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Prepared by: Maria Theresa I. Sabillo-EDE2A

What Are the Language Families of the World?

In this section, you will discover the major language families of the world,
paying particular attention to those with the greatest number of speakers and those
that include the most languages.

a. Counting Speakers and Language

These are the few others stand out for the sheer number of people that claim them as a
native language.

Chinese 1.2 billion

English 325 million

Spanish 325 million

Hindi-Urdu 240 million

Arabic 205 million

Portuguese 180 million

Bengali 170 million

Malay 150 million

Russian 145 million

Japanese 120 million

Equally difficult to estimate is the number of languages currently spoken in the world.
It is difficult to determine, in many cases, whether particular communities speak
different dialects of one language or different languages.

b. The Indo-European Family

This family belong most languages of Europe, as well as most languages of Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and most of India. Of the 10 languages with more
than 100 million native speakers, 6 belong to the Indo-European family. Yet Indo-
European languages number only several hundred, about 6 percent of the world’s
languages.
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The Indo-European family is divided into several groups.

 Germanic Group. It includes English, German, Yiddish, Swedish,

Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, and a few other languages such as Icelandic,
Faroese, and Frisian.

 Italic Group and Romance Subgroup. The Romance languages include

French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Rumanian, as well as Provençal (in
the south of France), Catalan

 Slavonic Group. Slavonic languages are spoken in Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union. The Slavonic group can be divided into three subgroups:
East Slavonic, which includes Russian (spoken in Russia), Ukrainian (spoken
in Ukraine), and Belarusan (spoken in Belarus); South Slavonic, which
includes Bulgarian, Serbian, and Croatian; and West Slavonic, which groups
together Polish, Czech, Slovak, and a few minor languages.
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By far the most widely spoken Slavonic language is Russian, which has 145 million
native speakers. Ukrainian has 39 million speakers, Polish 43 million, Serbian 11
million, Croatian 6 million, Czech 11 million, and Belarusan 9 million.

 Indo-Iranian Group. Is the Indo-Iranian group, subdivided into Iranian and

Indic. Persian has 32 million speakers principally in Iran and Afghanistan, and
Pashto has 20 million speakers principally in Pakistan. Indic languages include
Hindi-Urdu, spoken by about 181 million people in India (where it is called
Hindi and is written in Devanagari script) and 60 million principally in
Pakistan (where it is called Urdu and uses Arabic script). Other Indic
languages include:

Bengali 170 million Bangladesh, India, and Nepal

Marathi 68 million Central India

Gujarati 46 million Western India, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya

Panjabi 61 million Pakistan and Northern India

Bhojpuri 27 million Northeastern India, Nepal

Common Words in Six Indic Languages

 Hellenic Group. The sole member of the Hellenic group is Greek. They stand
out from other isolated Indo-European languages because of its relatively large
number of speakers (12 million) and its historical importance in Indo-
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European linguistics owing to the survival of early written records of Ancient

Greek.

 Other Indo-European Language Groups. Celtic includes Irish Gaelic, Scots

Gaelic, Breton, and Welsh, which together are spoken by fewer than one
million people today. Baltic includes Lithuanian, with 3 million speakers, and
Latvian, with 1.5 million. Tocharian and Anatolian (including Hittite) are now
extinct. Armenian, with nearly 7 million, and Albanian, with about 3 million
speakers, form two additional groups.

c. The Sino-Tibetan Family

This family is divided into a Sinitic, or Chinese, group and a Tibeto-Burman group.
With more than one billion speakers, this is the world’s most populous language; it is,
of course, Chinese. Five dialect groups can be identified. Mandarin includes the
Beijing dialect, which serves as the official language of the People’s Republic of
China; Yue includes the dialect of GuAngzhou (Canton), which is spoken by the
greatest number of overseas Chinese.

By contrast, the Tibeto-Burman group includes nearly all of the Sino-Tibetan

languages, but each has relatively few speakers. Among the languages of this group
with more than a million speakers are Burmese (32 million in Myanmar), Meitei or
Manipuri (1.2 million in India), Kam or Khams Tibetan (with 1.5 million), and
Tibetan (1.3 million).

d. The Austronesian Family

The Austronesian family has over 1200 languages scattered over one-third of the
Southern Hemisphere. It includes Malay, spoken by about 150 million people in
Indonesia and Malaysia; Javanese, with 75 million speakers on the island of Java in
Indonesia; Tagalog or Pilipino, the official language of the Philippines, with 16
million speakers; Cebuano, another language of the Philippines (20 million speakers);
and Malagasy, the principal language of Madagascar (10 million speakers). Most
other Austronesian languages have fewer than one million speakers each, and many of
them are spoken by only a few hundred people.

