The Indo-European Family
excerpts from the works of
Dr. Micheal Crafton

Department of English
State University of West Georgia
(Spring 2000)

Carrollton, Georgia

Here are some highlights on the branches: 

Anatolian Branch:
Oldest IE inscription in Hittite 1700 bc in cuneiform script on clay tablets (technology borrowed from Mesopotamia).     Important to linguists who guessed that there were lost consonants, the laryngeals, in PIE.

Indo-Iranian:
Sanskrit documents (though the documents are recent, Vedic hymns 1000 bc; Classical Sanskrit 500 bc) record faithfully the language spoken in India in about the same time as Hittite

Hellenic:
Mycenean Greek inscriptions date from 1400 BC, but Attic, Ionic and Koine are the dialects most influential

Italic:

Latin and its derivatives:

Celtic:
Gaelic and Welsh –

Germanic:
North (Scandinavia); West (Anglo-Saxon and German); East, not much
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