Indo-European Branches

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Indo-EuropeanBranches
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Indo-European Branches
Romance
Germanic
Balto-Slavic
Indo-Iranian
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Germanic branch

• English is part of the Germanic branch because it
  is spoken by Germanic tribes that invaded England
  1,500 years ago.
• English and German belong to the Western part of
  the Germanic branch because they have many words
  in common
• The Western part of the Germanic branch are
  divided into High and Low Germanic subgroups
  because they are found in high and low
  elevations.
• Languages spoken in the Low Germanic subgroup
  include English, Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans,
  Frisian, and a dialect of German.
• The Germanic language branch also includes North
  Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia
  Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.

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Indo-Iranian Branch

• The branch with the most speakers
• Includes more than 100 individual languages
• Spoken by more than 1 billion people
• Divided into and Eastern (Indic) and western
  (Iranian) subgroups

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Indic (eastern group)

• The most used languages in India and their
  neighboring countries belong to the Indic group
  of the Indo-Iranian branch.
• Approximately 1/3 of Indians use an Indic
  language called Hindi, and it is spoken in many
  different ways therefore making it a collection
  of many individual languages
• One of the main elements of cultural diversity of
  the 1 million citizens of India is language, and
  there are four main language families
  Indo-European (north), Dravidian (south),
  Sino-Tibetan (northeast), and Austro-Asiatic
  (central and eastern highlands).
• When India became an independent state in 1947,
  Hindi was made the official language
• India has 18 official languages
• More than 90 of the population speak at least
  one of these languages, but as many as 10 billion
  people speak another

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Iranian (western group)

• Indo-Iranian languages are also spoken in Iran
  and neighboring countries
• The major Iranian group languages include Persian
  (Farsi), Pathan, and Kurdish.
• These languages are written in Arabic

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Balto-Slavic Branch

• Slavic was once a single language, but
  differences developed in the 7th century.
• Several groups of Slavics migrated from Asia to
  different areas of Eastern Europe living in
  isolation from one another, and as a result it is
  split into East, West, and South Slavic subgroups

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East Slavic

• The most widely used Slavic languages are in the
  Eastern subgroup.
• Russian is one of the six official languages in
  the United Nations.
• The importance of Russian increased with the
  Soviet Unions rise to power after WWII.
• In Eastern European countries that were dominated
  politically and economically but the Soviet
  Union, Russian was taught as the second language
• Ukrainian and Belarusian are the second two most
  important East Slavic languages and official
  languages in Ukraine and Belarus.
• The two principle Baltic languages are Latvian
  and Lithuanian, official languages in Latvia and
  Lithuania

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West and south Slavic

• The most spoken West Slavic language is Polish,
  followed by Czech and Slovak.
• The two most important South Slavic languages are
  Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian.
• Differences among all Slavic languages are small.
• For example, a Czech can understand most of what
  is said or written in Slovak and could become
  fluent without much difficulty.

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Romance Branch

• The Romance language branch evolved from the
  Latin language spoken by Romans about 2,000 years
  ago.
• Four most widely used languages are Spanish,
  Portuguese, French, and Italian.
• The European regions in which these four
  languages are spoken correspond somewhat to the
  boundaries of the modern states of Spain,
  Portugal, France, and Italy.
• The fifth most important Romance language,
  Romanian, is the principal language of Romania
  and Moldova.
• The distribution of Romance languages shows the
  difficulty in trying to establish the number of
  distinct languages in the world.
• In addition to the other 5 languages, Romansh and
  Catalan are two other official Romance languages.