2. How was Indo-European discovered?
Many years ago some wise men realized that words from various
languages were very similar. Let’s take the word god in several
languagues.
• Dieu, dio, dios / French, Italian, Spanish.
• Gott, god, gud /German, English, Swedish.
• Bog, bog buh / Ancient Slavian, Russian, Checz.
• Theós / Greek.
The conclusion was that all these languages came from a unique
language, which was called Indo-European.
Indo-European was spoken before the invention of writing, therefore
there are no testimonies of its sounds or forms left.
6. The Indo-European languages, some data
Indo refers to the Indian subcontinent
They are several hundred languages of Europe, India, Iran and much of
Central Asia.
They comprise the largest families of languages in the world today with
three billion speakers.
7. We are particularly interested in
• the Italic family (which
includes Latin and the
Romance languages)
• the Germanic family (which
includes English and German)
• the Celtic and Greek families,
due to their important
contribution to the Spanish
and Galician vocabulary.
8. Italic Languages
• The most important language of
this family is Latin, the dialect
spoken in Latium, where Rome
(the cradle of the Roman
Empire) is located.
• The Romance languages in
Spain are: Castilian, Galician,
Catalonian… but NOT BASQUE
• The Romance languages in the
EU are: French, Italian,
Portuguese, Sardian, Romanian…
10. The Greek Family
Mycenaean Greek: the most ancient
period, 15th century BC, Linear B.
Ancient Greek: divided into several
dialects. The Attic is the most
important: the language of literature
during the 5th and 4th centuries BC.
Common Greek (Koinè): spoken in the
Mediterranean area for 1000 years.
Modern Greek: spoken nowadays in
Greece. It derives from Koinè.
11. Greek is very important because
• We use the Greek alphabet in Mathematics and Physics: , , have got
precise meanings.
• The Greek alphabet is officially used in the European Union.
• The scientific vocabulary comes predominantly from Greek: dermatology
(“science of the skin”), philosophy (“love of knowledge”).
• Many common words and personal names come from Greek as well: pirate,
panic, ideal, Alexander, Monique, Andrew…
12. Celtic Languages
• The Celtics were the first Indo-Europeans to spread all over Europe to
the Black Sea.
• Afterwards they became a little group living in Central Europe, Ireland
and the British Islands.
13. Germanic Languages
• They were the languages of the various Germanic tribes living in the
north of Europe during the 1st millenium BC.
• More than 500 million people speak one of these languages due to
the importance of English.
• We can distinguish 2 main groups:
Nordic Germanic: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic.
Western Germanic: German, Dutch, English.
15. Balto-Slavic Languages
Most of the Slavic languages are written
in the Cyrillic alphabet, the third
european alphabet (toghether with the
Latin and Greek ones).
They are classified into two groups:
Baltic: Lithuanian, Latvian (but not
Estonian).
Slavic: Polish, Czech; Russian;
Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian.
