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Kabila

How the world's languages group into families

A language family is a set of languages that descend from one older language. These are some of the largest families, with examples.

no known familyAbout 7,000 languagesIndo-EuropeanSino-TibetanNiger-CongoAustronesianAfro-AsiaticDravidianAustroasiaticLanguage isolates

  1. About 7,000 languages. Linguists count about 7,000 living languages. They group them into families by finding regular matches in sounds and words that point to a shared parent language. Only a few families fit in this picture.
  2. Indo-European. Indo-European has the most speakers of any family, close to half of humanity. It includes large national languages and also indigenous ones, such as Bhili in western India.
  3. Sino-Tibetan. Sino-Tibetan is second by number of speakers. Beside Chinese, it includes hundreds of smaller languages across the Himalaya and north-east India, many with only a few thousand speakers.
  4. Niger-Congo. Niger-Congo covers much of Africa south of the Sahara. By common counts it has more than a thousand languages. Scholars still debate exactly which languages belong in it.
  5. Austronesian. Austronesian also has more than a thousand languages. Most scholars trace it to Taiwan, where indigenous peoples still speak its oldest branches. Seafarers carried it across two oceans.
  6. Afro-Asiatic. Afro-Asiatic stretches across North Africa, the Horn of Africa and West Asia. It includes the Amazigh, or Berber, languages such as Tamazight and the Tamasheq of the Tuareg.
  7. Dravidian. Dravidian languages are spoken mainly in southern India. Several tribal languages of central India belong here too, including Gondi of the Gond and Kurukh of the Oraon.
  8. Austroasiatic. Austroasiatic links mainland South-East Asia with eastern India. Its Munda branch includes Santali, which is one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of India's Constitution.
  9. Language isolates. An isolate has no proven relatives. Basque in Europe, Burushaski in northern Pakistan and Kusunda in Nepal are examples. Many other families exist beyond those shown, especially in New Guinea and the Americas.

Read the lesson

  1. Language families, isolates and endangered languagesMost of the world's languages are spoken by small indigenous communities, and many are at risk. You will learn how languages are related, what an isolate is, and how a language becomes endangered.

Seven peoples, once a week

Every Monday: seven peoples you may never have heard of, who they are and where they live.