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هي الاستاذة تبغاك تعملي بارفريزنق >> اعادة صياغة < للكلام الموجود بالنت
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اضيفي روابط فرست سكند وكذا يعني
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هي الاستاذة تبغاك تعملي بارفريزنق >> اعادة صياغة < للكلام الموجود...
بنات هاذاي المعلوماات وابغى احد يساعدني في اعاده صياغتهااا ضروريي ابغى اخلصه اليومم تعبت منهه : (
The most widelystudied language family in the world is the Indo-European. There are a numberof reasons for this:
Many of the most important languages ofthe world are Indo-European. These languages are official or co-official inmany countries and are important in academic, technical and world organisations.
The Indo-Europeanlanguages tend to be inflected (ie verbs and nouns have different endingsdepending on their part in a sentence). Some languages (eg English) have lost many of the inflections duringtheir evolution.
The Indo-Europeanlanguages stretch from the Americas through Europe to North India.
The Indo-EuropeanFamily is thought to have originated in the forests north of the Black Sea (inwhat is now Ukraine) during theNeoloithic period (about 7000BC). These people bagan to migrate between 3500BCand 2500BC, spreading west to Europe, south to the Mediterranian, north toScandinavia, and east to India.
The Indo-EuropeanFamily is divided into twelve branches, ten of which contain existinglanguages. I will describe each of these branches separately.
The Celtic Branch
This is now thesmallest branch. The languages originated in Central Europe and once dominatedWestern Europe (around 400BC). The people migrated across to the British Islesover 2000 years ago. Later, when the Germanic speaking Anglo Saxons arrived,the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales (Welsh), Ireland (Irish Gaelic) and Scotland (ScottishGaelic).
One group of Celtsmoved back to France. Their language became Breton spoken in theBrittany region of France. Breton is closer to Welsh than to French.
Other Celticlanguages have became extinct. These include Cornish (Cornwall in England- now being revived), Gaulish (France), Cumbrian(Cumbria), Manx (Isle of Man -another language being revived), Pictish (Scotland) and Galatian(spoken in Anatolia by the Galatians mentioned in the Christian New Testament).
Welsh has the wordorder Verb-Subject-Object in a sentence. Irishhas the third oldest literature in Europe (after Greek and Latin).
The Germanic Branch
These languagesoriginate from Old Norse and Saxon.Due to the influence of early Christian missionaries, the vast majority of theCeltic and Germanic languages use the Latin Alphabet.
They include English,the second most spoken language in the world, the most widespread, the languageof technology, and the language with the largest vocabulary. A useful languageto have as your mother tongue.
Dutchand German are the closestmajor languages related to English. An even closer relative is Frisian.
Flemishand Afrikaans are varieties ofDutch while Yiddish is a variety ofGerman. Yiddish is written using theHebrew script.
Three of the four(mainland) Scandinavian languages belong to this branch: (Danish,Norwegian, and Swedish). Swedish has tones,unusual in European languages. The fourth Scandinavian language, Finnish,belongs to a different family.
Icelandicis the least changed of the Germanic Languages - being close to Old Norse.Another old language is Faroese.
Gothic(Central Europe), Frankish (France), Lombardo(Danube region), Visigoth (Iberian Peninsula)and Vandal (North Africa) areextinct languages from this branch.
German has a systemof four cases and three gendersfor its nouns. Case is the property where a noun takes a different endingdepending on its role in a sentence. An example in English would be the forms: lady,lady's, ladies and ladies'.The genders are masculine, feminine and neuter. German has three dialectsspoken in northern Germany, southern Germany and Austria, and a very differentform spoken in Switzerland.
English has lostgender and case. Only a few words form their plurals like German (ox,oxen and child, children).Most now add an s, having beeninfluenced by Norman French.
The Latin Branch
Also called the Italicor Romance Languages.
These languages areall derived from Latin. Latin is one of themost important classical languages. Its alphabet (derived from the Greekalphabet) is used by many languages of the world. Latin was long used by thescientific establishment and the Catholic Church as their means ofcommunication.
Italianand Portuguese are the closestmodern major languages to Latin. Spanish has been influencedby Arabic and Basque. French has moved farthestfrom Latin in pronunciation, only its spelling gives a clue to its origins.French has many Germanic and Celtic influences. Romanianhas picked up Slavic influences because it is a Latin Language surrounded by asea of Slavic speakers.Portuguese and Spanish have been separate for over 1000 years. The most widelyspoken of these languages is Spanish. Apart from Spain, it is spoken in most ofLatin America (apart from Portuguese speaking Brazil, and a few small countrieslike Belize and Guyana).
