It turns out that most of the major language families are related into one superfamily, referred to as Indo-European. They are associated with various groups of migrants that appeared around the beginning of the
BronzeAge. Huge amounts of information about ProtoIndoEuropean
? (PIE) lexicon and grammar have been inferred. Discussion about actual proto-IE culture has been stalled, though, by its association with the racist doctrines of German
NationalSocialism.
The various subgroups of Indo-European include:
- IndoIranianLanguages (e.g. SanskritLanguage?, HindiLanguage?, PersianLanguage?)
- ItalicLanguages? (including Latin and its descendants, the RomanceLanguages)
- GermanicLanguages (e.g. EnglishLanguage, GermanLanguage, DutchLanguage?, SwedishLanguage)
- CelticLanguages? (e.g. IrishLanguage?, WelshLanguage?)
- BalticLanguages? (e.g. OldPrussian?, LatvianLanguage?, LithuanianLanguage?)
- SlavicLanguages (e.g. OldSlavonic?, RussianLanguage?, PolishLanguage, CzechLanguage?, SerboCroatianLanguage?)
- IllyrianLanguages? (AlbanianLanguage? and extinct cousins)
- AnatolianLanguages? (extinct, most notable was the language of the HittitePeoples?)
- TocharianLanguages? (extinct tongues of TocharianPeoples?)
- GreekLanguage?
- ArmenianLanguage?
These are all InflectedLanguages? unlike, say, ChineseLanguages?. Some work indicates they may belong to a hypothetical language superfamily called the NostraticLanguages?. For those interested in such things, the original sounds appear to be
p t ky k kw Voiceless stops
b d gy g gw Voiced stops
bh dh ghy gh ghw Voiced aspirated stops
s z H1 H2 H3 Spirants, laryngeals (quality unknown)
r l y w m n Semi-vowels, nasals
a e i o u Short vowels
a^ e^ i^ o^? u^? Long vowels