1. Definition
1.1. The Indo-European languages are a large language family native to western Eurasia. It comprises most of the languages of Europe together with those of the northern Indian Subcontinent and the Iranian Plateau. A few of these languages, such as English and Spanish, have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across all continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, the largest of which are the Indo-Iranian, Germanic, Romance, and Balto-Slavic groups. The most populous individual languages within them are Spanish, English, Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu), Portuguese, Bengali, Punjabi, and Russian, each with over 100 million speakers. German, French, Marathi, Italian, and Persian have more than 50 million each. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion) speaks an Indo-European language as a first language, by far the highest of any language family. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, with over two thirds (313) of them belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch.
2. origin
2.1. The Proto-Indo-Europeans were a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestor of the Indo-European languages according to linguistic reconstruction. Knowledge of them comes chiefly from that linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics. The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during the late Neolithic, or roughly the 4th millennium BC. Mainstream scholarship places them in the Pontic–Caspian steppe zone in Eastern Europe (present day Ukraine and southern Russia).[2][3] Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the middle Neolithic (5500 to 4500 BC) or even the early Neolithic (7500 to 5500 BC), and suggest alternative location hypotheses. By the early second millennium BC, descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had reached far and wide across Eurasia, including Anatolia (Hittites), the Aegean (the ancestors of Mycenaean Greece), the north of Europe (Corded Ware culture), the edges of Central Asia (Yamnaya culture), and southern Siberia (Afanasievo culture).
3. How many branches exist on it?
3.1. Well there are 10 branches: Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Armenian, Tocharian, Balto-Slavic and Albanian
3.1.1. Anatolian: The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor (ancient Anatolia).
3.1.1.1. Hittite
3.1.1.2. Palaic
3.1.1.3. Luwic
3.1.1.4. Luwian
3.1.1.5. Lycian
3.1.1.6. Milyan
3.1.1.7. Carian
3.1.1.8. Sidetic
3.1.1.9. Pisidian
3.1.1.10. Lydian
3.1.2. Indo-iranian: Iranian languages constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. They are spoken over a wide area of the Middle East. The languages are called Iranian because the largest members of the branch have been spoken on the Iranian plateau since ancient times.map Iranian languages, together with Indo-Aryan languages are thought to have evolved from a common ancestral language called *Proto-Indo-Iranian. Most scholars subscribe to the hypothesis that the original homeland of Indo-Iranian was an area located northwest of the Indian subcontinent bordered by the Caspian sea in the east and Afghanistan in the north. It is hypothesized that sometime in the 2nd millennium BC, people who spoke the ancestral Indo-Iranian language migrated to the south and west, settling over a wide area of the Middle East where modern Indo-Iranian languages are presently spoken .According to Ethnologue, there are 87 Iranian languages, a few of of them now extinct, and many with a very small number of speakers. They are spoken today by 60-80 million people. The table below lists languages with at least half-a-million speakers.According to Ethnologue, there are 87 Iranian languages, a few of of them now extinct, and many with a very small number of speakers. They are spoken today by 60-80 million people. The table below lists languages with at least half-a-million speakers.According to Ethnologue, there are 87 Iranian languages, a few of of them now extinct, and many with a very small number of speakers. They are spoken today by 60-80 million people. The table below lists languages with at least half-a-million speakers.
3.1.2.1. Indo-Aryan languages or Indic languages: are a major language family of South Asia.
3.1.2.1.1. Sanskrit
3.1.2.1.2. Hindi-Urdu
3.1.2.1.3. Bengali
3.1.2.1.4. Punjabi
3.1.2.1.5. Marathi
3.1.2.1.6. Gujarati
3.1.2.1.7. Rajasthani
3.1.2.1.8. Bhojpuri
3.1.2.1.9. Odia
3.1.2.1.10. Maithili
3.1.2.1.11. Sindhi
3.1.2.1.12. Nepali
3.1.2.1.13. Assamese
3.1.2.1.14. Kamta
3.1.2.2. Iranian/Iranic
3.1.2.2.1. Zaza
3.1.2.2.2. Sorani
3.1.2.2.3. Kurmanji
3.1.2.2.4. Pashto
3.1.2.2.5. Tati
3.1.2.2.6. Talyshi
3.1.2.2.7. Balochi
3.1.2.2.8. Mazanderani
3.1.2.2.9. Tat
3.1.2.2.10. Persian
3.1.2.2.11. Middle Persian
3.1.2.2.12. Parthian
3.1.2.2.13. Old Persian
3.1.2.2.14. Avestan
3.1.2.2.15. Ossetian
3.1.2.3. Nuristani
3.1.2.3.1. Kamkata-vari
3.1.2.3.2. Vasi-vari
3.1.2.3.3. Askunu
3.1.2.3.4. Waigali
3.1.2.3.5. Tregami
3.1.2.3.6. Zemiaki
3.1.3. Greek: is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, Albania, other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the longest documented history of any living Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,500 years of written records.[3] Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously.[4] The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.
3.1.3.1. greek
3.1.4. Italic: The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken in the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The best known of them is Latin, the official language of the Roman Empire, which conquered the other Italic peoples before the common era. The other Italic languages became extinct in the first centuries AD as their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and shifted to some form of Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries AD, Vulgar Latin (perhaps influenced by language-shift from the other Italic languages) diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today.
