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What is a language family?
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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.
Jul 22, 2020 · The best way to learn about language families is looking at the individual families that are out there. Each of them has their own engaging history, and each of them challenges our idea of what “language” and “family” is in their own way. Our All in the Language Family series goes into detail on how these families work.
Oct 19, 2023 · A language family is a group of different languages that all descend from a particular common language. The one language that generated those other languages in its family is known as a protolanguage. Some languages do not come from a protolanguage.
- Indo-European. Speakers: 3.5 billion (46% of Earth's population) Languages: 583. Location of origin: Ukraine and southern Russia. Time of origin: 4,500 BCE.
- Sino-Tibetan. Speakers: 1.4 billion (18% of Earth's population) Languages: 501. Location of origin: northern China (Yellow River basin) Time of origin: 5,000 BCE.
- Afro-Asiatic. Speakers: 500 million (7% of of Earth's population) Languages: 379. Location of origin: Sudan or Ethiopia. Time of origin: 18,000–8,000 BCE. Culture of origin: African hunter-gatherers (pre-Neolithic)
- Niger-Congo. Speakers: 700 million (9% of Earth's population) Languages: 1,542. Location of origin: West Africa (speculative; Blench, 2006) Time of origin: 9,000–8,000 BCE (speculative; Blench, 2006)
Learn what a language family is and how it relates to language branches and isolates. Explore the number, size, and classification of language families worldwide, with examples of Indo-European and other families.
This list only includes primary language families that are accepted by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics; for language families that are not accepted by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics, see the article "List of proposed language families".
Learn what language families are, how linguists use the comparative method to reconstruct protolanguages, and what are some of the major language families in the world. Explore the features and distributions of Indo-European, Uralic, Caucasian, and Altaic languages.
