There is a world a large number of language families and diverse languages. There are more than 6,000 of the latter on the planet. Most of them belong to the world's largest language families, which are distinguished by lexical and grammatical composition, kinship of origin and community geographical location their carriers. However, it should be noted that community of residence is not always an integral factor.
In turn, the world's language families are divided into groups. They are distinguished according to a similar principle. There are also languages that do not belong to any of the identified families, as well as so-called isolated languages. It is also common for scientists to distinguish macrofamilies, i.e. groups of language families.
Indo-European family
The most fully studied is the Indo-European language family. It began to be distinguished in ancient times. However, relatively recently, work began to study the Proto-Indo-European language.
The Indo-European language family consists of groups of languages whose speakers live across vast areas of Europe and Asia. So, the German group belongs to them. Its main languages are English and German. Also a large group is Romance, which includes French, Spanish, Italian and other languages. In addition, Eastern European peoples who speak languages of the Slavic group also belong to the Indo-European family. These are Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, etc.
This language family is not the largest in terms of the number of languages it includes. However, these languages are spoken by almost half of the world's population.
Afro-Asian family
Languages representing the Afro-Asiatic language family are spoken by more than a quarter of a million people. It includes Arabic, Egyptian, Hebrew, and many others, including extinct languages.
This family is usually divided into five (six) branches. These include the Semitic branch, the Egyptian, Chadian, Cushitic, Berber-Libyan and Omotian. In general, the Afro-Asian family includes more than 300 languages African continent and parts of Asia.
However, this family is not the only one on the continent. Other unrelated languages exist in large numbers, especially to the south, in Africa. There are at least 500 of them. Almost all of them were not presented in writing until the 20th century. and were used only orally. Some of them are purely oral to this day.
Nilo-Saharan family
The language families of Africa also include the Nilo-Saharan family. The Nilo-Saharan languages are represented by six language families. One of them is Songhai Zarma. The languages and dialects of the other family, the Saharan family, are common in Central Sudan. There is also a family of mamba, whose carriers inhabit Chad. Another family, the Fur, is also common in Sudan.
The most complex is the Shari-Nile language family. It, in turn, is divided into four branches, which consist of language groups. The last family - coma - is widespread in Ethiopia and Sudan.
The language families represented by the Nilo-Saharan macrofamily have significant differences among themselves. Accordingly, they represent great difficulty for linguistic researchers. Into the languages of this macrofamily big influence provided by the Afro-Asian macrofamily.
Sino-Tibetan family
The Sino-Tibetan language family has more than a million speakers of its languages. First of all, this became possible thanks to the large Chinese population speaking a language belonging to one of the branches of this language family Chinese. In addition to it, this branch includes the Dungan language. It is they who form a separate branch (Chinese) in the Sino-Tibetan family.
The other branch includes more than three hundred languages, which are classified as the Tibeto-Burman branch. There are approximately 60 million native speakers of its languages.
Unlike Chinese, Burmese and Tibetan, most languages of the Sino-Tibetan family do not have a written tradition and are passed down from generation to generation exclusively orally. Despite the fact that this family has been studied deeply and for a long time, it still remains insufficiently studied and hides many as yet unrevealed secrets.
North and South American languages
Currently, as we know, the vast majority of North and South American languages belong to the Indo-European or Romance families. When settling the New World, European colonists brought their own languages with them. However, the dialects of the indigenous population of the American continent did not disappear completely. Many monks and missionaries who arrived from Europe to America recorded and systematized the languages and dialects of the local population.
Thus, the languages of the North American continent north of present-day Mexico were represented in the form of 25 language families. Later, some experts revised this division. Unfortunately, South America has not been studied as well linguistically.
Language families of Russia
All the peoples of Russia speak languages belonging to 14 language families. In total, there are 150 different languages and dialects in Russia. The basis of the country's linguistic wealth is made up of four main language families: Indo-European, North Caucasian, Altai, Uralic. Wherein most of The country's population speaks languages belonging to the Indo-European family. This part makes up 87 percent of the total population of Russia. Moreover, the Slavic group occupies 85 percent. It includes Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian, which make up the East Slavic group. These languages are very close to each other. Their speakers can understand each other almost without difficulty. This is especially true for the Belarusian and Russian languages.
Altaic language family
The Altai language family consists of the Turkic, Tungus-Manchu and Mongolian language groups. The difference in the number of representatives of their speakers in the country is great. For example, Mongolian is represented in Russia exclusively by Buryats and Kalmyks. But several dozen languages are included in the Turkic group. These include Khakass, Chuvash, Nogai, Bashkir, Azerbaijani, Yakut and many others.
