How are the Celts related to the Indo-Europeans?
Indo-European is the name for the ancenstral proto-language from which spring a number of the world’s major languages including English, Latin, Greek, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian, Armenian, Persian, Hindi, Sanskrit and many others. Celtic languages are descended from Indo-European, so they are, in fact, distantly related to English (although a little closer to Latin). Celtic is of interest to Indo-Europeanists because it is the western-most branch of Indo-European in Europe, so some archaic Indo-European linguistic (and perhaps cultural) features are preserved. On the other hand, it also means that Celtic languages also show lots of linguistic and cultural changes, probably influenced by pre Indo-European populations in Britain and Western Europe. The most south eastern Indo-European branch is Indic, which survives in some of the many languages of Northern India. Scholars are especially interested in features shared by Celtic and I
