- Source: List of Indo-European languages
This is a list of languages in the Indo-European language family. It contains a large number of individual languages, together spoken by roughly half the world's population.
Numbers of languages and language groups
The Indo-European languages include some 449 (SIL estimate, 2018 edition) languages spoken by about 3.5 billion people or more (roughly half of the world population). Most of the major languages belonging to language branches and groups in Europe, and western and southern Asia, belong to the Indo-European language family. This is thus the biggest language family in the world by number of mother tongue speakers (but not by number of languages: by this measure it is only the 3rd or 5th biggest). Eight of the top ten biggest languages, by number of native speakers, are Indo-European. One of these languages, English, is the de facto world lingua franca, with an estimate of over one billion second language speakers.
Indo-European language family has 10 known branches or subfamilies, of which eight are living and two are extinct. Most of the subfamilies or linguistic branches in this list contain many subgroups and individual languages. The relationships between these branches (how they are related to one another and branched from the ancestral proto-language) are a matter of further research and not yet fully known. There are some individual Indo-European languages that are unclassified within the language family; they are not yet classified in a branch and could constitute a separate branch.
The 449 Indo-European languages identified in the SIL estimate, 2018 edition, are mostly living languages. If all the known extinct Indo-European languages are added, they number more than 800 or close to one thousand. This list includes all known Indo-European languages, living and extinct.
Definition of language
The distinction between a language and a dialect is not clear-cut and simple: in many areas there is a dialect continuum, with transitional dialects and languages. Further, there is no agreed standard criterion for what amount of differences in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and prosody are required to constitute a separate language, as opposed to a mere dialect. Mutual intelligibility can be considered, but there are closely related languages that are also mutual intelligible to some degree, even if it is an asymmetric intelligibility. Or there may be cases where between three dialects, A, B, and C, A and B are mutually intelligible, B and C are mutually intelligible, but A and C are not. In such circumstances grouping the three dielects becomes impossible. Because of this, in this list, several dialect groups and some individual dialects of languages are shown (in italics), especially if a language is or was spoken by a large number of people and over a large land area, but also if it has or had divergent dialects.
Summary of historical development
The ancestral population and language, Proto-Indo-Europeans that spoke Proto-Indo-European, are estimated to have lived about 4500 BCE (6500 BP). At some point in time, starting about 4000 BCE (6000 BP), this population expanded through migration and cultural influence. This started a complex process of population blend or population replacement, acculturation and language change of peoples in many regions of western and southern Eurasia. This process gave origin to many languages and branches of this language family.
By around 1000 BCE, there were many millions of Indo-European speakers, and they lived in a vast geographical area which covered most of western and southern Eurasia (including western Central Asia).
In the following two millennia the number of speakers of Indo-European languages increased even further.
Indo-European languages continued to be spoken in large land areas, although most of western Central Asia and Asia Minor were lost to other language families (mainly Turkic) due to Turkic expansion, conquests and settlement (after the middle of the first millennium AD and the beginning and middle of the second millennium AD respectively) and also to Mongol invasions and conquests (which changed Central Asia ethnolinguistic composition). Another land area lost to non-Indo-European languages was today's Hungary, due to Magyar/Hungarian (Uralic language speakers) conquest and settlement.
However, from about AD 1500 onwards, Indo-European languages expanded their territories to North Asia (Siberia), through Russian expansion, and North America, South America, Australia and New Zealand as the result of the age of European discoveries and European conquests through the expansions of the Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and the Dutch. (These peoples had the biggest continental or maritime empires in the world and their countries were major powers.)
The contact between different peoples and languages, especially as a result of European colonization, also gave origin to the many pidgins, creoles and mixed languages that are mainly based in Indo-European languages (many of which are spoken in island groups and coastal regions).
