hypothetical family of languages composed of the Indo-European (Indo-European languages) and Anatolian languages. The term Indo-Hittite was proposed by scholars who believed that Hittite (Hittite language) and the other closely related Anatolian languages represent a language branch at the same level as all the other Indo-European languages combined, rather than a branch at the level of the individual Indo-European languages (Celtic, Germanic, etc.). In other words, they proposed that at one time there existed a protolanguage, Indo-Hittite, that split into two branches, Anatolian and Indo-European (from which the various branches of Indo-European later evolved). Other scholars, however, consider the Anatolian languages, including Hittite, to be simply a branch of Indo-European. The extreme forms of each hypothesis are unlikely to be correct, and in the early 21st century no scholarly consensus had been reached regarding the issue.