What is a language family? Major language families of the world.

I think many of us have heard the famous legend about the construction of the Tower of Babel, during which people, with their quarrels and squabbles, so angered God that he divided their single language into a great multitude, so that, not being able to communicate with each other, people could not even swear . This is how we settled all over the world, each nation with its own language, culture and traditions.

According to official figures, there are now between 2,796 and more than 7,000 languages in the world. Such a big difference comes from the fact that scientists cannot decide what exactly is considered a language, and what is a dialect or adverb. Translation agencies often face the nuances of translating from rare languages.

In 2017, there are approximately 240 language groups, or families. The largest and most numerous of them - Indo-European, to which our Russian language belongs. A language family is a set of languages that are united by the sound similarity of the roots of words and similar grammar. The basis of the Indo-European family is English and German, which form the backbone of the Germanic group. In general, this language family unites the peoples occupying the main part of Europe and Asia.

It also includes such common Romance languages as Spanish, French, Italian and others. The Russian language is part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family along with Ukrainian, Belarusian and others. The Indo-European group is not the largest in terms of the number of languages, but they are spoken by almost half of the world's population, which makes it possible for it to bear the title of "most numerous".

The next family of languages unites more than 250,000 people - this is afro-asian a family that includes Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic and many other languages, including extinct ones. This group consists of more than 300 languages of Asia and Africa, and it is divided into Egyptian, Semitic, Cushitic, Omotian, Chadian and Berber-Libyan branches. However, the Afro-Asiatic family of languages does not include about 500 dialects and adverbs used in Africa, often only in oral form.

Next in terms of prevalence and complexity of study - Nilo-Saharan family of languages spoken in Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia. Since the languages of these lands have significant differences between themselves, their study is not only of great interest, but also of great difficulty for linguists.

Over a million native speakers includes Sino-Tibetan group of languages Tibeto-Burmese the branch has more than 300 languages, which are spoken by as many as 60 million people worldwide! Some of the languages of this given family still do not have their own written language and exist only in oral form. This greatly complicates their study and research.

The languages and dialects of the peoples of Russia belong to 14 language families, the main of which are Indo-European, Uralic, North Caucasian and Altaic.

About 87% of the population of Russia belongs to the Indo-European language family, and 85% of it is occupied by the Slavic group of languages (Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Ukrainians), followed by the Iranian group (Tajiks, Kurds, Ossetians), the Romance group (Gypsies, Moldovans) and German group (Yiddish-speaking Jews, Germans).
The Altai language family (approximately 6.8% of the population of Russia) is made up of the Turkic group (Altaians, Yakuts, Tuvans, Shors, Chuvashs, Balkars, Karachays), the Mongolian group (Kalmyks, Buryats), the Tungus-Manchu group (Evenks, Evens, Nanais) and the Paleo-Asiatic group of languages (Koryak, Chukchi). Some of these languages are currently under the threat of extinction, as their speakers are partly switching to Russian, partly to Chinese.
The Uralic language family (2% of the population) is represented by the Finnish group of languages (Komi, Margey, Karelians, Komi-Permyaks, Mordovians), Ugric (Khanty, Mansi) and Samoyedic groups (Nenets, Selkups). More than 50% of the Uralic language family are Hungarians and about 20% are Finns. This includes the linguistic groups of peoples living in the regions of the Ural Range.

The Caucasian language family (2%) includes the Kartvelian group (Georgians), the Dagestan group (Lezgins, Dargins, Laks, Avars), the Adyghe-Abkhazian (Abkhazians, Adyghes, Kabardians, Circassians) and the Nakh groups (Ingush, Chechens). The study of the languages of the Caucasian family is associated with great difficulties for linguists, and therefore the languages of the local population are still very little studied.

Difficulties are caused not only by grammar or the rules for constructing the language of a given family, but also by pronunciation, which is often simply inaccessible to people who do not know this type of language. Certain difficulties in terms of study are also created by the inaccessibility of some mountainous regions of the North Caucasus.

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 the 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.

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINE

STATE UNIVERSITY

CHAIR OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY

MAIN LANGUAGE FAMILIES

Performed

5th year student

OKU "Master"

specialty

"Language and Literature

(English)"

Introduction

1. Indo-European languages

1.1. Indo-Aryan languages

1.2. Iranian languages

1.3. Romance languages

1.4. Celtic languages

1.5. Germanic languages

1.6. Baltic languages

1.7. Slavic languages

1.8. Armenian language

1.9. Greek language

2. Sino-Tibetan family

3. Finno-Ugric family

4. Turkic family

5. Semitic-Hamitic (Afrasian) family

List of used literature

Introduction

It should be noted that there are about 20 language families in total. The largest of them is the Indo-European family, whose languages are spoken by about 45% of the world's population. Its distribution area is also the largest. It covers Europe, Southwest and South Asia, North and South America, Australia. The most numerous group within this family is Indo-Aryan, which includes the Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, and other languages. The Romance group, which includes Spanish, Italian, French, and some other languages, is also very large. The same can be said about the German group (English, German and a number of other languages), the Slavic group (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, etc.), the Iranian group (Persian, Tajik, Baloch, etc.).

The second largest speaker is the Sino-Tibetan (Sino-Tibetan) family, whose languages are used by 22% of all inhabitants of the planet. It is clear that such a large share in the world is provided by the Chinese language.

The large ones also include the Niger-Kordofan family (distributed in Africa, south of the Sahara), the Afroasian family (mainly in the Near and Middle East), the Austronesian family (mainly in Southeast Asia and Oceania), the Dravidian family (in South Asia), Altai family (in Asia and Europe).

