Language families of Europe table. language families. Altaic language family

Khoisan family

Niger-Kordofanian family

Nilo-Saharan family

Afro-Asian family

Indo-European family (including isolates: Basque, Burushaski and Nahali)

caucasian family

Dravidian family

Ural-Yukaghir family

Altai family (including isolates Ket and Gilat)

Chukchi-Kamchatka family ("Paleosiberian") family

Sino-Tibetan family

Miao-Yao languages, Austro-Asiatic and Dai family

Austronesian family

Indian-Pacific and Australian families

Eskimo-Aleut family

Na-Dene language family

Amerindian family (North America)

Amerindian family (South America)

language family

Indo-European family

Isolated languages (isolates)

Russia is a multinational country, which means it is multilingual. Linguistic scientists count 150 languages - here, such a language as Russian, which is spoken by 97.72% of the population in Russia, and the language of the Negidals, a small people (only 622 people!), Living on the Amur River, are taken into account on an equal footing.

Some languages are very similar: people can speak their own language and at the same time understand each other perfectly, for example, Russian - Belarusian, Tatar - Bashkir, Kalmyk - Buryat. In other languages, although they also have a lot in common - sounds, some words, grammar - it will still not be possible to agree: a Mari with a Mordovian, a Lezghin with an accident. And finally, there are languages - scientists call them isolated - that are not like any other. These are the languages of the Kets, Nivkhs and Yukagirs.

Most of the languages of Russia belong to one of four language families: Indo-European, Altaic, Uralic and North Caucasian. Each family has a common language-ancestor - proto-language. The ancient tribes who spoke such a proto-language moved, mixed with other peoples, and the once single language broke up into several. This is how many languages appeared on Earth.

Let's say a Russian belongs to the Indo-European family. In the same family - English and German, Hindi and Farsi, Ossetian and Spanish (and many, many others). Part of the family is a group of Slavic languages. Here, Czech and Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian, etc. coexist with Russian. And together with closely related Ukrainian and Belarusian, it is included in the subgroup of East Slavic languages. More than 87% of the population speaks Indo-European languages in Russia, but only 2% of them are not Slavic. These are Germanic languages: German and Yiddish (see the plot "Jews in Russia"); Armenian (one makes up a group); Iranian languages: Ossetian, Tat, Kurdish and Tajik; Romance: Moldavian; and even the new Indian languages spoken by the gypsies in Russia.

The Altai family in Russia is represented by three groups: Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu. There are only two peoples who speak Mongolian languages - Kalmyks and Buryats, but one enumeration of Turkic languages \u200b\u200bmay surprise. These are Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, Karachay-Balkar, Nogai, Kumyk, Altai, Khakass, Shor, Tuvan, Tofalar, Yakut, Dolgan, Azerbaijani, etc. Most of these peoples live in Russia. In our country, there are also such Turkic peoples as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, Uzbeks. The Tungus-Manchu languages include Evenki, Even, Negidal, Nanai, Oroch, Orok, Udege and Ulch.

Sometimes the question arises: where is a separate language, and where are only dialects of the same language? For example, many linguists in Kazan believe that Bashkir is a dialect of Tatar, and the same number of specialists in Ufa are convinced that these are two completely different languages. independent language. Such disputes are not only about Tatar and Bashkir.

The Uralic language family includes the Finno-Ugric and Samolian groups. The concept of "Finnish" is conditional - in this case it does not mean official language Finland. It’s just that the languages included in this group have related grammars, a similar sound, especially if you don’t make out the words, but listen only to the melody. Finnish languages are spoken by Karelians, Vepsians, Izhors, Vods, Komis, Mariys, Mordovians, Udmurts, Sami. There are two Ugric languages in Russia: Khanty and Mansi (and the third Ugric is spoken by the Hungarians). Samoyedic languages are spoken by the Nenets, Nganasans, Enets, and Selkups. The Yukaghir language is genetically close to the Uralic. These peoples are very small in number, and their languages cannot be heard outside the north of Russia.

The North Caucasian family is a rather arbitrary concept. Unless specialists-linguists understand the ancient relationship of the languages of the Caucasus. These languages have very complex grammar and phonetics of extraordinary difficulty. They contain sounds that are completely inaccessible to people who speak other dialects.

Specialists divide the North Caucasian languages into Nakh-Lagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe groups. The Vainakhs speak Nakh languages that are understandable to each other - this is the common name for the Chechens and Ingush. (The group got its name from the self-name of the Chechens - Nakhchi.)

