Episode 2 The First Family Discovered: Indo-European
Language Families of the World
Dr John McWhorter
Film Review
The family of Indo-European languages, the first to undergo extensive classification, comprises most of the world’s written languages. In 1647, Dutch scholar Marcus van Boxhurn, was the first to note linguistic similarities between the different languages spoken in Europe and Northern India.
The 10 definitely confirmed sub-families of Indo-European languages spoken are Romance, Anatolian, Tokharian, Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Germanic and Celtic
English is an extremely atypical member of the Germanic sub-family, in that their nouns and verbs have lost the case endings (which depend on their grammatical role in the sentence) found in Latin, Slavic and Germanic languages.*
Linguists have been able to reconstruct what the original Proto-Indo-European language most likely looked like by tracing words and grammatical constructions that are similar in modern Indo-European languages.
It’s believed that Yamnaya tribes in southern Ukraine were the first to speak Proto-Indo-European around 5000 BC because all modern Indo-European languages use a similar word for “wheel’ and “horse,” which were both prominent in that culture. For example “wheel” is
- kuklos – in Greek
- kolo – in Slavic languages
- cakram – in Sanskrit
- kugullas – in Hittite
While Latin uses an unrelated word for wheel, they use the word “colus” for the circular shaped colon (large intestine).
The pattern of gradual linguistic changes found in different Indo-European languages suggest that Yamnaya men began migrating eastward and westward around 3500 BC and marrying local women in the new regions they settled. This is confirmed by DNA findings.
At present 3 billion people speak Indo-European languages.
Of the 20 most spoken languages in the world, 10 are Indo-European:
- English
- French
- Spanish
- Portuguese,
- German
- Hindi
- Punjabi
- Bengali
- Marathi
- Russian
*Old English had case endings like German does.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120004
The Most Revolutionary Act 
I once learned that Old English is mostly a mix of Old Norse, Saxon and Frankish, so it’s not a genuine Germanic language.
Interesting chart. (Where’s the complete one available?) Regarding my own language, I have seen and tried to read Old Swedish, but have never heard of Middle Swedish/Norwegian/Danish/Icelandic. Here we group the spoken Icelandic and Norwegian Bokmål as West Nordic and Norwegian Nynorsk/Bergenska*, Swedish and Danish as East Nordic. Low (Flat) German is related.
Two paradoxes:
1. The written Norwegian Bokmål is based on Danish and don’t differ much.
2. Swedes usually don’t have any issues understanding N. Bokmål, but few understand N. Nynorsk.
*) Norwegian Bergenska is a extreme version of Norwegian Nynorsk, that not all Norwegians understand. Used in the coastal town of Bergen.
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In addition to the second paradox, Swedes understand written Danish, but usually not spoken, except for the dialect used in Helsingør and surroundings (due to the old close relationship with Helsingborg, on the other side of the Öresund strait).
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Sasjal, McWhorter classifies the Scandinavian languages as North Germanic and English as West Germanic. He asserts that the primitive Anglo Saxon language lost its case endings and became simplified following the Viking invasion and occupation of Britain in the 10th century, when all the Viking rulers and settlers were forced to learn it as a second language. He says it’s typical for languages to become simplified when a large number of settler are forced to learn it as a second language. Here’s a more complete family tree of the Indo-European languages: https://www.worldhistory.org/image/1028/indo-european-language-family-tree/
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