Romanshis a minority language in Switzerland. Ladino was the languagespoken by Spain's Jewish population when they were expelled in 1492. Most ofthem now live in Turkey and Israel. Provincial and Catalanare closely related languages spoken in the south of France and the north-eastof Spain, respectively.
Note that Basque(spoken in parts of Spain and France) is not an Indo-European language - infact it is totally unrelated to any otherlanguage of the world.
Galicianis a Portuguese dialect with Celtic influences spoken in the north west ofSpain. Finally, Moldavian is a dialect ofRomanian spoken in the Moldova. Under the Soviets the Moldavians had to use theCyrillic alphabet. Now they have returned to the Latin alphabet.
Apart from Latin,other extinct languages include Dalmatian, Oscan,Faliscan, Sabine and Umbrian.
Latin had threegenders and at least six cases for its nouns and a Subject-Object-Verb sentence structure. Most modernRomance languages have only two genders, no cases and a Subject-Verb-Object structure.
The Slavic Branch
These languages areconfined to Eastern Europe.
In general, theCatholic peoples use the Latin alphabet while the Orthodox use the Cyrillicalphabet which is derived from the Greek. Indeed some of the languages are verysimilar differing only in the script used (Croatian and Serbianare virtually the same language).
One of the oldest ofthese languages is Bulgarian. The most importantis Russian. Others include Polish,Kashubian (spoken in parts of Poland), Sorbian(spoken in parts of eastern Germany), Czech, Slovak,Slovene, Macedonian, Bosnian,Ukrainian and Byelorussian.
The Slavic languagesare famed for their consonant clusters and large number of cases for nouns (upto seven). Many of the languages have three numbers for verbs: singular,dual and plural. Macedonian hasthree definite articles indicating distance; all are suffixes: VOL (ox),VOLOT (the ox), VOLOV (the ox here), VOLON (the oxthere).
The Baltic Branch
Three Baltic statesbut only two Baltic Languages (Estonian is related to Finnish).
Lithuanianis one of the oldest of the Indo-European languages. Its study is important indetermining the origins and evolution of the family. Lithuanian and Latvianboth use the Latin script and have tones. Lithuanian has three numbers:singular, dual and plural.
Prussianis an extinct language from this branch
The Hellenic Branch
The only extantlanguage in this branch is Modern Greek.
Greek is one of theoldest Indo-European languages. Mycenaean dates from 1300BC.The Ancient Greek of Homer was written fromaround 700BC. The major forms were Doric (Sparta), Ionic(Cos), Aeolic (Lesbos), and Attic(Athens). The latter is Classical Greek.
The New Testament ofthe Christian Bible was written in a form of 1st Century AD Greek called Koine.This developed into the Greek of the Byzantine Empire. Modern Greekhas developed from this.
Greek has threegenders and four cases for nouns but no form of the verb infinitive. Thelanguage has its own script, derived from Phoenician with the addition ofsymbols for vowels. It is one of the oldest alphabets in the world and has ledto the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. The Greek Alphabet is still used in scienceand mathematics.
Until the 1970s Greekwas a Diglossic language. This meansthat there were two forms: Katharevoussa used in officialdocuments and news broadcasts and Demotic used in commonspeech.
The Greek spoken inCyprus includes many Turkish, Arabic and Venetian words and has a differentpronounciation to the official Greek of Greece.
The Illyric Branch
Another singlelanguage branch. Only Albanian (called Shqipby its speakers) belongs to this branch. It has been written in the Latinscript since 1909; this replaced a number of writing systems including Greekand Arabic scripts. Albanian has many avoidance words. Instead of saying wolf,the phrase may God close its mouth is used. Thedefinate article is shown by a suffix: BUK (bread)BUKA (the bread). Many noun pluralsare irregular.
There are twodialects that have been diverging for 1000 years. They are mostly mutuallyintelligible. Geg is spoken in thenorth of Albania and Kosovo (Kosova). Tosk is spoken insouthern Albania and north west Greece.
The ancient Illyricand Mesapian languages, spoken inparts of Italy, are considered by some to be an extinct member of this branch.