Representatives of about 30 peoples live in Dagestan. "Approximately" - because far from all the languages of these peoples have been studied, and very often people determine their nationality precisely by language.

The Dagestan languages include Avar, Andi, Iez, Ginukh, Gunzib, Bezhta, Khvarshinsky, Lak, Dargin, Lezgin, Tabasaran, Agul, Rutul... We named the largest Dagestan languages, but did not list half of them. No wonder this republic was called the "mountain of languages". And a "paradise for linguists": the field of activity for them is boundless here.

The Abkhazian-Adyghe languages are spoken by kindred peoples. On the Adyghes - Kabardians, Adyghes, Circassians, Shapsugs; in Abkhazian - Abkhazians and Abaza. But not everything is so simple in this classification. Kabardians, Adyghes, Circassians and Shapsugs consider themselves to be a single people - Adyghes - with one language, Adyghe, and official sources name four Adyghe peoples.

There are languages in Russia that are not included in any of the four families. These are primarily the languages of the peoples of Siberia and Far East. All of them are few. The Chukchi-Kamchatka languages are spoken by the Chukchi, Koryaks and Itelmens; in Eskimo-Aleut - Eskimos and Aleuts. The languages of the Kets on the Yenisei and the Nivkhs on Sakhalin and the Amur are not included in any language family.

There are many languages, and in order for people to agree, a common one is needed. In Russia, it became Russian, for Russians are the most numerous people country and they live in all its corners. It is the language of great literature, science and international communication.

Languages, of course, are equal, but even the richest country cannot publish, for example, books on all issues in the language of several hundred people. Or even tens of thousands. In a language spoken by millions, this is feasible.

Many peoples of Russia have lost or are losing their languages, especially representatives of small peoples. So, they almost forgot the native language of the Chu-lymys - a small Turkic-speaking people in Siberia. The list is unfortunately long. In the cities of Russia, the Russian language becomes common for the multinational population. And most of all the only one. However, recently the concern for their own languages in major centers took over the national cultural and educational societies. They usually organize Sunday schools for children.

Most of the languages of Russia until the 20s. 20th century had no writing. Georgians, Armenians, Jews had their own alphabet. The Latin alphabet (Latin alphabet) was written by the Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns. Some languages do not have a written language even now.

The first attempts to create a written language for the peoples of Russia were made even before the revolution, but they seriously took up this in the 1920s: they reformed the Arabic script, adapting it to the phonetics of the Turkic languages. It did not fit the languages of the Yarods of the Caucasus. They developed the Latin alphabet, but there were not enough letters for the exact designation of sounds in the languages of small peoples. From 1936 to 1941, the languages of the peoples of Russia (and the USSR) were translated into the Slavic alphabet (except for those that had their own, moreover, ancient), added superscript signs, tall straight sticks to indicate guttural sounds, and strange combinations of letters for the Russian eye like "ь" and "ь" after vowels. It was believed that a single alphabet helped to better master the Russian language. Recently, some languages have begun to use the Latin alphabet again. (For a detailed classification, see the volume "Linguistics. Russian Language" of the "Encyclopedia for Children".)

Languages of the peoples of Russia

1. Indo-European languages

o Slavic (namely East Slavic) - Russian (about 120 million speakers according to the 1989 census)

o Germanic languages - Yiddish (Jewish)

o Iranian languages - Ossetian, Talysh, Tat (language of Tats and Mountain Jews)

o Indo-Aryan languages - Romani

2. Uralic languages

o Finno-Ugric languages

§ Mari

§ Sami

§ Mordovian languages - Moksha, Erzya

§ Ob-Ugric languages - Mansi, Khanty

§ Permian languages - Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak, Udmurt

§ Baltic-Finnish - Vepsian, Votic, Izhorian, Karelian

o Samoyedic languages - Nganasan, Nenets, Selkup, Enets

3. Turkic languages- Altai, Bashkir, Dolgan, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, Tatar, Tofalar, Tuva, Khakass, Chuvash, Shor, Yakut

4. Tungus-Manchu languages- Nanai, Negidal, Orok, Oroch, Udege, Ulch, Evenk, Even

5. Mongolian languages- Buryat, Kalmyk

6. Yenisei languages- Ket

7. Chukchi-Kamchatka languages- Alyutor, Itelmen, Kerek, Koryak, Chukchi

8. Eskimo-Aleut languages- Aleutian, Eskimo

9. Yukaghir language

10. Nivkh language

11. North Caucasian languages

o Abkhazian-Adyghe languages - Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardino-Circassian

o Nakh-Dagetan languages

§ Nakh languages - Batsbi, Ingush, Chechen

§ Dagestan languages

§ Avar

§ Andean languages - Andian, Akhvakh, Bagvalin (Kvanadin), Botlikh, Godoberin, Karata, Tindin, Chamalin

