Editing Indo-European languages (section)

== Present distribution ==
{{See also|List of Indo-European languages}}
[[File:Indo-European distribution.svg|thumb|upright=1.55|
{{legend|#045a8d|An Indo-European language is the majority native language
}}
{{legend|#0674b6|An Indo-European language is a co-official and majority native language}}
{{legend|#439dd4|An Indo-European language is an official but minority native language}}
{{legend|#9bbae1 |An Indo-European language is a cultural or secondary language}}
{{legend|#c0c0c0|An Indo-European language is not widely spoken}}]]
[[File:Americaslanguages (orthographic projection)-2.png|thumb|upright=1.27|Distribution of Indo-European languages in the [[Americas]]
<br />
[[romance languages|Romance]]:
{{Legend|#4CC200|[[Spanish language|Spanish]]}}
{{Legend|#FF8800|[[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]}}
{{Legend|#00269F|[[French language|French]]}}
[[Germanic languages|Germanic]]:
{{Legend|#CD0000|[[English language|English]]}}
{{Legend|#FFD800|[[Dutch language|Dutch]]}}
]]

Today, Indo-European languages are spoken by billions of [[Native speaker#Defining "native speaker"|native speakers]] across all inhabited continents,<ref>{{cite web |title=Ethnologue list of language families |publisher=[[Ethnologue]] |edition=22nd |date=25 May 2019 |access-date=2 July 2019 |url=http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=family |url-access=subscription}}</ref> the largest number by far for any recognized language family. Of the [[List of languages by total number of speakers|20 languages with the largest numbers of speakers]] according to ''Ethnologue'', 10 are Indo-European: [[English language|English]], [[Hindustani language|Hindustani]], [[Spanish language|Spanish]], [[Bengali language|Bengali]], [[French language|French]], [[Russian language|Russian]], [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], [[German language|German]], [[Persian language|Persian]] and [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]], each with 100&nbsp;million speakers or more.<ref>{{cite web |title=Ethnologue list of languages by number of speakers |date=3 October 2018 |publisher=[[Ethnologue]] |access-date=29 July 2021 |url=http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size |url-access=subscription}}</ref> Additionally, hundreds of millions of persons worldwide study Indo-European languages as secondary or tertiary languages, including in cultures which have completely different language families and historical backgrounds—there are around 600 million<ref>{{cite web |title=English |publisher=[[Ethnologue]] |access-date=17 January 2017 |url=https://www.ethnologue.com/language/eng |url-access=subscription}}</ref><!-- and one&nbsp;billion<ref>{{cite web |url=http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/08/ten-things-you-might-not-have-known-about-the-english-language/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150813233120/http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/08/ten-things-you-might-not-have-known-about-the-english-language/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=13 August 2015 |title=Ten Things You Might Not Have Known About the English Language |publisher=[[Oxford Dictionaries (website)|Oxford Dictionaries]] |date=12 August 2015}}</ref> L2--> learners of English alone.

The success of the language family, including the large number of speakers and the vast portions of the Earth that they inhabit, is due to several factors. The ancient [[Indo-European migrations]] and widespread dissemination of [[Indo-European culture]] throughout [[Eurasia]], including that of the [[Proto-Indo-Europeans]] themselves, and that of their daughter cultures including the [[Indo-Aryan migration theory|Indo-Aryans]], [[Iranian peoples]], [[Celts]], [[Hellenistic period|Greeks]], [[Roman Empire|Romans]], [[Germanic peoples]], and [[Slavs]], led to these peoples' branches of the language family already taking a dominant foothold in virtually all of [[Eurasia]] except for swathes of the [[Near East]], [[North Asia|North]] and [[East Asia]], replacing many (but not all) of the previously-spoken [[pre-Indo-European languages]] of this extensive area. However [[Semitic languages]] remain dominant in much of the [[Middle East]] and [[North Africa]], and [[Caucasian languages]] in much of the [[Caucasus]] region. Similarly in [[Europe]] and the [[Urals]] the [[Uralic languages]] (such as Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian etc.) remain, as does [[Basque language|Basque]], a pre-Indo-European isolate.

Despite being unaware of their common linguistic origin, diverse groups of Indo-European speakers continued to culturally dominate and often replace the indigenous languages of the western two-thirds of Eurasia. By the beginning of the [[Common Era]], Indo-European peoples controlled almost the entirety of this area: the Celts western and central Europe, the Romans southern Europe, the Germanic peoples northern Europe, the Slavs eastern Europe, the Iranian peoples most of western and central Asia and parts of eastern Europe, and the Indo-Aryan peoples in the [[Indian subcontinent]], with the [[Tocharians]] inhabiting the Indo-European frontier in western China. By the medieval period, only the [[Semitic languages|Semitic]], [[Dravidian languages|Dravidian]], [[Languages of the Caucasus|Caucasian]], and [[Uralic languages]], and the language isolate [[Basque language|Basque]] remained of the (relatively) [[Paleo-European languages|indigenous languages of Europe]] and the western half of Asia.

Despite medieval invasions by [[Eurasian nomads]], a group to which the Proto-Indo-Europeans had once belonged, Indo-European expansion reached another peak in the [[early modern period]] with the dramatic increase in the population of the [[Indian subcontinent]] and European expansionism throughout the globe during the [[Age of Discovery]], as well as the continued replacement and assimilation of surrounding non-Indo-European languages and peoples due to increased state centralization and [[nationalism]]. These trends compounded throughout the modern period due to the general global [[population growth]] and the results of [[European colonization]] of the [[Western Hemisphere]] and [[Oceania]], leading to an explosion in the number of Indo-European speakers as well as the territories inhabited by them.

Due to colonization and the modern dominance of Indo-European languages in the fields of politics, global science, technology, education, finance, and sports, even many modern countries whose populations largely speak non-Indo-European languages have Indo-European languages as official languages, and the majority of the global population speaks at least one Indo-European language. The overwhelming majority of [[languages used on the Internet]] are Indo-European, with [[English language|English]] continuing to lead the group; English in general has in many respects [[English as a lingua franca|become the ''lingua franca'']] of global communication.

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