The group of Tungus-Manchu languages includes Nanai, Udege, Even and others. This group is in danger of extinction due to the preference of their native peoples to use Russian on the one hand and Chinese on the other. Despite the extensive and long-term study of the Altai language family, it is extremely difficult for specialists to decide on the reproduction of the Altai proto-language. This is explained by the large number of borrowings by its speakers from other languages due to close contact with their representatives.
Ural family
The Uralic languages are represented by two large families - Finno-Ugric and Samoyed. The first of them includes Karelians, Mari, Komi, Udmurts, Mordovians and others. The languages of the second family are spoken by the Enets, Nenets, Selkups, and Nganasans. The bearers of the Ural macrofamily are to a large extent Hungarians (more than 50 percent) and Finns (20 percent).
The name of this family comes from the name of the Ural ridge, where the formation of the Uralic proto-language is believed to have taken place. The languages of the Uralic family had some influence on their neighboring Slavic and Baltic languages. In total, there are more than twenty languages of the Uralic family both on the territory of Russia and abroad.
North Caucasian family
Languages of peoples North Caucasus represent a huge difficulty for linguists in terms of their structuring and study. The concept of a North Caucasian family itself is rather arbitrary. The fact is that the languages of the local population are too little studied. However, thanks to the painstaking and in-depth work of many linguists studying this issue, it became clear how disjointed and complex many of the North Caucasian dialects are.
The difficulties relate not only to the actual grammar, structure and rules of the language, for example, as in the Tabasaran language - one of the most complex languages on the planet, but also pronunciation, which is sometimes simply inaccessible to people who do not speak these languages.
A significant obstacle for specialists studying them is the inaccessibility of many mountainous regions of the Caucasus. However, this language family, despite all the contradictions, is usually divided into two groups - Nakh-Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe.
Representatives of the first group inhabit mainly the regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. These include Avars, Lezgins, Laks, Dargins, Chechens, Ingush, etc. The second group consists of representatives of related peoples - Kabardians, Circassians, Adygeis, Abkhazians, etc.
Other language families
The language families of the peoples of Russia are not always extensive, uniting many languages into one family. Many of them are very small, and some are even isolated. Such nationalities primarily live in Siberia and Far East. Thus, the Chukchi-Kamchatka family unites the Chukchi, Itelmen, and Koryaks. Aleuts and Eskimos speak Aleut-Eskimo.
A large number of nationalities scattered across the vast territory of Russia, being extremely few in number (several thousand people or even less), have their own languages that are not included in any known language family. Like, for example, the Nivkhs, who inhabit the banks of the Amur and Sakhalin, and the Kets, located near the Yenisei.
However, the problem of linguistic extinction in the country continues to threaten Russia's cultural and linguistic diversity. Not only are they endangered individual languages, but also entire language families.
Most of the world's languages are grouped into families. A language family is a genetic linguistic 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.
Language family
There are about 420 language families in total. Sometimes families are united into macro-families. But at present, only theories about the existence of the Nostratic and Afrasian macrofamilies have received reliable substantiation.
Nostratic languages- a hypothetical macrofamily of languages, uniting several language families and languages of Europe, Asia and Africa, including Altaic, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Uralic, and sometimes also Afroasiatic and Eskimo-Aleutian languages. All Nostratic languages go back to a single Nostratic parent language.
Afroasiatic 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 Afroasiatic languages (mainly various dialects Arabic) are found in many countries outside their main range. Total number There are about 253 million speakers.
The existence of other macrofamilies remains only a scientific hypothesis that requires confirmation.
Family– this is definitely a group, but quite far away related languages, which have at least 15% matches in the base list.
The language family can be figuratively represented as a tree with branches. Branches are groups of closely related languages. They do not have to be of the same level of depth, only their relative order within the same family is important. Let us consider this question using the example of the Indo-European family of languages.
Indo-European family
This 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 scientist Thomas Young in 1813.
Thomas Young
The languages of the Indo-European family descend from a single Proto-Indo-European language, whose speakers lived about 5-6 thousand years ago.
But it is impossible to name exactly where the Proto-Indo-European language originated; there are only hypotheses: regions such as Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and steppe territories at the junction of Europe and Asia are named. Most likely archaeological culture ancient Indo-Europeans can be considered the so-called “Pit culture”, the bearers of which in the 3rd millennium BC. e. lived in the east of modern Ukraine and the south of Russia. This is a hypothesis, but it is supported by genetic studies indicating that the source of at least part of the Indo-European languages in Western and Central Europe was caused by a wave of migration of Yamnaya culture carriers 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, Romance, Illyrian, Greek, Anatolian (Hittite-Luvian), Iranian, Dardic, Indo-Aryan, Nuristan and Tocharian languages groups (Italic, Illyrian, Anatolian and Tocharian groups are represented only by dead languages).
