The first ten groups are families. So little is or was known about the last three groups that the author of the article classed together what are now known to be vast agglomerations of families. For instance, the American languages include several hundred distinct stocks, of which fifty are found in California alone. These are all, according to our present knowledge, utterly unrelated. It is known that the central African tongues belong to a different group than the southern, and it would be advisable to consult Sir Harry Johnston’s recent large work on the Bantu languages.
The subdivision of the Indo-European family into cognate languages is given here to show the great diversity of tongues that may spring from one ancestor. Not all the dialects, nor even languages, have been included, but only those best known:
I. Centum (European).
1. Greek.
Ancient Modern
{ Latin. Portuguese
{ Oscan. Spanish.
2. Italic. { Umbrian Catalan.
{ Minor dialects of Provençal.
{ ancient Italy.