Common Words in Six Austronesian Languages

e. The Afroasiatic Family

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The Afroasiatic family comprises about 375 languages scattered across the northern
part of Africa and western Asia. It includes Arabic, dialects of which are spoken
across the entire northern part of Africa and the Middle East; Hebrew, the traditional
language of the Jewish nation and revived in the twentieth century as the national
language of Israel.

Common Words in Six Afroasiatic Languages

f. The Three Major Language Families of Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa is home to three other language families: the Niger-Congo (or Niger-
Kordofanian) family, with perhaps 1500 languages spoken by about 150 million
people in a region that stretches from Senegal to Kenya to South Africa; the Nilo-
Saharan family, with 200 languages spoken by 10 million people in and around Chad
and the Sudan; and the Khoisan family in southern Africa, with 25 languages spoken
by fewer than 75,000 people altogether.

g. Other Language Families of Asia and Europe

Scattered throughout Asia and Europe are a few smaller language families and a few
languages that are not genealogically related to any other language family, so far as
linguists can determine, and are therefore called isolates.

o The Dravidian Family. Languages of the Dravidian family are spoken

principally in southern India. The four major Dravidian languages are Tamil
(66 million speakers), Malayalam (36 million speakers), Kannada (35 million
speakers), and Telugu (70 million speakers), all of which have been written for
centuries.
o The Mon-Khmer Family. The Mon-Khmer family includes almost 150
languages spoken in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and
Myanmar), China, and India. The most important of these are Vietnamese,
spoken by about 67 million people, mostly in Vietnam, and Cambodian or
Khmer, the official language of Cambodia, spoken by more than 13 million
people. Coupled with the Munda languages (such as Santali, Mundari, and Ho)
spoken chiefly in India, the Mon-Khmer languages constitute what some
scholars call the Austro-Asiatic family.
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o The Tai Family. The best-known languages of the Tai family are Thai (20
million speakers) and Lao (3 million speakers), the official languages of
Thailand and Laos respectively. There are about 50 other members of the Tai
family scattered throughout Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, eastern India,
and southern China, where they intertwine with Sino-Tibetan and Mon-Khmer
languages. Tai languages have been related to a number of languages spoken
in Vietnam, with which they form a Kam-Tai family, and to still others in
Vietnam and China, forming a Tai-Kadai family.
o The Caucasian. Family With about 35 languages, the Caucasian family is
confined to the mountainous region between the Black Sea and the Caspian
Sea in Turkey, Iran, and what was part of the former Soviet Union. Spoken by
about 5 million people altogether, Caucasian languages typically have
complex phonological and morphological systems. The best-known Caucasian
language is Georgian, spoken by about 4 million people in Georgia.
o The Turkic Family. This family comprises about 60 languages, all of which
are quite similar. The better-known members are Turkish, spoken by 50
million people, and Uzbek, with 17 million speakers in Uzbekistan.
o The Uralic Family. With about 40 members, the Uralic family is thought by
some to be related to the Turkic family, though this link is tenuous. The better-
known Uralic languages are Finnish (5 million speakers) and Hungarian (13
million speakers); also included are Estonian and Lapp .
o Japanese. With 122 million speakers, does not have any universally
agreedupon relatives, although many scholars regard it and Korean as
belonging to an Altaic family, along with Turkic. Ryukyuan, spoken in
Okinawa, is a dialect of Japanese, and Ainu, a nearly extinct language spoken
in the north of Japan, may also be related but is generally considered an isolate
o Korean. It is spoken by about 67 million people. Many scholars regard
Korean and Japanese as related members of the Altaic family, but this
hypothesis remains unproven. Like Japanese, Korean has been greatly
influenced by Chinese over the centuries.
o Other Isolated Languages of Asia and Europe. The remaining isolated
languages of Eurasia, Basque is the best known. It is spoken by almost
600,000 inhabitants in an area that straddles the Spanish-French border on the
Atlantic coast.

h. Native American Languages

o Eskimo-Aleut. In North America, we distinguish the Eskimo-Aleut family

from other language families. Inuktitut has about 20,000 speakers across
northern Canada and Alaska, and Yupik has about 10,000 speakers in Alaska
and a few score in Siberia.
o Algonquian Also called Algic, the Algonquian languages include Cree (with
90,000 speakers in Canada and Montana) and Ojibwa (with 64,000 speakers
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living in Ontario, Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota, and North Dakota).