Currently, there are more than two and a half thousand languages. The exact number of languages has not been established, as this is a very difficult process. Until now, there are territories that are poorly studied linguistically. These include some areas of Australia, Oceania, South America. Therefore, the study and study of the origin of languages is very relevant.

1. Andpre-European languages

Indo-European languages are one of the largest families of Eurasian languages (about 200 languages). They have also spread over the past five centuries to North and South America, Australia, and partly Africa. The most active was the expansion of the languages of English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, which led to the emergence of Indo-European speech on all continents. The top 20 most widely spoken languages (counting both their native speakers and those who use them as a second language in interethnic and international communication) now include English, Hindi and Urdu, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, French, Punjabi, Italian, Ukrainian.

The Indo-European (according to the tradition adopted among German scientists, Indo-Germanic) family of languages is the most well studied: based on the study of its languages in the 20s. 19th century comparative historical linguistics began to take shape, the research methods and techniques of which were then transferred to other language families. The founders of Indo-European and comparative studies include the Germans Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm, the Dane Rasmus Christian Rask and the Russian Alexander Khristoforovich Vostokov.

Comparativists aim to establish the nature and degree of similarity (primarily material, but also to some extent typological) of the studied languages, to find out the ways of its emergence (from a common source or due to convergence as a result of long-term contacts) and the reasons for the divergence (divergence) and convergence. (convergence) between the languages of the same family, to reconstruct the proto-linguistic state (in the form of a set of archetypes as a kind of matrix in which the accumulated knowledge about the internal structure of the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European is recorded) and to trace the directions of subsequent development.

Today, it is most often believed that the area of \u200b\u200bthe initial or rather early distribution of speakers of the Indo-European language extended from Central Europe and the Northern Balkans to the Black Sea region (South Russian steppes). At the same time, some researchers believe that the initial center of irradiation of Indo-European languages and cultures lay in the Middle East, in close proximity to the speakers of Kartvelian, Afroasian and, probably, Dravidian and Ural-Altaic languages. The traces of these contacts give grounds for putting forward the Nostratic hypothesis.

Indo-European linguistic unity could have as its source either a single proto-language, a base language (or, rather, a group of closely related dialects), or a situation of a linguistic union as a result of the development of a number of originally different languages. Both perspectives, in principle, do not contradict each other, one of them usually prevails at a certain period in the development of a linguistic community.

Relations between members of the Indo-European family were constantly changing due to frequent migrations, and therefore the classification of Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bthat is currently accepted must be adjusted when referring to different stages in the history of this linguistic community. For earlier periods, the proximity of the Indo-Aryan and Iranian, Baltic and Slavic languages is characteristic, the proximity of the Italic and Celtic languages is less noticeable. The Baltic, Slavic, Thracian, Albanian and Indo-Iranian languages have many common features, and the Italic and Celtic languages have Germanic, Venetian, and Illyrian languages.

The main features characterizing the relatively ancient state of the Indo-European source language:

a) In phonetics: functioning of [e] and [o] as variants of the same phoneme; the probability of vowels having no phonemic status at an earlier stage; special role [a] in the system; the presence of laryngeal, the disappearance of which led to the opposition of long and short vowels, as well as to the appearance of melodic stress; distinction between stop voiced, voiceless and aspirated; the difference between the three rows of posterior linguals, the tendency to palatalization and labialization of consonants in certain positions;

b) In morphology: heteroclitic declination; probable presence of ergative (active) case; a relatively simple case system and the later appearance of a number of indirect cases from combinations of a name with a postposition, etc.; the proximity of the nominative in -s and the genitive with the same element; the presence of an "indefinite" case; the opposition of the animate and inanimate classes, which gave rise to the three-kind system; the presence of two series of verb forms, which led to the development of thematic and athematic conjugation, transitivity/intransitivity, activity/inactivity; the presence of two series of personal endings of the verb, which caused the differentiation of the present and past tense, mood forms; the presence of forms on -s, which led to the appearance of one of the classes of present stems, the sigmatic aorist, a number of mood forms and derived conjugation;

with) In syntax: interdependence of the places of the members of the proposal; the role of particles and preverbs; the beginning of the transition of a number of full-value words into service elements; some initial features of analytics.

1 .1 Indo-Aryan languages

Indo-Aryan languages (Indian) - a group of related languages, dating back to the ancient Indian language.

The Indo-Aryan (Indian) languages (more than 40) include: the Apabhransha language group, Assami languages, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Vedic, Gujarati, Magahi, Maithili, Maldivian, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Pali, Punjabi, Pahari language group, Sanskrit, Sinhalese, Sindhi, Urdu, Hindi, Romani. Areas of distribution of living Indian languages: northern and central India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Republic of Maldives, Nepal. The total number of speakers is 770 million people.

All of them date back to the ancient Indian language and, together with the Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani languages, belong to the Indo-Iranian linguistic community. The oldest period of development is represented by the Vedic language (the language of worship, from the 12th century BC) and Sanskrit (epic period: 3-2 centuries BC; epigraphic period: the first centuries of our era; classical period: 4- 5th century AD). language Turkic Indo-European grammar

Features of modern Indian languages:

a)ATphonetics: number of phonemes from 30 to 50: preservation of aspirated and cerebral consonant classes; rare opposition of long and short vowels; the absence of an initial combination of consonants;

b)ATmorphology: the loss of the old inflection, the development of analytical forms and the creation of a new inflection;

c)ATsyntax: fixed position of the verb; widespread use of official words;

d)ATvocabulary: the presence of words dating back to Sanskrit and external borrowings (from non-Aryan languages of India, from Arabic, Persian, English); the formation of a number of local language unions (Himalayan, etc.); the presence of numerous alphabets, historically dating back to the Brahmi.

