The Satem division of the Indo-European family includes the following branches: Indo-Iranian, Baltic and Slavic, Armenian, Albanian, perhaps also a number of barely documented extinct languages, such as Phrygian, Thracian, and Dacian (see: Indo-European languages). All those languages show the characteristic change of the so-called Proto-Indo-European palato-velars (*ḱ, *ǵ, *ǵ^h) into affricate and fricative consonants articulated in the front of the mouth. For example, *ḱ became Sanskrit ś, Avestan, Russian and Armenian s, Lithuanian š, Albanian th, etc. At the same time, the protolanguage velars (*k, *g, *g^h) and labio-velars (*k^w, *g^w, *g^wh) merged in the Satem group, the latter losing their accompanying lip-rounding. Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ... Indo-Iranian languages (also called Aryan languages) are the eastern-most group of the living Indo-European languages. ... The Baltic languages are a group of genetically-related languages spoken in the Northern Europe and belonging to the Indo-European language family. ... The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia. ... The Phrygian language was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, a people who probably migrated from Thrace to Asia Minor in the Bronze Age. ... The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times by the Thracians. ... The Dacian language was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient people of Dacia. ... The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ... The Proto-Indo-Europeans are the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language, a prehistoric people of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... An affricate is a consonant that begins like a stop (most often an alveovelar, such as [t] or [d]) and that doesnt have a release of its own, but opens directly into a fricative (or, in one language, into a trill). ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... The Sanskrit language ( संस्कृता वाक्) is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family and is not only a classical language, but also an official language of India. ... Yasna 28. ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ...

By contrast, in the remainder of the Indo-European family (the then-called Centum languages), palato-velars lost their palatal component and merged with plain velars, while labio-velars remained distinct. Centum is the collective name for the branches of Indo-European in which the so-called Satem shift, the change of palato-velar *k^, *g^, *g^h into fricatives or affricates, did not take place, and the palato-velar consonants merged with plain velars (*k, *g, *gh). ...

The Satem shift is conveniently illustrated with the word for '100', Proto-Indo-European *ḱmtom, which became e.g. Avestan satem (hence the name of the group), Lithuanian šimtas, Russian sto, etc., as contrasted with Latin centum (pron. [kentum]), English hund(red)- (with /h/ from earlier *k, see Grimm's law), Greek (he)katon, Welsh cant, etc. Yasna 28. ... Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Grimms law (also known as the [First] Germanic Sound Shift; German: Erste Deutsche (Germanische) Lautverschiebung) was the first non-trivial systematic sound change ever to be discovered; its formulation was a turning-point in the development of linguistics, enabling the introduction of rigorous methodology in historical linguistic research. ... Welsh redirects here, and this article describes the Welsh language. ...