Language families, their formation and classification. What are the language groups
There are a large number of language families and a wide variety of languages in the world. There are more than 6,000 of the latter on the planet. Most of them belong to the largest language families in the world, which are distinguished by lexical and grammatical composition, kinship of origin and the common geographical location of their speakers. However, it should be noted that community of residence is not always an integral factor.
In turn, the language families of the world are divided into groups. They are distinguished in a similar way. There are also languages that do not belong to any of the selected families, as well as the so-called isolated languages. It is also customary for scientists to single out macrofamilies, i.e. groups of language families.
Indo-European family
The most fully studied is the Indo-European language family. It has been isolated since ancient times. However, relatively recently, work began on the study of the Proto-Indo-European language.
The Indo-European language family consists of groups of languages whose speakers live in vast areas of Europe and Asia. So, the German group belongs to them. Its main languages are English and German. Also a large group is Romance, which includes French, Spanish, Italian and other languages. In addition, Eastern European peoples who speak languages of the Slavic group also belong to the Indo-European family. This is Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, etc.
This language family is not the largest in terms of the number of languages included in it. However, these languages are spoken by almost half of the world's population.
Afro-Asian family
The languages that represent the Afro-Asiatic language family are used by more than a quarter of a million people. It includes Arabic, Egyptian, Hebrew, and many others, including extinct languages.
This family is usually divided into five (six) branches. This includes the Semitic branch, Egyptian, Chadian, Cushite, Berber-Libyan and Omot. In general, the Afro-Asiatic family includes more than 300 languages of the African continent and parts of Asia.
However, this family is not the only one on the continent. In large numbers, especially to the south, there are other languages in Africa that are not related to it. There are at least 500 of them. Almost all of them were not presented in writing until the 20th century. and used only orally. Some of them are still exclusively oral.
Nilo-Saharan family
The language families of Africa also include the Nilo-Saharan family. The Nilo-Saharan languages are represented by six language families. One of them is songhai-zarma. The languages and dialects of another - the Saharan family - are common in Central Sudan. There is also a family of mamba, whose carriers inhabit Chad. Another family, Fur, is also common in Sudan.
The most complex is the Shari-Nile language family. It, in turn, is divided into four branches, which consist of language groups. The last family - coma - is common in Ethiopia and Sudan.
The language families represented by the Nilo-Saharan macrofamily have significant differences among themselves. Accordingly, they present a great challenge for linguistic researchers. The languages of this macrofamily were greatly influenced by the Afro-Asiatic macrofamily.
Sino-Tibetan family
The Sino-Tibetan language family has over a million native speakers of its languages. First of all, this became possible due to the large number of the Chinese population speaking Chinese, which is part of one of the branches of this language family. In addition to it, this branch includes the Dungan language. It is they who form a separate branch (Chinese) in the Sino-Tibetan family.
Another branch includes more than three hundred languages, which are distinguished as the Tibeto-Burmese branch. There are approximately 60 million native speakers of its languages.
Unlike Chinese, Burmese and Tibetan, most of the languages of the Sino-Tibetan family do not have a written tradition and are passed down from generation to generation exclusively orally. Despite the fact that this family has been studied deeply and for a long time, it still remains insufficiently studied and hides many secrets that have not yet been revealed.
North and South American languages
At present, as is known, the vast majority of North and South American languages belong to the Indo-European or Romance families. Settling the New World, European colonists brought with them their own languages. However, the dialects of the indigenous population of the American continent did not disappear altogether. Many monks and missionaries who came from Europe to America recorded and systematized the languages and dialects of the local population.
Thus, the languages of the North American continent north of present-day Mexico were represented in the form of 25 language families. In the future, some experts have revised this division. Unfortunately, South America has not been studied as well in terms of language.