1 .2 Iranian languages

Iranian languages are a group of languages that go back to the reconstructed Old Iranian language, which is part of the Aryan branch of the Indo-European family. Iranian languages are spoken in the Middle East, Central Asia, Pakistan and the Caucasus among the Iranian peoples, whose number is currently estimated at about 150 million people.

Iranian languages (more than 60) include Avestan, Azeri, Alanian, Bactrian, Bashkardi, Balochi, Vanj, Wakhani, Gilan, Dari, Old Persian, Zaza (language/dialect), Ishkashim, Kumzari (language/dialect), Kurdish, Mazanderan, Median, Munjan, Ormuri, Ossetian, Pamir language group, Parachi, Parthian, Persian, Pashto/Pashto, Sangisari language/dialect, Sargulyam, Semnan, Sivendi (language/dialect), Scythian, Sogdian, Middle Persian, Tajik, Tajrish ( language/dialect), Talysh, Tat, Khorezmian, Khotanosak, Shugnano-Rushan group of languages, Yagnob, Yazgulyam, etc.

Features of Iranian languages:

a)in phonetics: preservation in the ancient Iranian languages of the subsequently lost correlation of duration; preservation in consonantism mainly of the proto-language system; the development in later languages of aspiration correlations presented in different languages is not the same.

b)in morphology: at the ancient stage - inflectional shaping and ablaut of the root and suffix; multi-type declension and conjugation; the trinity of the system of number and gender; multi-case inflectional paradigm; the use of inflections, suffixes, augment, different types of stems to build verb forms; the beginnings of analytical constructions; in later languages - the unification of the types of formation; death of the ablaut; binary systems of number and gender (up to the extinction of the gender in a number of languages); the formation of new verbal analytical and secondary inflectional forms based on participles; the variety of indicators of person and number of the verb; new formal indicators of liability, pledge, specific characteristics, time.

c)in syntax: the presence of a safe design; the presence in a number of languages of ergative sentence construction.

The first written monuments from the 6th c. BC. Cuneiform for Old Persian; Middle Persian (and a number of other languages) monuments (from the 2nd to 3rd centuries AD) in a variety of Aramaic writing; a special alphabet based on Middle Persian for Avestan texts.

1 .3 Romance languages

Romance languages are a group of languages and dialects that are part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family and genetically ascend to a common ancestor - Latin. The name Romance comes from the Latin word Romanus (Roman).

The Romance group unites the languages that arose on the basis of Latin:

Aromanian (Aromunian),

· Galician,

Gascon,

Dalmatian (extinct at the end of the 19th century),

Spanish,

Istro-Romanian

Italian,

· Catalan,

Ladino (language of the Jews of Spain)

Megleno-Romanian (Meglenite),

· Moldavian,

Portuguese,

Provençal (Occitan)

· Romansh; they include: Swiss, or Western, Romansh / Graubünden / Curval / Romansh, represented by at least two varieties - Surselv / Obwald and Upper Engadine, sometimes subdivided into more languages;

Tyrolean, or Central, Romansh / Ladin / Dolomite / Trentino and

Friulian/Eastern Romansh, often classified as a separate group,

Romanian,

Sardinian (Sardinian),

Franco-Provençal

· French.

Literary languages have their own variants: French - in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada; Spanish - in Latin America, Portuguese - in Brazil.

More than 10 creole languages arose on the basis of French, Portuguese, Spanish.

In Spain and Latin American countries, these languages are often referred to as Neo-Latin. The total number of speakers is about 580 million people. More than 60 countries use Romance languages as national or official languages.

Zones of distribution of Romance languages:

· "Old Romania": Italy, Portugal, almost all of Spain, France, south of Belgium, west and south of Switzerland, the main territory of Romania, almost all of Moldova, separate inclusions in the north of Greece, south and northwest of Yugoslavia;

· "New Romania": part of North America (Quebec in Canada, Mexico), almost all of Central America and South America, most of the Antilles;

· Countries that were colonies, where the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese), without displacing the local ones, became official - almost all of Africa, small territories in South Asia and Oceania.

The Romance languages are the continuation and development of the vernacular Latin speech in the territories that became part of the Roman Empire. Their history shows trends towards differentiation (divergence) and integration (convergence).

Main features of the Romance languages:

a)in phonetics: the common Romansh system has 7 vowels (the best preservation in Italian); the development of specific vowels (nasals in French and Portuguese, labialized front vowels in French, Provençal, Romansh; mixed vowels in Balkan-Romanian); the formation of diphthongs; reduction of unstressed vowels (especially final ones); open/close neutralization e and about in unstressed syllables; simplification and transformation of consonant groups; the emergence of affricates as a result of palatalization, which in some languages have become fricative; weakening or reduction of the intervocalic consonant; weakening and reduction of the consonant in the outcome of the syllable; a tendency towards openness of the syllable and limited compatibility of consonants; a tendency to phonetically link words in a speech stream (especially in French);

b)in morphology: preservation of inflection with a strong tendency towards analyticism; the name has 2 numbers, 2 genders, the absence of a case category (except for the Balkan-Romance), the transfer of object relations by prepositions; a variety of forms of the article; preservation of the case system for pronouns; agreement of adjectives with names in gender and number; formation of adverbs from adjectives through the suffix -mente (except for Balkan-Romanian); a branched system of analytical verb forms; the typical scheme of a Romance verb contains 16 tenses and 4 moods; 2 pledges; peculiar impersonal forms;

c)in syntax: word order is fixed in some cases; the adjective usually follows the noun; determinatives precede the verb (except for the Balkan-Romance ones).

