Language Family Trees

Linguists use "Language Tree" diagrams to illustrate the historical development of languages and show relationships among them. The small diagram in the lower right corner represents all the languages in the world. Families of languages that are historically related, deriving from a common ancestor, are on the same branch. The larger diagram represents the Indo-European family branch, to which English belongs.

The diagram is copied from this link: http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/05/the-language-tree/

In Language Tree diagrams, languages that evolved from a common "parent language," are charted on the same branch. This method of classification is similar to the one used in the physical sciences such as biology.

Each language family "branches" off from the trunk, and the smaller branches growing out of these are the "sub-families". Continuing upward, the sub-families divide, until each individual language is represented by its own little twig on the edges of the tree. You can see English in the top-left clump of leaves labeled "Germanic" - the family names are written horizontally across the top of each clump.

The Indo-European family includes many languages, spoken from India to Iran to England. Linguists believe that these languages evolved from a common theoretical ancestor (Proto-Indo-European) thousands of years ago. Its sub-families include the Romance languages (such as French and Spanish) and the Germanic languages (such as English and Dutch).

English is in the branch with German, not Latin, because of its history. Although the English we speak today includes a lot of Latin and Greek-based words, they were added later in its history. During the first six hundred years or so of its development, it was all Germanic. Latin and Greek-based words were added after the French-speaking Normans invaded England in 1066, and later during the Renaissance period.

The Latin and Greek words were considered more "fancy" or educated-sounding than the Germanic words. Many times In English there two words meaning basically the same thing – one is Germanic, the other Greek or Latin. Recently I read an obituary in which it was mentioned that the woman had loved her “felines and canines” – I guess the writer felt that those words sounded nicer than “cats and dogs.”