If we consider the place of the Russian language in the taxonomy of the Indo-European language family by level, it will look something like this:
Indo-European family
↓
Branch: Balto-Slavic
↓
Group: Slavic
↓
Subgroup: East Slavic
↓
Language: Russian
Slavic
Isolated languages (isolates)
There are more than 100 of them. In fact, each isolated language forms a separate family, consisting only of that 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, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia in the 4th-3rd millennia BC); Nivkh (the language of the Nivkhs, widespread in the northern part of Sakhalin Island and in the basin of the Amguni River, a tributary of the Amur); Elamite (Elam is a historical region and ancient state(III millennium - mid-VI century BC) in the southwest of modern Iran); Hadza (in Tanzania) languages are isolated. Only those languages are called isolated for which there is sufficient data and inclusion in the language family has not been proven for them, even after intensive attempts to do so.
The main characteristics by which ethnic communities are distinguished are language and culture. There are 5 thousand different languages in the world. They are grouped into numerous language families: Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Semitic-Hamitic, Austronesian, etc.
The largest is the Indo-European language family. It unites about 250,000,000 people, which is almost half of the world's population. It includes the following language groups that unite different peoples: Slavic (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Slovenes, etc.); Germanic (Germans, English, Americans, Norwegians, Dutch, etc.); Romanesque (French, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, etc.). The Sino-Tibetan language family is the second largest; its languages (Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese) are spoken by about 1 billion people. The most widely spoken languages in the world are Chinese (975 million people), English (478), Hindi (437), Spanish (392), Russian (284), Arabic (225), Bengali (200), Portuguese (184), Indonesian (159 ), Japanese (128), French (125) and German (123 million people) - spoken by two-thirds of the world's population.
The UN helps refugees and the hungry. UN relief agencies are providing assistance and protection to more than 23 million refugees and displaced people. The World Food Program is the leading UN organization responsible for food assistance, sending more than 5 million tons of food per year, providing food to approximately 113 million people in 80 countries.
The Council of Europe (CoE) is the oldest international political organization in Europe, created in 1949. The bodies of the Council of Europe are located in the French city of Strasbourg, on the border of France and Germany, as a symbol of reconciliation between the two countries.
The main goal of the Council of Europe is the development of a united Europe based on the principles of freedom, democracy, protection of human rights and the rule of law. Its activities are aimed primarily at ensuring and protecting human rights, whether civil, political, economic, social or cultural rights. Consequently, the activities of the Council of Europe cover all spheres of human life. This organization does not deal with economic news and military-political issues. Since 1995, Ukraine has also been a member of the Council of Europe, currently uniting 46 states.
One of the most significant achievements of the Council of Europe is the development and adoption of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The Convention establishes inalienable rights and rights for the same and obliges the state to guarantee these rights to every person. The main difference between the Convention and other international treaties in the field of human rights is the existence of a mechanism for protecting these rights.
Where is the best place to go fishing in the Moscow region? How to find the best fishing spots? What does the term “vip fishing” mean? How does paid fishing differ from free fishing and what is “eco-fishing”? A special resource about fishing in the Domodedovo district of the Moscow region will answer these questions.
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Language families are a term used to classify peoples according to language. A language family includes languages that are related to each other.
It manifests itself in the similarity in the sound of words denoting the same object, as well as in the similarity of elements such as morphemes and grammatical forms.
According to the theory of monogenesis, the world's language families were formed from the proto-language spoken by ancient peoples. The division occurred due to the predominance of tribes and their distance from each other.
Language families are divided as follows.
Language family name | Languages included in the family | Regions of distribution |
Indo-European | India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Fiji |
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India, Pakistan |
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Countries former USSR and Eastern Europe |
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English | USA, UK, European countries, Canada, Africa, Australia |
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German | Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy |
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French | France, Tunisia, Monaco, Canada, Algeria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg |
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Portuguese | Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, Macau |
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Bengal | Bengal, India, Bangladesh |
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Altai | Tatar | Tatarstan, Russia, Ukraine |
Mongolian | Mongolia, China |
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Azerbaijani | Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Central Asia |
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Turkish | Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Romania, USA, France, Sweden |
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Bashkir | Bashkorstan, Tatarstan, Urdmutia, Russia. |
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Kyrgyz | Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, China |
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Ural | Hungarian | Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia |
Mordovian | Mordovia, Russia, Tatarstan, Bashkorstan |
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Evenk | Russia, China, Mongolia |
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Finland, Sweden, Norway, Karelia |
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Karelian | Karelia, Finland |
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Caucasian | Georgian | Georgia, Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Iran |
Abkhazian | Abkhazia, Türkiye, Russia, Syria, Iraq |
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Chechen | Chechnya, Ingushetia, Georgia, Dagestan |
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Sino-Tibetan | Chinese | China, Taiwan, Singapore |
Laotian | Laos, Thailand, |
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Siamese | ||
Tibetan | Tibet, China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan |
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Burmese | Myanmar (Burma) |
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Afro-Asian | Arab | Arab countries, Iraq, Israel, Chad, Somalia, |
Barbary | Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, Egypt, Mauritania |
From this table it is clear that languages of the same family can be distributed in a wide variety of countries and parts of the world. And the very concept of “language families” was introduced to facilitate the classification of languages and their compilation family tree. The most widespread and numerous is the Indo-European family of languages. Peoples speaking languages of the Indo-European family can be found in any hemisphere of the Earth, on any continent and in any country. There are also languages that are not included in any language family. These are also artificial.