Language families of Russia
All the peoples of Russia speak languages belonging to 14 language families. In total, there are 150 different languages and dialects in Russia. The basis of the country's linguistic wealth is made up of four main language families: Indo-European, North Caucasian, Altai, Ural. At the same time, most of the country's population speaks languages \u200b\u200bthat belong to the Indo-European family. This part makes up 87 percent of the total population of Russia. Moreover, the Slavic group occupies 85 percent. It includes Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian, which make up the East Slavic group. These languages are very close to each other. Their carriers can almost easily understand each other. This is especially true for the Belarusian and Russian languages.
Altaic language family
The Altaic language family consists of the Turkic, Tungus-Manchurian and Mongolian language groups. The difference in the number of representatives of their carriers in the country is great. For example, Mongolian is represented in Russia exclusively by Buryats and Kalmyks. But the Turkic group includes several dozen languages. Among them are Khakass, Chuvash, Nogai, Bashkir, Azerbaijani, Yakut and many others.
The group of Tungus-Manchurian languages includes Nanai, Udege, Even and others. This group is under the threat of extinction due to the preference of their native peoples to use Russian on the one hand, and Chinese on the other. Despite the extensive and long study of the Altaic language family, it is extremely difficult for specialists to decide on the reproduction of the Altaic proto-language. This is explained by the large number of borrowings of its speakers from other languages due to close contact with their representatives.
Ural family
The Uralic languages are represented by two large families - Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. The first of them includes Karelians, Mari, Komi, Udmurts, Mordovians and others. The languages of the second family are spoken by Enets, Nenets, Selkups, Nganasans. The carriers of the Ural macrofamily are to a large extent Hungarians (more than 50 percent) and Finns (20 percent).
The name of this family comes from the name of the Ural Range, where it is believed that the formation of the Ural proto-language took place. The languages of the Uralic family had some influence on their neighboring Slavic and Baltic languages. In total, there are more than twenty languages of the Uralic family both in Russia and abroad.
North Caucasian family
The languages of the peoples of the North Caucasus represent a huge difficulty for linguists in terms of their structuring and study. In itself, the concept of a North Caucasian family is rather arbitrary. The fact is that the languages of the local population are too little studied. However, thanks to the painstaking and deep work of many linguists studying this issue, it became clear how fragmented and complex many of the North Caucasian dialects are.
Difficulties concern not only the actual grammar, structure and rules of the language, for example, as in the Tabasaran language - one of the most difficult languages on the planet, but also pronunciation, which is sometimes simply inaccessible to people who do not speak these languages.
A significant obstacle for specialists studying them is the inaccessibility of many mountainous regions of the Caucasus. However, this language family, despite all the contradictions, is usually divided into two groups - Nakh-Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe.
Representatives of the first group inhabit mainly the regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. These include Avars, Lezgins, Laks, Dargins, Chechens, Ingush, etc. The second group consists of representatives of kindred peoples - Kabardians, Circassians, Adyghes, Abkhazians, etc.
Other language families
The language families of the peoples of Russia are by no means always extensive, uniting many languages into one family. Many of them are very small and some are even isolated. Such nationalities primarily live in Siberia and the Far East. So, the Chukchi-Kamchatka family unites the Chukchi, Itelmens, and Koryaks. The Aleuts and Eskimos speak Aleut-Eskimo.
A large number of nationalities scattered over the vast territory of Russia, being extremely few in number (several thousand people or even less), have their own languages, which are not included in any known language family. As, for example, the Nivkhs inhabiting the banks of the Amur and Sakhalin, and the Kets, located near the Yenisei.
However, the problem of linguistic extinction in the country continues to threaten the cultural and linguistic diversity of Russia. Not only individual languages, but also entire language families are under the threat of extinction.
Languages develop like living organisms, and languages that come from the same ancestor (called a "proto-language") are part of the same language family. A language family can be divided into subfamilies, groups, and subgroups: for example, Polish and Slovak belong to the same subgroup of West Slavic languages, which is part of the Slavic language group, which is a branch of the larger Indo-European family.
Comparative (contrastive) linguistics, as its name implies, compares languages in order to discover their historical connections. This can be done by comparing the phonetics of languages, their grammar and vocabulary, even in cases where there are no written sources of their ancestors.
