Language families and languages
Category:Languages\nMost
languages are known to belong to
language families (called simply "families" for the rest of this article). An accurately identified family is a
phylogenetic unit, i.e., all its members derive from a common ancestor. The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since most languages have a very short recorded history. However, it is possible to recover many of the features of the common ancestor of related languages by applying
comparative method -- a reconstructive procedure worked out by
19th-century linguist August Schleicher. It can demonstrate the family status of many of the groupings listed below.
Language families can be subdivided into smaller units, conventionally referred to as "branches" (because the history of a language family is often represented as a "tree" diagram).
The common ancestor of a family (or branch) is known as its "protolanguage". For example, the reconstructible protolanguage of the well-known Indo-European family is called
Proto-Indo-European (not known from written records, since it was spoken before the invention of writing). Sometimes a protolanguage can be identified with a historically known language. Thus, provincial dialects of Latin ("Vulgar Latin") gave rise to the modern Romance languages, so the Proto-Romance language is more or less identical with Latin (if not exactly with the literary Latin of the Classical writers), and dialects of
Old Norse are the protolanguage to
Norwegian,
Swedish,
Danish and
Icelandic.
Languages that cannot be reliably classified into any family are known as
language isolates.
Natural Languages
\nMajor Language Families (grouped geographically without regard to inter-family relationship)
\nIn the following, each "bulleted" item is a known language family. The geographic headings over them are meant solely as a tool for grouping families into collections more comprehensible than an unstructured list of the dozen or two of independent families. Geographic relationship is convenient for that purpose, but these headings are not a suggestion of any "super-families" phylogenetically relating the families named.
Families of Africa and southwest Asia
\n* Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) languages\n* Niger-Congo languages\n* Nilo-Saharan languages\n* Khoisan languages
Families of Europe, and north, west, and south Asia
\n* Indo-European languages\n* Dravidian languages (some include Dravidian languages in a larger Elamo-Dravidian language family.)\n* Caucasian languages (generally thought to be two separate families, North Caucasian and South Caucasian)\n* Altaic languages (disputed)\n* Uralic languages\n* Hurro-Urartian languages (extinct)\n* Yukaghir languages (Some include Yukaghir in the Uralic family.)\n* Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages\n* Yenisei-Ostyak languages\n* Andamanese languages
Families of east and southeast Asia and the Pacific
\n* Austroasiatic languages\n* Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) languages\n* Sino-Tibetan languages (some include Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien in the Sino-Tibetan family)\n* Tai-Kadai languages\n* Hmong-Mien languages\n* Australian Aboriginal languages (multiple families)\n* Papuan languages (multiple families)
Families of the Americas
\n: See main article, Native American languages
Proposed Language Super-Families
\n* Austric\n* Indo-Pacific\n* Ural-Altaic \n* Pontic\n* Ibero-Caucasian\n* Alarodian\n* Amerind\n* Macro-Siouan\n* Kongo-Saharan\n* Super-Families that would include Indo-European\n** Eurasiatic\n** Nostratic \n** Proto-World
Creole languages, Pidgins, and Trade languages
\n* Bislamic languages\n** Bislama\n** Broken\n** Pijin\n** Tok Pisin\n* Chabacano - A Spanish creole spoken in South of the Philippines.\n* Chinook Jargon\n* Hawaiian Creole English\n* Haitian creole\n* Hiri Motu\n* Portuguese Creole languages\n* Sango
Isolate languages
\nSign languages
\n*American Sign Language (ASL) \n*Auslan, used in Australia\n*British Sign Language (BSL) \n*Dutch Sign Language (NGT)\n*Quebec Sign Language (LSQ) \n*French Sign Language (LSF) \n*Flemish Sign Language "Vlaamse Gebarentaal" (VGT) \n*German Sign Language "Deutsche Gebärdensprache" (DGS) \n*German-Swiss Sign Language "Deutschschweizer Gebärdensprache" (DSGS) \n*Irish Sign Language (ISL) \n*Nicaraguan Sign Language (LSN) \n*Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL)
Other Natural Languages of Special Interest
\n* Endangered languages\n* Extinct languages
Languages Other than Natural Languages
\nBesides the above languages that have arisen spontaneously out of the capablility for vocal communication, there are also languages that share many of their important properties.\n* constructed spoken languages\n* programming languages
External links
\n*http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp\n*http://www.unilang2.org/main/families.php\n*http://gebaren.ugent.be
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