write a short note on indo-european family of language
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Indo-European is a family of languages (including most of the languages spoken in Europe, India, and Iran) descended from a common tongue spoken in the third millennium B.C. by an agricultural people originating in southeastern Europe.
Branches of Indo-European (IE) include Indo-Iranian (Sanskrit and the Iranian languages), Greek, Italic (Latin and related languages), Celtic, Germanic (which includes English), Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Anatolian, and Tocharian.
The theory that languages as diverse as Sanskrit, Greek, Celtic, Gothic, and Persian had a common ancestor was proposed by Sir William Jones in an address to the Asiatick Society on Feb. 2, 1786.
The reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages is known as the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
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The use of the term “Indo-Germanic” or “Indo-Teutonic” seems to have been motivated by the desire to mark the two extremes of the geographical territory covered by this family of languages. “Indo” in this term was intended to indicate the eastern boundary and “Germanic” and its synonym “Teutonic” were intended to mark the western boundary of this territory.
At that time, Celtic languages, i.e., languages like Cornish and Welsh were not known to be part of the Indo-Germanic family. On the basis of the research done around the beginning of the twentieth century, it has now been more or less indisputably established that Celtic languages are an integral part of the Indo-European family and cannot be assigned to any other family of languages. Celtic languages like Cornish and Manx were used much farther in the west than English, a Germanic language.
In other words, the western limit of the geographical territory covered by this family of languages is marked not by English but by Celtic languages. It can, therefore, be argued that “Indo-Celtic” is a more appropriate label for this family. “Indo-European” is perhaps the least controversial and most widely used term these days.
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