INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLE

(Redirected from Indo-Europeans)

'Indo-European people' are the speakers of the Indo-European languages, a major language family of Eurasia. In the context of linguistics, the term usually refers to Bronze Age (third to second millennia BC) speakers of Indo-European languages that had not yet split into the attested sub-families, viz. early Centum and Satem dialects (speakers of languages predating Proto-Indo-Iranian, Proto-Armenian, Proto-Greek, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Balto-Slavic etc.) The term is also used to apply to the Proto-Indo-Europeans, speakers of the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language from which all Indo-European languages ultimately stem.
"Indo-Europeans" does ''not'' usually refer to speakers of various Indo-European languages in historical times. Linguists usually refer to such people specifically by the language in question: Anatolians, Tocharians, Aryans (Iranians, Indo-Aryans), Greeks, Celts, Italic peoples, Germanic peoples, Baltic peoples, Slavic peoples, Armenians, Albanians (or subdivisions of these groups).