什麼是印歐諸語言

使用人口最多的語系，用於歐洲大部分地區、歐洲拓殖區以及亞洲南部和西南部許多地區。源於沒有記錄的單一語言，據信使用於超過5,000年前的黑海北部乾草原區，而到西元前3000年已經分裂爲若干方言。這些語言被遷徙的部族帶至歐洲和亞洲，逐漸發展爲分立的語言。主要的分支有安納托利亞諸語言、印度-伊朗語支（包括印度-雅利安諸語言和伊朗諸語言）、希臘語、義大利諸語言、日耳曼諸語言、亞美尼亞語、塞爾特諸語言、阿爾巴尼亞語、已滅絕的土火羅語、波羅的諸語言、斯拉夫諸語言。關於印歐諸語言的研究始於1786年瓊斯（W. Jones）爵士的論點，他指出希臘語、拉丁語、梵語、日耳曼語、塞爾特語都可追溯到一個「共同的來源」，而語言學家在印歐語系中加入其他語言，拉斯克（R. Rask）等學者則建立了語音的對照體系。原印歐諸語言一直經由後裔同一根源的認同和共有語法模式的分析而部分重建起來。

Indo-European languages

Family of languages with the greatest number of speakers, spoken in most of Europe and areas of European settlement and in much of southwestern and southern Asia. They are descended from a single unrecorded language believed to have been spoken more than 5,000 years ago in the steppe regions north of the Black Sea and to have split into a number of dialects by 3000 BC. Carried by migrating tribes to Europe and Asia, these developed over time into separate languages. The main branches are Anatolian, Indo-Iranian (including Indo-Aryan and Iranian), Greek, Italic, Germanic, Armenian, Celtic, Albanian, the extinct Tocharian languages, Baltic, and Slavic. The study of Indo-European began in 1786 with Sir William Jones's proposal that Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Germanic, and Celtic were all derived from a “common source.” In the 19th century, linguists added other languages to the Indo-European family, and scholars such as Rasmus Rask established a system of sound correspondences. Proto-Indo-European has since been partially reconstructed via identification of roots common to its descendants and analysis of shared grammatical patterns.