Chapter 2 The Development of the English Vocabulary Introduction 1. A synchronic overview of the Indo-European Language Family will explain the relation between English and other languages. ? Modern English is derived from a collection of Germanic dialects/ Teutonic dialects , that were first brought to the British Islands in the fourth and fifth centuries. ? English is classified as a Teutonic language , that is, a Germanic language . To be more exact, English belongs to the Low West Germanic branch of Indo-European family . That is to say, English belongs to the group of languages to which German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian also belong . The Indo-European Language Family ? It is newly estimated that there are totally 5651 languages in the world, among which 1,400 languages have not yet been generally recognized as independent languages or the dying languages. ?~ is made up of most languages of ? Europe ? The Near East ? India The prehistoric Indo-European parent language was a highly inflected language. ? The surviving languages show various degrees of similarity to one another. The similarity bears a more or less direct relationship to their geographical distribution . They accordingly fall into 10 principal groups, which can be grouped into an Eastern set and and Western set( 东部组和西部组). The Eastern set: 1. Balto-Slavic 波罗的- 斯拉夫语族(the biggest one) ? Prussian 普鲁士语? Lithuanian 立陶宛语? Polish 波兰语? Czech 捷克语? Bulgarian 保加利亚语? Slovenian 斯洛文尼亚语? Russian 俄罗斯语 2. Indo-Iranian 印伊语族? Persian 波斯语? Bengali 孟加拉语? Hindi 北印度语? Romany 吉普赛语 3. Armenian 亚美尼亚语族? Armenian 4. Albanian 阿尔巴尼语族? Albanian The Western Set 1. Hellenic 希腊语族? Greek 2. Celtic 凯尔特语族? Scotish 苏格兰语? Irish 爱尔兰语? Welsh 威尔士? Breton 布列塔尼语? Pictish 皮克特语 3. Hittite 希泰语族 4. Tocharian 吐火罗语族 5. Italic 意大利语族(5 romance languages ) ? Portuguese 葡萄牙语? Spanish 西班牙语? French 法语? Italian 意大利语?