§ Dargin

§ Lak

§ Lezgi languages - Agul, Archa, Budukh, Kryz, Lezgi, Rutul, Tabasaran, Udi, Khinalug, Tsakhur

§ Tsuz languages - Bezhta (Bezhitinsky, or Kapuchinsky), Ginukhsky, Gunzibsky (Gunzalsky, Khunzalsky, Nahadinsky), Khvarshinsky, Tsezsky

Many speakers of languages of other states live in Russia, including those that were part of the USSR. These languages include Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Armenian, Azerbaijani, as well as German, Bulgarian, Finnish, etc.

language families of the world

The following classifications (+maps) are based on Merrit Ruhlen's book " Guide to the languages of the world” (A Guide to the World’s Languages), published by Stanford University Press in 1987), which in turn draws heavily on the work of the great linguist Joseph Greenberg, who died on May 7, 2001. Maps and statistics are only an approximation of reality. Errors are allowed.

There are about 30 languages in this family, spoken by about 100,000 people. The Khoisan family includes the peoples we call Bushmen and Hottentots.

The largest sub-Saharan African family of languages, it includes 1,000 languages with up to 200 million speakers. The most famous languages are Mandinka, Yoruba and Zulu.

This family is ok. 140 languages and 10 million speakers. The most famous language is Maasai, spoken by the warlike nomads of East Africa.

This is a large language group, which includes 240 languages spoken by 250 million native speakers. It includes: ancient Egyptian, and Aramaic, as well as the well-known Nigerian language Hausa. Some say ok. 200 million people!

The only major language family, Indo-European, which includes approx. 150 languages with 1 billion native speakers. Among the languages of this family: Hindi and Urdu (400 million), Bengali (200 million), Spanish (300 million), Portuguese (200 million), French (100 million), (100 million), Russian ( 300 million), and English (400 million) in Europe and America. Number of speakers English language around the world possibly reaches 1 billion people.

In the distribution region of this family of languages, there are 3 isolates that cannot be attributed to any family: those living in the territory between France and Spain, Burushaski and impudent that are located on the Indian Peninsula.

In total there are 38, they are spoken by about 5 million people. The most famous: Abkhazian and Chechen.

Kartvelian languages considered by many linguists as a separate family, possibly belonging to the Indo-European family. This includes the Georgian language.

These are ancient languages. India, just ok. 25, the number of speakers 150 million people. The most famous of the languages of this family: and Telugu.

This family includes 20 languages with the number of speakers 20 million. The most famous of the languages: Estonian, Hungarian, Sami - the language of the Laplanders.

The Altaic family includes about 60 languages spoken by about 250 million people. The Mongolian languages also belong to this family.

There are many discussions about this family. The first controversial question is how to classify the Altaic and Uralic languages (see above), since they have a similar grammatical structure.

The second controversial issue is that many linguists doubt that Korean, Japanese (125 million speakers), or Ainu should be included in this family, or even that these three languages are related!

Isolates are also represented here: the Ket and Gilyak languages.

Possibly the smallest family with only 5 languages spoken by 23,000 speakers. The distribution area of these languages is the northeastern part of Siberia. Many linguists believe that these are two different families.

A very significant language family, which includes about 250 languages. Only 1 billion people speak!

Austro-Asiatic (Munda languages in India and Mon-Khmer languages in South-East Asia) includes 150 languages spoken by 60 million people, including Vietnamese.

The Miao-Yao family of languages consists of 4 languages spoken by 7 million people living in southern China and Southeast Asia.

The Dai family has 60 languages and 50 million native speakers, this includes the Thai language (Siamese).

These three language families are sometimes combined with the Austronesian family (below) into a hyperfamily called the Austrian ( australian). On the other hand, some linguists consider the Miao-Yao and Dai families to be related to the Chinese languages.

This family includes 1000 different languages spoken by 250 million people. Malay and Indonesian (essentially the same language) are spoken by approx. 140 million. Other languages in this family include: Madagascar in Africa, Tagalog in the Philippines, the aboriginal languages of Formosa (Taiwan) - now almost supplanted by Chinese - and many languages of the Pacific Islands, from Hawaiian in the north Pacific Ocean to Maori in New Zealand.