The Anatolian Branch
This branch includesthe language of the Hittite civilisation whichonce ruled central Anatolia, fought the Ancient Egyptians and was mentioned inthe Christain Bible's Old Testament. Other languages were Lydian(spoken by a people who ruled the south coast of Anatolia), Lycian(spoken by a Hellenic culture along the western coastal regions), Luwian(spoken in ancient Troy) and Palaic.
All languages in thisbranch are extinct.
Hittite is theearliest Indo-European language known in Europe. It has two noun genders,animate and inanimate. It has post-positions.
The Thracian Branch
This branch isrepresented by a single modern language, Armenian. It has its ownscript.
Armenian is spoken inArmenia and Nagorno-Karabakh (an enclave in Azerbaijan). The language is richin consonants and has borrowed much of its vocabulary from Farsi (Iranian).Nouns have 7 cases and the past tense of verbs take an E prefix like Greek.
Three extinctlanguages from this branch are Dacian (or Daco-Mysian - spoken in the ancient Balkan region of Dacia), Thracianand Phrygian (spoken in ancientTroy).
The Iranian Branch
These languages aredescended from Ancient Persian, the literarylanguage of the Persian Empire and one of the great classical languages.
The main language ofthis branch is Farsi (also called Iranian,Dari and Persian), the main languageof Iran and much of Afghanistan. Kurdish is a close relation.Kurdish is spoken in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq by the Kurds. It is thesecond largest of the Iranian languages after Farsi. In Turkey it was banneduntil recently.
Pashto(also called Pushtu or Pakhto)is spoken in Afghanistan and parts of north west Pakistan. Baluchiis spoken in the desert regions between Iran, Afganistan and Pakistan. Theselanguages are written in the Nastaliq script, a derivative of Arabic writing.It is interesting that you cannot tell which family a language belongs to bythe way it is written.
Ossetianis found in the Caucasus mountains, north of Georgia. Tadzhikis a close relative of Farsi, written in Cyrillic and spoken in Tadzhikistan(of the former USSR) as well as northern Afghanistan.
Avestanis the extinct language of the Zoroastrian religion. Scythianis an extinct language of a warrior people who once lived north of the BlackSea.
The Indic Branch
This branch has themost languages. Most are found in North India. They are derived from Sanskrit(the classical language of Hinduism dating from 1000BC). This gave rise to Pali(the language of Buddhism), Ardhamagadhi (the language ofJainism) and the ancestors of the modern North Indian languages.
Of the modern NorthIndian languages, Hindi and Urduare very similar but differ in the script. The Hindi speakers are Hindus anduse the Sanskrit writing system called Devanagari (writing of the Gods). Urduis spoken by the Muslims so uses the Arabic Nastaliq script. These twolanguages are found in north and central India and Pakistan. Nepaliis closely related to Hindi.
In India most of thestates have their own language. These languages either use Devanagari script ora derivation (if the people are Hindus) or the Arabic Nastaliq script (if thepeople are Muslims).
Bengali(West Bengal as well as Bangladesh), Bhili (Central India), Oriya(in Orissa), Marathi (in Maharashtra), Assamese(in Assam), Punjabi and Lahnda(from the Punjab), Maithili and Maghadi(from Bihar), Kashmiri (Kashmir - writtenmainly in Nastaliq), Sindhi (the Pakistanprovince of Sindh - also written in Nastaliq), Gujarati(Gujarat in western India), Konkani (in Goa, an exPortuguese colony, uses the Latin script), Sinhalese (Sri Lanka - usesits own script derived from Pali), Maldivian (Maldives - with itsown script based on Arabic).
The most surprisinglanguage in this branch is Romany, the language of theRoma (also known as Gypsies - this is a derogatory term which should not beused). The Roma migrated to Europe from India.
Sanskrit had threegenders as has Marathi; most modern Indic languages have two genders; Bengalihas none.
The fascinating pointabout India is that the south Indian languages (like Tamil) are not Indo-European. In other words,Hindi is related to English, Greek and French but is totally unrelated toTamil. North Indians visiting Madras (in the south) are as baffled by Tamil asa foreigner would be.
The Tokharian Branch
Turfanianand Kucheanare recently identified extinct languages once spoken in north west China. Verylittle is known about this branch as only a few manuscripts dating from 600 AD arein existence. The languages disappeared around the 8th century AD. The closestrelatives of these languages are from the Celtic, Anatolian and Latin branches.