The further away languages are from each other, the more difficult it is to find genetic links between them. For example, none of the linguists doubts that the Spanish and Italian languages are related, meanwhile, the existence of the Altaic language family (including Turkish and Mongolian languages) is questioned and not recognized by all linguists. At the moment, it is simply impossible to know whether all languages come from the same ancestor. If a single human language existed, then it must have been spoken ten thousand years ago (if not more). This makes comparison extremely difficult or even impossible.
List of language families
Linguists have identified over a hundred major language families (language families that are not considered related to each other). Some of them consist of only a few languages, while others consist of more than a thousand. Here are the main language families of the world.
| language family | range | Languages |
|---|---|---|
| Indo-European | From Europe to India, modernity, by continent | Over 400 languages spoken by nearly 3 billion people. This includes Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, French...), Germanic (English, German, Swedish...), Baltic and Slavic languages (Russian, Polish...), Indo-Aryan languages (Persian, Hindi, Kurdish, Bengali and many other languages spoken from Turkey to northern India), as well as others such as Greek and Armenian. |
| Sino-Tibetan | Asia | Chinese languages, Tibetan and Burmese |
| Niger-Congolese (Niger-Kordofanian, Congo-Kordofanian) | Sub-Saharan Africa | Swahili, Yoruba, Shona, Zulu (Zulu language) |
| Afro-Asiatic (Afro-Asiatic, Semitic-Hamitic) | Middle East, North America | Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew...), Somali (Somali) |
| Austronesian | Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Pacific Ocean, Madagascar | Over a thousand languages including Filipino, Malagasy, Hawaiian, Fijian... |
| Ural | Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, Northern Asia | Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Sami, some languages of Russia (Udmurt, Mari, Komi...) |
| Altai (disputed) | from Turkey to Siberia | Turkic languages (Turkish, Kazakh...), Mongolian languages (Mongolian...), Tungus-Manchu languages, some researchers include here Japanese and Korean |
| Dravidian | South India | Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu |
| thai kadai | Southeast Asia | Thai, Lao |
| Austroasiatic | Southeast Asia | Vietnamese, Khmer |
| Na-Dene (Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit) | North America | Tlingit, Navo |
| tupi (tupi) | South America | Guaranian languages (Guarani languages) |
| Caucasian (disputed) | Caucasus | Three language families. Among the Caucasian languages, the largest number of speakers is Georgian |
Special cases
Isolated languages (isolate languages)
An isolate language is an "orphan": a language that has not been proven to belong to any of the known language families. The best example is the Basque language spoken in Spain and France. Despite being surrounded by Indo-European languages, it is very different from them. Linguists have compared Basque with other languages spoken in Europe, with Caucasians and even with Americans, but no links have been found.
Korean is another well-known isolate, although some linguists suggest a connection with the Altaic languages or Japanese. Japanese is sometimes considered an isolate on its own, but is best described as belonging to a small Japanese family that includes several related languages such as Okinawan.
Pidgin and Creole languages
A pidgin is a simplified communication system that has developed between two or more groups that do not share a common language. It does not come directly from one language, it has absorbed the characteristics of several languages. When children begin to learn a pidgin as their first language, it develops into a full-fledged, stable language called Creole.
Most of the pidgin or creole languages spoken today are the result of colonization. They are based on English, French or Portuguese. One of the most widely spoken Creole languages is Tok Pisin, which is the official language of Papua New Guinea. It is based on English but its grammar is different, its vocabulary including many loanwords from German, Malay, Portuguese and several local languages.
There are a large number of language families and a wide variety of languages in the world. There are more than 6,000 of the latter on the planet. Most of them belong to the largest language families in the world, which are distinguished by lexical and grammatical composition, kinship of origin and the common geographical location of their speakers. However, it should be noted that community of residence is not always an integral factor.
In turn, the language families of the world are divided into groups. They are distinguished in a similar way. There are also languages that do not belong to any of the selected families, as well as the so-called isolated languages. It is also customary for scientists to single out macrofamilies, i.e. groups of language families.