The Indian-Pacific family includes approx. 700 languages, most of them are spoken on the island of New Guinea, the number of speakers of these languages is approximately 3 million. Many linguists do not believe that all these languages are related to each other. In fact, some of them have not even been studied! On the other hand, some believe that this family may also include the Tasmanian language - now extinct.

It is possible that 170 Australian Aboriginal languages also belong to this family. Unfortunately, only 30,000 speakers of these languages remain today.

The Eskimo-Aleut family of languages consists of 9 languages spoken ca. 85,000 people. The Inuit language plays a key role in the administration of Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) and the Canadian territory of Nunavut today.

This family includes 34 languages with approx. 200,000 people. The most famous examples are the Tlingit, the Haida, the Navajo, and the Apache.

Although many linguists do not accept the idea of grouping all North (except Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut) and South American Indian languages into one family, they are often grouped for convenience. The Amerindian family includes almost 600 languages spoken by more than 20 million people. In North America, the most famous languages are: Ojibwe, Cree, Dakota (or Sioux), Cherokee and Iroquois, Hopi and Nahuatl (or Aztec), as well as the Mayan languages.

The language map of South America includes some of the North American subfamilies and others. The most famous languages are Quechua (the language of the Inca Indians), Guarani and Caribbean. The Andean subfamily of languages (which includes Quechua) has almost 9 million speakers!

hyperfamily- association of macrofamilies, extremely hypothetical.

Macrofamily

Macrofamily- a structural unit in linguistics, which includes several families of languages. The association of several families into one large macrofamily is usually based only on hypotheses, and therefore is perceived by many linguists ambiguously. Therefore, speaking of any macrofamily, for example, Nostratic or Sino-Caucasian, it should be remembered that the term macrofamily in this case means only a possible connection between the groups of languages included in it.

Some proposed macrofamilies

Borean hyperfamily

Afroasian macrofamily
- Nostratic macrofamily (Indo-European, Altai, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Ural-Yukagir, Eskimo-Aleutian)
- Sino-Caucasian macrofamily (Basque, Dene-Yenisei, North Caucasian, Burushaski, Hurrito-Urartian, Sino-Tibetan, the inclusion of a whole group of isolates in this family is also questionable)
- Austrian macrofamily (Austroasiatic languages, Austronesian languages, Dongtaic languages, Miao-Yao languages)
- Amerindian macrofamily

Niger-Saharan hyperfamily
- Niger-Congo languages
- Nilo-Saharan languages

Khoisan languages

Indo-Pacific languages
- Andamanese languages
- Papuan languages
- Tasmanian languages
- ? isolates of India: kusunda, nihali

Australian languages (29 Australian language families)

Family

Family - a basic level of on which all linguistic systematics is based. A family is a group of distinctly, but fairly distantly related, languages that have at least 15% overlap in the base list (a 100-word variant of the Swadesh list).

The most common language families:
1. Indo-European languages ~ 2.5 billion speakers, including Indo-Aryan languages, Germanic languages and Balto-Slavic languages;
2. Sino-Tibetan languages ~ 1.2 billion speakers, including the main one Chinese;
3. Ural-Altaic languages (formation of the superfamily level) ~ 500 million speakers, including the main Turkic languages.

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European family includes Albanian, Armenian languages and Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Romance, Illyrian, Greek, Anatolian (Hitto-Luvian), Iranian, Dardic, Indo-Aryan, Nuristani, and Tocharian language groups. At the same time, the Italic (if Romance is not considered Italian), Illyrian, Anatolian and Tocharian groups are represented only by dead languages.

Indo-European language family. On the left - centum languages, on the right - satem. Dead languages are marked in red.

Sino-Tibetan languages

Full composition and classification:

Chinese
Taiwanese
Cantonese
Putonghua
Mandarin
Kachin language
Burmese
Mizo
Bodo
Garo
Dungan language
bai
Dzongkha
Tibetan language
Gandu
Newar language

Most languages in the world are grouped into families. A language family is a genetic language association.

But there are isolated languages, i.e. those that do not belong to any known language family.
There are also unclassified languages, of which there are more than 100.

In total there are about 420 language families. Sometimes families are combined into macrofamilies. But at present, only theories about the existence of Nostratic and Afroasian macrofamilies have received reliable justification.

