The Italian Language

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Indo-European Languages of Europe

The Indo-European family is one of largest and most important of all language groups and includes, besides the Latin languages, languages from India, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as many of the European language families, such as: Germanic: German, Dutch, English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Luxemburgeois and Icelandic are the main examples. Celtic: Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Welsh and Breton are the sole surviving Celtic languages. Slavic: Russian, White Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Slovenian, Macedonian, Serbian and Croatian are the most important of the group. Baltic: Lithuanian, Latvian and Livonian are the only surviving languages of this group.

Latin (or Romance): The group that includes Italian (See Latin Languages), besides many other languages of Western and Eastern Europe.

Besides these families, there are some isolate languages such as Greek and Albanian.

The Indo-Europeans are believed to have originated in Northern India and are sometimes identified with the Aryans, the people who invaded India, destroying its earlier civilisation. They are further believed by some historians to have been the people who brought agriculture to Europe, supplanting in the process the native population. The only people who seem to have survived this process are the Basques, who up to this day speak a language which has no affinities to any other known tongue. Other peoples who were believed to speak native European languages were the Lusitanians and the Aquitanians, though we have no means to verify this.

Due to the voyages of exploration and settlement of eight of the countries where these languages are spoken, the Indo-European family has spread worldwide: Portugal, Spain, England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.