-European

The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English | 2009 | © The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English 2009, originally published by Oxford University Press 2009. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

In·do-Eu·ro·pe·an • adj. of or relating to the family of languages spoken over the greater part of Europe and Asia as far as northern India. ∎ another term for Proto-Indo-European. • n. 1. the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language. ∎  the Indo-European family of languages. 2. a speaker of an Indo-European language, esp. Proto-Indo-European.

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