"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 (Bȧsks) 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.