3.1.4.1. Latin
3.1.4.1.1. Catalan
3.1.4.1.2. French
3.1.4.1.3. Italian
3.1.4.1.4. Portuguese
3.1.4.1.5. Provencal
3.1.4.1.6. Romansch
3.1.4.1.7. Romanian
3.1.4.1.8. Spanish
3.1.4.1.9. Galician
3.1.5. Celtic: Celtic languages descended from a common ancestral language called Proto-Celtic, a member of the Indo-European language family. Reconstruction of Proto-Celtic shows that it was a conservative language that had retained many features of Proto-Indo-European, the hypothetical ancestor of all Indo-European languages. Although the original homeland of the Celts cannot be determined with absolute accuracy, it is generally believed that they appeared in the eastern part of central Europe around the 5th century BC and subsequently spread throughout most of the European continent, reaching the Black Sea, the Anatolian Peninsula, Spain, Italy, and the British Isles. Today, however, Celtic languages are limited to a few areas in the British Isles, on the peninsula of Brittany in France, and in emigrant communities in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
3.1.5.1. Brythonic
3.1.5.1.1. Breton
3.1.5.1.2. Cornish
3.1.5.1.3. Welsh
3.1.5.2. Goidelic
3.1.5.2.1. Scottish Gaelic
3.1.5.2.2. Irish Gaelic
3.1.5.2.3. Manx
3.1.6. Germanic: The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people[nb 1] mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia.
3.1.6.1. English
3.1.6.2. German
3.1.6.3. Yiddish
3.1.6.4. Scots
3.1.6.5. Limburgish
3.1.6.6. Dutch
3.1.6.7. Belgian
3.1.6.8. Swedish
3.1.6.9. Swedish
3.1.6.10. Danish
3.1.6.11. Norwegian
3.1.6.12. Frisian
3.1.6.13. Luxembourgish
3.1.6.14. Low German
3.1.6.15. Icelandic
3.1.6.16. Faroese
3.1.7. Armenian: The Armenian language (classical: հայերէն; reformed: հայերեն [hɑjɛˈɾɛn] hayeren) is an Indo-European language that is the only language in the Armenian branch. It is the official language of Armenia as well as the de facto Republic of Artsakh. Historically being spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands, today, Armenian is widely spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora. Armenian is written in its own writing system, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots.
3.1.7.1. Armenian
3.1.8. Tocharian: Tocharian, also spelled Tokharian (/təˈkɛəriən/ or /təˈkɑːriən/), is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. It is known from manuscripts dating from the 5th to the 8th century AD, which were found in oasis cities on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (now part of Xinjiang in northwest China) and the Lop Desert. The discovery of this language family in the early 20th century contradicted the formerly prevalent idea of an east–west division of the Indo-European language family on the centum–satem isogloss, and prompted reinvigorated study of the family. Identifying the authors with the Tokharoi people of ancient Bactria (Tokharistan), early authors called these languages "Tocharian".
3.1.8.1. Tocharian
3.1.9. Balto-Slavic: The Balto-Slavic languages are a branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It traditionally comprises the Baltic and Slavic languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to a period of common development. Although the notion of a Balto-Slavic unity has been contested[2] (partly due to political controversies), there is now a general consensus among specialists in Indo-European linguistics to classify Baltic and Slavic languages into a single branch, with only some details of the nature of their relationship remaining in dispute.
3.1.9.1. Latvian
3.1.9.2. Latgalian
3.1.9.3. Lithuanian
3.1.9.4. Polish
3.1.9.5. Kashubian
3.1.9.6. Czech
3.1.9.7. Slovak
3.1.9.8. Sorbian
3.1.9.9. Serbo-Croatian
3.1.9.10. Bosnian
3.1.9.11. Croatian
3.1.9.12. Serbian
3.1.9.13. Montenegrin
3.1.9.14. Bulgarian
3.1.9.15. Slovene
3.1.9.16. Macedonian
3.1.9.17. Church Slavonic
3.1.9.18. Russian
3.1.9.19. Ukrainian
3.1.9.20. Belarusian
3.1.9.21. Rusyn
3.1.9.22. Proto-Balto-Slavic language
3.1.9.23. Proto-Slavic
3.1.9.24. Old Church Slavonic
3.1.9.25. Knaanic
3.1.9.26. Old Novgorod
3.1.9.27. Old East Slavic
3.1.9.28. Old Ruthenian
3.1.9.29. Polabian language
3.1.9.30. Pomeranian language
3.1.9.31. Curonian
3.1.9.32. Old Prussian
3.1.9.33. Galindan
3.1.9.34. Selonian
3.1.9.35. Semigallian
3.1.9.36. Sudovian
3.1.10. Albanian: Albanian (/ælˈbeɪniən/; shqip, [ʃc͡çip] or gjuha shqipe, [ɟ͡ʝuha ˈʃc͡çipɛ]) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and the Albanian diaspora in the Americas, Europe and Oceania.[1][9] With about 7.5 million speakers, it comprises an independent branch within the Indo-European languages and is not closely related to any other language. First attested in the 15th century, it is the last Indo-European branch to appear in written records. This is one of the reasons why its still-unknown origin has long been a matter of dispute among linguists and historians.[10] Albanian is considered to be the descendant of one of the Paleo-Balkan languages of antiquity. For more historical and geographical reasons than specifically linguistic ones, there are various modern historians and linguists who believe that the Albanian language may have descended from a southern Illyrian dialect[11] spoken in much the same region in classical times. Alternative hypotheses hold that Albanian may have descended from Thracian or Daco-Moesian, other ancient languages spoken farther east than Illyrian.[10][12] Not enough is known of these languages to completely prove or disprove the various hypotheses.[13]
3.1.10.1. Albanian
3.1.10.2. Dialects
3.1.10.2.1. Gheg
3.1.10.2.2. Tosk
3.1.10.2.3. Arbëresh
3.1.10.2.4. Arvanitika
3.1.10.2.5. Istrian †