Indo-European family
The most fully studied is the Indo-European language family. It has been isolated since ancient times. However, relatively recently, work began on the study of the Proto-Indo-European language.
The Indo-European language family consists of groups of languages whose speakers live in vast areas of Europe and Asia. So, the German group belongs to them. Its main languages are English and German. Also a large group is Romance, which includes French, Spanish, Italian and other languages. In addition, Eastern European peoples who speak languages of the Slavic group also belong to the Indo-European family. This is Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, etc.
This language family is not the largest in terms of the number of languages included in it. However, these languages are spoken by almost half of the world's population.
Afro-Asian family
The languages that represent the Afro-Asiatic language family are used by more than a quarter of a million people. It includes Arabic, Egyptian, Hebrew, and many others, including extinct languages.
This family is usually divided into five (six) branches. This includes the Semitic branch, Egyptian, Chadian, Cushite, Berber-Libyan and Omot. In general, the Afro-Asiatic family includes more than 300 languages of the African continent and parts of Asia.
However, this family is not the only one on the continent. In large numbers, especially to the south, there are other languages in Africa that are not related to it. There are at least 500 of them. Almost all of them were not presented in writing until the 20th century. and used only orally. Some of them are still exclusively oral.
Nilo-Saharan family
The language families of Africa also include the Nilo-Saharan family. The Nilo-Saharan languages are represented by six language families. One of them is songhai-zarma. The languages and dialects of another - the Saharan family - are common in Central Sudan. There is also a family of mamba, whose carriers inhabit Chad. Another family, Fur, is also common in Sudan.
The most complex is the Shari-Nile language family. It, in turn, is divided into four branches, which consist of language groups. The last family - coma - is common in Ethiopia and Sudan.
The language families represented by the Nilo-Saharan macrofamily have significant differences among themselves. Accordingly, they present a great challenge for linguistic researchers. The languages of this macrofamily were greatly influenced by the Afro-Asiatic macrofamily.
Sino-Tibetan family
The Sino-Tibetan language family has over a million native speakers of its languages. First of all, this became possible due to the large number of the Chinese population speaking Chinese, which is part of one of the branches of this language family. In addition to it, this branch includes the Dungan language. It is they who form a separate branch (Chinese) in the Sino-Tibetan family.
Another branch includes more than three hundred languages, which are distinguished as the Tibeto-Burmese branch. There are approximately 60 million native speakers of its languages.
Unlike Chinese, Burmese and Tibetan, most of the languages of the Sino-Tibetan family do not have a written tradition and are passed down from generation to generation exclusively orally. Despite the fact that this family has been studied deeply and for a long time, it still remains insufficiently studied and hides many secrets that have not yet been revealed.
North and South American languages
At present, as is known, the vast majority of North and South American languages belong to the Indo-European or Romance families. Settling the New World, European colonists brought with them their own languages. However, the dialects of the indigenous population of the American continent did not disappear altogether. Many monks and missionaries who came from Europe to America recorded and systematized the languages and dialects of the local population.
Thus, the languages of the North American continent north of present-day Mexico were represented in the form of 25 language families. In the future, some experts have revised this division. Unfortunately, South America has not been studied as well in terms of language.
Language families of Russia
All the peoples of Russia speak languages belonging to 14 language families. In total, there are 150 different languages and dialects in Russia. The basis of the country's linguistic wealth is made up of four main language families: Indo-European, North Caucasian, Altai, Ural. At the same time, most of the country's population speaks languages \u200b\u200bthat belong to the Indo-European family. This part makes up 87 percent of the total population of Russia. Moreover, the Slavic group occupies 85 percent. It includes Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian, which make up the East Slavic group. These languages are very close to each other. Their carriers can almost easily understand each other. This is especially true for the Belarusian and Russian languages.
