How are English and Hindi related through the Indo-European language family?

English and Hindi are related as members of the Indo-European language family, a vast group of languages spoken across Europe and parts of Asia. Linguists have demonstrated this relationship by comparing their sound systems, grammatical structures, and vocabularies, which share common roots and patterns of development.12

These languages are believed to have descended from a single ancestral language known as Proto-Indo-European, which was likely spoken approximately 6,000 years ago. Over millennia, this parent language diverged into various branches:134

• Germanic: This branch includes English, as well as German and Dutch.13
• Indo-Iranian: This branch includes the Indic (or Indo-Aryan) subbranch, which encompasses Hindi, Sanskrit, and Punjabi.3

While English and Hindi belong to different branches, they share fundamental linguistic features, such as cognate vocabulary and grammatical affixes, that reflect their common origin. It is important to note that modern interactions between the two languages—such as the borrowing of English words into Hindi—are distinct from their ancient genealogical connection within the Indo-European family.1256