The most widelystudied language family in the world is the Indo-European. There are a numberof reasons for this:
Many of the most important languages ofthe world are Indo-European. These languages are official or co-official inmany countries and are important in academic, technical and world organisations.
Examples:English, Spanish, French,German, Russian.
Indeed,more than half the world's population speak one or more of these languageseither as a mother tongue or as a business language.
Languages that are essential inmultinational contexts or with large numbers of speakers.
Examples:Portuguese, Hindi, German,Bengali.
Some of the great classical languagesof religion, culture and philosophy were Indo-European.
Examples:Latin, Greek, Persian,Sanskrit, Pali.
Languages that are scattered around theworld as their speakers are part of diasporas.
Examples:Greek, Yiddish, Polish,Armenian, Romany, Kurdish,Italian, Punjabi, Gujarati.
The Indo-Europeanlanguages tend to be inflected (ie verbs and nouns have different endingsdepending on their part in a sentence). Some languages (eg English) have lost many of the inflections duringtheir evolution.
The Indo-Europeanlanguages stretch from the Americas through Europe to North India.
The Indo-EuropeanFamily is thought to have originated in the forests north of the Black Sea (inwhat is now Ukraine) during theNeoloithic period (about 7000BC). These people bagan to migrate between 3500BCand 2500BC, spreading west to Europe, south to the Mediterranian, north toScandinavia, and east to India.
The Indo-EuropeanFamily is divided into twelve branches, ten of which contain existinglanguages. I will describe each of these branches separately.
The Celtic Branch
This is now thesmallest branch. The languages originated in Central Europe and once dominatedWestern Europe (around 400BC). The people migrated across to the British Islesover 2000 years ago. Later, when the Germanic speaking Anglo Saxons arrived,the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales (Welsh), Ireland (Irish Gaelic) and Scotland (ScottishGaelic).
One group of Celtsmoved back to France. Their language became Breton spoken in theBrittany region of France. Breton is closer to Welsh than to French.
Other Celticlanguages have became extinct. These include Cornish (Cornwall in England- now being revived), Gaulish (France), Cumbrian(Cumbria), Manx (Isle of Man -another language being revived), Pictish (Scotland) and Galatian(spoken in Anatolia by the Galatians mentioned in the Christian New Testament).
Welsh has the wordorder Verb-Subject-Object in a sentence. Irishhas the third oldest literature in Europe (after Greek and Latin).
The Germanic Branch
These languagesoriginate from Old Norse and Saxon.Due to the influence of early Christian missionaries, the vast majority of theCeltic and Germanic languages use the Latin Alphabet.
They include English,the second most spoken language in the world, the most widespread, the languageof technology, and the language with the largest vocabulary. A useful languageto have as your mother tongue.
Dutchand German are the closestmajor languages related to English. An even closer relative is Frisian.
Flemishand Afrikaans are varieties ofDutch while Yiddish is a variety ofGerman. Yiddish is written using theHebrew script.
Three of the four(mainland) Scandinavian languages belong to this branch: (Danish,Norwegian, and Swedish). Swedish has tones,unusual in European languages. The fourth Scandinavian language, Finnish,belongs to a different family.
Icelandicis the least changed of the Germanic Languages - being close to Old Norse.Another old language is Faroese.
Gothic(Central Europe), Frankish (France), Lombardo(Danube region), Visigoth (Iberian Peninsula)and Vandal (North Africa) areextinct languages from this branch.
German has a systemof four cases and three gendersfor its nouns. Case is the property where a noun takes a different endingdepending on its role in a sentence. An example in English would be the forms: lady,lady's, ladies and ladies'.The genders are masculine, feminine and neuter. German has three dialectsspoken in northern Germany, southern Germany and Austria, and a very differentform spoken in Switzerland.
English has lostgender and case. Only a few words form their plurals like German (ox,oxen and child, children).Most now add an s, having beeninfluenced by Norman French.
The Latin Branch
Also called the Italicor Romance Languages.
These languages areall derived from Latin. Latin is one of themost important classical languages. Its alphabet (derived from the Greekalphabet) is used by many languages of the world. Latin was long used by thescientific establishment and the Catholic Church as their means ofcommunication.