Represented by fewer speakers are Arapaho (1000 in Wyoming), Blackfoot
(5100 in Canada and Montana), Cheyenne (1700 in Montana and Oklahoma),
Kickapoo (850 in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Coahuila, Mexico), Malecite-
Passamaquoddy (1650 in Maine and New Brunswick), Micmac (with 7300 in
Maritime Canada and 1200 in Boston and Maine), Potawatomi (50 spread
across Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, and Ontario), and Shawnee (with 200 in
Oklahoma).
o Muskogean. The largest language is Choctaw, with 9200 speakers in
Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Also Muskogean are Chickasaw, with
1000 speakers in Oklahoma; Koasati, with 200 speakers in Louisiana and
Texas; and Alabama, with 100 speakers in Texas.
o Athabaskan. In the Athabaskan family, some varieties of Apache are
becoming extinct, but Western Apache has 12,700 speakers in Arizona, and
Mescalero-Chiricahua Apache has 1800 speakers, chiefly in New Mexico.
Navaho has nearly 150,000 speakers in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.
Chipewyan has 4000 speakers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the
Northwest Territories. Often included with the Athabaskan languages in a
group called Na-Dene are Tlingit and Haida, both spoken in Alaska and
British Columbia.
o Iroquoian. Excepting principally Cherokee (with 22,500 speakers in
Oklahoma and North Carolina), the Iroquoian languages are spoken mainly in
Ontario and Quebec, as well as upstate New York. Cayuga has perhaps 70
speakers; Mohawk 3350; Oneida, 250; and Seneca, 175.
o Siouan. Located mainly in the upper Midwest of the United States and in
Canada, the Siouan family includes Dakota (20,000 in Minnesota, Montana,
Nebraska, and the Dakotas, as well as Manitoba and Saskatchewan). Crow has
4280 speakers in Montana, and Lakota has 6000 in Nebraska, Minnesota,
Montana, and the Dakotas, as well as Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Winnebago (or Ho-Chunk) has 230 in Nebraska and Wisconsin, while Omaha
has 85 speakers in Nebraska and Oklahoma.
o Penutian. The Penutian family includes Tsimshian (800 speakers mostly in
British Columbia), Yakima (3000 in Washington), and Walla Walla (100 in
Oregon).
o Salishan Among the languages of the Salishan family are Shuswap (500
speakers in British Columbia), Spokane (50 in Washington), and Thompson
(595 in British Columbia).
o Uto-Aztecan The Uto-Aztecan language family remains robust. Varieties of
Nahuatl are spoken by about 1 million people in central and southern Mexico.
On a much smaller scale, Huichol has 20,000 speakers in Nayarit and Jalisco,
and Papago-Pima (also called Tohono O’odham) has nearly 12,000 in Arizona
and Mexico. Hopi is spoken by 5300 in Arizona and Yaqui by 16,400 near
Phoenix and Tucson and in Mexico. Shoshoni has 2300 speakers in California,
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Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah, while Ute-Southern Paiute is spoken by

2000 speakers in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. Comanche has 200
speakers in Oklahoma. Also Uto-Aztecan are Cahuilla (20) and Luiseño (40),
spoken in Southern California.
o Hokan. It includes Kumiái, or Diegueño (320 speakers in Baja California and
Southern California), Havasupai-Walapai-Yavapai (1200 in Arizona), Karok
(100 in northwestern California), Maricopa (150 near Phoenix), Mohave (700
on the CaliforniaArizona border), and Washo (100 on the California-Nevada
border).
o Mayan The largest Mayan language is Yucatec, whose 940,000 speakers live
mostly in the Yucatán Peninsula. Mam has about 400,000 speakers, most in
Guatemala. The Mayan family also embraces Kekchi (with perhaps 365,000
speakers), Quiché (with perhaps 600,000), Cakchiquel (with perhaps 400,000),
and about two dozen other languages.
o Quechua. Quechua was the language of the ancient Incan Empire. Today it
has perhaps 6 million speakers in the Andes and is the most popular
indigenous South American language; its genealogical affiliation is unclear.
o Tupi. The Tupi family includes Guaraní, with nearly 5 million speakers in
Paraguay (where it is an official language) and southwestern Brazil.
o Oto-Manguean. Members of the Oto-Manguean family include Zapotec (with
almost half a million speakers), Mixtec (about 250,000), and Otomi (100,000),
all spoken in central and southern Mexico.
o Totonacan Totonacan includes eleven languages, including eight varieties of
Totonac, with about 250,000 speakers in Mexico.

