premise: The evolution of each language family was determined by the spread of various European cultures . 
hypothesis: Some , like French , Spanish , Italian , and Portuguese , had more in common with one another than they did with , say , German , English , Swedish , Danish , and Dutch , which , in turn , bore only a remote resemblance to Russian and Polish , on the one hand , and the two extant varieties of , say , Gaelic , on the other .