Language Families

and Groups
Contents of this template

• What Are Language Families?

• How Do We Know Which Languages Belong To Which
Languages?
• Learn About Specific Language Families
 What Are
Language
Families?
A language family, like any other family, is best thought
of as a tree. The idea is that there is one single language
— the trunk — that all the members of the language
family grew out of. The concept of branches is also
useful because usually these new languages form by
splitting off from each other. And within any large
language family, there might be smaller language
families.
How Do We Know
Which Languages
Belong To Which
Languages?
The process of determining the lineage of a
language family again mimics that of real families.
The further back you go, the harder it is to figure
out who’s related to who. If two languages are very
similar — take, for example, any of the
Scandinavian languages, which are practically
mutually intelligible — it’s not too hard to
determine that they’re related. But what if there are
just a few things in common?
 Learn About Specific
Language Families
The Indo-European Language Family

— One of the largest language families in the world, comprising

hundreds of languages including those in the Germanic, Romance,
Baltic and Slavic language families.

The Romance Language Family

— Perhaps the most famous language family there is, the

Romance languages are widely spoken in Europe (and the name
has nothing to do with our modern notions of love and
romance).
Learn About Specific Language Families
The Slavic Language Family

— Spoken throughout Russia and in parts of Eastern and Northern

Europe, the Slavic languages are another part of the larger Indo-
European language family.

The Baltic Language Family The Celtic Language Family

— The Baltic languages are relatively few, with the only — While most of the Celtic
surviving members of the family being Latvian and Lithuanian. languages including Irish, Scottish
Gaelic and Manx can only be found
in parts of the British Isles today,
The Uralic Language Family they used to spread across the
European continent.
— Lesser-known than its nearby families, the Uralic languages
include Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, along with 35 other
languages that are a bit smaller.
Learn About Specific Language Families
The Germanic Language Family

— The family of English and German, the Germanic languages also

include the Nordic and Scandinavian languages, as well as a few
others spoken in Europe.
The Sino-Tibetan Language Family
— This is a huge family with over 400 members, most of which
are found in East Asia, but speakers of these languages can be
found around the globe.
The Afro-Asiatic Language Family
— This family — the fourth largest in the world — includes
languages spoken in North and East Africa, as well as the
Arabian Peninsula, and it has six distinct branches: Berber,
Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic and Semitic.
The Amerindian Language
Family
— A catch-all for the languages
spoken in North and South America
before the arrival of the Europeans,
the Amerindian languages are some
of the hardest in the world to study
because so much of their history was
destroyed by colonialism.
Learn About Specific Language Families
The Dravidian Language Family

— With about 215 million speakers, the Dravidian languages are

spoken in parts of Sri Lanka, Southern India, Pakistan and Nepal,
and the largest member of the family is Telugu.

The Altaic Language Family The Semitic Language Family

— This was at one point considered a unified language family,

— Arabic has by far the most
but most linguists agree that the Altaic languages are actually
speakers of any of the Semitic
three separate language families: Turkic, Tungusic and
languages, and this family also
Mongolic.
features the only language to have
The Mayan Language Family ever been successfully brought back
after being declared “dead”: Hebrew.
— A group of 32 languages that are indigenous to North
America, the Mayan languages has survived better than any
other language family in the Americas.
 Resources
● All In The Language Family: A Guide To The Language Families Of The
World (2022) [online resource]. URL:
https://lubbil.ngontinh24.com/article/all-in-the-language-family-a-guide-to-
the-language-families-of-the-world