1 .4 Celtic languages

The Celtic group is formed by the languages of Breton, Welsh (Cymric), Gaulish, Gaelic, Irish, Celtiberian, Cornish, Cumbrian, Lepontian, Manx (K)sky, Pictish, Scottish (Aeric). In the 1st millennium BC. Celtic languages were distributed in a significant part of Europe (now it is part of Germany, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, northern Italy), reaching in the east to the Carpathians and through the Balkans to Asia Minor. Later, the zone of their distribution was greatly reduced; the Manx, Cornish, Celtiberian, Lepontian, and Gallic languages became extinct. Living languages are Irish, Gaelic, Welsh and Breton. Irish is one of the official languages in Ireland. Welsh is used in the press and on the radio, Breton and Gaelic are used in everyday communication.

The vocalism of the Neo-Celtic languages is characterized by interaction with neighboring consonants. As a result of this, rounding, palatalization, permutation, narrowing, contact nasalization, etc., have become widespread (in diachrony and synchrony). Some of these phenomena, as the causes that caused them disappear, turn into morphological means for expressing number, case, kind, etc.

Insular languages sharply deviate from the ancient Indo-European type: numerous combinatorial changes (aspiration, palatalization and labialization of consonants); infixation of pronouns in verb forms; "conjugated" prepositions; specific use of verbal names; word order. These and many other features distinguish the Celtic languages from the Indo-European ones. languages (explanations: influence of non-Indo-European substratum; historical innovations). Preservation of a number of archaic features. Changes in living languages: loss of the opposition of personal absolute and conjunctive verb endings in many forms of tenses and moods (Irish).

1.5 Germanic languages

The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European family. Distributed in a number of Western European countries (Great Britain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein), North. America (USA, Canada), southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia), Asia (India), Australia, New Zealand. The total number of speakers as native is about 550 million people.

Modern Germanic languages are divided into 2 subgroups: West Germanic and North Germanic (Scandinavian).

West Germanic languages include English, Frisian, High German (German), Dutch, Boer, Flemish, and Yiddish.

English language is the native language of the majority of the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain - England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, USA. In addition, English is spoken as an official language in the Republic of South Africa, the Republic of India and Pakistan.

Frisian distributed among the population of the Friesland Islands in the North Sea. The literary Frisian language developed on the basis of West Frisian dialects.

High German is the native language of the population of Germany, Austria and a significant part of Switzerland, as well as the literary language of the urban population of the northern regions of Germany; the rural population of these areas still speaks a special dialect called Low German or Platdeutsch. In the Middle Ages, Low German was the language of an extensive folk fiction, which has come down to us in a number of works of art.

Dutch Language is the native language of the Dutch people.

Afrikaans, also called "Afrikaans", it is distributed over a large territory of the Republic of South Africa. The Boer language, which is close to Dutch, is spoken by the Boers or Afrikaners, the descendants of the Dutch colonists who left Holland in the 17th century.

Flemish very close to Dutch. It is spoken by the population of the northern part of Belgium and parts of the Netherlands. Along with French, Flemish is the official language of the Belgian state.

Yiddish- the language of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, which developed in the 10th - 12th centuries on the basis of Middle High German dialects.

North Germanic languages include: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese.

Swedish- this is the native language of the Swedish people and the population of the coastal strip of Finland, where representatives of the ancient Swedish tribes moved in the distant past. Of the Swedish dialects that exist at the present time, the dialect of the inhabitants of the island of Gotland, the so-called Gutnic dialect, stands out sharply for its features. Modern Swedish is made up of German words written and arranged according to English grammar. The active Swedish dictionary is not very large.

Danish is the native language of the Danish people and was for several centuries the state and literary language of Norway, which was part of the Danish state from the end of the 14th century. until 1814

Swedish and Danish, which were close in the past, but have diverged significantly at the present time, are sometimes combined into a subgroup of East Scandinavian languages.

Norwegian, the native language of the Norwegian people, is spoken throughout Norway. Due to the special historical conditions for the development of the Norwegian people, forced to be under the rule of the Danes for almost 400 years, the development of the Norwegian language was greatly delayed. Currently, Norway is in the process of forming a single national Norwegian language, which in its features occupies an intermediate position between the Swedish and Danish languages.

in Icelandic says the people of Iceland. The ancestors of modern Icelanders were Norwegians who settled here in the 10th century. During almost a thousand years of independent development, the Icelandic language has acquired a number of new features that significantly distinguish it from the Norwegian language, and has also retained many features characteristic of the Old Norse language, while the Norwegian language has lost them. All this has led to the fact that the difference between Norwegian and (New) Icelandic is now very significant.

Faroese, common in the Faroe Islands, which lie north of the Shetland Islands, like Icelandic, retained many features of the Old Norse language, from which it broke away.

The languages Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese are sometimes combined on the basis of their origin into one group called the West Norse language group. However, the facts of the modern Norwegian language show that in its present state it is much closer to Swedish and Danish than to Icelandic and Faroese.

Distinctive features of the Germanic languages:

a)in phonetics: dynamic stress on the first (root) syllable; reduction of unstressed syllables; assimilative variation of vowels, which led to historical alternations in umlaut (by row) and refraction (by degree of rise); common German consonant movement;

b)in morphology: wide use of ablaut in inflection and word formation; the formation (next to a strong preterite) of a weak preterite by means of a dental suffix; distinguishing between strong and weak declensions of adjectives; manifestation of a tendency to analyticism;

c)in word formation: the special role of nominal word formation (basic composition); the prevalence of suffixation in nominal word production and prefixation in verb word production; the presence of a conversion (especially in English);

d)in syntax: tendency to fix word order;

e)in vocabulary: layers of native Indo-European and common Germanic, borrowings from the Celtic, Latin, Greek, French languages.