If we talk about the territory of Russia, then a wide variety of language families are represented here. The country is inhabited by people of more than 150 different nationalities, who can consider almost every language family to be their native language. The linguistic families of Russia are distributed geographically depending on which country a particular region borders on, and which language is most widespread in the country bordering the region.
Some nationalities have occupied a certain territory since ancient times. And at first glance it may seem strange why these particular language families and languages predominate in this region. But there is nothing strange about this. In ancient times, human migrations were determined by the search for new hunting grounds, new lands for agriculture, and some tribes simply led a nomadic lifestyle.
The forced relocation of entire peoples during the Soviet era also played a significant role. The languages from the Indo-European, Uralic, Caucasian and Altai families are most fully represented in Russia. The Indo-European family occupies Western and Central Russia. Representatives live mainly in the north-west of the country. The northeast and southern regions are predominantly occupied by Altai language groups. Caucasian languages are represented mainly in the territory lying between the Black and Caspian seas.
There are about 3,000 languages all over the world; no one has yet been able to calculate the exact number. Although, according to available UNESCO data, there are 2,796 languages in the world. Seeing the exact figure, any linguist will smile, not because the exact number of languages in the world was counted, but from what was counted. All over the world there are many mixed languages and languages that are extinct or languages of small tribes that are not officially listed anywhere. In this regard, it is practically impossible to calculate the exact number of languages. But linguists managed to distribute all the languages of the world into groups or families.
Many different languages are similar to each other, for example, a citizen of Russia can communicate with a citizen of Belarus and Ukraine, or vice versa, and everyone will be able to understand each other. Basically, the languages of those peoples whose lands border each other or by the ethnic origin of the countries are similar. As we know, 1000 years ago, in the territory where Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are now located, there were lands Kievan Rus. And the ancestors of the above countries communicated in the same Old Church Slavonic language. Until our time, the borders have changed, and in place of Kievan Rus, three new states grew up: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Map of the distribution of languages of Ukraine
Chinese dialect map
Indigenous languages of South America
Arabic dialects
Dialects of the Russian language
Map of African languages
German dialect map
Map of Finno-Ugric languages
Map of Slavic languages
Map of Indian languages
Families and groups of languages
Currently, linguists distinguish the following families and groups of languages:
- Indian group. This is the largest group in terms of number talking people, as Indian languages are spoken by more than 1 billion people. This group includes the languages of Central and North India, as well as Pakistan. You can also include the gypsies who moved to Europe from India in the 5th - 10th centuries into this group. n. e. Of the extinct languages, this group includes the ancient Indian language - Sanskrit. On given language The famous epic poem of ancient India "Mahabharata" was written
- Iranian group. The languages of this group are spoken in Iran (Persian) and Afghanistan (Afghan). In this group there is a dead Scythian language.
- Slavic group. This includes a large number of different languages, which are usually further divided into subgroups.
- eastern subgroup; Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian language
- Western subgroup; Polish, Slovak, Czech, Kashubian, Lusatian and Polabian which is a dead language
- southern subgroup; Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavonic which is also a dead language
- Baltic group. This group speaks Latvian and Lithuanian.
- German group. Almost all languages belong to this group Western Europe; Scandinavian (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic), English, German, Dutch and modern Jewish Yiddish. Among all the above languages, the most widespread in this group is English language it is spoken by more than 400 million people. USA - 215 million, UK 58 million, Canada 33.5 million, Australia - 20 million, Ireland - 4 million, South Africa - 4 million, New Zealand 3.6 million. German is spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Regarding the Yiddish language, we can say that almost all Jews speak it. One of the languages of the Germanic group, Boer, is widespread in South Africa thanks to immigrants from Holland.
- Roman group. French, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. This group also includes Provençal, Sardinian (island of Sardinia), Catalan (Eastern Spain) and Moldavian.
- Celtic group. The languages of this group are spoken in Ireland and on the nearby islands, as well as on the Brittany peninsula of France (Breton language), in Wales (Welsh language). The dead languages of this group include the language of the ancient Gauls, who lived in the territory of modern France.
In addition to the above groups, Greek, Albanian and Armenian languages are separately distinguished, which are classified as Indo-European languages. Also included in this group are such dead languages as Hittite (Asia Minor) and Tocharian (the territory of Central Asia).