<P> In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo - Aryan, Iranian, and European languages . In 1583, English Jesuit missionary and Konkani scholar Thomas Stephens wrote a letter from Goa to his brother (not published until the 20th century) in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin . </P> <P> Another account was made by Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, who travelled to the Indian subcontinent . Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included devaḥ / dio "God", sarpaḥ / serpe "serpent", sapta / sette "seven", aṣṭa / otto "eight", and nava / nove "nine"). However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry . </P> <P> In 1647, Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted the similarity among certain Asian and European languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language which he called Scythian . He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages . However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research . </P> <P> Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665--1666 as part of a diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in German and in Persian . Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type . Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them . Meanwhile, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Slavic, Baltic ("Kurlandic"), Iranian ("Medic"), Finnish, Chinese, "Hottentot", and others, noting that related languages (including Latin, Greek, German and Russian) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors . </P>

Where did the languages that are not indo-european develop