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (extinct) (see also Proto-Indo-European homeland)
Early Proto-Indo-European (First version of Indo-European)
Middle Proto-Indo-European ("Classical" Indo-European)
Late Proto-Indo-European (Last version of indo-European as a spoken language before splitting into several languages that originated in the regional dialects that diverged in time, and in space, with Indo-European migrations; these languages were the direct ancestors of today's subfamilies or "branches" of descendant languages) (larger clades of Indo-European than the individual subfamilies or the way individual subfamilies are related to each other are both as-of-yet unresolved issues)
Dating the split-offs of the main branches
Although all Indo-European languages descend from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-European, the kinship between the subfamilies or branches (large groups of more closely related languages within the language family), that descend from other more recent proto-languages, is not the same because there are subfamilies that are closer or further, and they did not split-off at the same time, the affinity or kinship of Indo-European subfamilies or branches between themselves is still an unresolved and controversial issue and being investigated.
However, there is some consensus that Anatolian was the first group of Indo-European (branch) to split-off from all the others and Tocharian was the second in which that happened.
Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology, Donald Ringe and Tandy Warnow propose the following tree of Indo-European branches:
Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
Pre-Anatolian (before 3500 BC)
Pre-Tocharian
Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (before 2500 BC)
Pre-Armenian and Pre-Greek (after 2500 BC)
Proto-Indo-Iranian (2000 BC)
Pre-Germanic and Pre-Balto-Slavic; proto-Germanic (500 BC)
David W. Anthony, following the methodology of Donald Ringe and Tandy Warnow, proposes the following sequence:
Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
Pre-Anatolian (4200 BC)
Pre-Tocharian (3700 BC)
Pre-Germanic (3300 BC)
Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (3000 BC)
Pre-Armenian (2800 BC)
Pre-Balto-Slavic (2800 BC)
Pre-Greek (2500 BC)
Proto-Indo-Iranian (2200 BC); split between Old Iranian and Old Indic 1800 BC
The list below follows Donald Ringe, Tandy Warnow and Ann Taylor classification tree for Indo-European branches. quoted in Anthony, David W. (2007), The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press.
Anatolian languages (all extinct)
Tocharian languages (Agni-Kuči languages) (all extinct)
Albanian language
Italic languages
Celtic languages
Hellenic languages
Armenian language
Germanic languages
Balto-Slavic languages
Proto-Balto-Slavic (extinct)
= Baltic languages
== Slavic languages
=Indo-Iranian languages
Proto-Indo-Iranian (extinct)
= Iranian languages
== Nuristani languages
== Indo-Aryan languages
=Unclassified Indo-European languages (all extinct)
Indo-European languages whose relationship to other languages in the family is unclear
Brygian
Phrygian
Moesian
Mysian?
Mushkian
Mygdonian?
Paionian
Belgic/Ancient Belgian
Cimmerian
Dardanian
Assinean
Gushiean
Ligurian
Lusitanian
Daco-Thracian
Dacian
Thracian
Illyrian language
Messapic
Venetic
Liburnian
Possible Indo-European languages (all extinct)
Unclassified languages that may have been Indo-European or members of other language families (?)
Cypro-Minoan
Elymian
Eteocypriot
Minoan
Eteocretan
Paleo-Corsican
Paleo-Sardinian
Philistine
Tartessian
Trojan
See also
List of Pidgins, Creoles, Mixed languages and Cants based on Indo-European languages
Proto-Human
Borean languages
Nostratic
Eurasiatic
Uralo-Siberian
Indo-Uralic
Indo-Anatolian (Indo-Hittite)
Paleo-Balkan
Daco-Thracian
Graeco-Armenian
Graeco-Aryan
Graeco-Phrygian
Thraco-Illyrian
Italo-Celtic
References
External links
Indo-European language tree
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- Bahasa Sanskerta
- Rumpun bahasa Indo-Eropa
- Bahasa Inggris
- Rumpun bahasa Indo-Iran
- Bahasa Belanda
- Peradaban Lembah Indus
- Rumpun bahasa Italik
- Bahasa Kaska
- Rumpun suku bangsa Austronesia
- Bahasa Hatti
- List of Indo-European languages
- Proto-Indo-European language
- Indo-European languages
- Pre-Indo-European languages
- Indo-European studies
- Indo-European vocabulary
- Languages of Europe
- Proto-Indo-Iranian language
- Centum and satem languages
- Indo-Iranian languages