1.6 Baltic languages

The Baltic group (the name belongs to G. G. F. Nesselman, 1845) includes the languages Latvian, Lithuanian, Prussian.

Modern Baltic languages are common in the eastern Baltic (Lithuania, Latvia, the north-eastern part of Poland - Suvalkia, partly Belarus).

Modern Baltic languages are represented by Lithuanian and Latvian (sometimes Latgalian is also distinguished). Among the extinct Baltic languages are Prussian (before the 18th century; East Prussia), Yatvingian, or Sudavian (before the 18th century; northeast Poland, southern Lithuania, adjacent regions of Belarus), Curonian (before the middle of the 17th century; on the coast Baltic Sea within modern Lithuania and Latvia), Selonian, or Selian (documents of the 13th-15th centuries; part of eastern Latvia and northeast Lithuania), Galindian, or Golyadsky (in Russian chronicles "golyad"; documents of the 14th century; southern Prussia and, probably, the basin of the Protva River).

Features of the Baltic languages:

a)ATphonetics: essential are the oppositions of palatalized and non-palatalized, simple consonants and affricates, tense and relaxed, long and short vowels; the presence of intonation oppositions; the possibility of clustering up to 3 consonants at the beginning of a syllable; the presence of closed and open syllables;

b)ATmorphology: the use of quantitative and qualitative alternation of vowels in the verb; names have movement of stress, change of intonation; richness of suffix inventory; remnants of the middle gender; 2 numbers; 7 cases, including instrumental, locative and vocative); 3 degrees of gradation; 5 types of stems for nouns; distinction between adjective nominal and pronominal types of declension; moods are indicative, conditional, desirable, imperative, and in Latvian, ascending to the Finno-Ugric substratum, obligatory and paraphrasing; pledges real, reflexive, passive; diverse types of tenses and moods;

c)ATsyntax: precedence of the genitive to other cases in the chain of names;

d)ATvocabulary: most of the words from the original I.-e. vocabulary; practically unified dictionary of the Baltic languages; significant commonality of the Baltic and Slavic vocabulary; borrowings from Finno-Ugric languages, German, Polish, Russian.

1.7 Slavic languages

The Slavic group includes Belarusian, Bulgarian, Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian, Macedonian, Polabian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Old Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, Czech.

Slavic languages are widespread in Europe and Asia (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, as well as the states of Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Austria). Native speakers of Slavic languages also live in the countries of America, Africa, and Australia. The total number of speakers is about 300 million people.

The Slavic languages, according to the degree of their proximity to each other, form groups: East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian), South Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, or Serbian and Croatian, Slovenian) and West Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish with Kashubian, Upper and Lower Lusatian).

general characteristicsSlavic languages

a)Grammar

Grammatically, the Slavic languages, with the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, have a highly developed system of noun inflections, up to seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional, and vocative). The verb in the Slavic languages has three simple tenses (past, present and future), but is also characterized by such a complex characteristic as aspect. The verb can be imperfective or perfective, indicating the completion of the action of the species. Participles and gerunds are widely used (one can compare their use with the use of participles and gerunds in English). In all Slavic languages, except for Bulgarian and Macedonian, there is no article. The languages of the Slavic subfamily are more conservative and therefore closer to the Proto-Indo-European language than the languages of the Germanic and Romance groups, as evidenced by the preservation by the Slavic languages of seven of the eight cases for nouns that were characters for the Proto-Indo-European language, as well as the development of the form of the verb.

b)Vocabulary

The vocabulary of the Slavic languages is predominantly of Indo-European origin. There is also an important element of the mutual influence of the Baltic and Slavic languages on each other, which is reflected in the vocabulary. Borrowed words or translations of words go back to the Iranian and Germanic groups, as well as to the Greek, Latin, and Turkic languages. Influenced the vocabulary and languages such as Italian and French. Slavic languages also borrowed words from each other. The borrowing of foreign words tends to be translated and imitated rather than simply absorbed.

c)Writing

Perhaps it is in writing that the most significant differences between the Slavic languages lie. Some Slavic languages (in particular, Czech, Slovak, Slovene and Polish) have a script based on the Latin alphabet, since the speakers of these languages belong predominantly to the Catholic denomination. Other Slavic languages (for example, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) use adopted Cyrillic variants as a result of the influence of the Orthodox Church. The only language, Serbo-Croatian, uses two alphabets: Cyrillic for Serbian and Latin for Croatian.

1 .8 Armenian language

Armenian is an Indo-European language, usually classified as a separate subgroup, rarely combined with Greek and Phrygian.

It is common in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, USA, Iran, France and other countries. The total number of speakers is over 6 million people.

It is assumed that the basis of the Armenian language is the language of the Hayasa-Armen tribal union within the state of Urartu. The Armenian ethnos was formed in the 7th century. BC. in the Armenian Highlands.

There are 3 stages in the history of the written and literary language: the ancient one (from the beginning of the 5th century, from the time the Armenian alphabet was created, to the 11th century, when the oral ancient Armenian fell into disuse; the written version, grabar, functioned in literature, competing with the new literary language , until the end of the 19th century, and has survived to this day in the cult sphere); middle (from the 12th to 16th centuries; the formation of dialects), new (from the 17th century), characterized by the presence of eastern and western versions of the literary language and the presence of many dialects.