i. Extinct and Dying Amerindian Languages

Amerindian languages are disappearing in the face of mounting pressure for younger
speakers to adopt English, Spanish, or Portuguese, and many native languages are
known only to a few older speakers. Besides several varieties of Apache, here is a list
of some additional languages with fewer than 50 speakers each; the family name is
given in italics.
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j. Languages of Aboriginal Australia

It is estimated that at the time of first contact with Europeans about 200 to 300
Aboriginal languages were spoken. Today, only about 100 Aboriginal languages
survive, most spoken by tiny populations of older survivors.

Virtually all Australian languages fall into a single family with two groups: the large
Pama-Nyungan group, which covers most of the continent and includes most
Aboriginal languages, and the Non–Pama-Nyungan group, which includes about 50
languages in northern Australia

k. Papuan Languages

Papuan languages are spoken on the large island of New Guinea, which is divided
politically between the nation of Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian-controlled
section called Irian Jaya. While the inhabitants of coastal areas of the island speak
Austronesian languages, about 800 of the languages are not Austronesian languages.
Referred to as Papuan languages, most are not in any danger of extinction, though
many are spoken by small populations. They fall into more than 60 different families,
with no established genealogical link among them. Little is known about most of
these languages.

l. Nostratic Macrofamily

Recent years have seen renewed focus on linking certain language families within
larger “macrofamilies.” The proposed Nostratic macrofamily has received attention
even in the popular press. The languages hypothesized to belong to Nostratic differ
slightly from scholar to scholar, but most scholars espousing this theory include Indo-
European, Afroasiatic, Uralic, Altaic, Dravidian, and Eskimo-Aleut. Assuming that
detailed comparative reconstruction confirmed this hypothesis, the Nostratic
macrofamily would then make distant cousins of English (Indo-European); Hebrew,
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Arabic, Somali, and Hausa (Afroasiatic); Finnish and Hungarian (Uralic); perhaps
Korean and Turkish (Altaic); Tamil (Dravidian); and Inuktitut (Eskimo-Aleut).

Languages in Contact

As a result of the exploratory and colonizing enterprises of the English, French,

Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese, European languages have come into contact with
languages of Africa, Native America, Asia, and the Pacific. These colonizing efforts
put members of different speech communities in contact with each other. For
example, the importing of slaves from Africa to the Americas forced speakers of
different African languages to live side by side. Several language contact phenomena
can take place when speakers of different languages interact.

 Multilingualism

The first of these phenomena is bilingualism or multilingualism, in which members

of a community acquire more than one language natively. In a multilingual
community, children grow up speaking several languages. Use of each language is
often compartmentalized, as when one is used at home and another at school or at
work. Multilingualism is such a natural solution to the problem of language contact
that it is extremely widespread throughout the world

 Nativization

A possible side effect of multilingualism is nativization, which takes place when a

community adopts a new language (in addition to its native language) and modifies
the structure of that new language, thus developing a dialect that becomes
characteristic of the community. That is precisely what has happened with English in
India, where Indian English is recognized as a separate dialect of English with some
of its own structural characteristics. Indeed, it has become one of India’s two national
and is used in education, government, and communications within India and with the
rest of the world.

 Pidgins

Another process that may take place in language contact situations is pidginization.
The term refers to a contact language that develops where groups are in a
dominant/subordinate situation, often in the context of colonization. Pidgins arise
when members of a politically or economically dominant group do not learn the
native language of the people they interact with as political or economic subordinates.
To communicate, members of the subordinate community create a simplified variety
of the language of the dominant group as their own second language.
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 From Pidgin to Creole

At some point, a pidgin may begin to fulfill a greater number of roles in social life.
Instead of using the pidgin language only in the workplace to communicate with
traders or colonizers, speakers may begin to use it at home or among themselves.
Members of that community may find it convenient to adopt the new language as a
lingua franca—a means to communicate across language boundaries.

As a result, small children begin to grow up speaking the new language, and as
greater demands are put onto that language its structure becomes more complex in a
process called creolization. A creole language is thus a former pidgin that has
“acquired” native speakers. Creoles are structurally complex, eventually as complex
as any other language, and they differ from pidgins in that they exhibit less variability
from speaker to speaker than pidgins do.