in the German mutter; in the Spanish maedre; in the Norwegian moder, etc.  This great family of languages is called “the Indo-European group,” because the tribes which spoke them, originally inhabitants of Asia, have scattered all over India and Europe.  The only peoples in Europe whose languages do not belong to it are the Finns and Laplanders of the north, the Basques (Basks) of the Pyrenees Mountains, the Hungarians, the Gypsies, and the Turks.

The descendants of the old Celtic peoples have not kept up the Celtic languages to any great extent.  The reason for this is that first the Romans and then the Germanic tribes conquered most of the lands where the Celts lived.  In this way, Spain, Portugal, France, and Belgium now talk languages that have grown from the Latin, the language of Rome.  The Celts in the British Isles now all talk English, because the English, who were a Germanic people, conquered them and forced them to use their language.  Patriotic Irishmen and Welshmen (who are descendants of the Celtic tribes) are trying to keep alive the Irish and Welsh languages, but all of the young people in the British Isles learn English, and they are generally content to talk only one language.  The other Celtic languages which have existed within the last one hundred years are the Gaelic of the north of Scotland, the Breton of western France, and the Cornish of the southwestern corner of England.

The Germanic languages (sometimes called Teutonic) are found in three parts of Europe today.  The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, belong to this family.  Western Austria and Germany form, with Holland and Western Belgium, a second group of German-speaking nations. (The people of eastern Belgium are Celts and talk a kind of French.) The third part of Europe which uses a Germanic language is England.

In an earlier chapter we learned how the Celts in France, Spain, and Portugal gave up their own languages and used the Latin.  Latin languages today are found also in the southern and western parts of Switzerland, all over Italy, and in Roumania.

We learned also about the Slavs who lived to the eastward of the Germanic tribes.  When the Germans moved west, these Slavs followed them and occupied the lands which had just been left vacant.  In this way, we find Slavic peoples talking Slavic (sometimes called Slavonic) languages in the parts of Europe to the east and south of the Germans.  More than half of the inhabitants of Austria-Hungary are Slavs, although the Austrians proper are a Germanic people, and the Hungarians do not belong to the Indo-European family at all.  The Serbians and Montenegrins are Slavs.  The Poles and Russians are Slavs.  The Bulgarians speak a Slavic language and have some Slavic blood in them, although, as will be pointed out later, originally they did not belong to the Slavic family.

[Map:  Distribution Of Peoples According to Relationship]