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 the 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 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), superscript signs, tall straight sticks to indicate guttural sounds, and combinations of letters strange 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, Tuvan, 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
language family
The language family is the largest unit of classification of peoples (ethnic groups) on the basis of their linguistic kinship - the common origin of their languages from the alleged base language. Language families are divided into language groups.
The largest in number is the Indo-European language family, which includes language groups:
- Romanesque: French, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Moldavians, Romanians, etc.;
- Germanic: Germans, British, Scandinavians, etc.;
- Slavic: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, etc.
The second largest is the Sino-Tibetan language family, with the largest Chinese language group.
The Altaic language family includes a large Turkic language group: Turks, Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Kazakhs, Turkmens, Uzbeks, Kirghiz, Yakuts, etc.
The Uralic language family includes the Finno-Ugric group: Finns, Estonians, Hungarians, Komi, etc.
The Semitic group belongs to the Semitic-Hamitic language family: Arabs, Jews, Ethiopians, etc.
Synonyms: family of peoples
See also: Ethnoses Languages
Finam Financial Dictionary.
See what the "Language Family" is in other dictionaries:
Language systematics is an auxiliary discipline that helps to organize the objects studied by linguistics - languages, dialects and groups of languages. The result of this ordering is also called the taxonomy of languages. The taxonomy of languages is based on ... ... Wikipedia
See language family... Handbook of etymology and historical lexicology
language family- a set of languages \u200b\u200bthat goes back to a single parent language that can be reconstructed ... Physical Anthropology. Illustrated explanatory dictionary.
The largest unit of classification of peoples on the basis of linguistic proximity. The Biggest Me" p. Indo-European, the languages of this family are used by 2.5 billion people. It includes Romance, Germanic, Slavic and other language groups. In the second on ... ... Geographic Encyclopedia
Otho Mang languages Taxon: family Status: generally recognized Range: Mexico (all regions), formerly Mesoamerica and Central America Classification ... Wikipedia
Indo-European taxon: family Ancestral home: Indo-European ranges of Kentum (blue) and Satem (red). The estimated original area of satemization is shown in bright red. Range: the whole world ... Wikipedia
Caucasian languages is a conventional name for the languages of the Caucasus that are not included in any of the known language families distributed outside the Caucasus (Indo-European, Altaic or Semitic). Contents 1 Classification 2 External Relations 3 ... Wikipedia
Books
- , Bondarenko Grigory Vladimirovich. The book is devoted to the basics of traditional ancient Irish culture, myths and daily life of the ancient Irish society. The most diverse aspects of the traditional worldview and ...
- Myths and Society of Ancient Ireland, Bondarenko GV This book will be produced in accordance with your order using Print-on-Demand technology. The book is dedicated to the basics of traditional ancient Irish culture, myths and everyday life ...
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 it 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.
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 language groups may have many divisions 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. AT 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.
Term language family I first heard from my neighbor. The most interesting thing was that he himself did not know what it was and turned to me for help. Feeling embarrassed, I replied that I myself did not know what a language family was, but promised to look into it.
What is a language family
A language family, or rather, language families (since there are many) is association of related languages. And all these large groups of related languages originate from one language ( language - ancestor). The kinship of languages began to be studied in eighteenth century and began with the study of the ancient language of India - Sanskrit. The language family is divided into subfamilies and groups.
The special science of comparative linguistics discovers the historical connections of languages. It is likely that thousands of years ago there was only one language spoken by the people of that time. There is a special map of language families around the world. Linguistic scholars have found about a hundred language families. So, the main ones are:
- Indo-European(the largest, from Europe to India, includes about four hundred languages).
- Afro-Asian(Afghanistan, Egypt, ).
- Altai(Russia, ).
- Sino-Tibetan( , Kyrgyzstan).
- Ural(Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian).
- Austroasiatic( , ).
It is possible that not all families are on this list, but at least the main part of them. Scientists still cannot decide on this issue.
Isolate languages or isolated languages
it language with unproven belonging to no family. They are also called orphan language. For example, the inhabitants of Spain and France speak Basque. This is a dialect different from all European languages. Linguistic scholars have compared it to every possible language spoken in Europe, America and the Caucasus, but absolutely no connection has been found.
At the end of the answer, I want to talk about the pidgin. This language is also called Creole. It is the result of colonization, when local children begin to talk in two languages at once. In the native language and in the language of the colonizing country. The result is one mixed language.
