The languages, from left to right, are English, Latin, Japanese, Classical Greek, Portuguese, and Sanskrit. (Japanese, Greek, and Sanskrit have been transliterated — written in the Roman alphabet.) You probably noticed some similarities among all of the languages except Japanese. In fact, all except Japanese belong to the Indo-European family. Latin (column B) and Portuguese (column E) are the most closely related; Portuguese is one of the Romance languages that's derived from Latin. Using the comparative method, linguists examine words from two or more languages, concentrating on words that are likely to endure over time.