Spanish, french and italian, for example, are all romance languages deriving from latin. The history and geography of language families stanford. Pdf how many language families are there in the world. Jul 22, 2020 it turns out language families have quite a bit in common with human families. Language families of the world also covers significantly more individual languages than the story of human language. The language situation in papua new guinea is one of the most complex in the world. Here you can find an overview of all languages of all countries in the world. Classification of languages figure 516 shows the world s language families. The website catalogs the world s 6,909 known living languages. Language family simple english wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. His books on creoles include language change and language contact in pidgins and creoles, the missing spanish. He has also written a book on dialects and black english, the word on the street. A language family is a grouping of linguistically linked languages, stemming from a common ancestral mother language called protolanguage. They can be found throughout the world, spreading uniquely to different regions and countries.
A language in the indoeuropean family, such as english, is spoken by 46 percent of the world s people. Jul 09, 2018 this article examines which of these living language families have the largest common speech community, or the number of speakers. Categories can be split into ever smaller units, until the level of. The ethnologue is a catalogue of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries. The total number of language families in the world is the set of independent families. The basic structure of the family has changed drastically throughout the years. Introduction languages that follow a similar programming paradigm are classified into the same programming language families. The indoeuropean family of languages is fairly broadly distributed today embracing perhaps half of the worlds inhabitable surface area. Language and archaeology correlations can be sought not only for the origins and dispersal histories of language families, but can also reflect the contacts which take place from time to time between languages in different families and subgroups. A language family is a group of related languages that developed from a common historic ancestor, referred to as. Sep 29, 2010 family language independent koreanjapanese korean, japanese, and ainu are often grouped together as a branch of the altaic language family. Languages that have no demonstrable relation with others, and cannot be classified within a specific family, are generally known as language isolates. Jan 23, 2015 despite being close geographically, the tree highlights the distinct linguistic origins of finnish from other languages in scandinavia. The largest language families those with over 25 languages are listed below ethnologue.
Most students have to earn this by taking a foreign language class at school, but if your child already speaks your home language, they may be eligible to receive world language credits for what they know. Korean japanese ainu monkhmer vietnamese and muong are now often accepted as being members of the monkhmer branch of the austric language family. A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto language of that family. A language family tree in pictures education the guardian. Most languages in the world belong to a specific family. Utilizing historical theories and cuttingedge research, these 34 astonishing lectures will introduce you.
Jul 15, 2000 the single largest language family, indoeuropean has about 150 languages and about three billion speakers. Ethnologue 22 2019 lists the following families as containing at least 1% of the 7,111 known languages in the world. Language isolates and their history, or, whats weird, anyway. Of course, the number of families may change as scholarship improves, but there is little reason to believe that these figures are radically off the mark.
Some linguists may be of the opinion that some two language groups are relatedthat is, that they are branches of a single family while others reject the evidence meant to prove the. Pdf language families in india and ic analysis kaushik. Pdf homelands of the worlds language families researchgate. Languages are not at all uniformly distributed around the world. Of the 142 different language families, these six stand out as the major language families of the world. The names in italics after the arabic numerals indicate the language families. Get an introduction to the concept of language families, understand how languages change over time, and discover what linguistics can teach us about our own history. Larger language families can be further divided into language branches and language groups. Mcwhorter offers a look at the major language families around the world, their similarities, and some theories of how theyve traveled from one region to another. The ethnologue name index lists over 39,000 language, dialect, and alternate names. Learn more about this linguistic term and why its important. Rated 5 out of 5 by big john ny from i wish it were longer language families of the world has 34 lectures if i may use that word but i wish it was twice as long. A student may earn up to four 4 high school credits for being proficient in another nonenglish language. Freelang classification of the main languages of the world.
Your role in developing and encouraging language acquisition in children is therefore of the utmost importance. The aim is to inform readers of their existence and documentation status, with the ultimate hope of increasing their chances of being documented. Ill introduce various language families while we tour the world. There are 6,523 languages in this group, and together they account for close to 95 percent of all world languages assuming that there are some 6,900 languages in the world. Each of these families has at least 5% of the worlds languages, and together account for twothirds of. Languages include hindi and urdu 400 million, bengali 200 million, spanish 300 million, portuguese 200 million, french 100 million, german 100 million, russian 300 million, and english 400 million in europe and the americas. Mcwhorter has a way of speaking that makes the subject come alive and lively, i envy his knowledge and ability to create the sounds of so many different languages, language. Language families of the world is more of a historical and cultural survey of the world s languages, discussing the unique features of each and the events or hypothesized events that drove those changes. How are languages shown to be related to one another.
