IndogermanicIndoEuropean

Indo-European is a large and widespread language family originating in Eurasia. It is one of the largest language families in the world, encompassing over 445 languages and dialects, including major world languages such as English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian. These languages are spoken by billions of people across Europe, North and South America, parts of Asia, and Oceania.

The study of Indo-European languages, known as Indo-European linguistics, is a major field of historical linguistics. Scholars reconstruct a hypothetical ancestor language, Proto-Indo-European, which is believed to have been spoken around the 4th millennium BCE. Evidence for this reconstruction comes from systematic comparisons of vocabulary, grammar, and phonology across the daughter languages. The proposed homeland of Proto-Indo-European is a subject of ongoing debate, with prominent theories placing it in the Pontic-Caspian steppe or Anatolia.

The Indo-European language family is typically divided into several branches, including Germanic, Italic (which includes Romance languages), Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Celtic, Baltic, Greek, Albanian, and Armenian. The relationships between these branches are based on shared innovations and reconstructed features. The spread of Indo-European languages is thought to have occurred through migration and cultural diffusion over millennia, shaping the linguistic landscape of vast regions.