Altaic language family
The Altaic language family consists of the Turkic, Tungus-Manchurian and Mongolian language groups. The difference in the number of representatives of their carriers in the country is great. For example, Mongolian is represented in Russia exclusively by Buryats and Kalmyks. But the Turkic group includes several dozen languages. Among them are Khakass, Chuvash, Nogai, Bashkir, Azerbaijani, Yakut and many others.
The group of Tungus-Manchurian languages includes Nanai, Udege, Even and others. This group is under the threat of extinction due to the preference of their native peoples to use Russian on the one hand, and Chinese on the other. Despite the extensive and long study of the Altaic language family, it is extremely difficult for specialists to decide on the reproduction of the Altaic proto-language. This is explained by the large number of borrowings of its speakers from other languages due to close contact with their representatives.
Ural family
The Uralic languages are represented by two large families - Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. The first of them includes Karelians, Mari, Komi, Udmurts, Mordovians and others. The languages of the second family are spoken by Enets, Nenets, Selkups, Nganasans. The carriers of the Ural macrofamily are to a large extent Hungarians (more than 50 percent) and Finns (20 percent).
The name of this family comes from the name of the Ural Range, where it is believed that the formation of the Ural proto-language took place. The languages of the Uralic family had some influence on their neighboring Slavic and Baltic languages. In total, there are more than twenty languages of the Uralic family both in Russia and abroad.
North Caucasian family
The languages of the peoples of the North Caucasus represent a huge difficulty for linguists in terms of their structuring and study. In itself, the concept of a North Caucasian family is rather arbitrary. The fact is that the languages of the local population are too little studied. However, thanks to the painstaking and deep work of many linguists studying this issue, it became clear how fragmented and complex many of the North Caucasian dialects are.
Difficulties concern not only the actual grammar, structure and rules of the language, for example, as in the Tabasaran language - one of the most difficult languages on the planet, but also pronunciation, which is sometimes simply inaccessible to people who do not speak these languages.
A significant obstacle for specialists studying them is the inaccessibility of many mountainous regions of the Caucasus. However, this language family, despite all the contradictions, is usually divided into two groups - Nakh-Dagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe.
Representatives of the first group inhabit mainly the regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. These include Avars, Lezgins, Laks, Dargins, Chechens, Ingush, etc. The second group consists of representatives of kindred peoples - Kabardians, Circassians, Adyghes, Abkhazians, etc.
Other language families
The language families of the peoples of Russia are by no means always extensive, uniting many languages into one family. Many of them are very small and some are even isolated. Such nationalities primarily live in Siberia and the Far East. So, the Chukchi-Kamchatka family unites the Chukchi, Itelmens, and Koryaks. The Aleuts and Eskimos speak Aleut-Eskimo.
A large number of nationalities scattered over the vast territory of Russia, being extremely few in number (several thousand people or even less), have their own languages, which are not included in any known language family. As, for example, the Nivkhs inhabiting the banks of the Amur and Sakhalin, and the Kets, located near the Yenisei.
However, the problem of linguistic extinction in the country continues to threaten the cultural and linguistic diversity of Russia. Not only individual languages, but also entire language families are under the threat of extinction.
Russia is a multinational country, which means it is multilingual. Linguistic scientists count 150 languages - here, such a language as Russian, which is spoken by 97.72% of the population in Russia, and the language of the Negidals, a small people (only 622 people!), Living on the Amur River, are taken into account on an equal footing.
Some languages are very similar: people can speak their own language and at the same time understand each other perfectly, for example, Russian - Belarusian, Tatar - Bashkir, Kalmyk - Buryat. In other languages, although they also have a lot in common - sounds, some words, grammar - it will still not be possible to agree: a Mari with a Mordovian, a Lezghin with an accident. And finally, there are languages - scientists call them isolated - that are not like any other. These are the languages of the Kets, Nivkhs and Yukagirs.
Most of the languages of Russia belong to one of four language families: Indo-European, Altaic, Uralic and North Caucasian. Each family has a common language-ancestor - proto-language. The ancient tribes who spoke such a proto-language moved, mixed with other peoples, and the once single language broke up into several. This is how many languages appeared on Earth.
