Language families, isolates and endangered languages

Lesson 2 of 5 in "Language and knowledge", about 7 minutes

There are about 7,000 living languages. They are spread very unevenly. A few dozen large languages are spoken by more than half of humanity. At the other end, thousands of languages have fewer than ten thousand speakers each. Most of these small languages belong to indigenous and tribal peoples, who make up about 6% of the world's population but speak a majority of its languages.

Language families

Languages change slowly as they are passed on. When groups of speakers separate, their speech drifts apart until they can no longer understand each other. A language family is a set of languages that grew from one earlier language in this way. Spanish, French and Italian all grew from Latin. Linguists detect older relationships by finding regular patterns of matching sounds in basic words.

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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.

The picture shows only some of the largest families. There are many more. New Guinea alone has dozens of families. The Americas have families such as Uto-Aztecan, Mayan, Quechuan and Tupian. Most Aboriginal Australian languages belong to a family called Pama-Nyungan. The Uralic family includes the Sámi languages along with Finnish and Hungarian.

India's four families

India's tribal languages come from four main families. Bhili and its relatives are Indo-European. Gondi, Kurukh and Kui are Dravidian. Santali, Mundari, Ho and Khasi are Austroasiatic. The many languages of the Naga, Mizo, Bodo and other peoples of the north-east and the Himalaya are Sino-Tibetan. The languages of the Andaman Islands form small families of their own.

Isolates

A language isolate is a language with no known relatives. It is a family of one. Basque, spoken in Spain and France, is the best-known example. Others include Burushaski in northern Pakistan, Kusunda in Nepal, Nihali in central India, Ainu in Japan and Zuni in the United States. Isolates are often the last survivors of families whose other members have vanished.

How a language becomes endangered

A language is endangered when children stop learning it at home. By common estimates, around four in ten of the world's languages are in this position. The cause is rarely a free choice. Speakers switch because their language was banned in schools, mocked in public or made useless for getting work. The diagram traces the usual path, and the way back.

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1. Used by all ages. A healthy language has one key sign: children learn it from their parents. The number of speakers matters less than whether it is still being passed on at home.
2. Outside pressure. Pressure builds from outside. In many countries indigenous children were punished at school for speaking their own language. Jobs and official papers demanded a different one.
3. Parents switch. The chain breaks at home. Parents who were shamed for their language often choose not to teach it. This is a decision made under pressure, not a free preference.
4. Only elders speak. Within a generation only older people are fluent. In 2010 Boa Sr, the last speaker of Bo, a language of the Andaman Islands in India, died and the language fell silent.
5. Record and describe. Revival often starts with recording. Elders work with younger members and linguists to capture words, stories and grammar. Old letters and Bibles can also become sources.
6. Teach the young. The turning point is teaching small children. Māori communities in New Zealand opened kōhanga reo, or language nests, in the early 1980s. Hawaiians followed with Pūnana Leo preschools.
7. New speakers. Success means new speakers who raise their own children in the language. Revival takes decades and steady support. Māori and Hawaiian now have growing numbers of young speakers.

What is lost

• Knowledge: names and uses of plants, animals, soils and seasons that exist in no other language.
• Literature: songs, epics, prayers and jokes that do not survive translation.
• Identity: the link between grandparents and grandchildren, and to a homeland.
• Evidence: clues about human history and about what the human mind can do with grammar and sound.

Scripts and writing

Most small languages were unwritten until recently, and some communities have created their own scripts. In the 1820s a Cherokee man named Sequoyah completed a syllabary, a set of signs each standing for a syllable, and within years many Cherokee could read and write. In India, Raghunath Murmu devised the Ol Chiki script for Santali in the 1920s. It is now used in schools, books and signboards.

Signs of hope

Decline is not inevitable. Guaraní is an official language of Paraguay and is spoken by most of the population. Santali and Bodo were added in 2003 to the languages listed in India's Constitution. The United Nations has declared 2022 to 2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. A later lesson looks at how communities are bringing languages back.

Words in this lesson