The status of the least documented language families in the world. The major world language families are indoeuropean, sinotibetan, afroasiatic and the nigercongo. A natural history of language, on how the world s languages arise, change, and mix. A brief history of programming languages can be found in section ii. Finnish belongs to the uralic language family and shares. Understanding and speaking in two or more languages is a remarkable skill and provides many benefits to the child, family, school, and society. A systematic, computerautomated tool for narrowing down the homelands of linguistic families is presented and applied to 82 of the world s larger families. A combination of a more complete inventory and some decisions were made as to how many speech communities to distinguish as languages. There are over 7,000 languages in the world and many linguists believe they likely all developed from a single source language in the distant past. It lists the major language families and their members and tells where they are spoken. Conclusion glossary bibliography biographical sketch summary interdisciplinary research and cooperation of linguistics, anthropology, archaeology and population genetics have led to new insights about the prehistory of language families of the world. Families of language the first scientific attempts to discover the history of the world s languages were made at the end of the 18th century. The table below which shows about 800 main languages is only a glimpse of the huge diversity of languages.
Mar 31, 2021 there are over 7,000 languages in the world and many linguists believe they likely all developed from a single source language in the distant past. This does not inherently cause confusion or language delays espinosa, 20. Ethnologue 22 2019 lists these language families as major. Language history and origins language families of the world. The term family reflects the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree, or in a subsequent modification, to species in a. In language families of the world, professor john mcwhorter of columbia university takes you back through time and around the world, following the linguistic trails left by generations of humans that lead back to the beginnings of language. Pdf a systematic, computerautomated tool for narrowing down the homelands of linguistic families is presented and applied to 82 of the worlds larger. Languages of the world department of computer science. If there could be demonstrated, it could be assumed. As is generally known, a language family is a set of languages for which there is sufficient evidence to show that they descend from a single ancestral language and are therefore genetically related. The remaining families account for only 5 percent of the world languages. Linguistics assignment on language families in india and ic analysis kaushik talukdar egb14003 linguistic history of the indian subcontinent an overview the languages of the indian subcontinent are divided into various language families, of which the indoiranian and the dravidian languages are the most widely spoken.
The six largest language families by language count are nigercongo, austronesian, transnew guinea, sinotibetan, indoeuropean, and afroasiatic. Scholar began to compare groups of languages in a systematic and detailed way, to see whether there were correspondence between them. The indoeuropean language family is the largest in the world. Phrygian extinct thracianextinct macedonianextinct. Hittite, lydian, palaic, luwian, lycian, carian, pisidian, sidetic. There are over 850 indigenous languages spoken right across the country. Language families of the world by john mcwhorter, the great. Languages today many countries have more than one official language because of the many different ethnic groups that are present in europe many countries share borders, and people move back and forth across borders about 400 million people in the world speak english because it is often the choice for a 2nd language. Linguists do not agree about the number of language families in the world. In this paper, we discuss the history of programming languages, and discuss at length the four major language families. However, it is not solely the province of those working with young children, as it is also a concern of parents, carers, families and even policymakers. Family subgroup branch language sinotibetan sinitic bai hokin, bai, tali chinese mandarin, yue cantonese, wu, xiang, gan, northern min, southern min tibetoburman tibetic newari, lepcha, central tibetan, magar, rangkas, rungchenbung burmic meithei, angami, moso, burmese, lisu, maru family language independent. A language in the indoeuropean family, such as english, is spoken by 46.
Finnish, estonian, mordvin, udmurt, mari, komi, saami lappish. Many linguists will disagree about many of the details, but the list gives you an impression of the linguistic diversity of the earth. Children all over the world engage in the practice of learning two or more languages during the first five years of life. Key issue 3 where are other distribution of language language. The americas very many languages in many families are spoken by the native americans of both continents. He is an affable teacher, occasionally corny or prone to fanciful tangents, but its all part of the fun. The ethnologue language family index organizes languages according to language families. Language families 2 the american missionary organization summer institute of linguistics sil publishes regularly new editions of an interesting book called ethnologue.
1511 457 1251 764 1424 298 326 1325 132 1220 529 946 874 1361 304 1003 164 476 1235 1183 1106 1162 1061 394 1412 915 1490 573