Let's say a Russian belongs to the Indo-European family. In the same family - English and German, Hindi and Farsi, Ossetian and Spanish (and many, many others). Part of the family is a group of Slavic languages. Here, Czech and Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian, etc. coexist with Russian. And together with closely related Ukrainian and Belarusian, it is included in the subgroup of East Slavic languages. More than 87% of the population speaks Indo-European languages in Russia, but only 2% of them are not Slavic. These are Germanic languages: German and Yiddish (see the plot "Jews in Russia"); Armenian (one makes up a group); Iranian languages: Ossetian, Tat, Kurdish and Tajik; Romance: Moldavian; and even the new Indian languages spoken by the gypsies in Russia.
The Altai family in Russia is represented by three groups: Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu. There are only two peoples who speak Mongolian languages - Kalmyks and Buryats, but one enumeration of Turkic languages \u200b\u200bmay surprise. These are Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, Karachay-Balkar, Nogai, Kumyk, Altai, Khakass, Shor, Tuvan, Tofalar, Yakut, Dolgan, Azerbaijani, etc. Most of these peoples live in Russia. In our country, there are also such Turkic peoples as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, Uzbeks. The Tungus-Manchu languages include Evenki, Even, Negidal, Nanai, Oroch, Orok, Udege and Ulch.
Sometimes the question arises: where is a separate language, and where are only dialects of the same language? For example, many linguists in Kazan believe that Bashkir is a dialect of Tatar, and the same number of specialists in Ufa are convinced that these are two completely independent languages. Such disputes are not only about Tatar and Bashkir.
The Uralic language family includes the Finno-Ugric and Samolian groups. The concept of "Finnish" is conditional - in this case it does not mean the official language of Finland. It’s just that the languages included in this group have related grammars, a similar sound, especially if you don’t make out the words, but listen only to the melody. Finnish languages are spoken by Karelians, Vepsians, Izhors, Vods, Komis, Mariys, Mordovians, Udmurts, Sami. There are two Ugric languages in Russia: Khanty and Mansi (and the third Ugric is spoken by the Hungarians). Samoyedic languages are spoken by the Nenets, Nganasans, Enets, and Selkups. The Yukaghir language is genetically close to the Uralic. These peoples are very small in number, and their languages cannot be heard outside the north of Russia.
The North Caucasian family is a rather arbitrary concept. Unless specialists-linguists understand the ancient relationship of the languages of the Caucasus. These languages have very complex grammar and phonetics of extraordinary difficulty. They contain sounds that are completely inaccessible to people who speak other dialects.
Specialists divide the North Caucasian languages into Nakh-Lagestan and Abkhaz-Adyghe groups. The Vainakhs speak Nakh languages that are understandable to each other - this is the common name for the Chechens and Ingush. (The group got its name from the self-name of the Chechens - Nakhchi.)
Representatives of about 30 peoples live in Dagestan. "Approximately" - because far from all the languages of these peoples have been studied, and very often people determine their nationality precisely by language.
The Dagestan languages include Avar, Andi, Iez, Ginukh, Gunzib, Bezhta, Khvarshinsky, Lak, Dargin, Lezgin, Tabasaran, Agul, Rutul... We named the largest Dagestan languages, but did not list half of them. No wonder this republic was called the "mountain of languages". And a "paradise for linguists": the field of activity for them is boundless here.
The Abkhazian-Adyghe languages are spoken by kindred peoples. On the Adyghes - Kabardians, Adyghes, Circassians, Shapsugs; in Abkhazian - Abkhazians and Abaza. But not everything is so simple in this classification. Kabardians, Adyghes, Circassians and Shapsugs consider themselves to be a single people - Adyghes - with one language, Adyghe, and official sources name four Adyghe peoples.
There are languages in Russia that are not included in any of the four families. These are primarily the languages of the peoples of Siberia and the Far East. All of them are few. The Chukchi-Kamchatka languages are spoken by the Chukchi, Koryaks and Itelmens; in Eskimo-Aleut - Eskimos and Aleuts. The languages of the Kets on the Yenisei and the Nivkhs on Sakhalin and the Amur are not included in any language family.