Properties of the Armenian language:

a)in phonetics: at the ancient stage - the Indo-European phonological system with some modifications; removal of opposition by longitude/shortness; the transition of syllabic Indo-European sonants into vowels and non-syllabic sonants into consonants; the emergence of new fricative phonemes; the appearance of affricates; change of plosives by interruption, similar to the German movement of consonants; the presence of three rows - voiced, deaf and aspirated; in the middle period - stunning voiced and voicing of the deaf; monophthongization of diphthongs; in the new period - the divergence between the two options, primarily in consonantism.

b)in morphology: predominantly inflectional-synthetic structure; the appearance of analytical verbal constructions already in the ancient period; preservation of the three-row system of demonstrative pronouns; inheritance from I.-e. the basic principles of the formation of verbal and nominal stems, individual case and verbal inflections, word-building suffixes; the presence of 2 numbers; extinction of the genus category in the eastern version; use of the agglutinative principle of education pl. numbers; distinction of 7 cases and 8 types of declension; preservation of almost all categories of Indo-European pronouns; the verb has 3 voices (real, passive and middle), 3 persons, 2 numbers, 5 moods (indicative, imperative, desirable, conditional, incentive), 3 tenses (present, past, future), 3 types of action (performed, committed and to be committed), 2 types of conjugation, simple and analytical forms (with a predominance of analytical), 7 participles.

1.9 Greek language

The Greek language forms a special group in the Indo-European community. Genetically most closely related to the ancient Macedonian language. Distributed in the south of the Balkan Peninsula and the adjacent islands of the Ionian and Aegean Seas, as well as in southern Albania, Egypt, southern Italy, Ukraine, Russia.

Main periods: Ancient Greek (14th century BC-4th century AD), Middle Greek, or Byzantine (5th-15th centuries), Modern Greek (from the 15th century).

The main stages in the development of ancient Greek: archaic ((14-12 centuries BC - 8 century BC), classical (from 8-7 to 4 centuries BC), Hellenistic (time formation of the Koine; 4-1 centuries BC), late Greek (1-4 centuries AD).In ancient Greek, dialectal groups were distinguished: Ionian-Attic, Arcado-Cypriot (South Achaean), with the language of the Cretan-Mycenaean monuments), Dorian.

From the end of the 5th c. BC. Attic superdialect becomes the literary language. In the Hellenistic period, on the basis of the Attic and Ionian dialects, the common Greek koine was formed in literary and colloquial varieties. Later, there was a return to the Attic norm, which led to competition between 2 autonomous language traditions.

Modern Greek Koine was formed on the basis of southern dialects and was widely distributed in the 18th and 19th centuries. The literary modern Greek language exists in two versions: kafarevusa "purified" and dimotika "folk".

In the Greek language, many structural properties are manifested due to the long historical interaction in the course of the formation of the Balkan linguistic union.

Features of the ancient Greek language:

a)in phonetics: 5 vowel phonemes, differing in longitude/shortness; the formation of long vowels or diphthongs from adjacent vowels; mobile musical stress, of three types: acute, obtuse and clothed; 17 consonants, including stop voiced, voiceless and aspirated, nasal, fluent, affricates, spirants; dense and weak aspiration; transition I.-e. syllabic sonants into groups "vowel + consonant" (or "consonant + vowel"); reflection i.-e. labiovelar mainly in the form of anterior lingual or labial;

b)in morphology: 3 genera; the presence of articles; 3 numbers; 5 cases; 3 types of declension; 4 inclinations; 3 pledges; 2 types of conjugation; 2 groups of tenses (main: present, futurum, perfect; historical: aorist, imperfect, pluperfect);

c)in syntax: free word order; developed system of parataxis and hypotaxis; the important role of particles and prepositions;

d)in vocabulary: layers are native Greek, pre-Greek (Pelasgian), borrowed (from Semitic, Persian, Latin languages).

2. Sino-Tibetan family

The Sino-Tibetan languages (Sino-Tibetan languages) are one of the largest language families in the world. Includes over 100, according to other sources, several hundred languages, from tribal to national. The total number of speakers is over 1100 million people.

In modern linguistics, the Sino-Tibetan languages are usually divided into 2 branches, differing in the degree of their internal dissection and in their place on the linguistic map of the world, -- Chinese and Tibeto-Burmese. The first is formed by the Chinese language with its numerous dialects and groups of dialects. It is spoken by more than 1050 million people, including about 700 million - in the dialects of the northern group. The main area of its distribution is the PRC south of the Gobi and east of Tibet.

The rest of the Sino-Tibetan languages, numbering about 60 million speakers, are included in the Tibeto-Burmese branch. The peoples who speak these languages inhabit most of Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nepal, Bhutan, vast areas of southwestern China and northeastern India. The most important Tibeto-Burmese languages or groups of closely related languages are: Burmese (up to 30 million speakers) in Myanmar and (over 5.5 million) in Sichuan and Yunnan (PRC); Tibetan (over 5 million) in Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan (PRC), Kashmir (northern India), Nepal, Bhutan; Karen languages (over 3 million) in Myanmar near the border with Thailand: Hani (1.25 million) in Yunnan; manipuri, or meithei (over 1 million); bodo, or kachari (750 thousand), and garo (up to 700 thousand) in India; jingpo, or kachin (about 600 thousand), in Myanmar and Yunnan; fox (up to 600 thousand) in Yunnan; Tamang (about 550 thousand), Newar (over 450 thousand) and Gurung (about 450 thousand) in Nepal. The disappearing language of the Tujia people (up to 3 million people) in Hunan (PRC) belongs to the Tibeto-Burmese branch, but by now most of the Tujia have switched to Chinese.