Italianand Portuguese are the closestmodern major languages to Latin. Spanish has been influencedby Arabic and Basque. French has moved farthestfrom Latin in pronunciation, only its spelling gives a clue to its origins.French has many Germanic and Celtic influences. Romanianhas picked up Slavic influences because it is a Latin Language surrounded by asea of Slavic speakers.Portuguese and Spanish have been separate for over 1000 years. The most widelyspoken of these languages is Spanish. Apart from Spain, it is spoken in most ofLatin America (apart from Portuguese speaking Brazil, and a few small countrieslike Belize and Guyana).
Romanshis a minority language in Switzerland. Ladino was the languagespoken by Spain's Jewish population when they were expelled in 1492. Most ofthem now live in Turkey and Israel. Provincial and Catalanare closely related languages spoken in the south of France and the north-eastof Spain, respectively.
Note that Basque(spoken in parts of Spain and France) is not an Indo-European language - infact it is totally unrelated to any otherlanguage of the world.
Galicianis a Portuguese dialect with Celtic influences spoken in the north west ofSpain. Finally, Moldavian is a dialect ofRomanian spoken in the Moldova. Under the Soviets the Moldavians had to use theCyrillic alphabet. Now they have returned to the Latin alphabet.
Apart from Latin,other extinct languages include Dalmatian, Oscan,Faliscan, Sabine and Umbrian.
Latin had threegenders and at least six cases for its nouns and a Subject-Object-Verb sentence structure. Most modernRomance languages have only two genders, no cases and a Subject-Verb-Object structure.
The Slavic Branch
These languages areconfined to Eastern Europe.
In general, theCatholic peoples use the Latin alphabet while the Orthodox use the Cyrillicalphabet which is derived from the Greek. Indeed some of the languages are verysimilar differing only in the script used (Croatian and Serbianare virtually the same language).
One of the oldest ofthese languages is Bulgarian. The most importantis Russian. Others include Polish,Kashubian (spoken in parts of Poland), Sorbian(spoken in parts of eastern Germany), Czech, Slovak,Slovene, Macedonian, Bosnian,Ukrainian and Byelorussian.
The Slavic languagesare famed for their consonant clusters and large number of cases for nouns (upto seven). Many of the languages have three numbers for verbs: singular,dual and plural. Macedonian hasthree definite articles indicating distance; all are suffixes: VOL (ox),VOLOT (the ox), VOLOV (the ox here), VOLON (the oxthere).
The Baltic Branch
Three Baltic statesbut only two Baltic Languages (Estonian is related to Finnish).
Lithuanianis one of the oldest of the Indo-European languages. Its study is important indetermining the origins and evolution of the family. Lithuanian and Latvianboth use the Latin script and have tones. Lithuanian has three numbers:singular, dual and plural.
Prussianis an extinct language from this branch
The Hellenic Branch
The only extantlanguage in this branch is Modern Greek.
Greek is one of theoldest Indo-European languages. Mycenaean dates from 1300BC.The Ancient Greek of Homer was written fromaround 700BC. The major forms were Doric (Sparta), Ionic(Cos), Aeolic (Lesbos), and Attic(Athens). The latter is Classical Greek.
The New Testament ofthe Christian Bible was written in a form of 1st Century AD Greek called Koine.This developed into the Greek of the Byzantine Empire. Modern Greekhas developed from this.
Greek has threegenders and four cases for nouns but no form of the verb infinitive. Thelanguage has its own script, derived from Phoenician with the addition ofsymbols for vowels. It is one of the oldest alphabets in the world and has ledto the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. The Greek Alphabet is still used in scienceand mathematics.
Until the 1970s Greekwas a Diglossic language. This meansthat there were two forms: Katharevoussa used in officialdocuments and news broadcasts and Demotic used in commonspeech.
The Greek spoken inCyprus includes many Turkish, Arabic and Venetian words and has a differentpronounciation to the official Greek of Greece.
The Illyric Branch
Another singlelanguage branch. Only Albanian (called Shqipby its speakers) belongs to this branch. It has been written in the Latinscript since 1909; this replaced a number of writing systems including Greekand Arabic scripts. Albanian has many avoidance words. Instead of saying wolf,the phrase may God close its mouth is used. Thedefinate article is shown by a suffix: BUK (bread)BUKA (the bread). Many noun pluralsare irregular.
There are twodialects that have been diverging for 1000 years. They are mostly mutuallyintelligible. Geg is spoken in thenorth of Albania and Kosovo (Kosova). Tosk is spoken insouthern Albania and north west Greece.
The ancient Illyricand Mesapian languages, spoken inparts of Italy, are considered by some to be an extinct member of this branch.
