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Languages fall easily into groups, depending on their root and origin. They often share common grammatical structures or vocabulary, and so learning these languages from within the ‘family’ would usually be easier. The main groups of languages are below, but there are obviously many others which are isolated languages (Japanese) or constructed languages (Esperanto).
The Germanic family
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These languages can also be sub-divided into North, West and East Germanic languages. In this grouping, German shares 80% of its vocabulary with Dutch and more than 50% with Swedish. For a language learner who has already studied one of the languages, the others should be easier to pick up.
The Romance family
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There are over 50 Romance languages in total, some with additional variations to their root, such as Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. These languages all have their origins in Latin, which although a dead language, is very useful to learn in order to get a good grounding in the range of Romance languages. Again there are many sub- divisions. Italian, Spanish and Portuguese have many similarities, and will help in the study of Catalan, French or Rumanian.
The Slavic family
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Originally this family of languages was spoken in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and northern Asia. Polish and Czech have less in common with the others in this group, but there are still many vocabulary words that are the same or very similar.
The Indo-Aryan family
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The various Indo-Aryan languages are classed into 3 chronological categories: Ancient/Old Indo-Aryan languages; Intermediate Indo-Aryan languages; Modern Indo-Aryan languages (these comprise most of the modern languages of India).
Of these, the languages in the first two categories are extinct. The grammar, vocabulary and writing system of these languages closely follows Sanskrit. Most possess 8 grammatical cases like Sanskrit.