what are some of the languages in the indo-european family
Indo-European languages There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, with over two thirds (313) of them belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch.[3] The most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Portuguese, Bengali, Punjabi, Russian, each with over 100 million speakers, with German, French, Italian, and Persian also having significant numbers. Today, about 46% of the human population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language, by far the highest of any language family.
Italian language During the Middle Ages, the established written language in Europe was Latin. With the great majority of people being illiterate, however, only a handful were well versed in the language. In the Italian peninsula, as in most of Europe, the majority would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects (as they are commonly referred to as) were born to Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, evolving naturally unaffected by formal standards and teachings, and are not truly "dialects" of Standard Italian, that itself started off being one of these local tongues. Since they often provide poor mutual intelligibility with standard Italian, they are better classified as distinct languages.[22]:13