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The Hellenic Branch

The only extant language in this branch is Modern Greek.

Greek is one of the oldest Indo-European languages. Mycenaean dates from 1300BC. The Ancient Greek of Homer was written from around 700BC. The major forms were Doric (Sparta), Ionic (Cos), Aeolic (Lesbos), and Attic (Athens). The latter is Classical Greek.

The New Testament of the Christian Bible was written in a form of 1st Century AD Greek called Koine. This developed into the Greek of the Byzantine Empire. Modern Greek has developed from this.

Greek has three genders and four cases for nouns but no form of the verb infinitive. The language has its own script, derived from Phoenician with the addition of symbols for vowels. It is one of the oldest alphabets in the world and has led to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. The Greek Alphabet is still used in science and mathematics.

The Tokharian Branch

Turfanian and Kuchean are recently identified extinct languages once spoken in north west China. Very little is known about this branch as only a few manuscripts dating from 600 AD are in existence. The languages disappeared around the 8th century AD. The closest relatives of these languages are from the Celtic, Anatolian and Latin branches.

The Illyric Branch

Another single language branch. Only Albanian (called Shqip by its speakers) belongs to this branch. It has been written in the Latin script since 1909; this replaced a number of writing systems including Greek and Arabic scripts. Albanian has many avoidance words.

The Anatolian Branch

This branch includes the language of the Hittite civilisation which once ruled central Anatolia, fought the Ancient Egyptians and was mentioned in the Christain Bible's Old Testament.

Hittite is the earliest Indo-European language known in Europe. It has two noun genders, animate and inanimate. It has post-positions.

The Thracian Branch

This branch is represented by a single modern language, Armenian. It has its own script.

Armenian is spoken in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is rich in 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.