&_160;&_160;&_160;&_160;&_160;Countries with a majority of speakers of IE languages &_160;&_160;&_160;&_160;&_160;Countries with an IE minority language with official statusThe Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects,[1] including most of the major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), much of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent (South Asia). The Indo-European (Indo refers to the Indian subcontinent, since geographically the language group spreads from Europe in the west to India in the east) group has the largest numbers of speakers of the recognised families of languages in the world today, with its languages spoken by approximately three billion native speakers.[2]
Suggestions of similarities between Indian and European languages began to be made by European visitors to India in the sixteenth century. In 1583 Thomas Stephens, an English Jesuit missionary in Goa, noted similarities between Indian languages, specifically Konkani, and Greek and Latin. These observations were included in a letter to his brother which was not published until the twentieth century.[3]
The first account to mention Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti (born in Florence, Italy in 1540 AD), a Florentine merchant who traveled to the Indian subcontinent and was among the first European observers to study the ancient Indian language, Sanskrit. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (e.g. deva?/dio 'God', sarpa?/serpe 'snake', sapta/sette 'seven', a??a/otto 'eight', nava/nove 'nine').[3] However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.[3]
