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Discovering Ancient Greek and Latin
Discovering Ancient Greek and Latin

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1.4 Indo-European

The discovery of connections with Sanskrit made it possible to place Greek and Latin within a larger group known today as the ‘Indo-European’ family of languages. This family embraces almost all of Europe, Iran and Northern India. All of these speakers use languages descended from a common ancestor known as ‘Proto-Indo-European’ which, though lost, can be reconstructed to a certain extent. These shared origins across Indo-European languages are particularly clear in similarities of vocabulary, notably in words denoting family relationships.

Table 1 Words for ‘father’ in Indo-European languages
Language Word for ‘father’
Sanskrit piter
Greek patēr
Latin pater
Irish Gaelic athair
German Vater
English father

Although the Indo-European family contains a relatively small number of languages (around 100; there are an estimated 6000 languages in use in the world today), it contains a larger number of native speakers than any other family. One estimate puts the number of people whose native language is Indo-European at roughly 1.7 billion.

Described image
Figure 3 Some of the main branches of Indo-European languages.
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This is a tree diagram with linking lines in dark blue and blocks containing languages in light blue.

At the top there is a dark blue horizontal line with seven short vertical branches. These are all linked in the centre to ‘Proto-Indo-European’ which is shown in the light blue block above it.

The seven branches from left to right are ‘GERMANIC’, ‘SLAVIC’, ’ITALIC’, ‘CELTIC’, ‘Greek’, ‘IRANIAN’ and ‘INDO-ARYAN’. Of these only Greek has no links further down the tree.

To the far left is GERMANIC. Two branches are connected to it. In the upper block is ‘German’, ‘Dutch’ and ‘English’. In the lower block is ‘Swedish’, ‘Danish’ and ‘Norwegian’.

Further to the right is ‘SLAVIC’. Two branches are connected to it. In the upper block is ‘Russian’, ‘Polish’ and ‘Czech’. In the lower block is ‘Bulgarian’, ‘Serbian’ and ‘Croatian’.

Further to the right is ‘ITALIC’. One branch is connected to it. In this block is ‘Latin’, ‘Italian’, ‘Spanish’, ‘Portuguese’, ‘French’ and ‘Romanian’.

In the centre is ‘CELTIC’. Two branches are connected to it. In the upper block is ‘Welsh’ and ‘Breton’. In the lower block is ‘Scottish Gaelic’ and ‘Irish Gaelic’.

To the right of this is ‘Greek’. There are no connecting branches.

Further to the right is ‘IRANIAN’. One branch is connected to it. In this block is ‘Avestan’, ‘Persian’ and ‘Kurdish’.

To the far right is ‘INDO-ARYAN’. One branch is connected to it. In this block is ‘Sanskrit’, ‘Hindu/Urdu’, ‘Bengali’ and ‘Gujarati’.

All the languages in the light blue blocks stem from ‘Proto-Indo-European’.

Figure 3 Some of the main branches of Indo-European languages.