Indo-European

      Most languages of Europe as well as many languages of Iran, Afganistan and northern India are genetically related.  Among European languages, only Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish and Basque are not IE.  It is fairly certain that all the others are descendents of an ancient, proto-language whose original homeland was probably the territory of present day Ukraine.   

      The "discovery" of IE is only about 200 years old.  1786 Sir William Jones, a physician residing in India who had studied Sanskrit, read a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta.  He noted the abundance of similarities between Sanskrit and European languages such as German, Latin, Greek and concluded that these similarities couldn't have been the result of chance borrowings or coincidence.  First to suggest that all these languages were decended from an ancient proto-language, which he christened Indo-European. mrityu/ mortem/ mortal.  Numbers and basic vocabulary are the same.  (Contrast Hungarian: egy, ketto, harom, negy, ot.)

      Proto Indo-European may have been spoken as early as 6 thousand years ago. What was the linguistic picture of the world like many thousands of years ago when humans lived in small tribal units?  The Modern language map gives us some clues.  Extreme diversification (West Central Africa). Spread zones into newly accessible territory (the far north, central North America, Oceana).

      Linguists have since estimated that Indo-European must have begun to break up into dialects, then separate languages by about 5000 BC.  Language researchers, in their search for the original homeland of the IE language group, raised the possibility that three words common to all the languages in the group might establish where the basic language began.  These three locating words are: beech tree, turtle and salmon.  The only geographical location in which all three living forms were found is the northern Germany and Poland.  There are no turtles north of the Danish border, no beech trees farther eastward, and no salmon west of the Rhine.  This theory is supported by the fact that the modern language closest to the original IE roots is Lithuanian, still spoken in the identified area.  Salmon-- loch.  Problems (climate changes over 500 years-- present habitat not necessarily similar to ancient one.  Another problem is that meanings change: Yellow/Gelb/zelyony

      No words for Mediterranean plants: vine/wine/ olive.

Other theories

      J. Gordon Childe, Maria Gimbutas--the Kurgan mound people

      Colin Renfrew--Anatolian origin in the north of the fertile cresent; they were some of the first hunter-gatherers to become predominantly farmers.

Ancient culture of the Indo-Europeans:

idea of cycles-- words for time (spiral or repetitive.)--farming is important.  Words for horse are borrowed from the steppe peoples.

patrilocal society-- words for wife's inlaws (members of husband's family) but not for husband's inlaws. 

Subgroupings

Some IE languages are more closely related to one another than others.   They form several groups, probably originating in separate migrations of people from the original IE homeland.  Centum/Satem split.

Centum Language Families.

Germanic (Teutonic)--Western sub-group: German, English, Dutch.  Northern subgroup--Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic.  Eastern subgroup, Gothic, died out over a thousand years ago.  Cf. words for good day in different languages.  Africaans of South Africa (Descendants of the Boer settlers from Holland), and Yiddish spoken by Ashkenazi Jews (strongly conservative Renaissance German).  English has changed the most.  Umlaut-- Hand--Hande (like foot/feet), weak and strong verbs.  North has post-position article: Sw- den stygga gosse-n=  the bad boy the.  Icelandic has changed the least: four cases intact--heimur-inn (the world), heims-ins, heimi-num (dat), heim-inn (obj). 

Romance-- Latin "romanice loqui" to speak in Roman fashion.  Vulgar Latin.  non-religious lit written in it-- hence "romantic" Russ word for novel is "roman".   Half a billion people speak a language directly descended from Latin.   French (80m), Sp (200 m): easy spelling, few Basque words-- izquierdo "left" vega "plain", Port (9m and 100 m), It. (50m) Romanian (20).   400 million speakers-- largest division.  Of the main languages, Romanian most conservative.  Minor lang-- (Provencal, Catalan, Sardinian, Rhaeto-Romance.)  Ladino-- Sephardic Jews.

Celtic-- formerly  spoken over a wide territory.  now Gaelic, Scots-Irish, Welsh (Cymbri).  Gauls were Celts.  Many place names in central Europe are of Celtic origin.

Greek-- many Eng. words from Greek-- phone, psyche, soma, auto, hypnos, stratevma,  Evcharisto, ne/osi

Tocharian-- extinct IE language spoken in present day western China.--probably an Iranian people.  The only eastern Centum language.

Satem Language Families

Slavic--origin of name-- slave or glory.  called Germans "dumb". Cf. teut, folk.  East: Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian.  West: Polish, Czech, Slovak.  South: Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Macedonian.  Slovak and Slovenian have changed the least.   Word for good day in each language.  

Baltic--Lithuanian, Latvian (Old Prussian)

Armenian-- surrounded by non-IE languages.

Albanian-- two dialects;  history obscure;  many Turkish loan words

Indo--Iranian Branch: 500 languages spoken by half a billion people.  Pashto, Kurdish.  Ancestors called themselves Aryans, meaning noble. (This word shows up in the modern toponym Iran.)

Modern Persian-- Farsi.  Scythians related.  -stan country.  Chess terms. 

Hindi direct descendant of Sanscrit-- maharaja  Cf. Latin  magnus (great)  rego  (king). 

Hittite-- one of several extinct Indo--European languages spoken in what is now Turkey.

---Today, roughly half the world's population speaks an Indo-European language.