The Anatolian Branch
This branch includesthe language of the Hittite civilisation whichonce ruled central Anatolia, fought the Ancient Egyptians and was mentioned inthe Christain Bible's Old Testament. Other languages were Lydian(spoken by a people who ruled the south coast of Anatolia), Lycian(spoken by a Hellenic culture along the western coastal regions), Luwian(spoken in ancient Troy) and Palaic.
All languages in thisbranch are extinct.
Hittite is theearliest Indo-European language known in Europe. It has two noun genders,animate and inanimate. It has post-positions.
The Thracian Branch
This branch isrepresented by a single modern language, Armenian. It has its ownscript.
Armenian is spoken inArmenia and Nagorno-Karabakh (an enclave in Azerbaijan). The language is richin consonants and has borrowed much of its vocabulary from Farsi (Iranian).Nouns have 7 cases and the past tense of verbs take an E prefix like Greek.
Three extinctlanguages from this branch are Dacian (or Daco-Mysian - spoken in the ancient Balkan region of Dacia), Thracianand Phrygian (spoken in ancientTroy).
The Iranian Branch
These languages aredescended from Ancient Persian, the literarylanguage of the Persian Empire and one of the great classical languages.
The main language ofthis branch is Farsi (also called Iranian,Dari and Persian), the main languageof Iran and much of Afghanistan. Kurdish is a close relation.Kurdish is spoken in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq by the Kurds. It is thesecond largest of the Iranian languages after Farsi. In Turkey it was banneduntil recently.
Pashto(also called Pushtu or Pakhto)is spoken in Afghanistan and parts of north west Pakistan. Baluchiis spoken in the desert regions between Iran, Afganistan and Pakistan. Theselanguages are written in the Nastaliq script, a derivative of Arabic writing.It is interesting that you cannot tell which family a language belongs to bythe way it is written.
Ossetianis found in the Caucasus mountains, north of Georgia. Tadzhikis a close relative of Farsi, written in Cyrillic and spoken in Tadzhikistan(of the former USSR) as well as northern Afghanistan.
Avestanis the extinct language of the Zoroastrian religion. Scythianis an extinct language of a warrior people who once lived north of the BlackSea.
The Indic Branch
This branch has themost languages. Most are found in North India. They are derived from Sanskrit(the classical language of Hinduism dating from 1000BC). This gave rise to Pali(the language of Buddhism), Ardhamagadhi (the language ofJainism) and the ancestors of the modern North Indian languages.
Of the modern NorthIndian languages, Hindi and Urduare very similar but differ in the script. The Hindi speakers are Hindus anduse the Sanskrit writing system called Devanagari (writing of the Gods). Urduis spoken by the Muslims so uses the Arabic Nastaliq script. These twolanguages are found in north and central India and Pakistan. Nepaliis closely related to Hindi.
In India most of thestates have their own language. These languages either use Devanagari script ora derivation (if the people are Hindus) or the Arabic Nastaliq script (if thepeople are Muslims).
Bengali(West Bengal as well as Bangladesh), Bhili (Central India), Oriya(in Orissa), Marathi (in Maharashtra), Assamese(in Assam), Punjabi and Lahnda(from the Punjab), Maithili and Maghadi(from Bihar), Kashmiri (Kashmir - writtenmainly in Nastaliq), Sindhi (the Pakistanprovince of Sindh - also written in Nastaliq), Gujarati(Gujarat in western India), Konkani (in Goa, an exPortuguese colony, uses the Latin script), Sinhalese (Sri Lanka - usesits own script derived from Pali), Maldivian (Maldives - with itsown script based on Arabic).
The most surprisinglanguage in this branch is Romany, the language of theRoma (also known as Gypsies - this is a derogatory term which should not beused). The Roma migrated to Europe from India.
Sanskrit had threegenders as has Marathi; most modern Indic languages have two genders; Bengalihas none.
The fascinating pointabout India is that the south Indian languages (like Tamil) are not Indo-European. In other words,Hindi is related to English, Greek and French but is totally unrelated toTamil. North Indians visiting Madras (in the south) are as baffled by Tamil asa foreigner would be.
The Tokharian Branch
Turfanianand Kucheanare recently identified extinct languages once spoken in north west China. Verylittle is known about this branch as only a few manuscripts dating from 600 AD arein existence. The languages disappeared around the 8th century AD. The closestrelatives of these languages are from the Celtic, Anatolian and Latin branches.