Indo-European Languages

Indo-European languages are the world's largest family of languages.

Linguists believe they all came from a single language called Proto-Indo-European. This language was originally spoken somewhere in Eurasia. Today they are spoken all over the world.

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects,including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia.

Historically, this language family was also important in Anatolia and Central Asia.

The earliest Indo-European writing comes from the Bronze Age in the Anatolian and Mycenaean Greek languages. We can place the origin of Indo-European languages after the invention of farming, because some of the Proto-Indo-European words are farming words.


The languages of the Indo-European group have about three billion native speakers. Although it may not have as many different languages as some other language families, it has more native speakers than any other.

Of the 20 languages with the most speakers, 12 are Indo-European: English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Sindhi, Punjabi, Marathi, French, and Urdu. They account for over 2.7 billion native speakers.

Four of the six official languages of the United Nations are Indo-European: English, Spanish, French, and Russian.



Text from Simple Wikipedia