This document summarizes language families and the history of linguistics. It discusses how Sir William Jones established relationships between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, laying the foundations for historical linguistics. It also introduces the Proto-Indo-European language as the common ancestor of Indo-European languages, which include many of the most spoken languages today like Spanish, English, Hindi, and Russian. The document categorizes the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family and provides information on the diachronic and synchronic study of languages.

1. Language History

2. Language Families
• A language family is a group of languages related
through descent from a common ancestor, called the
proto-language of that family.
• Philology - The study of language history and change
• There are an estimated 5,000 to 8,000, living human
languages. A living language is simply one that is
used as the primary form of communication of a
group of people. There are also many dead and
extinct languages, as well as some that are still
insufficiently studied to be classified
• There are around 147 language families

3. Sir William Jones in the 18th century established a
relationship between Sanskrit and the European
languages Greek and Latin. He is generally regarded as
father of Historical Linguistics
Sanskrit Latin Ancient Greek
pitar pater pate-r (“father”)
bhrātar frāter phrāter (“brother”)
Hindi English Russian
dvaar door dver
dho two dva

4. Proto-Indo-European language
• Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the linguistic
reconstruction of the common ancestor of the
Indo-European languages.
• There are about 445 living Indo-European (IE)
languages, with Spanish, English, Hindi,
Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German,
French and Marathi being the ten Indo-
European languages with the most native
speakers in descending order.

5. The Germanic Branch
• Germanic languages - branch of the Indo-
European language family. Scholars often divide
the Germanic languages into three groups:
• West Germanic - English, German, and
Netherlandic (Dutch);
• North Germanic
Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian etc.
• East Germanic - now extinct

7. • Languages with the most number of native
speakers
Mandarin Chinese (over 1 billion)
Spanish (over 400 million)
English (over 330 million)
• Diachronic Study
The study of the evolution and development of
language through history.
• Synchronic study
The study of the differences within one language in
different places and among different groups at the
same time