The Sino-Tibetan languages are syllabic, isolating, with a greater or lesser tendency to agglutinate. The main phonetic unit is the syllable, and the boundaries of syllables, as a rule, are at the same time the boundaries of morphemes or words. The sounds in the syllable are arranged in a strictly defined order (usually a noisy consonant, sonant, intermediate vowel, main vowel, consonant; all elements except the main vowel may be absent). Combinations of consonants are not found in all languages and are possible only at the beginning of a syllable. The number of consonants occurring at the end of a syllable is much less than the number of possible initial consonants (usually no more than 6-8); in some languages, only open syllables are allowed, or there is only one final nasal consonant. Many languages have a tone. In languages whose history is well known, one can observe the gradual simplification of consonantism and the complication of the system of vowels and tones.

A morpheme usually corresponds to a syllable; the root is usually immutable. However, in many languages these principles are violated. So, in the Burmese language, alternation of consonants in the root is possible; in classical Tibetan there were non-syllabic prefixes and suffixes, expressing, in particular, the grammatical categories of the verb. The predominant method of word formation is the addition of roots. The selection of a word often presents a difficult problem: it is difficult to distinguish a compound word from a phrase, an affix from a functional word. Adjectives in Sino-Tibetan languages are grammatically closer to verbs than to names; sometimes they are included in the verb category as "verbs of quality". The conversion is widespread.

3. FInno-Ugric family

The Finno-Ugric (or Finno-Ugric) family is divided into four groups: Baltic-Finnish (these are Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Vepsian, Izhorian), Permian (Udmurt, Komi-Zyryan and Komi-Permyak languages), Volga, to which they belong the Mari and Mordovian languages, and the Ugric group, which includes the Hungarian, Mansi and Khanty languages. The separate language of the Saami living in Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula is closest to the Baltic-Finnish languages. The most widespread Finno-Ugric language is Hungarian, and in the countries of the near abroad - Estonian.

All Finno-Ugric languages have common features and a common basic vocabulary. These features originate in a hypothetical Proto-Finno-Ugric language. About 200 basic words of this language have been proposed, including word roots for such concepts as the names of kinship relationships, body parts, and basic numbers. This total vocabulary includes, according to Lyle Campbell, at least 55 words related to fishing, 33 to hunting, 12 to deer, 17 to plants, 31 to technology, 26 to construction, 11 to clothing, 18 - to climate, 4 - to society, 11 - to religion, as well as three words related to trade.

Most of the Finno-Ugric languages are agglutinative, the common features of which are changing words by adding suffixes (instead of prepositions) and syntactic coordination of suffixes. In addition, there is no category of gender in the Finno-Ugric languages. Therefore, there is only one pronoun with the meaning "he", "she" and "it", for example, hän in Finnish, tdmd in Votic, tema in Estonian, x in Hungarian, cij? in the Komi language, Tudo in the Mari language, So in the Udmurt language.

In many Finno-Ugric languages, possessive adjectives and pronouns such as "my" or "your" are rarely used. Possession is expressed by inclination. For this, suffixes are used, sometimes together with a pronoun in the genitive case: "my dog" in Finnish minun koirani (literally "my dog is mine"), from the word koira - dog.

4. Turkic family

The Turkic family unites more than 20 languages, including:

1) Turkish (formerly Ottoman); writing since 1929 based on the Latin alphabet; until then for several centuries - based on the Arabic alphabet.

2) Azerbaijani.

3) Turkmen.

4) Gagauz.

5) Crimean Tatar.

6) Karachay-Balkar.

7) Kumyk - was used as a common language for the Caucasian peoples of Dagestan.

8) Nogai.

9) Karaite.

10) Tatar, with three dialects - middle, western (Mishar) and eastern (Siberian).

11) Bashkir.

12) Altai (Oirot).

13) Shor with Kondom and Mras dialects3.

14) Khakassian (with dialects of Sogai, Beltir, Kachin, Koibal, Kyzyl, Shor).

15) Tuva.

16) Yakut.

17) Dolgansky.

18) Kazakh.

19) Kyrgyz.

20) Uzbek.

21) Karakalpak.

22) Uighur (New Uighur).

23) Chuvash, a descendant of the language of the Kama Bulgars, writing from the very beginning based on the Russian alphabet.

24) Orkhon - according to the Orkhon-Yenisei runic inscriptions, the language (or languages) of a powerful state of the 7th-8th centuries. n. e. in Northern Mongolia on the river. Orkhon. The name is conditional.

25) Pecheneg - the language of the steppe nomads of the IX-XI centuries. AD

26) Polovtsian (Cuman) - according to the Polovtsian-Latin dictionary compiled by Italians, the language of the steppe nomads of the XI-XIV centuries.

27) Ancient Uighur - the language of a huge state in Central Asia in the 9th-11th centuries. n. e. with writing based on a modified Aramaic alphabet.

28) Chagatai - the literary language of the XV-XVI centuries. AD in Central Asia; Arabic graphics.

29) Bulgar - the language of the Bulgar kingdom at the mouth of the Kama; the Bulgar language formed the basis of the Chuvash language, part of the Bulgars moved to the Balkan Peninsula and, having mixed with the Slavs, became an integral element (superstratum) in the Bulgarian language.

30) Khazar - the language of a large state of the 7th-10th centuries. AD, in the area of the lower reaches of the Volga and Don, close to the Bulgar.

5. Semitic-Hamitic(Afrasian) family

Afroasian languages are a macrofamily (superfamily) of languages, which includes six families of languages that have signs of a common origin (the presence of related root and grammatical morphemes).