There are many languages, and in order for people to agree, a common one is needed. In Russia, it has become Russian, for Russians are the most numerous people in the country and they live in all its corners. It is the language of great literature, science and international communication.
Languages, of course, are equal, but even the richest country cannot publish, for example, books on all issues in the language of several hundred people. Or even tens of thousands. In a language spoken by millions, this is feasible.
Many peoples of Russia have lost or are losing their languages, especially representatives of small peoples. So, they almost forgot the native language of the Chu-lymys - a small Turkic-speaking people in Siberia. The list is unfortunately long. In the cities of Russia, the Russian language becomes common for the multinational population. And most of all the only one. However, recently national cultural and educational societies have taken care of their own languages in large centers. They usually organize Sunday schools for children.
Most of the languages of Russia until the 20s. 20th century had no writing. Georgians, Armenians, Jews had their own alphabet. The Latin alphabet (Latin alphabet) was written by the Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns. Some languages do not have a written language even now.
The first attempts to create a written language for the peoples of Russia were made even before the revolution, but they seriously took up this in the 1920s: they reformed the Arabic script, adapting it to the phonetics of the Turkic languages. It did not fit the languages of the Yarods of the Caucasus. They developed the Latin alphabet, but there were not enough letters for the exact designation of sounds in the languages of small peoples. From 1936 to 1941, the languages of the peoples of Russia (and the USSR) were translated into the Slavic alphabet (except for those that had their own, moreover, ancient), added superscript signs, tall straight sticks to indicate guttural sounds, and strange combinations of letters for the Russian eye like "ь" and "ь" after vowels. It was believed that a single alphabet helped to better master the Russian language. Recently, some languages have begun to use the Latin alphabet again. (For a detailed classification, see the volume "Linguistics. Russian Language" of the "Encyclopedia for Children".)
Languages of the peoples of Russia
1. Indo-European languages
o Slavic (namely East Slavic) - Russian (about 120 million speakers according to the 1989 census)
o Germanic languages - Yiddish (Jewish)
o Iranian languages - Ossetian, Talysh, Tat (language of Tats and Mountain Jews)
o Indo-Aryan languages - Romani
2. Uralic languages
o Finno-Ugric languages
§ Mari
§ Sami
§ Mordovian languages - Moksha, Erzya
§ Ob-Ugric languages - Mansi, Khanty
§ Permian languages - Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak, Udmurt
§ Baltic-Finnish - Vepsian, Votic, Izhorian, Karelian
o Samoyedic languages - Nganasan, Nenets, Selkup, Enets
3. Turkic languages- Altai, Bashkir, Dolgan, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, Tatar, Tofalar, Tuva, Khakass, Chuvash, Shor, Yakut
4. Tungus-Manchu languages- Nanai, Negidal, Orok, Oroch, Udege, Ulch, Evenk, Even
5. Mongolian languages- Buryat, Kalmyk
6. Yenisei languages- Ket
7. Chukchi-Kamchatka languages- Alyutor, Itelmen, Kerek, Koryak, Chukchi
8. Eskimo-Aleut languages- Aleutian, Eskimo
9. Yukaghir language
10. Nivkh language
11. North Caucasian languages
o Abkhazian-Adyghe languages - Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardino-Circassian
o Nakh-Dagetan languages
§ Nakh languages - Batsbi, Ingush, Chechen
§ Dagestan languages
§ Avar
§ Andean languages - Andian, Akhvakh, Bagvalin (Kvanadin), Botlikh, Godoberin, Karata, Tindin, Chamalin
language family is a group of languages that are united linguistically, having one common ancestor language, called parent language.
Most languages in the world belong to some language family. Languages that are not clearly related to other languages, and which cannot be placed in any family, are called isolate languages
.
Creole languages -
these are the only languages in the world that can neither be called isolates nor attributed to any language family. They form a special type of language.
