Dave Wilton

A Timeline of the History of the English Language

Indo-European and Germanic Influences

English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. This broad family includes most of the European languages spoken today. The Indo-European family includes several major branches:

  • Latin and the modern Romance languages;
  • The Germanic languages;
  • The Indo-Iranian languages, including Hindi and Sanskrit;
  • The Slavic languages;
  • The Baltic languages of Latvian and Lithuanian (but not Estonian);
  • The Celtic languages; and
  • Greek.

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