The Afroasian languages include both living and dead languages. The former are currently distributed over a vast area, occupying the territory of Western Asia (from Mesopotamia to the coast of the Mediterranean and Red Seas) and vast territories of East and North Africa - up to the Atlantic coast. Separate groups of representatives of the Afroasian languages are also found outside the main territory of their distribution.

The total number of speakers currently fluctuates between 270 million and 300 million people, according to various estimates. The Afroasian macrofamily includes the following language families (or branches).

Berber-Libyan languages. The living languages of this family are distributed in North Africa west from Egypt and Libya to Mauritania, as well as in the oases of the Sahara, as far as Nigeria and Senegal. The Berber tribes of the Tuareg (Sahara) use their own script in everyday life, called tifinagh and dating back to the ancient Libyan script. The Libyan script is represented by brief rock inscriptions found in the Sahara and the Libyan Desert; the earliest of them date back to the 2nd century BC. e.

ancient egyptian language with its late descendant - the Coptic language is a dead language. It was distributed in the valley of the middle and lower Nile (modern Egypt). The first written monuments of ancient Egyptian date back to the end of the 4th - the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. It existed as a living and colloquial language until the 5th century AD. e. Monuments of the Coptic language have been known since the 3rd century AD. e.; by the 14th century it fell into disuse, remaining as the cult language of the Coptic Christian Church. In everyday life, the Copts, who, according to data from the end of 1999, there are about 6 million people, use Arabic and are now considered an ethno-confessional group of Egyptian Arabs.

Cushitic languages of which only living ones are known, distributed in Northeast Africa: in the northeast of Sudan, in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, in northern Kenya and in western Tanzania. According to data from the late 1980s, the number of speakers is about 25.7 million.

Omotian languages. Living unwritten languages, common in southwestern Ethiopia. The number of speakers according to the late 1980s is about 1.6 million people. As an independent branch of the Afroasian macrofamily, they began to stand out only recently (G. Fleming, M. Bender, I. M. Dyakonov). Some scientists attribute the Omot languages to the Western Cushitic group, which separated from Proto-Kushit earlier than the rest.

Semitic languages. The most numerous of the Afroasian language families; It is represented by modern living languages (Arabic, Maltese, New Aramaic dialects, Hebrew, Ethio-Semitic - Amharic, Tigre, Tigray, etc.), common in the Arab East, Israel, Ethiopia and North Africa, islands - in other countries of Asia and Africa. The number of speakers according to different sources fluctuates, amounting to approximately 200 million.

Chadic languages alive; more than 150 modern languages and dialect groups belong to this family. Distributed in Central and Western Sudan, in the region of Lake Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon. The Hausa speakers are the most numerous, numbering about 30-40 million people; for most of them, Hausa is not their native language, but the language of interethnic communication.

findings

This paper characterizes the main language families, considers language groups, features of the language structure of languages, including phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary. Of course, languages differ both in prevalence and social functions, as well as in features of the phonetic structure and vocabulary, morphological and syntactic characteristics.

Emphasis should be placed on the huge role played in modern linguistics by various classifications of world languages. This is not only a compact fixation of the many internal connections of the latter discovered by science, but also a certain guideline in their consistent study.

It should be noted that some languages are outside the general classification, they are not included in any of the families, Japanese also belongs to them. Many languages are so poorly studied that they do not fall under any of the classifications. This is explained not only by the large number of languages spoken on the globe, but also by the fact that a linguist studying existing (and existing) languages has to deal with factual data that are very dissimilar and very different in their very essence.

List of used literature

1. Arakin V. D. History of the English language / V. D. Arakin. - M.: Fizmatlit, 2001. - 360 p.

2. Armenian language. Materials from Wikipedia free encyclopedia [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_language

3. Baltic languages [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: http://www.languages-study.com/baltic.html

4. Vendina T. I. Introduction to linguistics: textbook. allowance for ped. universities / T.I. Wendina. - M.: Vyssh.shk., 2003. - 288 p.

5. Golovin B.N. Introduction to linguistics / N. B. Golovin. - M.: Higher school, 1973. - 320 p.

6. Dyakonov I. M. Semitic-Hamitic languages / I. M. Dyakonov. - M., 1965. -189 p.

7. Kodukhov V.I. Introduction to linguistics / V.I. Kodukhov. - M.: Enlightenment, 1979. - 351s.

8. Lewis G. Brief comparative grammar of the Celtic languages [Electronic resource] / G. Lewis, H. Pedersen. - Access mode: http://bookre.org/reader?file=629546

9. Melnichuk O. S. Entry to the historical-historical formation of the words "Janian language" / O. S. Melnichuk. -K., 1966. - 596 p.

10. Reformatsky A. A. Introduction to linguistics / ed. V.A. Vinogradov. - M.: Aspect Press, 1998. - 536 p.

11. Edelman D. I. Indo-Iranian languages. Languages of the world: Dardic and Nuristan languages / D. I. Edelman. - M. 1999. - 230 p.

12. Etymological dictionary of Slavic languages. - M.: Nauka, 1980. - T. 7. - 380 p.

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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.

The difficulties relate not only to 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 to 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 they take into account 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.

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 the 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 fell apart 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, Yez, Ginukh, Gunzib, Bezhta, Khvarshinsky, Lak, Dargin, Lezgin, Tabasaran, Agul, Rutul... We named the largest Dagestan languages, but did not list even half. 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), added 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, 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 - Andean, Akhvakh, Bagvalin (Kvanadin), Botlikh, Godoberin, Karata, Tindin, Chamalin

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What is a language family? Major language families of the world.

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