Literally Speaking

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The Indo-European languages are spoken by approximately half of the world’s population and include Italic: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Sardinian, to name a few—the Romance* languages; Germanic: English, Flemish (spoken in Belgium), Afrikaans (spoken in South Africa), Dutch, Yiddish and German, Indo-Iranian consisting of Indo-Aryan such as Hindi and Nepali, and Iranian, such as Persian and Kurdish, Balto-Slavic consisting of Baltic, such as Lithuanian, and Slavic, such as Czech and Slovak in the west and Russian and Ukrainian in the east; and Celtic: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh.

There are a lot of similarities between these languages, so there has been academic speculation of a common parent language: Proto-Indo-European. The theory is that as the speakers moved away from each other (geographically, not emotionally), the language of the various groups was revised and gradually became new languages entirely, being further divided over time. There are no records of Proto-Indo-European (since no one stayed in school, no one learned how to write), but is a plausible argument to explain the similarities between the languages. I buy it. Hey, even in a civilized world with open communication, consider the differences between English in America and English in England!

This section will explore some of the similarities between English and the other Indo-European languages, especially the Romance languages.

*The Romance languages are so called because Italic is derivative of Latin, which was the language of the Romans. So romance from the Latin romanice literally means, “in the Roman manner.” If your date asks for a romantic evening and you think that might include pillaging and conquering, well… good luck!

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