The Indo -European languages is a family of several hundred of languages and dialects. It consists of the major languages of Europe, the northern Indian subcontinent, (South Asia), the Iranian Plateau (Southwest Asia) and much of Central Asia. According to a study conducted by SIL International among the twenty modern languages in terms of speakers, twelve of them belong to the Indo- European family. They are Italian, English, Hindi, Portugese, Bengali, Russian, Spanish, German, Marathi, French, Punjabi and Urdu. This accounts for nearly 1.6 billion native speakers. Among the various subgroups, the Indo-Iranian language family forms the largest branch in terms of the number of native speakers as well as in terms of the number of native languages.

The various sub groups of the Indo- European language family are Anatolian languages, Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Aryan languages, Iranian languages, Dardic languages, Nuristani languages, Greek language, Italic language, Celtic languages, Germanic languages, Armenian language, Tocharian languages, Balto-Slavic languages, Slavic languages, Baltic languages, and Albanian language.