Why are they called Indo-European language?

Question

Indo-European languages include English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Persian, French, German, Bengali, Urdu, Irish, Lativian, Norwegian, Punjabi, Greek and etc.
I am curious why they are classified as a one big family of Indo-European.

Are there any common features that merge them into one family?
For instance, Russian and Urdu or English and Punjabi seem totally different language to me so I don't know why they are called as Indo-European languages.

Answer 1

There are four reasons why Linguists identify this group of languages as belonging to the same language family. And, by the way, the homeland was NOT in South Asia (that is just false Indian nationalism), but in the region of modern Ukraine. The languages spread east and west from there--the Indo-Iranian languages to the east and then south, most of the other groups to the west.

1) Common core vocabulary. When you look at all these languages you see a great many words dealing with natural phenomena, body parts, and common verbs that look alike throughout the family. For example, "to carry, bear" is English 'bear', Latin 'ferre', Greek 'phairo', Sanskrit 'bharami'; English 'foot', Latin 'pedis', Greek 'podis', Sanskrit 'pad'; English 'fish', Latin 'piscis', Russian 'peskarj'; etc.

2) Common grammatical elements. When you look at all these languages you see common grammatical elements throughout. For example, the verb 'bear' is made into 'I bear' in Latin 'fero', in Greek 'phairo', in Sanskrit 'bharami', in Ukrainian 'beru'. Notice the presence in all these forms of a rounded vowel or an 'm'. This is because these suffixes all relate back to a single suffix *-em in Proto-Indo-European. The same is true for second person, Early Modern English "bearest", Latin "feris", Greek "phaireis", Sanskrit "bharasi", Ukrainian "beresh".

3) Regular Sound Correspondences. This is when the words of the different languages can be related to each other because all the languages of one subgroup changed a sound in the same way. So, in Sanskrit, if the word begins in "bh", then it begins in Latin with "f", in Greek with "ph", in English with "b" and in Ukrainian and Russian with "b". Thus, English "brother"/"bear", Latin "frater"/"fero", Sanskrit "bhratar"/"bharami", Greek "phairo", Ukrainian "brat'"/"beru". These regular sound correspondences occur across hundreds of words in the languages.

4) Inherited Irregular Patterns. The same exceptional patterns are also found across the languages. For example, the verb "to be" is English "I am", Latin "sum", Greek "eimi", Sanskrit "asmi". Notice the common "m" and the "s" in both Latin and Sanskrit. The "ei" in Greek is the result of a short vowel becoming long when "s" was lost. All these things are related to one another.

Thus, because of these four pieces of evidence across the family, the Indo-European language family was built during the 19th century. In the early 20th century, several newly discovered languages were also found to be Indo-European (Tocharian and Hittite).

LATER EDIT: The date for Proto-Indo-European is not "about four thousand years ago", but about 6000 years ago. Many linguists look at the Sredny Stog culture of Ukraine (about 4500-3500 BCE) as being the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Answer 2

German linguists of the 19th century coined the term "Indo-Germanic" for this group of languages because the Indic languages (Hindu, Bengali etc.) represented the easternmost members of the group while Icelandic, a Germanic language, represented the westernmost member of the group.

However, this was a time of intense Franco-German rivalry and the term "Indo-Germanic" grated on the ears of the French. So their linguists chose "Indo-European" as an alternative name.

The name "Indo-European" for this family of languages has basically stuck ever since, especially since the Germans lost two world wars and it never pays to be on the losing side of a war for more reasons than one. Occasionally, you will hear just a few people call these languages "Indo-Germanic" but usually not any professional linguists.

Both terms are imperpect though. Indo-Germanic ignores the fact that the Romance, Slavic and Celtic languages belong to this group too. The problem with Indo-European is that some languages spoken in Europe still do not belong to this group: Maltese, Basque, Hungarian, Lappic, Finnish, Estonian, and Turkish in Bulgaria

Linguists usually use words for "mother," father," "brother," "sister" and the numbers 1 - 100 for comparison and there is indeed a high degree of similarity between English, German, Russian, Persian, Punjabi and Hindi regarding these words.

There is also a high degree of similarity in these languages regarding words for "night" and "night time." cf. Latin noctis /noctem , Lithuanian naktis, German Nacht, Russian noch', Welsh nos, Breton noz, Greek nyx / nyktos, Sanskrit naktam "at night," Old Irish innocht "at night." etc.

All of these similarity point to a common ancestor for these languages which was spoken probably not to long ago historically speaking, about four thousand years ago.

Answer 3

Try giving references other than your own earlier questions. Just imaginary questions are being posed by you without any substance. Urdu is just a script and real language is HINDI with some imported words, largely from central Asia. If language is enriched by such import, Indians are most open to such import. Urdu does not have any HEAVY borrowing. Now that you are STUCK with daitya and danavas theory without any substance, find more meaningful references to make this interesting. Most people know little more than sons of DITI. Otherwise, continue with churning garbage you are used to.

Answer 4

Linguists believe that these languages all originated from a common language in South Asia- India many centuries before the Christian Era and moved into Europe and other areas from there. They do share some common characteristics.

Answer 5

Indo-European language is merely a hypothetical parent language of the family of languages spoken over most of Europe and Asia as far as N. India.

Answer 6

because they all have same ancestors. they lived in middle asia and from there they have moved to europe. and yes there are some words that have same roots. for example: father, pater (latin), pedar (in farsi) or mother, mater (latin) and madar (in farsi),..... so they all originated from a same language and same people but then they have been divided into different branches. there are also some same idioms or supersitions like touching the wood or birds of a feather flock together ,....(which exist in farsi too)

Answer 7

I don't know
but for example Altaic languages are different too but often they are agluttanative and are SOV syntaxed........
often European languages (but nto all) have definite and undefinite articles...
also they have often fisrt person second person and plural (in Arabic for example there are singular dual and plural, when in sinoTibetan there is no dictinction between plural and singular even)
also it is said that Latvian language carries many similarities with Indian languages...
even thoguht Lithuanians are living in Europe rather long time

Answer 8

I don't know either and I am a European citizen