Nostratic languages- a hypothetical macrofamily of languages that unites several language families and languages of Europe, Asia and Africa, including Altaic, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Uralic, sometimes also Afroasian and Eskimo-Aleut languages. All Nostratic languages go back to a single Nostratic parent language.
Afroasian languages- a macrofamily of languages distributed in northern Africa from the Atlantic coast and the Canary Islands to the Red Sea coast, as well as in Western Asia and on the island of Malta. Groups of speakers of Afro-Asiatic languages (mainly various dialects Arabic) are found in many countries outside the main range. The total number of speakers is about 253 million people.

The existence of other macrofamilies remains only a scientific hypothesis that needs to be confirmed.
Family is a group of distinctly but fairly distantly related languages that have at least 15% of matches in the base list.

Figuratively, a language family can be represented as a tree with branches. Branches are groups of related languages. They do not have to be of the same level of depth, only their relative order within the same family is important. Consider this issue on the example of the Indo-European family of languages.

It is the most widespread language family in the world. It is represented on all inhabited continents of the Earth. The number of speakers exceeds 2.5 billion. The Indo-European family of languages is considered part of the macrofamily of Nostratic languages.
The term "Indo-European languages" was introduced by the English scholar Thomas Young in 1813.

Thomas Young
The languages of the Indo-European family come from a single Proto-Indo-European language, whose speakers lived about 5-6 thousand years ago.
But it is impossible to name the exact places of origin of the Proto-Indo-European language, there are only hypotheses: they name such regions as Eastern Europe, Western Asia, the steppe territories at the junction of Europe and Asia. With a high probability, the so-called "pit culture" can be considered the archaeological culture of the ancient Indo-Europeans, the carriers of which in the III millennium BC. e. lived in the east of modern Ukraine and the south of Russia. This is a hypothesis, but it is confirmed by genetic studies, indicating that the source of at least part of the Indo-European languages in Western and Central Europe was a wave of migration of carriers of the Yamnaya culture from the territory of the Black Sea and Volga steppes approximately 4500 years ago.

The Indo-European family includes the following branches and groups: Albanian, Armenian, as well as Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Romanesque, Illyrian, Greek, Anatolian (Hetto-Luvian), Iranian, Dardic, Indo-Aryan, Nuristani and Tocharian language groups (Italic, Illyrian, Anatolian and Tocharian groups are represented only by dead languages).
If we consider the place of the Russian language in the systematics of the Indo-European language family by levels, then it will look something like this:

Indo-European family
↓
Branch: Balto-Slavic
↓
Group: Slavic
↓
Subgroup: East Slavic
↓
Language: Russian

Slavic

Germanic

Lithuanian

There are more than 100 of them. In fact, each isolated language forms a separate family, consisting only of this language. For example, Basque (northern regions of Spain and adjacent southern regions of France); Burushaski (this language is spoken by the Burish people living in the mountainous regions of Hunza (Kanjut) and Nagar in northern Kashmir); Sumerian (the language of the ancient Sumerians, which was spoken in the Southern Mesopotamia in the 4th-3rd millennia BC); Nivkh (the Nivkh language, spoken in the northern part of Sakhalin Island and in the basin of the Amgun River, a tributary of the Amur); Elamite (Elam is a historical region and ancient state(III millennium - mid-VI century BC) in the south-west of modern Iran); The Hadza (in Tanzania) languages are isolated. Only those languages are said to be isolated for which there is sufficient data and entry into the language family has not been proven for them even after strenuous attempts to do so.

N.V. Suprunchuk // Encyclopedia for schoolchildren and students: in 12 volumes. T. 1: Information society. XXI century / under the total. edited by V. I. Strazhev. - Minsk: Belarus. encycle. them. P. Brovki, 2009. - S. 111–115 (528 p. : ill.)

LANGUAGE FAMILIES, large associations of related languages \u200b\u200bthat descended from one parent language (ancestor language). Purposefully studying the relationship of languages began from the end of the 18th century. after the discovery of Sanskrit literary language ancient India. Studying similarities in vocabulary and grammar, scientists W. Jones, R. Rask, F. Bopp, J. Grimm, A. Vostokov, A. Schleicher, A. Leskin and others came to the conclusion that most European languages, living and dead, and some Asian languages \u200b\u200b(Persian, Sanskrit) come from one language - Indo-European. Therefore, they belong to the same family - Indo-European (see fig.). Family and group are the main associations of related languages. There are other terms (see table 1):

Table 1. Examples of linguistic and biological associations

In linguistics		In biology
An association		An association
Macrofamily (superfamily, phyla)	Nostratic		Animals
	Indo-European		chordates
Branch (subfamily)	Baltoslavyanskaya		Vertebrates
	Slavic		mammals
Subgroup	Eastern		Primates
	Belorussian	Family	hominids
Dialect (adverb)	Southwestern		Chimpanzee
dialect group	Slutsko-Mozyrskaya		common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)
	Slutsky		Schweinfurt chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)

The Indo-European family includes such groups as Slavic, Germanic, Iranian, Romanesque, Celtic, Indo-Aryan, Baltic, etc.

