In the 19th century, the European school of comparative studies studied nearly one hundred languages in the world, and found that there were correspondences and some similarities between certain phonological, vocabulary, and grammatical rules of some languages, and they grouped these languages together as homologous languages; as there were some correspondences between some families, they were grouped together again as homologous languages, which is the This is the so-called genealogical relationship between languages. Now, there are seven major language families in the world:
The Indo-European language family is the largest language family, which is divided into Indian, Iranian, Germanic, Latin, Slavic, Baltic and other language families. The Indo-European language family includes Sanskrit, Hindi, Pali and so on. The Iranian language group includes Persian, Afghan and so on. The Germanic language group includes English, German, Dutch, and the major languages of Scandinavia. The Latin group includes French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. The Slavic group has Russian, Bulgarian, and Polish. The Baltic language group includes Latvian and Lithuanian.
The Sino-Tibetan language family is divided into the Chinese and Tibetan-Burmese, Zhuang-Dong, and Miao-Yao language groups, including Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Karen, Zhuang, Miao, and Yao.
The Altaic language family is divided into the Western Altaic language family and the Eastern Altaic language family. The former includes the languages of Turku and the Chuvash languages of the former Soviet Union, while the latter includes the Mongolian languages and the Evangelical languages of the former Soviet Union.
The Semitic languages are also known as the Afro-Asian languages. It is subdivided into the Semitic group and the Hamitic group. The former includes Hebrew and Arabic, while the latter includes ancient Egyptian and Hausa.
The Dravidian family is also known as the Dravidian family. The languages of southern India belong to this family and include Bihar, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, etc.
Caucasian Language Family The languages of this language family are distributed around the Caucasus, and the main languages include Georgian, Chechen, and so on.
Uralic Language Family The Uralic Language Family is divided into the Finnish Language Group and the Ugric Language Group. The former includes Finnish, Estonian and so on, and the latter includes Hungarian, Mansi and so on.
There are also a number of language families, such as the Niger-Congo, Shari-Nile, and Khoisan language families in Africa, the Eskimo-Aleutian and some Indian languages in the Americas, the Malayo-Polynesian language family in Oceania and the Micronesian language families in Oceania. It should be noted that some languages in the world, genealogically speaking, do not belong to any language family, such as Japanese and Korean, are independent languages.
In the past two centuries, scholars have divided the world's diverse languages into various language families such as Indo-European, Uralic, Afro-Asiatic, Altaic, Sino-Tibetan, South Asian, South Island languages, etc., but there are still some languages that do not yet belong to the Department of the unknown, such as the distribution of the Basque language in the northern part of Spain and the southwestern part of France and the region bordering on Spain, the Sumerian language, used in the ancient Two Rivers Basin. The Sumerian language used in the ancient Two Rivers Basin, etc. How did these different languages and language families originate? And how did the homogeneity of the inhabitants who spoke the same language family come about? Were the different language families and their inhabitants related to each other in ancient times? Did the thousands of languages spoken by billions of people around the world have a common origin? These questions could not be answered accurately in the past, and were once regarded as "off-limits" to science. But in the past 20 years, with the progress of molecular biology, human population genetics, archaeology and linguistics, we have finally seen the dawn of hope for solving these "mysteries of the century". This is the result of the interpenetration of various sciences and the advancement of new research methods and approaches.
Indian languages (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gypsy, etc.).
Iranian language group (Persian, Kurdish, Afghan, etc.).
Slavic language group (Russian, Serbian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, etc.)
Armenian language group (predominantly Armenian)
Baltic language group (Lithuanian, Latvian, etc.)
Germanic language group (German, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, English, etc.)
Latin ( Romance languages (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, etc.)
Greek (predominantly Greek)
Celtic (predominantly Irish)
Albanian (predominantly Albanian)
The Sino-Tibetan language family with the largest number of speakers. Centered in China and radiating slightly to the southwest, this language family has a quarter of the world's speaking population, but is more geographically concentrated. It is divided into four language groups, namely the Chinese, Tibetan-Burmese, Zhuang-Dong, and Miao-Yao.
Altaic language family. Centered in the Altai Mountains, which is now the border between China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, it is widely distributed in the desert and steppe areas of the Asian hinterland. It is divided into three language groups, namely, Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic Manchu. Some linguists believe that the main components of Korean and Japanese, belong to this language group.
Semitic language family. Distributed in West Asia and North Africa, it is divided into two language families, namely, the Semitic family in West Asia and the Hamitic family in North Africa.
Bantu language family. Distributed throughout sub-Saharan Black Africa, it has thousands of languages, most of which are tribal. The representative language is Swahili.
South Island (Malayo-Polynesian) Language Family. Widely distributed in the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago in Southeast Asia, and in the countries of Oceania. The Gaoshan language of the Chinese island of Taiwan belongs to the South Island language family.
Other language families include the Darobitu family (southern Indian Peninsula), the South Asian family (southern Central and South Asian Peninsula), the Finno-Ugric family (mainly in Finland and Hungary), and the Ibero-Caucasian family (along the Caucasus Mountains), which are narrower in distribution, and have a limited influence on world interactions.
Besides this, there are also nine major language families:
Nine major language families in the world
At present, people generally divide the world's languages into nine major language families:
1) Sino-Tibetan,
2) Indo-European,
3) Altaic,
4) Semitic-Hispanic
5) Uralic,
6) Ibero-Caucasian,
7) Malayo-Bolynesian,
8) South Asian, and
9) Dravidian.
In addition, there are a number of languages from Africa and the Americas and some languages of unknown affiliation.