This article is a list of language families. This list only includes primary language families that are accepted by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics; for language families that are not accepted by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics, see the article "List of proposed language families".
List of language families
Spoken language families
- Traditional geographical classification (not implying genetic relationship)
Legend
Sign language families
The family relationships of sign languages are not well established due to lagging linguistic research, and many are isolates (cf. Wittmann 1991).[4]
| Family Name | Location | Number of |
|---|---|---|
| French Sign | Europe, the Americas, Francophone Africa, parts of Asia | Over 50 |
| British Sign | United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa | 4–10 |
| Arab Sign | Much of the Arab World | 6–10 |
| Japanese Sign | Japan, Korea, Taiwan | 3 |
| German Sign | Germany, Poland, Israel | 3 |
| Swedish Sign | Sweden, Finland, Portugal | 3 |
| Chinese Sign | China (including Hong Kong and Macau) | 2 |
Maps of several language families
Map of the main language families of the world
The language families of Africa
Map of the Austronesian languages
Map of major Dravidian languages
Distribution of the Indo-European language family branches across Eurasia
Area of the Papuan languages
Map of the Australian languages
Distribution of language families and isolates north of Mexico at first contact
The major South American language families
Ethnolinguistic groups of mainland Southeast Asia
Caucasian languages
Distribution of the Uralic, Altaic, and Yukaghir languages
.png)
See also
- Constructed language – Language that is intentionally devised; not emergent from human interaction
- Endangered language – Language that is at risk of going extinct
- Ethnologue#Language families
- Extinct language – Language that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers
- Index of language articles
- Intercontinental Dictionary Series – Linguistics database
- International auxiliary language – Constructed language meant to facilitate communication
- Glottolog#Language families
- Language isolate#List of language isolates by continent
- Lists of languages
- List of proposed language families
References
- ↑ "Glottolog 5.0 -". glottolog.org. Retrieved 2024-06-28.
- ↑ "What are the largest language families?". Ethnologue. May 25, 2019.
- ↑ "North Caucasian". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on July 2, 2016. Retrieved July 17, 2016.
- ↑ Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement" (PDF). Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée (in French). 10 (1): 215–288.
External links
- Glottolog
- Ethnologue
- MultiTree Project Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
- Comparative Swadesh list tables of various language families (from Wiktionary)
| |||||||||||||||||