IN Slavic group 3 subgroups: eastern (Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian, Yugoslav-Rusinian languages), western (Upper Lusatian, Kashubian, Lower Lusatian, Polabian, Polish, Slovak, Czech) and southern (Bulgarian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Serbian, Slovenian, Old Slavonic, Croatian). There are also 3 subgroups in the Germanic group: eastern (Gothic, Vandal, Burgundian), western (English, Dutch, Yiddish, German), northern, or Scandinavian (Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish).

The relationship of languages is determined by the similarity of vocabulary, phonetics, grammar. Very similar languages are combined into groups or subgroups, less similar languages are grouped into branches or families. Compare what the words look like sun, brother, three in Indo-European languages (see tables 2, 3).

You can see that the Slavic words are very similar. They also have something in common with the Baltic, Romanesque and Germanic ones, but the similarity is less. This closeness is explained by the fact that all the given languages descended from one ancestor - from the Indo-European language.

Interestingly, 3 European languages, Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, are not like any other European language. They are part of a separate family - the Ural. There are about 400 languages in the Indo-European family, about every twentieth language on the planet belongs to it. There are even more languages in the African Niger-Congo family - about 1500, for example,

Rice.Indo-European language family (in Europe)

Table 2. Words sun, brother, three in the languages of the Slavic group

Table 3 Words sun, brother, three in the languages of the Baltic, Germanic and Romance groups

Rice.Language families of the world

Table 4 Largest language families

	Number of living languages	Number of media	Main countries of use	Language examples
	Share from total number languages, %	Number, million	Share of population, %
Altai					Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iran, China, Russia, Mongolia, Turkey	Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Kazakh, Mongolian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Uzbek
Afro-Asian					Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, Somalia, UAE, Chad	Arabic, Hebrew, Somali, Hausa
Austronesian					Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, New Zealand, Samoa, USA	Hawaiian, Indonesian, Malagasy, Malay, Maori, Samoan, Javanese
Dravidian					India, Nepal, Pakistan	Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu
Indo-European					Austria, Armenia, Belgium, Belarus, Great Britain, Venezuela, Germany, India, Peru, Russia, USA, Ukraine, France, South Africa	English, Armenian, Belarusian, Bengali, Greek, Spanish, German, Romanian, Russian, French, Hindi, Romani
Niger-Congolese					Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Nigeria, Sudan, Chad, South Africa	Bamana, Zulu, Yoruba, Lingala, Swahili,
Sino-Tibetan					Bangladesh, India, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia	Bai, Burmese, Lao, Thai, Tibetan
Non-Austronesian languages of New Guinea					Australia, East Timor, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea	Asmat, dani, enga, chimbu
					–	–

Swahili, Zulu, Yoruba. It includes every fifth language on Earth. There are also very small families, for example, the Chukotka-Kamchatka. It has only 4 languages: Alyutor, Itelmen, Koryak and Chukchi. They are spoken by only about 14 thousand people. For some languages, no relatives have yet been found at all. They - isolated . These are Ainu (Japan), Basque (Spain), Korean (DPRK and South Korea), as well as dead Sumerian (see Cuneiform ) and Etruscan (see Alphabetic letter ) languages.

It is not yet possible to determine exactly how many languages there are in the world. They call different numbers: from 2 to 7 thousand. huge difference can be explained by two reasons. First, certain regions of our planet are still poorly understood (in South America, in the Pacific Islands).

Secondly, it is sometimes difficult to determine what is in front of us: 2 languages or a language and its dialect. If we cannot determine what is in front of us - a language, a dialect, a dialect, a variant of the literary language, etc. - or if this characteristic is not essential for us, the term " idiom ». This concept is especially important when describing languages and dialects that do not have their own written language and any literary processed form, as well as in situations of interethnic conflicts, when representatives different peoples do not want to admit that they speak the same language. Then, taking into account political, national motives, the linguist should be especially careful in his conclusions.

Genealogical classification, group of languages, Slavic languages, Germanic languages, Baltic languages, Romance languages, Indo-European languages, isolated language, isolate, idiom