What Are Language Families? Part I: The Indo-European Connection

<p>Speakers of most of the world&rsquo;s languages are at least vaguely aware that their tongue is related to some others. For people in the West, the most familiar example is Romance languages, which began as Latin slang in Italy, Spain, Gaul, and elsewhere and grew up to become great languages in their own right. Fewer people are aware that Latin itself was just one branch of a family tree whose roots were already deep-set when Rome was just a minor Italian city-state.</p> <p>The Romance languages are part of the broader Indo-European language family, which includes virtually all of the languages of Europe (which mainly fall into the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic groups), as well as Iran and northern India. Around 4,000 years ago, the ancient forebears of all these people, warlike pastoralists known as the Aryans, left their ancient home near the Black Sea and decided to conquer a large swath of the entire world.</p> <p><a href="https://sjquillen.medium.com/what-are-language-families-part-i-the-indo-european-connection-9851cca2c2c2"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>