Big language families split into branches, and branches into groups and single languages. Indo-European, the largest family, has about ten branches; four of them have most of its speakers.
Key idea
Main branches of Indo-European: Germanic (English, German, Dutch, Swedish), Romance (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian; all from Latin), Balto-Slavic (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Lithuanian) and Indo-Iranian (Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Persian). Smaller branches include Celtic, Hellenic (Greek), Albanian and Armenian.
Why it works
A branch forms when speakers of one language spread out and lose touch. Over centuries each group's speech changes in its own way until the groups can no longer understand each other. Latin is the best-documented case: as the Roman Empire's Latin-speaking lands drifted apart after its fall, local Latin became Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian. Branches stay recognizable because their basic words still match: compare English father, German Vater and Dutch vader.
| English | German | Spanish | Italian | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| three | drei | tres | tre | tri |
| night | Nacht | noche | notte | noch |
| mother | Mutter | madre | madre | mat |
Worked examples
Worked example: English's branch
A large share of English words (by some counts, more than half of those in a big dictionary) come from French and Latin. Is English a Romance language?
- Borrowing words does not change a language's ancestry.
- English grew from the speech of Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) who settled in Britain.
- After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English borrowed many French words, but its basic words (I, you, mother, water, house) and grammar stayed Germanic.
Answer: No. English is Germanic, with many borrowed Romance words.
Worked example: Sorting by branch
Which branch: Portuguese, Polish, Persian, Swedish?
- Portuguese comes from Latin: Romance.
- Polish: Balto-Slavic.
- Persian: Indo-Iranian.
- Swedish: Germanic.
Answer: Romance, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Germanic.
Common mistake
Students put English in the Romance branch because so much of its vocabulary is French or Latin. Look at the most basic words and the grammar, which change slowly and are rarely borrowed. Those are Germanic, so English is Germanic. Also, Romance comes from Roman (Latin), not from "romantic."