"related languages" and "proto-language"
Genetic connections
If we compare, for example, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, we will find a striking similarity between them, which indicates belonging to one language family. This "family resemblance" does not show up when comparing French and German. But if we again compare German, English, Dutch, Swedish and Danish, we again find a "family resemblance" between these languages.
The basic idea is that these languages are similar in that they all evolved from a common, once-existing language (also called parent language). We know the common origin from latin) of the five languages mentioned in the first case, which today are called Romance languages, but we have no written evidence of the ancestor language of the four languages in the second example, today called Germanic languages, although we have every reason to believe that one existed. Linguists manage to establish genetic classifications by comparing languages and trying to determine permanent rules of similarity (and difference). This method is called comparative linguistics. The classification of languages into groups is called genetic classification: two languages belonging to the same group are genetically related.
deceptive resemblance
However, the following must be kept in mind. The similarity between two or more languages can happen both in terms of their genetic connection (features of similarity come from a common trait in the past), but there may be other sources of similarity:
- borrowing: the fact that the French sloo tomate sounds like an Aztec word tomatl does not prove that these languages are related to each other, but shows that they were in contact. The name that the plant brought to Europe received came from the name of the people where this plant grows. Therefore, the French language "borrowed" the word from another language and adapted it.
- random resemblance: Languages have limited sound systems to express thousands of complex concepts. If we randomly choose two languages that are not at all similar to one another, we will always find 3 or 4 words that are similar in form and meaning.
Therefore, one can speak of a genetic connection only if there are several similarities in different directions, even partial, and not single, but conspicuous.
Language family groups, extended families
Since there are closely related languages that originated from the same ancestor language 1000 or 2000 years ago, it can be assumed that there are other related languages that originate from the same ancestor language of an earlier period. In the 19th century, by emphasizing systematic and converging commonalities in languages, several linguists succeeded in discovering the existence of a large language families – Indo-European. This is the first discovered language family, which includes: Romance, Germanic, Slavic languages, Greek and others. And if you are surprised that French and Russian share the same ancestor language, then try comparing French and Nepali, or Pashto and Kurdish! Despite the differences between these languages, they all belong to Indo-European family languages. Belonging to the same family does not necessarily mean obvious similarities, or a standard level of understanding between speakers of these languages.
Classification
Some groups of languages may have many subdivisions within them. These divisions are sometimes referred to as "families" or "sub-families", sometimes creating misunderstandings. When referring to internal divisions, the following terms may be used. At present, there is no consensus on the correct use of these terms: the division of languages can be called " group», « branch», « subgroup" etc. If a family forms a large number of languages and internal divisions, then we can already talk about " superfamily" or " macrofamily". For example, as in the case of Niger-Congolese family of languages, which consists of 1300 - 1500 languages (the number depends on the sources) and represents 1/5 or even ¼ of all the world's languages.
It is possible to refer to the same group of the same family of languages languages that are very far from each other geographically, and which are spoken even on different continents. For example, the Eskimo-Aleut family includes the languages of Eastern Siberia and Alaska, which are on the other side of the Pacific Ocean - which are separated by thousands of kilometers of ocean. Actually Eskimo-Aleut languages can be found throughout North America from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast and even in Greenland. Likewise, languages Austronesian family languages are common on the islands of the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and even Madagascar, which is located next to the African continent!
On the other hand, in some regions of the globe one can observe a great variety and complexity of genetically related languages. For example, in Europe there are three families of languages, and in all American continent contains almost half of the world's languages, although these 400 languages are spoken by about 25 million people. Many families of Amerindian languages consist of less than 15 languages. IN Papua New Guinea, the territory of which is twice the territory of France - from 600 to 800 languages, which make up about twenty families. It should be noted that this discrepancy is the result of the "isolation" of some peoples, but also the lack of information about these languages, which makes it difficult to classify them.
It is also necessary to keep in mind that the classification of languages is a source of constant disputes and discussions between linguists, so the number of language families may and their composition may differ depending on the source.
